buenos aires, argentina
december 1976
Lorena kept her head down as she hurried past the kiosko stacked with government-backed newspapers. She focused on the little flowers stitched into her leather clogs, on their clop-clop-clop sound against the hot pavement. At the corner, a cluster of military officers loomed. They were everywhere now, black-booted and dressed in olive uniforms, boasting submachine guns like trophies. Lorena ran her index finger along the laminated edge of the identification card in her pocket and lifted her gaze to the nearest soldier’s face. He was slightly younger than her—early twenties, maybe—with deep-set eyes and a bottom lip that jutted out. She imagined encountering him in another time or place, recast in a role that wasn’t on the opposite side of el Proceso—the government’s “reorganization process.” He might have seen her differently then, as a woman rather than a possible subversive. Perhaps he would have made a pass at her. Perhaps she would have laughed him off sharply enough to damage his pride, and he would have been the one at her mercy instead of the other way around.
The idea passed quickly as the young man glanced back and forth between her face and the identification card he now held in his hand.
“Lorena Ledesma,” he read aloud, emboldened by the authority of his misbuttoned uniform.
She nodded obediently. Lorena Ledesma: a devoted citizen, a faithful wife, the mother of a young son. A loving daughter hosting dinner for her extended family that very evening, she explained to him, just on her way to the grocery store to pick up some meat for the empanadas.
He leered at her with an intensity she doubted he could’ve summoned if he weren’t holding the gun. Perhaps he’d caught sight of her coming out of the university, where classes had been canceled to thwart the spread of radicalism. Please, she thought. Just let me go home. If she could just get through one more dinner, one more day, something was bound to happen to break this ominous tension.
“Your errands are done,” said the officer at last, giving her the ID. “Go straight home. Hurry up, and mind curfew tonight.”
She took it, irate but relieved, and dropped her eyes again. Her cotton blouse clung to the sweat spreading across her back. The cinnamon scent of a lonely churro cart faded behind her as she boarded the bus for Barrio Norte, its arrival a small miracle given the recent unreliability of public transport. Inside her clogs, her feet had begun to swell.
When the bus door shrieked open at Alvarez Thomas Street, Lorena disembarked and made her way past stone facades and gates of finished wood. She was a fool for going back to the university in the first place. It wasn’t as though she expected to find Claudio there, in the faculty lounge where it had all started, but she’d still wanted physical proximity to his memory. It had been weeks since she’d heard a single word from him.
She unlocked the front gate and went inside. José was in the kitchen fixing a drink, his shirt unbuttoned in the heat. Every evening lately, he poured a stiff drink at an early hour, as though he’d been fighting fascists with his bare hands all day rather than philosophizing with furloughed political science professors. She kissed him chastely and began slicing vegetables. The cat weaved between her ankles.
“What time does your mother arrive?” he asked.
“Seven,” she said. “I told you that already.”
“You didn’t.”
“Well, it’s seven.” Lorena was exhausted and her legs ached, but she wiped down the counters and fired up the stove. Making José feel like the man of the house was a small penance for the things she hid from him, and it offered protection: the work of an ordinary housewife was unsuspicious.
By the time Esme knocked on the front door, the aroma of sizzling peppers and spices wafted through the place.
“Come in, Mamá,” Lorena called from the kitchen.
Esme appeared cradling her groggy two-year-old grandson, Matías, in one arm.
“How are you feeling, my love?” Esme asked, cupping her daughter’s face with her free hand. Her palm was smooth and warm. “You still haven’t put up your Christmas decorations.”
Lorena pried her son’s fist from a lock of his grandmother’s hair and nuzzled his soft cheek with kisses. The boy wriggled from Esme’s grasp and hefted his weight toward his mother.
“I’m fine,” Lorena lied, cuddling her boy. She kissed Matías again and set him down on the tile, where he immediately tottered toward the patio. Lorena twisted her dark hair into a loose bun and tucked it in place. “I haven’t had time yet, but I’ll get to it.”
