Translated by Rick Segreda and Natalia
Rivas Colin
from the anthology, "Visita íntima," available here on Amazon.com
She worked at the Pink Zone Mall’s Aca Joe because
she liked the rags. Rags, lights, colors - and people from everywhere. And above all, tourists. Though
the task of folding and unfolding trousers, t-shirts, and sweatshirts that
customers often didn't buy was usually monotonous, seeing new and
different people made her job exciting. She loved getting to know them, to
serve them, and to treat them - even when they did not purchase anything.
However, if they did buy, it was even better, because she earned a
commission.
And it was because she did indeed like
people that, on a crowded Saturday, while serving a couple who asked for pants
-“We have this model and these colors”- her gaze fixated on the face of a woman
who just walked in. She felt she had known her forever.
“Do you like these red pants?,” she
asked a couple. However, now distracted, she felt her gaze trapped by
this woman and her features, who came across in the store as lost in herself.
“One moment, please,” she said to her
customers, asking her co-worker to look after the couple so she
could attend this individual.
“¿Can I help you, M’am?”
Everything about her was attractive to
on Monica: the tenderness of her maternal, suffering face, the caress of her
look, that expression; at once so full of courage and helplessness. A
“dolorosa,” a "painful one," embellished by an unspeakable suffering.
“Tell me, how can I help you?,” she
insisted.
“Calentadores for
men, please. Plus size, but not extra large.” Her voice caressed and persuaded.
“Calentadores?,”
said Monica, with a nervous and equivocal smile.
“Yes, calentadores.”
“What are calentadores?”
“Excuse me, what do you call them here?”
“Oh, that? Sudaderas.”
“Ok! I’m from Ecuador and there we call
them calentadores. My name is Esther. Esther
Villacrés.”
“I'm Monica," she replied, and
showed her red sudaderas.
“No, I want gray ones, pretty please”
“A very sad color, don’t you think so?
Why not blue?”
“No, gray.”
“It could also be yellow.”
“No, gray”, she insisted.
“Excuse me, out of curiosity, why gray,
M’am?”
“It is the color of my son’s uniform,
he’s in jail,” she said, her voice broken. “In Quito someone put cocaine in his
suitcase, and I have come to defend him, to free him.”
Later, after Esther selected the
sweatshirts for her son, Monica invited her a coffee at the restaurant across
the street.
“Can you wait for me twenty minutes?”
she added.
“Yeah, sure,” she said. “Meanwhile, I’ll
take a look and pay.”
“He was arrested at the airport,
just newly arrived to Mexico,” she said as she sipped her Americano with an air
of custom and good taste. “My son is innocent, I swear it. I know, Monica, I've
always known that, because I raised him, I taught him. A bad friend, I'm sure
of it, put the drugs in the suitcase, which weren't much, but enough to have
him arrested. Can you imagine, Monica? My Luisito doing damage to people's
health? That's not my son, Monica. He is innocent and it has to be proven. He
has always lived with me, I know him, he not capable of such a thing, not now,
nor forever. By the way, Javier, a good friend from Ecuador, has given me
lodging, dear. Otherwise, it would have been impossible to stay here,
considering how expensive the hotels are, not to mention how long the
trials."
“How can I help you, Esther? When are
you going to visit your son?”
“I’m going to the prison tomorrow, dear.
It's Sunday, visiting day, and I’m going to leave his uniform.”
“If you wish, I can join you. Do you
want me to? Tomorrow is my day off.”
“You make me happy, my girl,” she said,
without understanding any of the reasons why this strange girl felt so
enthusiastic. Nonetheless, she took note of this stranger and oddly, took
shelter in her cloak.
“My father is a retired railroad worker
and my mother died when I was four, and I have only a distant memory of her.
Can I tell you something? When I saw you walking into the store I felt like you
were like my mother coming to get me, that's why I approached you.”
“Do you mind if I call you Mom?,” she
said, although she also thought it was too premature to ask this question.
"And look how things are, together we go to see your son in prison. You're
amazing; that in this monster city you already where to find the prison. This
bus drops us off right in front, Mom. And look, we’re already here.”
