PART I
The first time Juan Ruiz proposes, I’m eleven years old, skinny and flat-chested. I’m half asleep, my frizzy hair has busted out from a rubber band, and my dress is on backwards. Every other weekend Juan and three of his brothers show up past midnight all the way from La Capital to serenade the good country girls in the area who’re eligible for marriage. They’re not the first men to stop by and try at me and my older sister, Teresa.
For years, people stare at me, almost against their will. I’m different than other girls. By no means pretty. A curious beauty, people say, as if my green eyes are shinier, more valuable, to be possessed. Because of this, Mamá fears if she doesn’t plan my future, my fate will be worse than Teresa’s, who already has her brown eye on El Guardia, who guards the municipal building in the center of town.
That night, the first out of many, three of the Ruiz brothers park their car on the dirt road and clang on Papá’s colmado’s bell as if they’re herding cows. The roads are dark under the cloudy sky and the absence of the moon. The power outages can last fifteen hours at a time. There’d been some chicken stealing, and our store had been robbed twice in the past year. So we keep everything under lock and key, especially after Trujillo was shot dead. In his own car! After being El Jefe for thirty-one years! This amuses Papá. All his life he had to look at Trujillo’s photograph, along with the slogan: God in Heaven, Trujillo on Earth. No one could help laughing at his mortality. Even God had had enough. But Trujillo didn’t go in peace. La Capital is in chaos. A tremendous mess. No law or order to speak of. Full of crazies. Visitors from the big city tug their lower lids, warning us to remain vigilant. So we’re vigilant.
Mamá, Teresa, and I huddle near the house while Papá walks toward the darkness with his rifle in shooting position. My brothers, Yohnny and Lenny, and my cousins, Juanita and Betty, are asleep.
It’s us, it’s us, Juan yells out in the dark. Everyone knows who the Ruiz brothers are because they travel to and from New York, returning with pockets full of dollars.
Behind Juan the two other brothers wave their instruments in the air and laugh.
Come, step forward, Mamá yells, and soon they sit in our front yard, beers in hand, talking about New York, politics, money, and papers.
When Juan proposes, he’s drunk. Slurs, Marry me. I’ll take you to America. He trips over himself and pushes me against the wooden fence. Tell me yes, he insists with his lit breath and his thick sweat dripping over my face.
Papá doesn’t care for politics, and he knows not to trust a man in a suit. He goes for his rifle, and Mamá stands between them, laughing it off in the way she does where she shows all her teeth and dips her chin to her neck, then flirtatiously looks away. She grips Juan’s shoulder and guides him back to the plastic lawn chair to sit with his brothers, who have all had too much to drink.
When Juan sits, his chest folds toward his round stomach, and his jaw, the corner of his lips, his cheeks, his eyes all droop: a sad clown. Juan stares at my knees, which come together tight tight as if I hold a secret there for him to discover.
The three brothers can’t be more different, same parents but different faces and heights. And wait until you meet César, Hector says. They all wear suits and clump together near Juan like a band on a stage. Their eyes glassy and pink. Their instruments their crutches.
This song’s for you, Juan says to Teresa, who cowers under Papá’s watchful eye. But all the time he’s looking at me. Teresa’s thirteen going on twenty, born kicking before the sun had risen. She swings her skirt side to side in anticipation. This is before El Guardia will ruin her chance to get out. Ramón, the oldest, strings the guitar, and Juan looks to his brothers as though to make sure the chickens are in the coop, and like a real showman he gets on his feet, turns around, and there we are.
Bésame, bésame mucho …
He sings the song low and thick and full, filling a void in my chest. A block of ice melting. His voice is amplified by the dark sky and the stillness of the night. I close my eyes to listen. What is it that I hear? His sorrow? His longing? His passion? All of it?
Como si fuera esta noche la última vez
Bésame, bésame mucho,
Que tengo miedo a perderte, perderte después …
When he’s finished, Mamá and Teresa jump up to clap. A scattered applause. Another one! Another one! Teresa says, unaware that Juan is singing to me.
I know then that one day the earth will rip open underneath my feet and Juan will take me away. Tears rise. I don’t know how or when, but a ravenous world waits outside for me.
Girls, to bed, Papá announces with the resonance of a cowbell. He places his rifle across his thighs, pissed like I’ve never seen him. Two of his sisters had been taken by military men, back when Trujillo lived.
We should hit the road, Ramón says, and stands up lean and tall like a flagpole, always polite, always apologetic for his younger brothers who can’t control their liquor.
Before Juan leaves, he bends over to look right into my face. I stare straight back into his eyes as if I have the power to scare him. He makes a gesture of retreat and suddenly pounces toward me and barks, loud and insistent. Bark. Bark. Bark. I jump back and away from him, trip over the plastic bucket we keep by the door to fetch water. He laughs and laughs. His large body shakes when he laughs. Everyone laughs except me.
Mamá makes nice and tells them to come back soon, and don’t be strangers, and that the best of girls are worth waiting for. Maybe we’ll go eat at your restaurant in the city one day, she says, knowing well we never go to La Capital or eat at restaurants.
The day Teresa steals and slips into Mamá’s favorite dress to sneak out to see El Guardia, Mamá declares Teresa a lost cause and my marrying Juan becomes her top priority.
Did you see her leave?
No? I lie.
Mamá’s white dress fits Teresa tight in all the right places, including her knees. She moves as if her heels have wheels attached to them, her body full and womanly. Una mujerota, Yohnny says. Her heart-shaped lips always part because she has big teeth that give the impression she wants to kiss you.
Just thinking about boys getting their way with Teresa and having folks say how she’s fast and hot and loose makes Mamá clench her fists and pull out her hair. So much so, she has a bald spot at the nape of her neck dedicated to Teresa’s escapades. But no amount of whipping or hollering keeps Teresa from sneaking away to be with that man.
The first time she snuck out, Mamá screamed so loud the clouds dumped so much rain our land flooded. All morning, me, Teresa, Lenny, Betty, Juanita, and Yohnny swept away water from the house, filling buckets upon buckets.
I had watched Teresa toss off the hair rollers one by one and finger her dark locks. It had taken Juanita one full hour to blow out Teresa’s thick uncooperative hair. But it was worth it. She shook her hair out so it danced around her face—a beauty queen.
Mamá’s going to kill you, I whispered, trying not to wake Juanita and Betty, who share a bed with us and whose limbs tangle up when they sleep. They purr like kittens. A sheet separates Lenny and Yohnny from us. It hangs from one side of the room to the other. So threadbare that when the lamp is on, before we all go to sleep, we are able to see each other’s silhouettes against the faded blue-and-yellow-flowered print. Lucky for Teresa, when they sleep they might as well be dead.