Mamá talks to Juan as if I’m not here. She doesn’t know about Gabriel, who may still show up to the wedding and speak now or forever hold his peace although my life is no telenovela.
Don’t worry, señora, says Juan, boisterous as a cowboy. I’ll take good care of your daughter. His confidence is kind of charming. He obviously is capable of taking care of us all. He’s not a weak man. And his power is even more pronounced by the surrounding wilderness—overgrown trees and bushes impossible to tame.
My ears pick up the howl of the siren miles away, the occasional motorcycle, the hawks sweeping close enough for us to flinch. I look away from our yellow house, a flower planted on the greenest of earths. I imagine myself inside the skyscrapers, in the snow, under all the bright lights.
With Juan there are many firsts. He opens the car door for me to sit in the front, on the passenger side. I always have to sit in the back with Yohnny, Juanita, Lenny, Teresa, and Betty: cramped. Just this, I’m sure, impresses Mamá. Marrying Juan is like going to the moon. Up front, I have the best view of the road, of the world passing me by as Juan accelerates the car, switching gears.
We stop at the Ruiz restaurant, which sits right outside the city on our way to the hotel. Of course, everyone knows Juan there. The women especially. He doesn’t introduce me. He sits me at a table that reeks of Clorox. No tablecloths. No walls. Just a slab of cement on the ground and sheets of zinc held up by a few poles, to protect the few customers eating at the table or sitting at the makeshift bar if it rains. I wait. The lights make my hands and arms look green. The waitress serves me a morir soñando with a straw. I don’t have to share it with anybody. I sip the shake with my eyes lowered, and listen to the familiar song playing on the radio. I remember the time I danced to that song with my brother Yohnny after the chores were done and dinner had been eaten.
Juan carries over a tray with two pressed sandwiches. Behind him, El Cojo, a funny-looking man, limps toward us, his shirt off by one button.
So you’re the one, El Cojo says to me, then catches a fly with his index finger and thumb and flicks it to the floor as if wanting me to fear him.
So what do you think of the place?
I shrug. The restaurant?
You can call it that, El Cojo says.
Juan fake punches him and says, Don’t worry, parajita, one day, people’ll travel from all over to eat here. We’re gonna make it real nice, you and me.
Really? I say. I had never thought I would own a restaurant before.
Don’t get ahead of yourself, El Cojo says. You don’t even have the papers for the land yet.
I stay quiet and pick at the sandwich.
Money. Papers. Always the main subject.
El Cojo pulls out papers for us to sign. He studies the series of two-by-two photos of different women and picks one.
She looks like you, right? El Cojo squints his eyes, to reconsider the photo from arm’s distance.
Juan takes a look. I take a look.
It’s perfect, Juan agrees, comparing my face against the woman in the photograph.
I bite my tongue. Mamá’s right, men don’t know anything.
El Cojo stands up. All right then, I’ll be back.
He hobbles over behind the bar and acts as if all the work he has to do is one big favor, a real nuisance.
Juan takes a large bite of his sandwich. He catches all the drippings with his tongue. Eats quickly and voraciously. Mamá says you can read a man by the way he eats.
You not hungry?
Not really, I lie, too nervous to eat. The women at the counter stare at me or maybe at my lacy pink dress. They aren’t much older, but nothing seems new to them.
Juan takes my sandwich and eats it too. He could’ve insisted I eat, as Mamá does when we have guests over. Even when they say they aren’t hungry she sets a place at the table and makes them eat. And when their plate is empty she adds seconds, even if they claim to be full.
El Cojo returns and hands Juan a passport. Juan studies it. He looks through the papers. They shake hands and do small talk.
Congratulations, El Cojo says.
For what?
You’re married!
Was that it? No ceremony? No guests or cake or you may kiss the bride or do you take this man? All this fuss Mamá made for a new dress and no party to go to?
Can I see?
I reach for the large yellow envelope filled with papers.
The woman in the photograph is an older version of me: Ana Ruiz-Canción born 25 December 1946.
I’m now nineteen years old?
The Original Certificate of Marriage hereby certifies that on the thirty-first of December, 1964, at the courthouse of Santo Domingo, Juan Ruiz and Ana Canción were married by an illegible signature.
Airline tickets: Pan Am, SDQ to JFK. 1 January 1965.
We are to arrive to New York City early early so the officers will be too tired to notice that I’m not the girl in the photo.
Teresa would call it bad luck to travel on the first day of the year, because it’s like entering a room without going through a door.
By the restaurant’s exit sign, I see some girls huddled over one another, whispering and giggling. Surely about me. My flaming pink dress feels brighter, more vulgar. The white lace barely covers my chest. Juan stares at the curled ribbons in my hair as if I am a present to be undone.
We drive to the hotel. Juan turns on the radio. I have nothing to say. My dress hikes up when I sit in the car. He looks and tries not to look. His fingers shift gears inches away from my thigh. He reeks of rum and cigarettes. The brown paper bag Mamá gave me sits on my lap. Along with the botella, she packed an extra pair of underwear, a fragrant bar of jabón de cuaba, and a lipstick.
Ask Juan for new clothes. It’s his duty. Men don’t know their heads from their feet. Demand. Demand. Demand, she said.
At a stoplight he caresses my cheek. I try not to cringe. I don’t want to disrespect. His hand drops on my lap like a dead rat.
You’re too skinny, he says, that’s got to change.
I cringe. He taps my nose and says, Don’t worry. I’m a good man.
Always worry when someone says don’t worry: my father’s words.
He stops at a gas station and gets out of the car.
A panic enters my body. Worse than the day Lenny threw up tapeworms and his face turned red because some were caught in his throat. I thought he would die in front of me. Worse than the panic that entered me when I last saw Gabriel at the school and he had to save me from myself.
I’m all alone with Juan. And now I belong to him. In less than an hour, I’ve lost four years of my life. Ana Canción was fifteen. Ana Ruiz is nineteen. I clamp my legs together, ankles crossed, hands woven shut.
I check to see if the car door is locked. Two men are leaning back on crates against the wall outside of the tire shop that is now officially closed. It’s dark outside. Beyond the dim streetlamp over the gas tanks there is just black. If I run I might be able to find my way back home. But Juan returns, locks my door, and flicks on the overhead light inside the car to get a better look at me. His mustache is a shadow over his lips.
You’re so damn beautiful. You kill me, you know that?
He drives through the dark roads. We see only as far as the headlights. And far beyond, lights appear like fireflies.
La Capital? I ask.