Lobby of lobbies. Everything in the
entrance is cavernous. Exhaustive and humiliating check-in. Everybody is
suspected of carrying drugs or illegal weapons. You yourself feel illegal and
guilty before-the-fact. Repeated displays of passports and credentials and
signatures as well as verification of signatures. Declaration of names and
relationships: Esther, the mother. Monica, a friend. Monica sees in Esther a
painful disbelief, as if she can not believe what is happening. And she tells
her. It is unreal, the mother has never set foot in a prison and now her son is in one,
among thieves, drug dealers, and murderers
Monica feels unreal as well. Suddenly
she asks herself what is she doing there, at that table, waiting for the
unknown son of a mother whom she has suddenly invented. She takes a look
around, she sees many eager faces, like hers, waiting at the tables for
convicts to arrive.
When she saw him walking into the room,
she knew it was him. He showed up with the weariness of sleepless nights and
with eyes only for his mother. They embraced tightly; he asked for his gray
uniform, then he went back to exchange his personal clothes for the prison
clothes. He quickly returned with his laundry bag, more willing to talk as well
as to know the stranger.
“Luis, this is Monica; Monica, this is
Luis.” The relating of how and where they met soon followed. Nobody, even
discreetly, mentioned Monica being an orphan; and Luis, moved, but strange
and perhaps understandably distant, thanked the girl for her company. Monica
refrained from calling her "Mom" and the entire conversation between
mother and son revolved around the defense strategy.
“The court-appointed lawyer by itself
isn't enough”, said Luis. “We need someone more committed. Javier - so well
connected - could get me one. He won’t refuse, right?”
Monica just listened and called
attention to the courage and clarity of Luis’ ideas. A strange strength seemed
to come from the mother. He hardly spoke of what happened, but rather of the
future, how to get out of there, as in the so well-liked movies of inmates who
spend time planning an escape.
It was all very exciting. And she felt
involved in this picture because it was being filmed by her own eyes,
by her imagination. But she said nothing, because he hadn't said anything
either. For the moment, it was all about everything going well between him
and his mother, about characters that she didn't know and fragments of these
two distant lives, which she was slowly and secretly incorporating into her
own.
Nervous and scared, she scrutinized the
grisly faces of some of the convicts. She didn't understand how they could be
there; some had faces that were almost tender, yet they were probably murderers.
She also studied the relative's faces and their behavior. She enjoyed guessing
their possible relationships between them. Those faces entered the river of her
sub-conscious. In the end, without even a kiss, they said goodbye politely.
The following Sunday, Esther brought to
her son t he news Javier wanted to share regarding the recently contracted
defender; his name, fees, date and time of the first meeting. Luis was much
more communicative. He also looked at Monica and gave her a greeting kiss. He shared
with her anecdotes from prison: The young man who stormed the box office of a
movie theater with a water pistol (they should give him a prize, Monica
laughed), the teasing of the incarcerated over the flowery blanket that one of
them brought ("one more flower and it will be ridiculous”).
Esther noticed how they exchanged
glances. She knew that this generous and friendly girl, with abundant black
hair and shapely and well-cared body, small face, and that little bit of vulgar
sensuality, did not provoke indifference in her son. In the conversation about
the lawyer and the things to attend to in Quito, Luis now included Monica, not
only by looking at her, but with with a validation that confirmed his feelings
for her.
Esther and Monica often saw each other
during the week, when Monica completed her shift at Aca Joe. They drank coffee
and talked about their lives; Luis's father had abandoned Esther and the two
children and they hadn't heard anymore from him since. Meanwhile, her daughter
was struggling in Ecuador - body and soul - to help free her brother.
The retired railroad worker spent many
long leisurely hours watching TV. Almost always, after work, Monica found him
asleep in front of a soap opera. He knew he had been overtaken by his two
daughters, Monica as well as her sister, who was a year older. Although they
were well behaved, the fact of his being a man, as well as a widower, made him
clueless as to how to treat and educate them. She had delegated part of
her education to her sister, who had not needed much in order to grow up
with respect for the basic rules of a family life. She had never had
a reason to complain, in part because the aunt was an excellent mentor, and in
part because the two girls knew well how to hide anything that could arouse
displeasure from her father and her aunt .
Esther insisted his son was incapable of
committing a crime of the sort of which he was accused. He was a healthy boy,
an athlete, who practiced basketball since he was at primary school. She did
not know all his friends nor did she have reason to know them, but she trusted
his moral integrity.
“And if he was, in effect, careless -
and had an inconvenient adventure?," wondered Monica.
“That doesn't matter, he’s still my son,
and my duty is to help him out, not to mention to make his stay there less
lonely and painful. You know he is very appealing to women?”
”What are you trying to say?” Monica
said.
