6

Manuel

She started acting different a few months ago. Not crazy, like loco, not the way she’d acted after Essy was born. But she kept secrets, and got mad if he asked too many questions. Though it was not his way, to ask many questions, and he often wondered if he should ask more. What of all those evenings she spent apart from him, in Cuenca? Did she have friends there? Were they Americanos? Were they young or old? Did she go straight home after work, make herself a bowl of noodles? Or did she loiter at the office, gossiping, go for drinks with her colleagues until the bars and restaurants closed? Sometimes when they were together she would stay up late, sit in the uncomfortable high-backed rocking chair in the corner of their bedroom, scribbling away in her notebook. “What are you doing?” he asked. “Work,” she said. “What kind of work?” She shrugged, eyes tight on her page, and if he pressed she’d sigh, followed by a bloated exhale, and this meant she had nothing more to say. These past few months, she’d seemed extra impatient, exhaling often, as if she did not want to expend extra energy funneling her thoughts through her mouth, as if she’d rather expect him to read her mind.

But she was patient with Essy. As patient as one could hope to be with a child her age. She cooked her favorite foods, oatmeal not too thin, not too lumpy, chicken soup with the bones strained out, fried rice with green onion and gravy. She peeled her apples, halved her grapes, quartered her strawberries, adding a teaspoon of sugar if the fruit was underripe. She chided her: to clean up, to get dressed, to go potty, to go to bed, but she rarely raised her voice. He had his own challenges with his daughter, who seemed gifted with a limitless energy, who talked too much and too loudly, who dashed and jumped and punched the air, chased animals with sticks and climbed trees like a boy. “Why can’t she sit still?” he asked. “What about tea parties and dolls?” He spoke of little girls as if he knew, but he was acquainted with few, only his cousins’ daughters who played makeup and beauty pageant and pranced around at family parties dressed in leotards and tiaras and their mothers’ scarves. On second thought, he was glad his daughter was not like that.

•   •   •

He was back in his country, with his family. The work was hard but predictable. Air seemed to circulate more smoothly through his body, in one continuous loop, without getting stuck, or sucked in, or expelled in frantic bursts. The days stretched before him like miles of empty space. He tried not to think of it as dull, or view himself as defeated; on the contrary, he’d seen more of the world than anyone else in this countryside, and now he reaped the rewards of his return, puffing up as he recounted stories of Nueva York. Now he walked with his shoulders thrown back, looked people in the eye for the hell of it, because for too long he had looked down or away. The girls, too. Sure, the girls!

And then when Lucia decided to take that job in Cuenca, she was gone three days a week. His tías tittered, but he tried not to care. And though it wasn’t what he wanted, it was what she wanted, what she needed. He wanted to believe it: that she was cured. He made the best of things.

At Mami’s request, Tía Camila sent over her youngest daughter, his cousin Yasmin, to help with assorted daily household chores. Yasmin was nineteen, not particularly prompt or attractive or thorough in her cleaning, but she was chatty and had many friends. Luna, with the short legs; Guadalupe, with the stubbly pepa; Fabiana, who clawed her nails into his scalp and screamed for Holy Jesus the Savior as he went down on her (that shit was hard to take).

Mami liked Lucia, even if she was as confounded as the rest of them as to why Lucia felt it necessary to take work so far away. They assumed it to be some kind of crass cultural difference, like chewing gum or wearing shorts to church. The younger girls, teenagers, liked Lucia, too—joked with her at parties, gossiped about boys, took her into their confidences. She seemed to occupy that rare niche between themselves and their mothers, though they could feel she was constitutionally different somehow. He knew it, too, but it had not mattered to him. In this way, he and Lucia were alike—concerning themselves only with people as they are now, rather than who they were in the past.

