8. Pomelo #2
During the days, the man looked down upon the city from his perch of power.
Money delighted him, but paled against the thrill of money earned, which gave him influence over another.
For this reason, his interests mainly lay in the acquiring and leasing of land and, of course, the lending of capital.
Through the glass of his office, the people wandering the streets were far away and invisible to him, but he knew that scores upon scores of them were in his debt.
People anxious to run into him unexpectedly, people lamenting favors needing repayment.
This gave him a feeling of calm satisfaction, while also presenting him with a sense of unease on this particular day.
Below him was a world of chaos. Of indifference and desperation.
Most days, he found a comfort in the pit of his stomach knowing that his wife, his daughter, his household, were safely ensconced from this.
But today, they were out there, somewhere, down below. Shopping.
He prided himself in anticipating their every need, in knowing the intricacies of his household and in that knowledge enabling him to keep his family apart from the chaos of the city.
This was an urge provoked less by fear of their harm than by his desire to preserve their contamination.
To know that his home—his jewel box and the contents within—was truly not a part of this filthy world.
That no matter what depths of debasement he might traverse in the course of his days doing business or his nights seeking to quench his other, more carnal thirsts, when he was home, this was a space that was pure.
His lapse in memory around this communion frustrated him, not only because it took his wife and daughter out of the home, but because it exposed for him his blind spot.
He had blocked the communion out of his mind because he liked to block the church from his mind.
He abhorred the performative piousness of the faith and the cottage industries of superstition and sorcery that had cropped up around it.
How many indulgences and blessings had he paid for while Marlen was trying to conceive another child?
For forgiveness of his perceived sins, for prayers to heal her suddenly barren womb.
How many ofrendas had he made the gardeners dismantle that she and Alma erected in little corners of the house and garden?
As though he wouldn’t notice or would approve.
Marlen was a faithful woman; he had known this when he met her, when they married in a ceremony filled with smoke and wafers and wine—he himself had come from a faithful family—but the desperation with which she clung to God being able to give her another child repulsed him.
When he came home early one day and found her under the grapefruit tree with the old woman, the stranger in his home, rolling an egg around her…
an egg! As though that would be the thing that, after doctor upon doctor and specialist upon specialist had investigated his wife inside and out, would help her get pregnant?
Well, it was all so ridiculous, he had to put his foot down.
He threw the old woman out onto the street and smacked Marlen so hard she fell, but he needed to make it clear.
Enough was enough. This nonsense was over.
There was a knock on the door to his office, and Victor, his most trusted employee, the one to whom he gave all his work that required discretion, entered.
“Sir… Gloria came by today, wanting to see you.”
The man sighed with heaviness, looked at the clock. Poured himself a drink.
“I sent her money,” he said, aggravated.
“It wasn’t for money, sir,” Victor offered. “The girl was with her.”
The man threw back the scotch and set the glass down.
“She only left after I swore I’d bring you to see them. Soon,” Victor added.
“Fine.” The man gazed back out the window, down to the street. So many people in his debt. “I’ll go tonight.”
It was well known among the well-heeled women of the city that Calle Princesa had the finest clothing stores—all the latest fashions imported from Europe, the most trendsetting designers from New York.
But Marlen didn’t direct their driver to Calle Princesa, but rather to a no-name mom-and-pop store that sold children’s special occasion wear in a working-class part of town, on Calle Siete, down from the unnamed alley that Marlen had heard whispered was a red-light district.
She wouldn’t know. She rarely was out of the house at night, except for the occasional social outing with her husband.
Certainly never to this part of town. Indeed, Marlen could not help but notice Pilar’s exhilaration as she looked out onto the frenetic streets just past the car windows.
To school and back. The poor girl’s world so very small.
The car pulled up to the shabby boutique, and Pilar bounded out as soon as the driver opened the door.
“Alma,” Marlen called out to the older woman as she hoisted her plump frame from the front seat.