“Just that. In order to ensure that he
doesn't feel alone nor suffer the torments of a place like that, I'll talk to
anyone - with lawyers, with judges, with the President, if possible. I have no
money nor blood to bribe anyone but I do have a tongue to speak.”
They then spoke of distant, faraway
Quito, among other subjects, and in the process, Monica became captivated by
Esther’s humor; sometimes subtle, sometimes bold and brash, but always sharp.
They compared ecuatorianismos with mexicanismos and laughed:
"Calentadores,
c’mon, calentadores for men.”
(In Ecuador, the sweatshirts are called calentadores, which in Mexico could imply a
sexual joke: “heaters for men.”)
They'd go for walks. She showed her what
she could of Mexico City. Each time Monica would call Esther "Mom,"
she became natural and spontaneous; and she even invented a diminutive, not
"Mom Esther" or even "Mom Esthercita" but "Mom
Tishi" with a "sh" - not silent, but rather sonorous and
continuous so that it could be written as "zh", ie, "Mom
Tizhi".
Thus on Sundays, this regard for
"Mom," in front of Luis, became inevitable and he could not repress a
gesture of pleasant surprise rather than distaste. Rather, he preferred that
his mother not be alone in this monstrous city, not to mention
that, unexpectedly, his mother had won a a close friend, someone willing
to accompany and please her.
Monica wore a red low-cut dress that
both revealed yet concealed a generous bust while emphasizing the harmonious
lines of her body. This caught the attention of other prisoners as well as
their visitors. This left Luis ambivalent, at once pleased and displeased. And Monica
noticed. Their talk was all about the lawyer with whom he had just met and
who had explained the defense strategy. He seemed to be very skilled, albeit
expensive.
“We'll see where we'll get the money to
pay him,” said Esther, “but we will, trust me. For now, I can pay for the
advance he’s asking for. And then we'll see.”
And there came the question of what Luis
had been up to in the prison; that week he witnessed a violent dispute between
convicts, as well as a murder.
It was vital to collect all possible points
for good behavior. He already began coaching basketball, thereby earning the
respect of the inmates. Luis then gave a very warm farewell to Monica. Monica’s
response followed. The mother smiled; she was pleased.
“My girl,” said Esther, sitting in the
café, “Javier invited me next Sunday to a picnic with friends. He has been good
to me, I won't let him down, and I think I deserve a day off. Wouldn't you mind
going alone this time?”
“But Luis might feel disappointed, maybe
upset or angry,”said Monica.
“No, just go and accompany him,” Esther
insisted, mastering the situation.
That fifth Sunday for Luis in prison,
the fourth for Monica, they greeted each other with an almost accidental and
quick kiss on the mouth. Luis’ initial surprise over the absence of his mother,
was followed by the explanation and a long and uneven talk over the two. They
reported on their lives; she knew much more about him than him about her. She
was a perfect stranger.
“I want to get to know you more,” he
said, “we have little time left.”
They enjoyed being alone and speaking
freely. She caressed the tired-looking face of the man before her. Seeing him
like that aroused in her a hidden generosity that just cried out for an
opportunity to be expressed. It was not fair that a young man like him should
spend months or years in jail. If his mother was doing everything she could to
save him, she knew that she could do something for him too, something more than
accompanying their mutual mother. And that was what she spoke about, how
this strange and foreign woman went on to become her mother, the mother she had
lost.
“Do not thank me for anything,” she
said, “she is doing for me something that no one, not even herself, can gauge,
and that only I know.”
Then he placed his hand on hers - which
was on the table - and stroked it. He got up and sat on the bench beside her
and began kissing her with an increasing intensity. But something troubled
Luis and Monica without either knowing what happened to them; the conversation
drifted once again to the hardships and unspeakable violence inside, as well as
the cruel or funny anecdotes of prisoners. And they laughed heavily.
Upon parting, they looked to each other in order to say something that
they did not yet understand.
The attorney’s opinion could have struck
a blow to the mood for anybody lacking Esther’s strength: The trial would last
at least a year until the sentencing, and Luis was barely up to the preliminary
investigation.
Esther has secretly made a decision. In
the café, as always, she asked Monica if she had ever fallen madly in
love. Monica replied: “My strongest loves have been away at a distance, with
faraway, unattainable people. The rest were, you know, sweaty-palmed love
affairs and messing around at the movies. All that’s part of everyday tedium.
The kisses on the street corners, or in the shadows, so that neither my father
nor my aunt knew. Not that I did anything wrong, but I prefer that my
private life was mine only.”