“Immaculate Conception Day was Wednesday.” Esme set her pocketbook on the counter and fanned herself with one hand. “Children need Christmas. They need celebrations, things to look forward to—especially these days, God help us.”
Lorena glanced around. The heavy wooden shutters along the front of the house were unlatched, exposing thick wrought iron bars over the windows. French doors opened from the kitchen to a back patio where blades of grass thrust between cracks in the concrete to graze Matías’s pudgy bare feet. The stone pavers were still warm from the day’s sun, which had just begun to set. A pang of longing struck. She missed her father.
Esme followed Matías outside. The bamboo patio chair creaked as she settled into its faded cushion.
“You want a glass of wine, Mamá?” Lorena asked.
“Just some water, dear.” Esme sighed. “Have some, too. You look tired. You need to stay hydrated in this heat.”
In the living room, the turntable’s needle steered through the prelude to one of José’s favorite songs. He emerged, drink in hand, and joined his mother-in-law on the patio.
“Good day today?” he asked, leaning down to offer his cheek.
Esme kissed it fondly. José took the seat next to her, lifting his feet to the ottoman and humming softly to the music. Resentment filled Lorena as she fetched a glass of water and delivered it to her mother.
“Matías was an angel,” said Esme, who helped take care of her only grandson a few days each week. “As he always is. We tried to go to the park, but—” Esme sighed, lamenting some earlier event, and took a long sip of water. “What can you do? What can anyone do about such madness in the world? It’s in God’s hands, I suppose.”
In the kitchen, Lorena stuffed half-moon pockets of dough with cheese and vegetables, crimping the repulgue the way Esme had taught her as a girl, but with far greater force. Her late father, Gustavo, a union leader and Peronista, would stir in his grave if he heard Esme dismissing the current state of his country. Lorena shifted from one sore foot to the other. A revolutionary’s drumbeat echoed in her memory. Esme and José preferred to sip drinks and downplay the junta’s fascism. Lorena straightened her spine; she would never be subdued. She would never abandon her father’s fight—the people’s fight—and she knew Claudio wouldn’t, either.
“Mamá, dance!” Matías squealed, stomping into the kitchen and wrapping his arms around his mother’s legs. He gazed up at her adoringly.
“My love,” she said, softening. She reached down to tousle his hair, then paused, her hands wet with empanada filling.
“José,” she called, “can you help with Matías?”
José turned his head in her direction without getting up, then dropped a hand to pet the cat’s head. He took a slow sip of his drink.
Lorena stuck the empanadas in the oven, wiped her hands on a towel, and carried Matías back out to the patio, where she danced with him a bit before guiding him toward Esme’s lap. The boy hopped back down and followed Lorena to the table, grabbing at the flatware as she arranged the place settings.
“Any word from Claudio?” Esme called over a lull in the music.
Lorena stopped folding the napkin she was holding and glanced up to catch—then avoid—her husband’s eye.
José shook his head. “God only knows what he’s gotten himself into.”
Lorena’s jaw constricted. “I’m sure he’s fine,” she said quietly. “He knows what he’s doing.”
José glared. “He’s reckless as ever.”
“You haven’t seen him?” Esme asked.
Lorena straightened a fork at one of the place settings.
“No,” José said quickly. “We’re not involved.”
Claudio is not our concern anymore, José would insist. You need to stay calm, Lorena. Stop getting so worked up about things you can’t control. But Lorena didn’t want to keep calm. She wanted to set the streets on fire until her country belonged to its people again, and from the look on José’s face, he knew exactly how she felt.
“Let’s eat,” she said, smiling tightly.
Since the coup last March, General Jorge Videla had been running the country with tight control. Tanks were parked outside the Casa Rosada—the Pink House, Argentina’s presidential residence—bolstering the right-wing dictatorship’s message: the time for resistance and uprisings was over. Any perceived subversion was snuffed out by the junta. Leftist militant groups like the Montoneros and the People’s Revolutionary Army had lost support, and their members—like Claudio—were going underground or into exile. Guerrillas were eradicated and people suspected of subversion were going missing. There was no tolerance for public spectacles like the union demonstrations her father had organized for years. Fall in line, Videla had warned citizens explicitly, or pay the price and become invisible.