He helped Papi on the farm. The animals needed to be fed and groomed and milked and herded. The sprinklers needed to be rotated, the fences mended, the grasses cut. When something broke, he fixed it. When their tools were stolen one night because he’d left them in the fields, he built a small storage bin. He could take care of these matters that stood squarely in his field of vision. And he had learned a thing or two in America, tearing down buildings with Maurice. He could install proper windows, frame a door, patch a rusty tin roof for a neighbor. He lagged on the outhouse, because soon enough he would build a brand-new casa, from scratch—when things were a bit more settled, when he had more time. A big house with a proper toilet and bathtub and shower, a kitchen with proper cabinets and porcelain tiles. And after he was done, he told Essy, they would paint it.

“Pink?” she said.

“Sure, pink.” He laughed, picturing it. “And purple. And orange and blue and all the other colors.”

“How about stripes?”

“Yes, stripes.”

“And dots. Polka dots?”

He laughed again.

“With a face? And a moon?”

“Sure. How about rabbits? You like rabbits?”

She nodded. “But Papi.” They were sitting outside, feeding leftover coconut shreds to their two pigs, Princess and Pea. “Papi, I want to paint our house now.”

This was the thing about children, they couldn’t wait—anything worth doing had to be done right away. He thought for a minute, knock-knocking his fist on the splintered wood panels, weathered dull and gray. “Sure, hija. We can paint it now.”

They hopped on the motorbike. Essy clung to him as they puttered into the village, but the general store was closed. Directed by the carnicero to venture seven kilometers south, he found a neighbor who kept a few gallons of white. “But I don’t like white!” cried Essy. “It will have to do,” he said. He placed the cans on the floor of the bike, puttered back to the casita. He thought they could start with the north-facing wall. He sprayed it down with the hose, showed her how to buff and sand and smooth the surface with a brick wrapped in sandpaper. The dry wood kept splintering. She grew impatient. He handed her a brush, hoisted her onto his shoulders so she could paint a cloud. “On the wall, mi amor,” he said. “On the wall.” Splatters of paint stuck in his hair.

That afternoon, they sat on the front stoop, awaiting Lucia’s return from Cuenca. As she walked up the winding dirt path, Essy ran to her.

“Mama, look!” she cried.

“What is this?” said Lucia. Her eyes grew wide, her jaw dropped, her mouth formed a perfect O.

He was afraid her brows would knit together, her lips draw into a line.

“A cloud! A cloud shaped like a rabbit!” Lucia said. She giggled with delight.

•   •   •

She was unpredictable. She had always been a bit impulsive but now she complained: She felt fat, or tired, or too fuzzy and mushy like a rotten peach. He checked his temper, but it rattled his brain, caused him to tug at the hair on the back of his neck with his fingers, grind his teeth late at night. Side effects, she said. No, he said. It was the travel that made her tired, the long bus rides, the job, the noise and fumes of the city. “Take a nap,” he said. He sent Essy away to play with Fredy. She slept on the hammock outside.

That night, like most nights, he listened to the sound of her brushing her teeth, and when it stopped he hopped out of bed to spy on her in the kitchen, careful not to be seen. He waited until he saw the tap—the small round object falling into her hand—before he returned to bed, quickly pulling up the sheet.

Each month or so, he would root through the tall shelf, hunt among the spices to retrieve the small orange bottle. At first, he’d simply inspected it to see if she was running low, and then, when she was, he’d sweat for days over how to bring up the matter. As casually as possible. But it never went well, and soon afterward he’d taken it upon himself to bring the bottle to the local farmacia, where he’d specifically requested they import this medication from Quito, but nonetheless, it was often unstocked, so he always felt victorious if he came out with it full. Back at the casita, he carefully dispensed one third of the contents into an old tin he kept hidden in the bedroom, inside a storage trunk. The orange bottle never went empty, but was also never more than two-thirds filled. She knew, of course, but she didn’t question him. In this way they were like an old married couple, who preferred to pretend certain parts of themselves were invisible.