Monica then gave a detailed account of
her last meeting with Luis, which left the mother haunted by the happy outcome
of her plan. “I think, my girl - and forgive the intrusion - that if you want
to know what happens between you two, you should seek more privacy than what
you have in the dining area. In other words, if my son asks, would you accept
conjugal visits on Tuesday?”
On Sunday, Monica gave Luis an envelope
with some money and a long letter from the mother, in which she apologized
again for not going because she did not feel well. In addition to reporting the
latest news from Quito - regarding the flower export business, the daughter's
selfless activity on behalf of her brother, as well as relatives and friends
that had offered to cooperate in providing economically assistance, as well as
other family details - her mother confirmed, in her letter, what the attorney
stated regarding how long the trial would last.
"At least a year!," the letter
exclaimed, "a year!" "Will you be able," she asked,
"to live without a woman all that time - you? Who has long been accustomed
to their company? Monica loves you, son, accept her for your conjugal
visits."
Those were the letter's final words.
Monica intuited what the letter said and looked at Luis with a question that
underscored the surrender. Behind her reserve she had a triumphant smile.
Later on came the kisses and caresses; carefree, intense. They couldn't wait
anymore.
“I want to be alone with you,” Luis
said. They immediately decided to sign, in the presence of the prison
authorities, their commitment to conjugal visits on Tuesdays.
At Luis’ request, Monica came on Tuesday
with the low-cut red and sensual dress that she wore that Sunday. She also
brought in a picnic basket, a couple of sheets, and a towel - that prosaic
burden she would have preferred to do without. All this and even her own body
were scrupulously inspected at the entrance, even to offensive degrees, by
policewomen, some of them masculine.
They led her along a dark corridor to a
cell where, inexplicably, Luis had not yet arrived. A skylight let in a ray of
sunshine. However, there was also a light bulb in the middle of the room. Only
a cot and a chair, but everything was clean and smelling of floor-cleaning
soap. The walls were concrete, both hard and smooth, and with a repellent
solidity. She touched them forcefully, and her knuckles hurt. There should have
been an ornament - a picture, a vase, something - but there were only a couple
of nails on which to hang clothes. She sat on the hard mattress. They had
tried, in vain, to clean stains from previous visits. The sheets she
brought were too large for the bed; she spread one and then folded it in half,
yet it remained too big.
No outside sounds could be heard. She
became impatient and frightened. She tried to open the door but they had locked
her in. She had barely sat on the bed, when the door opened, and they let Luis
in, who showed up with a blanket.
“They did it the other way round,” he
said. “Normally the convict comes first and waits for his partner. I paid out
of my pocket to leave the room clean and with the smell of floor-cleaning
soap.”
The door closed and they remained alone
in the solitude of the cell.
Monica’s reserve was formidable enough
that it allowed her to conceal from her friends at Aca
Joe her reason for
being so happy. She wanted to shout it out, announce it in a universal kiss,
even while taking the bus to or from the prison. But she counted on Esther, to
whom she could express her ebullience. She was living a love story the
likes of which she never even dreamed of - with such sacrifice, dedication, and
emotion - that it made her envious even of herself.
She not only loved, but loved in
an unusual, bold, and adventurous way: That descent every third day of the week into
the sinister corridors of the prison only to find, finally, the light of love
which then only made her crave the arrival of the following Tuesday whereby she
could rediscover with Luis what she had never previously known: A form of
freedom. She was an occasional guest on a desert island, where every body was
appropriated, with no inhibitions, by one individual to another. With him
she created a magic circle, more powerful than the one she made with Esther.
In the spareness of the room, Luis was
always intrigued by how she would show up dressed. She pleased him, not
only making use of all her goods, but buying new clothes - something in which
occasionally Esther collaborated - or by borrowing from her sister, to whom she
also had to reveal the reason for her emotions.
Luis’ favorite garment was a blouse that
emphasized Monica’s beautiful bare shoulders. In the cell they invented the
most unusual love situations, they played the most imaginative scenes. Each
square centimeter of the enclosure became a loving and unprecedented territory.
That ray of sunshine filtering from the high end of the cell wall became
the spotlight of their own theatrical scenery in whose center the couple
performed before an imaginary audience. Either that, or the flash of an indiscreet,
audacious and pornographic camera.
They impersonated other lovers.