Lorena brought out the platter of empanadas and a bottle of red wine as they settled around the table. Matías perched on Esme’s knee while she said grace. Across the patio, the neighbor’s back door slammed. José opened the bottle and poured, then took a bite.
“No meat?” he muttered.
Lorena’s cheeks burned. “I couldn’t get any.” She envisioned the young officer’s smug face and tore off the tip of an empanada with her teeth.
“They’re delicious, sweetheart,” said Esme.
“Yes, very good,” murmured José, a small kindness that reminded Lorena of a time when there hadn’t been such tension between them, before his complacency had become intolerable. But when he swiped a napkin across his mouth and patted Lorena’s hand, her fury returned. We have a family now, José would remind her, as if that wasn’t all the more reason to take a stand for their country.
After they finished eating, Lorena cleared the table and set down a tray of coffee and alfajores. José moved his hand to the small of her waist. She flinched, then closed her eyes as his fingertips found the broad part of her hip. His touch was reverent, tentative, as though he was uncertain of her body’s full capabilities or his own capacity to handle them. Lorena breathed through a quiver of anxiety.
“You all right, dear?” Esme asked.
Matías, who was overtired and tearful, curled up on his grandmother’s lap and reached for her earring.
Lorena let out another breath, opened her eyes and met Esme’s. It seemed her mother could see straight through to her fraying soul.
“Everything’s fine,” said Lorena quietly. She watched with a pang of envy as Matías nestled into Esme’s lap. How she longed to be comforted in such a simple way, to return to a time when her mother’s touch was all it took to erase every mistake she’d ever made.
* * *
Later, as she put her boy to bed, Lorena studied his long lashes, the tiny lids eclipsing his brown eyes, his soft, dark hair like José’s. Matías reached up and wrapped his hand around Lorena’s finger, but the sweet gesture seemed too mature, as though he was holding onto her, already wise to the possibility of her absence.
It was past curfew. Esme retired to the guest room, and José took his book to bed. Alone, Lorena moved through the house, adjusting the open windows with precision. Warm summer air bled in. The balance of muted street sounds and the soft, sleeping breath of her family gave her the sense that everything was momentarily in its proper place. She yearned to miniaturize it all, to package them up and keep them safe. In the hallway, the fan was a rickety metronome, the tiles cool beneath her bare feet.
The cat hurtled from the kitchen windowsill and landed on the patio with a soft trill. In the moonlight, laundry fluttered on the line and palm fronds rustled in the breeze. Where was Claudio tonight?
In the bedroom, Lorena pulled back the ivory coverlet and slid between the sheets. José’s skin felt warm and welcoming. She pressed her body against him and, through the thin material of her nightgown, felt the shift of his shoulder blade. She kissed his bare shoulder. She’d almost forgotten the taste of his skin. She hadn’t held him in months, but now she realized that focusing on his body distracted her mind. Please, God, she prayed. Give me strength to handle this. Help me to know what to do.
Through the open windows, the city streets fell quiet. She closed her eyes and tried, just for a little while, to make everything go away.
* * *
In the darkness, a thud jolted Lorena awake. Adrenaline surged through her chest. Before she could orient herself, her mind went instinctively to Matías. Her eyes adjusted as José sat up in bed, running his hand absently over his face and through his hair. It was past midnight. A series of thuds sounded from the front entrance of the house.
Lorena flung the covers off her legs and fled to the baby’s room. When she reached his crib, she found him still half-asleep.
“Mamá?” Matías groaned as she picked him up. Cradling the warmth of his small body, she headed toward the guest room.
“Mamá?” Lorena echoed her son as Esme emerged. The sharp banging was startling. Matías began to cry.
“What’s going on, Lore?” asked Esme, shoving her arms through her robe. The front door shuddered, each pounding more forceful than the previous.
Claudio, thought Lorena.