But she was unpredictable. One evening she ran outside, grabbed a shovel from the garden, began to dig a hole. “Lucia, it’s getting dark,” he said. “So what?” she said. “I have eyes.” Her tone flippant, loud, with a bitterness that frightened him. And he did not say the word, the one that rang in his mind, the one the sister had repeated over and over again, the one Lucia despised: pills.

“Are you all right?” he said.

She kept digging, furiously hurling dirt.

“Are you all right?” he repeated.

“I can take care of myself,” she said. She fell silent then, but he sensed a disdain, as if she knew he was hiding his fear.

He bit the inside of his cheek. He would not let it go. This he had promised Lucia’s sister, before they’d left America: that he would never let this go. And though he did not owe the sister anything, he owed it to his daughter, he knew.

“We don’t have the same kinds of hospitals here,” he said, quietly. “You get sick here, I don’t know how to help you. You get sick here, you stay loco for the rest of your life.”

She stormed off into the woods.

The next morning she left for Cuenca and it crossed his mind: He never should’ve allowed her to take that job. But, no, that was his tías’ way of thinking. Wasn’t it? He knew Lucia, they didn’t.

He went to see Guadalupe. She wasn’t home. The next day he tried Luna. Her mother was there. Eventually he found Fabiana, and when she screamed for Holy Jesus the Savior, he clamped a hand over her mouth, plunged harder and harder, and when she clawed her nails into his scalp, he focused on the pain. Then by accident, he glimpsed his reflection in an oval hand mirror next to the bed, and for a split second, he thought he was looking at his daughter. He yanked on his jeans, returned quickly to the casita.

They were in the kitchen, beating together butter, sugar, eggs, wearing their matching pink aprons. “Papi, we’re making cookies!” said Essy. He peered into the bowl. “Mmm,” he said, yum-yum tapping his belly. His daughter beamed. She looked so much like her mother.

For Essy, he would try. For Essy.

•   •   •

And then one day he’d gone to Cuenca to open a bank account, ducked into an Internet café as it started to rain. By chance, he saw the girl in front of the vending machine, her reflection in the fluorescent white glare. She wore a denim jacket over a pink miniskirt, and when she moved, there was something familiar about the way her head and neck thrust ahead, the rest of her body in pursuit. Giraffe. Susi.

The memories flooded in. Imprinted upon him, the darkness of those days, inseparable from the chaos, the joy, the tender hysteria surrounding Esperanza’s birth—back when his baby’s eyes rarely opened and he was terrified he would drop her or smother her or crush her or starve her or that her nascent breath would simply stop. Only a handful of events (his infant brother Alamar’s burial at sea, his departure from the campo, his arrival in America) were branded into his being in such visceral detail. And if he lay in the dark, he could hear it still, the skittering in the walls, the incessant clang of the radiators, low muffle of the television in the kitchen, tuned to channel 9. Whenever the sirens wailed, he smelled smoke, but it was always his imagination. The bedroom temperature oscillated, hot and cold, hot and cold, a delicate film of ice coated the inner panes of the windows and he’d scrape at it with his fingernails while the baby slept beside him and Lucia floated two floors above. He tried to banish them from his thoughts—the baby, Lucia—free himself for a minute or two, but the band of fear would stretch from his groin to his throat, a tension rod jammed in his chest. So he listened for the clip of Susi’s footsteps, let the sheets absorb the tang of sweat and sex and rancid deep-fry oil and plaster dust and rose-scented perfume, and he pulled her on top of him and Susi would ride and ride until he exploded or until the baby woke and cried. No other lovemaking, before or after, ever came close to the rabid urgency of those nights. And then he and Susi would take turns bouncing Essy on the big green exercise ball that was not quite fully inflated, and with each bounce it sagged into the carpet with a hefty puff, as if bored by this repeated expulsion, and Susi would giggle, though he himself always worried the ball would burst under his weight. Such were the sharpened senses of those times, each day punctuated with shots of fear and doubt and adrenaline.

