Juventud. Vanessa Blakeslee
“Was the Seder so terrible?”
Fidel stepped inside, hung the keys on the hook. “We passed a bus hijacking.”
“Who was it? Guerillas?” Papi pulled me close and rubbed my back.
Fidel shrugged. As Papi hugged me, I eyed the materials by his chair. School brochures in English. Papi told me to change into some comfortable clothes and then we could talk. “Take your time,” he said. “I want to discuss some things with Fidel, and you’re upset. I’ll tell Inez to fix you a snack.” He waved me upstairs and addressed Fidel. It would do no good to protest.
We lived in a split-level ranch house, Spanish-style, with the bedrooms upstairs. Downstairs we had an open kitchen—Papi disliked the closed kitchens common in Latin American households with servants and preferred the American style, with barstools at an open counter and the living room adjoined. Tile floors extended throughout both levels of the house, adorned here and there with Moroccan carpets. Inez and the maids slept in small bedrooms on the other end of the kitchen, near the laundry. My room had a window seat overlooking the front courtyard and the valley, and Papi’s had a small balcony that did the same. When he was back from the fields, he spent most of his time downstairs with the glass doors of the living room thrown open. Although our leather couches displayed few pillows and the maids scrubbed the floors until they gleamed, our house always felt warm, like home.
The only exception to this was the lack of photographs. Whenever I visited the homes of schoolmates, pictures abounded—snapshots of celebrations, beach trips to Cartagena, black-and-whites of grandparents from years past. But Papi kept none on display, except for the portrait of my mother beside his bed.
As I changed out of the brown-and-yellow Hebrew school uniform and into jeans and a cotton blouse, he and Fidel lobbed heated words back and forth—not an argument between them, I could tell, but about something or someone. Probably the latest guerilla uprising.
I passed Papi’s bedroom, the door ajar, and paused, then crept inside and lifted the frame with my mother’s face. She had such pale skin; I had gotten my sprinkling of freckles from her. Some might not consider her pretty, but I did. Paula—was she still alive, and would I ever meet her? Around holidays and my birthday, I had bugged Papi about how we might find out where she was. “Once you’re eighteen, you can go look for her all you want,” he said. “But she’s fragile, I doubt she could handle the guilt. Probably best to forget it.”
From below, the conversation lulled. Wistfully, I returned the frame to the nightstand and headed downstairs. Fidel left, shutting the front door behind him, but not without giving me a little wave.
Papi patted the seat next to him. I slumped into a cushioned armchair; the ridgebacks stirred. They squeezed out the gap in the sliding-glass door and bolted down the lawn. The mutts, Cocoa and Angel, planted themselves at Papi’s feet. The laziest of our plantation dogs, they were his round-bellied favorites. Angel licked the side of his boot like a devoted mistress.
“What is this about?” I asked, gesturing toward the brochures.
He nodded over my shoulder to the valley. “What happened today with the bus,” he said, and drew on his cigar. “Things are only going to get worse. I want you to finish high school in the United States. Then go to university. Not stay here and get kidnapped.”
I said nothing. Leaving—no. Wasn’t danger just a part of life? Six years before, Pablo Escobar had been killed in Medellín and the Cali Cartel, headed by the Rodriguez Orejuela brothers, rose to dominate and supply most of the world’s cocaine. Some fathers dealt cocaine; my father earned his living from commodities, and shipping. Those who could afford to lived behind gates and hired drivers.
“Fidel has a gun,” I said. “You and the jefes have them, too. We have the biggest gate. All those guards at school—who’s going to kidnap me?”
“Girls your age shouldn’t be worrying about who is protecting them with a gun. You have other things to think about.”
Inez entered with a tray of tea and English biscuits, my usual after-school snack. Papi poured a cup, sifted through the brochures, and talked about the American boarding schools. To be accepted I would need to speak and write English at a far greater level than I did. How could he even think of shipping me off? I nibbled at a biscuit, but it turned to sawdust in my mouth, and I tossed it aside. I rubbed my temples. “I want to be a flight attendant,” I whispered, staring at my lap. “Like Tía Leo.”
Papi gathered the brochures and sat down on the hassock before me. “The education abroad is much better,” he said. “You could start next year. January, maybe even sooner. Then attend one of the American universities.”
“I can go to the university here.” I poured a cup of tea, frowning.
“You’re missing the point. I don’t want you to get stuck in Colombia for the rest of your life. It’s not safe.” He glanced around as if someone even now might be listening. In the outdoor courtyard our two parrots in the big cage squawked as a maintenance worker fixed our fountain that had been broken since Christmas. Papi said, “You can blame me, okay?”
“Blame you? I don’t want to leave you. Or anything.” I reached down and fed Cocoa the remainder of my biscuit.
“I should have sent you a few years ago. In a way, it would have been easier for both of us.” He drank his tea and smoked in between sips, the haze hanging around his head. “All I’m asking is that you trust me on this. I’m prepared to do whatever it takes, mi preciosa. I’m glad to take care of the costs.”
“Couldn’t something just as easily happen to me there? And look, you wouldn’t even be around,” I said. “Don’t they have crazies committing murders all the time in the United States?”
“There are no guarantees, it’s true. But as a rule their problems with violence are not like here, like what happened today.”
“How can you be so sure? I could live here for years and be fine.”
“Mercedes, do you really want to find out what happens when you aren’t lucky enough to get away?”
Gitano music ripped through the silence between us, the voices bellowing and hands clapping to the staccato beat. “No,” I said.
“Believe me, this isn’t an easy decision for me, either.” He got up slowly, as if his slight paunch were already too much for his forty-six-year-old knees. “Boarding school; I didn’t even know that existed at your age. I hope I’m not turning you into a spoiled brat.”
I lifted a brochure. Sacred Heart, it read, and the one beneath read Country Day. Teens in crisp polo shirts beamed in front of brick dorms. “I’ll pick a cheap one,” I said, dropping them back onto the pile. “Even though I hate the idea.”
Papi went for a cookie then, and I slapped his hand. “No, you’re getting too fat,” I told him. He pointed to his belly and made a quizzical, innocent face. I chucked a cookie at him; it bounced off his chest, and Cocoa snatched it greedily.
Fidel drove me to Ana’s the following night for her Easter party. As we approached the Cali exits, I thought again of the bold young man outside the cathedral. Who was he? If I went there again, might I have a chance at running into him? The brightly-lit mansion towered three stories, the homes on either side dark and silent—their gates locked and inhabitants likely on holiday to beach towns, Cartagena or Santa Marta. Cars lined Ana’s driveway, the guard perched in his booth in front of her father’s Land Rover and her mother’s Volvo, munching chips and jabbering on his cell phone. To my surprise, Ana opened the door instead of the maid. “Chica, you look beautiful!” she gushed, holding her wine glass aside as she leaned forward to peck my cheek. A moment later, I choked on perfume as her mother, aunts, and housekeeper hugged me so hard, I slipped a little on the marble floor. Before dinner, they had all attended the biggest mass of the year, Holy Saturday. Their cheerful faces reflected back from photos as Ana and I climbed the steps, the stairway so crammed with frames, not an inch had been spared—more than a few of Ana in a sash and crown