José tugged an undershirt over his head as he made his way down the shadowy hall. His bare feet were silent on the tile floor.
“José,” Lorena hissed. “Wait.”
But when José turned around, Lorena couldn’t articulate her fears, managing only to hold her husband’s gaze. She imagined the state Claudio might be in, the help he might need. Not now, she thought. Please, not with Mamá here. Not with the baby. Not like this. Matías wailed at the banging. It didn’t stop.
“Coming!” José shouted.
The heavy metal latch screeched as José opened the door. Shadows merged the profiles of two unfamiliar men at the threshold. Behind them, a third silhouette filled the gap between their shoulders.
Lorena came up behind her husband, bouncing Matías on her hip frantically to soothe him. Esme began to follow, but Lorena flicked the air with her free hand to keep her mother back. Keep calm, she thought, but her heart pounded.
“José Ledesma?” barked one of the officers in front. He wore a thick shirt, belted pants with pocketed thighs, and calf-high black boots—the same uniform of the junta Lorena had passed near the churro cart that afternoon. The other two men wore plain street clothes and brandished rifles.
José turned to look at Lorena, then back toward the men.
“Sí,” he said in a near whisper, stepping back.
The officer shoved José’s chest with the side of his rifle, thrusting him against the foyer wall with a crash, then belted him across the torso with the gun. José’s single high-pitched cry pierced the air. For a moment, Matías went quiet.
“Is this your wife?” the officer snarled, nodding toward Lorena. He leaned into José, who looked wordlessly at the floor. “Lorena Ledesma?”
The resonance of the officer’s voice sent a cold terror through Lorena’s chest. She held Matías tighter.
“We’ve done nothing. You’ve got the wrong house,” José uttered, his voice shallow, the breath emptied from his lungs.
Lorena bolted back to Esme, who clutched her chest and covered her mouth. Their eyes locked. Lorena was close enough to feel the warmth of Esme’s body, the brush of her mother’s cotton robe against her own bare calves. Esme reached for Matías, enveloping him with both arms and cradling the back of his head.
Lorena lurched back toward the entryway, a trailing arm outstretched to shield her mother and son. Matías reached for her as she moved away, but Esme held on tightly until he buried his face in his grandmother’s soft shoulder.
The officer relinquished his hold on José, but one of the other men seized him by the shoulder and kneed him in the gut. José yelped, slinging his arm across his waist as he crumpled to the floor.
The lead officer dashed toward Lorena, yanking her arms behind her. Lorena’s swirling hip slammed against the wooden sideboard that she and José had bought in Palermo, sending a basket of hollow gourds clattering to the floor.
“Let’s go,” the officer spat. He pushed Lorena down the hallway toward the bedroom. She took quick inventory of him. Would he rape her, right here in her home, in front of her husband, mother, and son? He gestured back for the third comrade to enter the house. Their boots were like hooves against the tile. He shoved Lorena through the bedroom door.
“Get dressed,” the officer demanded.
Crashes reverberated from the living room.
“We haven’t done anything,” she whispered, wincing in fear. But it was a lie. What she’d done hardly seemed enough to bring the junta into their home, but she knew they were here now because of her—because of what she’d done with Claudio.
The officer looked down his nose at her, disgusted. “Put some clothes on,” he said.
Shame, then rage, seeped through her fright. She crouched next to the full laundry basket at the foot of the bed and pulled out a pair of drawstring pants she wore to clean the yard. The closet door was partially open. The bedsheets were pulled back. There was a faint valley in the pillow where José’s head had rested just moments earlier. There was nothing within her reach substantial enough to inflict pain, and she knew she would be killed before she could cause any real damage.
“Who sent you?” José shouted from the foyer as Lorena slipped the pants over her bare legs.
“Shut up,” she heard one of the men growl. “We ask the questions.”
They’ll realize we’re not worth their time, Lorena thought. They’ll take us in for questioning and let us go. We’ll be home before morning. She slid on the shoes she’d discarded when she got home, ages earlier.