On closer inspection, this girl was shorter, wider, paler, with thicker calves, but the exact same moon face and too-small eyes. Probably no older than eighteen.

“Susi?” he said, even though he knew it was not Susi.

The girl shook her head.

“Lo siento,” he said. He unfurled a shy grin. Continued to play the game. “You look so much like someone I know.”

The girl angled her body away from him, skittish, like the squirrels he used to feed in New York.

“Susi Hernandez,” he said.

A flinch of recognition. Then she stared at him and he thought she seemed a bit stupid. Or perhaps he had it all wrong.

“I know Susi from America,” he said, casually. “We were friends in Nueva York.”

The girl blushed, startled, but her face brightened. “I am Nele,” she said. “Nele Hernandez. Susi is my sister.”

The odds! The coincidence! he could hear Lucia say.

His heart pounded. Power surged up his legs. “I moved back awhile ago. We haven’t really kept in touch. She is well, I hope?”

The girl reddened. He noted a trace of dimple. If only she’d release that smile. “Susi is in Esmeraldas now,” she said, softly. “Outside of the city.”

“Esmeraldas?”

“Yes. You know, in the north.”

“Esmeraldas,” he repeated. In the north.

“Outside the city.” The girl named the barrio.

How did she get there? How long has she lived there? What is she doing now?

“She’s . . . fine?” he said.

The girl’s too-small eyes, squinting. Bizarre, how much she looked like Susi, every feature the same, yet he found her overwhelmingly unattractive. Her skin had no sheen, her chin moved sideways like a cow chewing cud.

“Yes,” she said, finally.

“That’s great. Esmeraldas. That’s great.” He repeated it, qué bueno, qué bueno, and now he was the stupid one.

He should’ve asked for a phone number, or an address, or to convey a message. But what would he have said? Qué bueno, qué bueno, he kept mumbling, and then she’d turned away and run off like the squirrels. He couldn’t remember if he’d told her his name.

He should tell Lucia. Of course, she would want to know. She had been fond of Susi, the little sister she’d never had, crushed to learn of her disappearance. But a part of him wanted this new information all for himself. As if this knowledge of Susi’s whereabouts, kept secret, could be stowed alongside those other memories, prolong their intimacy somehow.

He would let it go. Susi had been found. She was safe in Esmeraldas. There was no need to complicate things further.

•   •   •

And then one day Lucia came to him. She had an idea, she said. She wanted to take a trip, with Essy. She wanted to visit her sister in Switzerland.

It caught him off guard. He couldn’t recall the last time she’d mentioned her sister. The name, once popping up at regular intervals, had all but disappeared. Lucia asking permission, this surprised him, too—if he said no, would she actually listen? But he couldn’t think of any reason why she shouldn’t go. And then seeing how happy she was when he consented, he found it reasonable that she’d miss what little family she had. She went from withdrawn and moody to ecstatic, giddy, floating over the moon. She sang hey diddle diddle the cat in the fiddle, every night before bedtime, and that song about the bones, which Essy adored. They were going on a trip! They would fly high in the sky on an airplane! They would see snow—snow! They would build snow forts and climb mountains and sit on the tippy-top, drink hot chocolate with marshmallows and eat cheese with holes. It sounded silly, such promises, but when he said so, jokingly, she snapped at him. “What would you know?” she said.

She was unpredictable. He was tense, unnerved. So one afternoon he found himself by the teléfono cabinica in town and he walked into a booth and called Lucia’s sister in Switzerland. A whim. Because if he admitted he’d planned it, he would’ve been far too nervous. They had not spoken in years—not since he’d left America.

“Hello. This is Manny.”

She asked immediately, “Is something wrong?”

“No,” he said. He did not want to raise alarm. He told her about Lucia’s job in Cuenca, of which Miranda was already aware, and about how happy Essy was at her school.

There was no reply on the other end and he was afraid the call had been disconnected, that Miranda Bok had been left hanging, annoyed. He was being evasive, he knew, and he knew she knew, and in the silence, he sensed her apprehension.