Monica would wear Luis' favorite blouse and a pair of round jiggling silver
earrings in order to interpret Carmen or the gypsy from El
Amor Brujo. They simulated that enclosure featuring both a tamer
and a beast and exchanged roles, pretending to be two wild beasts who at first
hated each other, with claws and bites, but then with the delicate touch of
their fingers loved tenderly. They played a prostitute and her client. “I wanna
be your bitch,” she would say; they always demonstrated a great talent for
eroticism. And being her beloved's whore beloved gave her life a
dimension that only under such circumstances she could acquire. On Tuesday
their time was limited, so it was useless to wish that each encounter lasted
longer. For this reason, almost every game was interrupted to be continued next
week. But when the next week came, the conditions and circumstances had
changed, and they had to start it all over from scratch.
Over time, however, Luis became
impermeable to the enormous expectations that usually aroused love in him. By
contrast, while every Tuesday and Sunday Monica yearned to go back to prison,
quite understandably he only wanted his freedom, and thus was always on top of
any news his attorney and mother could bring. He had no complaints about the
joy she felt in seeing him, yet he felt a growing sadness in being aware that
their encounters were inseparable from the pain of his condition.
A year or more was too long for a few
square meters: Luis was devoured by impatience.
He craved only to get out of there, and
now time was undermining his romantic imagination. He would have been
happy to see the lawyer every day, but the counselor's presence was conditional
on progress in the trial, something that only happened once every two months or
so. He lived a sharp contradiction; though Monica made love madly, she was
becoming the symbol that which made confinement desirable for him. That
couldn't be. If love is what remains after orgasm, what remained for Luis was
the return to a dreadful reality.
Naked, exhausted, beautiful and sad, she
at the head of the bed, he at the foot, and they stared up the ceiling,
wondering: “What, now?” They remained silent as well, each one finding in the
other a sense of neglect.
More than once Monica tried to brighten
the cell with some embellishment; she often brought flowers, gestures that
greatly surprised Luis: “Want to make this cell a cottage?”
He knew it was a form of despair. They
talked, too, and a lot - of each other, of their history, of prison, of their
friends, of trivial things and transcendent matters. Anything but a common
future. It was useless to pretend that they had one now when they had lacked
such before, and even in their present they had little to share but their
bodies, which they piously gave to each other between those walls.
The illusion of Monica’s disinterested
vision stumbled, not just with a man beset by prison bars and other prisoners,
but by secrets and ghosts, with which she could no longer cope. He wished time
could fly in order to be set free; she wished she could make time stop in order
to stay in the arms of her beloved. But time passed, nonetheless, relentless.
Luis and his lawyer went through the
presentation of evidence and talked about other moments in the trial. Esther
visited the judge as often as
possible as well as discretely, and quite effectively. Interceding on behalf her son, her
language had an authenticity as well as irresistible power of persuasion. Meanwhile,
the lawyer’s defense strategy was also smart. A "not guilty"
verdict was delivered and Luis was released. Twelve months and eight days had
passed since he was arrested, and ten months since the conjugal visits began.
Luis remained free in Mexico for three
days before heading back to Quito. He could not think of anything else but
going back to work in order to revive the flower exportation business that he
had left his partner in charge of.
When Monica learned of the sentence, she
felt invaded by both a genuine joy and a tight anguish: “What now?” Luis
allowed—as a courtesy, if nothing else – for Monica to accompany him for one
day - the first out of the three he had in Mexico. She already belonged to the
past, because his memory was inextricably linked to an undesirable confinement.
Monica said goodbye to Esther with tears
in her face and heart, and both promised to write to each other. In this
farewell, she denied Luis’ mother the title she had previously invented for
Esther, but rather just referred to her by her name, albeit with affection. Now Monica
saw everything more clearly. She had been used - and Monica gave that word all
commercial connotation it could possess.
Nonetheless, she did not complain or
regret. Outside prison nothing happened to her; the days had passed gray and
monotonous. Inside, however, love had effected a strange interlude in her life,
one that lasted as long as her lover’s term in prison. She had found freedom in
a cell. She had burned until being consumed within those four walls. That
humble ray of sunlight filtering through the cell had been immensely more
precious than the golden glow that bathed the city now.
The magic circle she
created with Luis had been broken, desecrated by a judge's voice. Since then
she has had the certainty that in any future relationship she would look back
upon this story as a reference - all future episodes would follow from this,
yet diminished, because she had reached a kind of Finisterre Point, an
endpoint, in which perhaps only she could retreat into. And while thinking
about it, she sadly folded the
day's last pair of pants and slowly placed it on the shelf.