The officer butted his rifle against her arm, prompting her back into the hall. Esme receded toward the guest room still holding Matías.
The third man was standing in the living room, surveying it. Fragments of a shattered vase speckled the floor. Couch pillows were shredded, their innards strewn. A wall tapestry had been torn down, dumped in a rumpled pile.
“Let’s go,” the lead officer ordered. For the first time, Lorena noticed his features—his burlap skin reddened by razor burn, his small eyes the color of lentils.
“Mamá!” Matías cried from Esme’s arms.
“Please,” Lorena pleaded with the officer as he shoved her toward the door. “My son.”
Fueled by adrenaline, she broke free of the officer’s grasp and sprinted the brief distance to Esme. Tearfully, she pressed her lips against Matías’s face, rubbing his plump arms and legs maniacally. She ignored the approaching boot steps until the officer yanked her away by her hair.
“I’m coming back, Mamá,” Lorena said to Esme.
Matías began to whimper.
“What’s their crime?” yelled Esme, her voice breaking. “Why are you doing this?”
The officer jerked his head toward the door, then took an ominous step toward Esme.
“Leave the boy and the old woman,” he said to the third man.
“We’re coming back,” cried Lorena.
Before she could utter another word, Lorena saw the second man lift José from the floor. His arms were bracketed behind him, his shoulders hunched, vulturelike. The third man produced a dark sack and plunged its opening over José’s head. She saw the stubble on her husband’s jaw, the place where she’d kissed him just hours earlier.
Then her entire world went black behind the tight warp and weft of material that reeked of sinister things: gasoline, rubber, something metallic.
Matías’s cries faded as the clomping boots led her out to the street. She could still feel the warmth from his small body against her chest, the weight of him in her arms just moments earlier. A lump filled her throat. She envisioned him wriggling from Esme’s embrace, crawling toward the front door with his little hand outstretched. He would twist his body defiantly when Esme swept him up to comfort him. He would see Lorena being marched away.
Her soul tore with every inch she moved away from Matías. A part of her became crippled, debilitated. But another part was starkly alive, walking in her nightgown and drawstring pants, her swollen feet still in her own shoes. In the warm air outside the house, she was being prodded toward the street by brutal men hell-bent on carrying out their orders. Her rational mind still worked devastatingly well.
The two men in plain clothes had to be Triple A—the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance, a paramilitary group—and it was possible that they’d seen her go into that apartment with Claudio months earlier. She’d only been inside for an hour, maybe two, and she’d been so careful—but the junta had eyes everywhere.
Please, God, she prayed. What would happen to Matías? Was Esme strong enough to keep him safe? We could be home by morning. We have to be. But the hood over her head told a different story.
Crushed between the two men, Lorena heard the muffled sound of José’s voice somewhere up ahead. A grumbled threat silenced him. She longed to collapse against his chest, to find safety there, but in the next terrible instant, she longed for Claudio instead. Claudio would know what to do—he’d have found a way out of this already.
A car door clicked open. Someone put a hand on Lorena’s head and shoved her inside. She was in the backseat between two of the men, the sides of her arms and thighs pinned by their hard bodies as the engine started.
No one spoke; only her sniffling could be heard in the silent vehicle. From the turns she could sense, they seemed to be headed north. The darkness was insufferable. Was José with her in the car? If she spoke, could he answer?
In a tiny, halted voice, she said his name, off-pitch.
“José?”
A blinding white light flashed behind her eyes. The shock of the force against the side of her head eclipsed the pain.
Please, she prayed. Please keep Matías and my mother safe. That’s all I ask.
The white light began to glow, illuminating both her hope and vulnerability. She tried blotting it out with reason—we’ll be home by morning—but as the car swerved, her consciousness descended a tunnel toward the brightness, through a terrifying premonition of the hours, days, and weeks ahead. There, in the radiance of her own intuition, she was paralyzed by questions even her worst fears couldn’t answer yet. If the junta learned of her secret, God only knew what they would do to her. All Lorena could conceive of now was how much infinitely more she had to lose.