“Hello? Manny?”

He exhaled. “Have you spoken with her much?”

“Not really,” said Miranda. “A few e-mails. What’s going on?”

Then he tried to reassure her, but by the very fact that he was calling, it was impossible to sound convincing. He reassured himself instead. “She’s excited to visit you in Switzerland, and Essy, too. Before, I was worried. She seemed sad, not saying much, that’s all.” The line cracked with static, but he continued to talk. “It will be good for her, some time away, a vacation with you and Essy. It’ll be nice for her to relax.” Relajarse. It was not a word often spoken in these parts, but it was a word emphasized by that social worker in that hospital. “It’s hard, all the travel, back and forth to the city every week. I worry it’s not good for her.”

More crackling on the line. Like nerves, buzzing.

“Is she taking her pills?”

This was, essentially, the only question that mattered in their conversations. At times he felt its answer was more important to Miranda Bok than her sister’s actual well-being.

“Yes,” he said. “I think so.” Though now he couldn’t be sure, certainly not on the nights she stayed in the city, how did he know what she did then? And even in the kitchen of their casita, in front of the sink, he never spied long enough to see the pills go down her throat. He grew panicked. But no. Her behavior was not anything like after Essy had been born. She had been crazy, crazy loco, then. She was not like that. She was different, but not like that.

And then, as if she sensed his confusion: “Are you sure?”

“I think so. But I’m not sure.” He felt a rush of relief, to share this burden with her. He had never told anyone about Lucia’s illness, not even Mami.

“If she’s not right, you can tell.”

He nodded into the phone, but he wasn’t sure, and he felt stupid, as he often did, speaking to Lucia’s sister.

Only later, much later, would he understand. Later, in hindsight, they would come together on this: to wonder when it had become impossible to distinguish which parts of Lucia fell under her own jurisdiction and which belonged to her illness.

“Is she seeing a doctor?”

“In the city, maybe. She doesn’t like to talk about it.”

“If she isn’t right, she needs to see a doctor. Do you have psychiatrists there?”

He felt suddenly heavy. Tired. He set down the phone quickly. He wished he had not made the call. It stirred up worry, that was all.

•   •   •

He tried not to think about the conversation as he walked through town. He bought soup bones from the carnicero, a bag of candy corn. Lucia would be leaving soon. They would have a break, it would be good for him. He could call on Fabiana or Luna or Guadalupe. Or see if a couple of his primos would be interested in taking a trip. He’d enjoy a couple of days on the beach. They could hit the bars and discos, go fishing, check out the tourists on the malecón. He enjoyed losing himself in all he might do, all the freedoms a man might take while his wife and child were away. Though they were never officially married, and this bothered no one but Mami; it no longer occurred to him to have that conversation.

Or, he thought, suddenly—he could try to find Susi in Esmeraldas. Susi Hernandez, who had disappeared one day from the Vargas house, that cold rainy afternoon he could still see so clearly in his mind. The sleet, the ice, the traffic on Main Street, the policeman shining a flashlight in his eyes. And then Mrs. Gutierrez waving her broom, dressed in robe and sunglasses as she called from her stoop: Susi, taken by migras.

Following the news, he had lived in a stupor for days, maybe weeks. It dawned on him: Susi had been his sole ally. She had shared his burden, knowing the truth. And one night the sirens screamed down the street and without thinking, he’d grabbed Esperanza and run out into the cold. His legs carried him to Main Street, past the familiar shops and restaurants, until he found himself sitting on the steps of the town’s police station. He knew only that he was cold, and tired, and that he was sick of being so cold and tired and afraid all the time, and he wanted it to end. So he’d risen to his feet, reached for the metal door handle with his near-frozen hand. And that’s when Susi’s phone—which he’d carried in his pocket every day since she’d disappeared—had buzzed. As if on cue. Lucia’s sister. “Lucia is still in the hospital,” she said. “I’d like to come by to speak with you.” He’d hunched back down on those icy steps, head hot and spinning, baby strapped to his chest. It had been weeks since the sister had promised to call him with news. He’d assumed Lucia was gone. Like the Mexicano Jimmy Prieto. Like Susi. Disappeared from his life. Because what else could he have thought back then?