“Remember, dotted swiss, maybe a lace. Tasteful. Something my husband will like.” Marlen peeled off four bills from the stack the man had given her, keeping one for herself.
“Afterward,” she now whispered, “take her for a treat or to a toy store or something. I’ll be back here in an hour. ”
“Of course, Dona Marlen.”
And the two women stood, pretending to small talk and window-shop until her husband’s driver pulled away.
Marlen stole away down the alley, gazing up and down at the house numbers and the piece of paper that Alma had written the woman’s address down upon.
In her nervousness she tripped on an uneven piece of cobblestone and fell into a puddle, dirtying her dress, the anxiety of which made her start to perspire.
She could feel the moisture gather at her temples, beads of sweat streaking her foundation, the frizzing of the roots of her smoothed-out hair.
The walk from the car to the woman’s house was not long, but when she arrived, she was disheveled. Nervous.
“Dona Viviana?” Marlen asked, though no doubt existed that the ancient woman across the threshold was anyone but.
Her brown skin wrinkled and spotted with age, her thinning white hair, pulled into a bun, showed her scalp.
But her eyes, pale and gray, were still clear, and as the old woman took her in, the gaze was so penetrating, so piercing, Marlen felt tears come to her eyes.
She led Marlen to a small table in her dimly lit kitchen, thick with the scents of cooking and incense, fetched her a glass of water, and, only once Marlen had calmed herself, did the woman begin to speak.
“So,” Dona Viviana said, “what is the problem with your daughter?”
Marlen startled at the woman’s sorcery, causing Viviana to laugh.
“Please,” she said, “I’m a bruja, not a mystic. I’m also very, very old. Your kind of panic can only be induced by a daughter.”
Somehow knowing her pain was so visible twisted the knife in Marlen just a bit more.
“My daughter,” Marlen said, “is perfect. She is light and song and laughter and curiosity. The problem is… there was supposed to be a house full of children. Sons. More daughters. So that someone, by choice or chance, would stay home with my husband and me. But… my body failed me and, because of this failure, my girl, with her enormous spirit, will be confined to this minuscule world.”
There was a moment of silence. Marlen could feel Dona Viviana looking on her as the wheels of her mind churned. She cast her own eyes down in shame.
“I’ve seen every priest and curandera in every city and town along this river,” Marlen continued. “Except for you. Can you help me?”
“And why should I help you? You insult me to my face by telling me I’m your last resort—”
Marlen had feared this might come up. That Dona Viviana would take her act of desperation as a slight when it was anything but.
All the women in the area knew that her witchcraft was the most powerful.
All the women knew how estranged lovers had been reunited after her interventions, how sick relatives had been brought back from the brink of death, how families on the cusp of fiscal ruin would suddenly find themselves flush after a visit to Viviana.
Marlen, like all the other women in their city by the river, knew this.
And she, like everyone else, knew these miracles came with a dark side.
That the lovers would reunite after one had been struck dumb or blind and needed care.
That the relative on the brink would come back to full physical health, but with the mind of a vegetable.
That the family, suddenly flush with cash, would only find themselves so after compensation from a fatal accident would reverse their fortunes.
The desired outcomes, yes. But always with an edge of darkness to it.
The edge that Marlen had wanted to avoid, until her torment eclipsed her fears.
“Dona Viviana,” she now said with contrition, “it wasn’t a slight. Not at all. It’s just that only now did I realize that I would give anything to give my Pilar freedom in this world.”
“And how do you want to do that?”
“By having another child.”
Dona Viviana looked at her and laughed. “And what about this child? You won’t care about them being free?”
Marlen felt punched in the gut. She had never thought about it that way. She had been so fixated on this as her solution, on castigating her body for betraying her in providing it, she had failed to see the flaw at the root of this plan. She now suddenly felt trapped.
“Don’t worry, mija,” Dona Viviana cooed softly as she placed her gnarled hand over Marlen’s smooth one. “I have a way to help.”