Mauricio just stared up at the gun barrel, going cross-eyed. When he still hadn’t said anything, Ugly lowered the gun. For a split second I was lured into relief, until Ugly struck Mauricio a blow to the jaw. Whimpering, Mauricio cupped his mouth. Thick blood dribbled through his fingers.
‘I said – sound good? People answer me when I ask a question, Mauricio, even people who so ignorant they think a man with style look like Boy George.’
Then Mauricio was nodding quick and frightened. ‘Sound good,’ he said. The words were a gurgle. Blood ran down his chin. He spat weakly onto the grass.
‘Nice, man. Let we go inside.’
Ugly threw an arm around his shoulders, laughing with all the cheer of a homicidal Santa Claus. Mauricio jumped as the arm clamped around him. His skin was grey, bloodless as Aunt Celia’s had been in the coffin. Something about the way Ugly then guided loping, tongue-tied Mauricio towards the house with the gun aimed at his ribs made me think of a circus ringleader cajoling a ketamine-doped gorilla into its cage.
‘Hector!’ Ugly called over his shoulder. ‘You come too. Leave that chile.’
My father handed the baby to my brother. Drawn to his full six feet, he looked every bit the dignified Alpha male. This wasn’t a comfort. I didn’t want my father in there puffing his chest out, facing off with some psychopath. Let Mauricio deal with it! Let Mauricio get a bullet in the head! My mother shared my sentiments. As Papá began following Mauricio and Ugly, she ran across the yard to clutch the back of my father’s shirt. ‘Hector!’ She couldn’t get anything more out than that. Ugly stopped to waggle the gun at her.
‘Señora Palacios, I recommend you don’t mix up yourself in my business. I need to speak with Mauricio and Hector.’ He lifted his chin towards the barbecue pit. ‘Best you go flip them burgers like a good little señorita. They smelling burnt.’
My father gently twisted himself out of Mamá’s grip, kissed the top of her head. ‘No te preocupes. I’ll be fine.’
At the porch door, Ugly turned once more. ‘No policía, people! Any policía and there go be two sets of brains splattered on the wall in there. If I so much as hear a fucking siren or see a car pull into that driveway, I ain’t asking questions first. Understand? Bang uno and bang dos.’ He pointed the gun back and forth from Mauricio to my father.
Then they went into the house and all we could do was wait.
When Papá and Mauricio eventually came out again, my father wore a curious expression, like he was trying to work out a particularly difficult math equation. Still ashen, Mauricio was running a hand over his stubbled chin, murmuring to himself. Ugly emerged from the house behind them, stopping to stand on the porch, a finger running along the gun barrel until we’d all turned, a captive audience in the most literal sense, to face him. When he saw he had our full attention, he waved brightly.
‘Nice to meet all you Palacios in the flesh! I go be seeing you again very soon. That a promise from me to you.’ He flashed sterling teeth. ‘And I does never break a promise.’
THE COCKROACH FAIRYTALE
That was our first visit from Ugly.
That was also the afternoon we found out just how Aunt Celia had gone about securing fraudulent residency permits for herself, Mauricio and the twins.
Now, let me be straight with you: the residency permits came as a total surprise to me and the rest of the family. Because none of us, not even fanatically Catholic, shit-scared-of-everything Aunt Milagros, had bothered with residency permits, fraudulent or otherwise. We’d all moseyed across the twelve kilometres of ocean separating Trinidad from Venezuela in fishing boats in the dead of night – my immediate family first, the pioneers of the Palacios exodus if you will, then Aunt Celia with Mauricio and the twins, followed by Aunt Milagros not long after. Who the hell needs residency permits when you know a guy with a boat?
Plus none of us needed false papers to get work. Aunt Milagros worked at an Opus Dei charity that turned a blind eye to her immigration status, Papá had his school driver gig, Mamá ran a nail parlour out of an annex next to our house, I was a freelance translator working from home, Sancho and Mauricio worked under-the-table at a casino, and Zulema slotted herself into the local Colour Me Beautiful spa without so much as presenting a résumé. In fact, her illustrious ‘qualification’ as a Colour Me Beautiful Image Consultant was all we’d been waiting on to get the hell out of Caracas.
But it turned out Aunt Celia had to get falsified papers for the twins to finish secondary school in Port of Spain. Luckily they’d gone to glamorous English-speaking expat schools their whole lives or else no fake papers in the world could’ve salvaged their educations. Anyway, papers is what Aunt Celia needed for her girls – and that was where Ugly came in.
He’d provided Aunt Celia with his illicit relocation services that included sourcing a man with a zippy boat, making sure no Guardia or Coast Guard showed up, getting the falsified residency permits, and even enrolling the twins at one of the island’s best public secondary schools. Not hard to imagine that his fee, payable in twelve oh-so-convenient yet virtually impossible instalments, would’ve been sky high. When I heard the amount, I couldn’t help whistling. I knew Aunt Celia and Mauricio had been well off in Venezuela, but this was big money for people coming from a crumbling economy. We’re talking sell-a-kidney money. So – surprise, surprise – Aunt Celia had missed the last two payment deadlines, and seven instalments were still outstanding.
Papá told us all this after gathering everyone in Mauricio’s living room once Ugly had left. When Mauricio spoke for the first time, wincing because of his bruised jaw and busted lip, he had to pause twice to wipe his leaking eyes. ‘We owe Ugly nearly six hundred thousand TT dollars,’ he said. ‘Six hundred thousand! We’ll never be able to pay.’
That was for shit sure.
He slouched forward, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes. His body shook. So much for all his usual macho bluster. Ava, sitting on the arm of his chair, draped herself across her father’s hunched back, hugging him. Papá continued, stone-faced at Mauricio’s culturally uncharacteristic display of emotion: ‘This debt doesn’t only affect Mauricio and the twins.’ My stomach was knotted so hard it hurt. ‘If the money isn’t paid, Ugly is going to make us all suffer.’
‘What?’ Mamá’s jaw muscles were twitching, neck stiff as an iron rod. There was that razor-sharp edge of hers, gift-wrapped in pearls and pencil skirts, but forever simmering beneath the svelte veneer. Her eyes were on Mauricio. He was lucky she thought violence was an unattractive trait in a woman or I’m sure she would’ve gone straight for his jugular.
Papá shot her a look and went on. ‘Since we obviously can’t raise the money, we all have to work off Celia’s debt.’ He exhaled and ran both hands over his hair. ‘Ugly will be back again in one week. We’re to wait here for him – all of us – next Sunday, to find out the details.’
He looked around the room gravely. ‘It goes without saying that we can’t contact the police. We’re illegal residents in this country. There’s no one who can help us besides ourselves. And even if the police wouldn’t immediately ship us back to Venezuela, Ugly has made it clear that if anyone makes any anonymous reports or any attempt at involving law enforcement, we’ll all be shot. Not just the perpetrator – all of us. We have no choice but to follow his instructions.’