He had been to America, but he had never been to the city of Esmeraldas, a mere six hundred kilometers to the north. It had a rough reputation—Colombian drug rings, brothels, though it was also home to several of the national footballers. At first, it seemed a crazy idea, but then he found a bus schedule, planned an itinerary: the early morning bus to Quito, a night with an old schoolmate, then out to Esmeraldas the next morning. Though how would he find her, by navigating his way to the barrio, calling her name in the streets?

Still—he was curious. And colored by an illusive nostalgia, he fantasized a life with Susi the way he’d once fantasized a life with Lucia, with half a dozen children and hot meals around a large table. But Lucia was woven into his reality now, and it struck him that even if he wanted to leave—the casita, his tías, the eternal blue-gray sky—there was no place for him to go. It would be good to have a break.

But Lucia didn’t end up going to Switzerland. Three days before she was scheduled to leave, she called from Cuenca, left a message at the main house with Mami. The casita still had no phone.

“What do you mean, she’s not coming back today?” he asked.

“That’s what she said,” said Mami. She sat on her low stool, peeling potatoes.

“Why?”

“I don’t know, hijo,” said Mami. “She didn’t say.”

“What did she say?”

“Only that she was delayed in Cuenca. Had some things to do.”

“Did she sound all right?”

Mami looked at him from her low stool. “I don’t know, hijo. She didn’t say much. Why, is something wrong?”

“That one,” said Tía Camila. “Going here, going there, never standing still. That kind of woman is never right.” She fanned her face with a dish towel. Tía Camila did not pretend to like Lucia. She didn’t see the point.

Mami stood, set out a slice of honey cake and motioned for him to eat. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, kissed him on top of his head as she had done when he was a child. “Hijo, you are a good man,” she said. “I am glad that you are home.”

Three days later, Lucia came trudging up the winding dirt path, muddy from the rains. He was drinking a beer on the front stoop. He hadn’t expected her. It was dark, already night.

“I’m not going,” she said, deep moons under her eyes.

“What do you mean you’re not going?”

“Not going to Switzerland.”

“Why not?” he said.

“It’s complicated.” Her voice tight and strange.

“What happened?”

“You wouldn’t understand. I don’t want to go anymore. I don’t want to talk about it.”

She went inside, slipped into bed. He was baffled, bewildered, disappointed, relieved. A short while later, he went to check on her. She was already asleep—both arms wrapped around Essy, the two of them one big ball curled up tight.

The next day it occurred to him, he had not brought the orange bottle on the high shelf to the farmacia in a while. It must be running low. He rummaged through the spices. It was there behind the paprika. Lucia must’ve gone to the pharmacy herself, because it was all the way full.

On Monday morning, she asked him to drive her to town, where she boarded the chicken bus to the city as usual. But she returned that same evening, wheeling her large, red plaid suitcase behind her.

“Mama!” said Essy. She leapt into her mother’s arms, begged to ride on the suitcase as though it were some exotic horse.

“I’m back,” she said.

“What’s up?” he said.

She would no longer stay in the apartment in Cuenca.

“Why not?” he asked, genuinely surprised.

She said, “It’s full of spiders.”

She seemed different. But not in that erratic way she had been for months. This was something more fragile, more volatile. He found the best strategy was to feign lighthearted approval. Is that a new dress? I haven’t seen it before. Have you noticed your fava beans growing? On eggshells, he checked his words. She ignored him, mostly, though she lavished attention on their daughter, playing blocks or stuffed bunny tea party or pirate ship adventures. But before bed each night, when Essy called, Mama, come! Mama, read a book! Lucia walked away, as if she did not hear, and when Essy ran to tug at her arm, she looked through her daughter as though she were not there.

She worked in their garden. Digging and weeding and sowing and pruning, always on her knees, looking down. Mami noticed the change. Mami rarely came to the casita, but one day he saw her walk up the path, woolen shawl drawn around her shoulders.

“Essy is in school,” he said.

“This is for Lucia,” said Mami. She had brought a pot of locro de papa, potato soup. She set it down, joined them on the stoop. “Lucita, is something bothering you?”

Lucia stared up at the sky, pointed at the clouds changing shape. “They’re whispering about me all the time,” she said.

She sounded so far away.

Mami kissed her cheek gently, reached for her hand. Lucia sat, her gaze still fixed on the clouds. “Ma?” she said.

He walked away. He went to Fabiana that afternoon.

It was true. They whispered. At Tía Camila’s birthday party, at cousin Estela’s quince, on Día de los Difuntos and New Year’s Eve, at baby Alberto’s christening. They had always whispered: What kind of woman leaves her husband and child? She goes to Cuenca, alone. Why Cuenca? In America the women do it. America! But this is not America. Tía Camila. Tía Alba. Tía Paula. The neighbor, Roberto. His cousins on the futbol fields. Tío Remy, who asked after Lucia’s health as he winked and nudged: The Chinitas have the softest hands. Even Ricky and Juan asked, “Manny, what’s up with Lucia?” “She’s been tired,” he said. At least this was the truth.

Some days she was up at the crack of dawn, frying eggs, making pancakes. Some days she slept all afternoon. Some days she picked up Essy early from school. One morning they left the campo but did not go to school at all, and when he came home midmorning he found them outside, sailing paper boats down a trench they’d dug with Essy’s toy shovels and filled with the hose. “Shouldn’t she be at school?” he asked. “What?” “School,” he said. “Oh, Manny,” she said, breezily. “School is so silly. This is Mommy-Essy time. We’re bonding.” He swallowed. He knew he should say something, assert himself, admonish her—but the vacancy in her eyes made him cower.

One day he came home to find the bright yellow pot unattended on the stove, sizzling, boiling over, lapped by orange-blue flames. “Lucia?” he called. “Lucia!” Angry. He found them in the bedroom, on the floor, playing My Little Pony—Lucia on her knees, Essy with a brand-new butterfly barrette in her hair. “Please, you need to be more careful,” he said. “You could have burned the whole house down.”

“But Manny, you wouldn’t let that happen. See? You came.”

“Lucia, this behavior, it’s dangerous.” He gritted his teeth, lowered his voice. “I’m worried.”

“Wor-ried, wor-ried, Man-ny’s worried.”

He did not use the word: sick. She hated that word.

“You don’t seem well.”

“How would you know? Are you inside my body?”

“Are you . . .”

“I’m fine. It’s none of your business.” Her clavicles tensed.

“I’m just asking.”

“Stop asking.”

“Maybe we should go to the doctor.”

“We? NO,” she shouted. “YOU go to the doctor. LEAVE ME ALONE.”

He took his daughter outside. He felt clammy, hot and cold.

“Why is Mama so mad?” said Essy.

“Go to Abuela,” he said. “Go on, mi amor, go stay at the house.”

He began to spend his nights on the hammock outside. One night he dreamed of a woman with Fabiana’s face, Luna’s legs, Guadalupe’s stubbly pepa. But when he rode her, he was riding Susi’s heart-shaped ass. Dawn brought a sore back, sore jaw, a crick in his neck, skin riddled with fresh mosquito bites.

One evening he came home later than usual, found the screen door wide open, the house dark and empty. He figured they were at Mami’s, watching TV or playing cards. But Mami’s house was quiet, too. “What is it, hijo?” she said. “Nothing,” he mumbled. He plodded back home. The motorbike was still there. They could not have gone far. He checked the garden, the shed, the groves behind the casita. Down by the river, he saw their clothes, laid out in the grass to dry: his T-shirts and jeans, Lucia’s bras, Essy’s sundresses and Dora the Explorer underwear. Lucia? he called. The only sounds, the gurgling water, the crickets, the bark of a dog. The sunlight was fading. The water, dark. For a moment he panicked, envisioning the worst. Essy! Lucia! He kicked off his boots, waded in. The mud sludgy, warm, squishy between his toes. Small fish nipping at his ankles. “Shit,” he said. He was being ridiculous. Wasn’t he? They could be at Tía Paula’s. The neighbor’s. Anywhere. He sprinted back to the casita. Lucia? Essy?

Finally, he heard a whimper from the direction of their bright purple outhouse. He ran to it, yanked at the door, the flimsy hook flying into the grass. They were there. The two of them. Squatted on top of the toilet seat, his daughter’s eyes clenched shut, pinching her nose with her fingers. “Essy!” “Papi?” Her eyes sprang open, her lips quivered. “We were hiding from the spies,” she said. She began to cry. She threw her skinny arms around his neck. “Papi, Papi, I was scared. Please don’t let them find us, Papi.” She clung to him with gasping sobs, her entire body shaking uncontrollably. “Hija, I’m here now. I’m here.” He kissed her wet cheeks, smoothed her hair. “Hija, it’s okay, you don’t have to be scared.” But his chest filled with rage. He glared at Lucia. “Are you crazy?” he hissed. “What?” she said. “We were playing a game. Essy, come on, silly, it was just a game.” He wanted to hit her, slap her, smash that ridiculous smirk off her vile face. “Don’t you ever dare do this again,” he said. He carried his daughter back to the casita, lay beside her as she slept in their bed. Lucia did not come in.

•   •   •

He did not see her the next morning either. He didn’t care. He brought Essy to school. “Abuela will come pick you up today,” he said. The rest of the morning was spent lugging heavy hoses up the hillside. Around lunchtime he stopped at Mami’s, drenched in sweat. Tía Camila sat on the low stool, peeling potatoes.

“Where is Mami?” he asked.

“She is not here,” his tía answered.

“Where is she?”

Tía Camila set down the peeler, stood, washed her hands in the sink. “Your Papi took Sylvia to the doctor.”

“The doctor?”

“Sí.”

“Why?”

“Ay, sobrino.” His tía vented a lofty sigh. “Your mother is worrying about you all the time. Worrying about your Chinita. Worrying about your child. Worrying so much she makes herself sick.”

Mami? Sick? It sent his gut roiling, lit a fire from his chest to his face. But Mami was strong, like an ox. He could not recall her ever being sick; she rarely even went to the doctor.

Tía Camila shook her head. “You don’t know what it’s like for a mother, to see her own son this way. A man who cannot control his own wife. Ay, qué vergüenza.” Disgrace.

•   •   •

He blistered with humiliation, boiled all day. Dug holes, flung dirt, pounded wooden posts with a sledgehammer. His throat was dry. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He felt dizzy and had to sit down. That evening, he returned to the casita, exhausted.

Lucia was there, wearing her pink apron, standing in front of the stove, the yellow enamel pot once again at full boil. Every surface of their kitchen was covered in vegetables: zucchini, eggplants, yuca, radishes, cabbage, beets, carrots, potatoes, all diced into one-inch cubes, laid out in colorful matrices of varying sizes, six by eight, four by twelve, twenty-four by two.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he said.

She turned to him. “What does it look like?” she said. “I’m cooking. What are YOU doing?”

He punched the wall with his fist. Pain shot through his arm. The gold-framed picture of Jesus Christ clattered to the floor. “Basta,” he said. “Enough of this shit. You’re sick. You’re crazy. You need to take your pills. I need to call your sister.”

“What?”

“I’m going to call your sister.”

“My sister?” said Lucia.

She grabbed the bright yellow pot full of boiling water, hurled it at his face.