America's Dream (3 page)
The man looks quizzically at him, but the woman has studied a little Spanish and decides to use it. “Yo soy Ginnie,” she re- sponds, enunciating every syllable as if she were in class, “y estos son nuestros ninos, Peter, Suzy, y Lily.” Correa smiles at her ap- provingly, like a teacher with his best pupil.
“Muchas gracias.” He writes everything down.
“Is there a charge for parking?” the husband wants to know. “If you want to pay…” Correa grins, and the woman pulls out
two folded dollar hills from her pocket and hands them to him. The tourists think if they tip the guard, he’ll keep an eye on their cars.
“Gracias, señora,” Correa says, waving them into the parking area, looking at the woman as if she were his type, which she isn’t.
América blushes, as the woman in the car ought to. Surely he caught a glimpse of her tetas, barely covered by the bikini top. Even though the guards have been trained not to look at the Américanas the way they look at the native women (“Look them in the eyes, not anywhere else,” the trainer told them), some of them can get away with it. And some of the turistas encourage it.
Correa waves the family through, touching the brim of his hat in the lady’s direction. “Have a good time,” he says to them. The children wave at him.
People love Correa. He’s good-looking, charming, with a smile that makes women melt and children trust him. He takes care of himself, and it shows in his bodybuilder’s shape, the neatness of his close-cropped hair, the fastidious crescent of his well-clipped nails. He’s the kind of man women love to see sweat. The moisture on his skin highlights the taut arm muscles, the powerful thighs, the graceful curve between his buttocks and upper back.
He steps into the guardhouse, puts the clipboard ledger on the shelf, stuffs the two dollars into his pocket, and joins América in the shade.
“What’s new?” he asks, casual, ignoring the fact that she has never come after him when they should both be working.
“Your daughter has run away with that mocoso who works at the supermarket.” She doesn’t waste words. Like her mother, she’s never learned the art of dissimulation.
She senses his reaction before he voices it, takes a few steps away from him but feels him looming over her.
“How the hell could you let a thing like that happen?” He steps closer, fists clenched.
She’s been standing tall up to now, but his words discourage her. She resists the urge to cry. Her tears excite him, sometimes making him angry, other times so tender she believes him when he says he loves her, that he will take care of her.
“I didn’t let it happen. It just did. When Mami went into her room this morning, she discovered Rosalinda was gone.” Her voice is tight, as if sobs were strangling her from the inside. She pulls a tissue out of her handbag and blows her nose. “I didn’t look in on her before I left for work because she went to bed so late. She must have gone in the middle of the night.” She feels his attention shift, the tension that surrounds him press away from her.
“I’ll kill that hijo de la gran puta.” Correa stomps toward his custom-fitted jeep, as tough and macho as he is.
“Wait! Correa, where are you going? We don’t even know where they went!” América runs after him, reaches his side just before he jumps in, fumbling for his keys. She pulls on his sleeve, like a child seeking an elder’s attention. His slap sends her sprawling onto the gravel of the road.
“Even if they’re at the edge of hell, I’ll find him. That son of a bitch! How dare that fucker mess with my daughter!” He starts the vehicle with a screech of grinding gears, leans out the open side, raises his finger in warning. “You go home and wait for me.” His tone of voice, his eyes, convey a menace that makes her shiver. She drops her gaze, and he speeds off, spraying gravel and dirt in a broad circle. When she’s sure he’s gone, she pushes herself up, brushes dirt and grass from her clothes, picks out tiny sharp pebbles from her burning palms. A car drives up to the guardhouse, and the driver leans out, staring after the speeding vehicle with the uniformed attendant at the wheel, at América on the other side of the empty guardhouse, tear-stained and rumpled.
“Are you all right?” he asks, and América wipes her nose with the back of her hand and waves him through.
She picks up her handbag, which landed near the guard-house when she fell, brushes the sand off it, and walks to the road.
“¡Idiota!” she sobs under her breath, aware that she doesn’t know if she means the tourist, herself, or Correa. To the left, the road curves toward Esperanza. Across from where she stands, a cow munches noisily on some grass in a fenced meadow. A cow that has been there as long as she can remember. It can’t be the same cow she saw when she was growing up less than a mile from here. But it looks like the same cow, white with black splotches on her rump. She chews placidly, watery eyes fixed on América, slobber dripping from her leathery lips. Her udder is long and skinny, gray at the tips. A big black fly lands on her left hip, and the cow slaps it with her tail, without breaking the rhythm of her chewing.
América tugs her dress down at the hips, runs her fingers through her hair, and heads not toward Esperanza, but away from it, toward Destino.
t’s all uphill from Esperanza to Destino. The flatlands on the southern shore of the island rise gently but consistently toward low mountains speckled with flat-roofed houses. Once these lowlands were a sea of sugarcane, which elegant senores oversaw atop sprightly Paso Fino horses. But when the U.S. Navy appro- priated two-thirds of the island for its maneuvers, the great sugar haciendas disappeared and the tall stacks that dotted the island were bulldozed out of the way. This is history, and América doesn’t think about it as she walks the slope of the narrow road, sweating in the stretches between shady patches. Several times she stops and studies the road in front of her, trying to gauge how much farther she has to walk. It is a short view, as the road curves sharply right or left. On the few open stretches there is no shade. Visible heat bounces off the blacktop until she feels as if she were slowly roasting, her clothes like wrappers to keep the
juices in.
A público passes in the opposite direction, and the driver waves at her. It is an air-conditioned van for twelve passengers, full of tourists gawking at the lush vegetation and doubtless at the brightly dressed woman walking along the road. She tries to
ignore their rude stares, the feeling that to them she represents the charm of the tropics: a colorfully dressed woman walking along a sunlit road, her shadow stretching behind her as if she were dragging her history.
After the last of the many curves, she arrives at the open road leading up a steep hill beyond the gates of Camp Garcia, the naval base. Cars and trucks are parked helter-skelter outside the gates. There’s a line of battered Isuzus and Mitsubishi fourwheel- drive vehicles waiting to gain admission into the hidden beaches owned by the U.S. Navy.
She’s breathing hard. Even though she works on her feet all day long, up and down the stairs, around the interior courtyard and wraparound porches of La Casa del Fránces, she’s not used to this much exercise under the hot sun. Her feet, encased in pretty but uncomfortable sandals, feel large and heavy. Her shoulder-length hair, which she keeps up during the day, has slipped out of its pins, and her usually well tended curls droop around her neck in sticky wisps that she keeps peeling off and pinning as she walks.
I should have worn sneakers and shorts, América thinks. But I wasn’t thinking. What am I doing here anyway? Correa said to wait for him. But I can’t just stand by and let him do it all. She’s my daughter too. I should have thought of that before I went to see him. What good is he anyway? A hothead, is what he is. He’s just going to make a scene everywhere he goes and then nothing. Rosalinda is not stupid. She’s not on the island, that’s for sure. Everyone here knows her and Taino. I’m sure his mother would be out looking for them if she knew he’d run away with Ros- alinda. Her with her airs of la gran señora.
The image of Yamila Valentín Saavedra in her hilltop house makes América feel hotter. It’s not that she doesn’t wish Yamila well. It’s that Yamila, who has come up in the world, acts as if she’s always lived in the hills where the Yanquis build their vaca- tion homes. If I’d had the good fortune to marry a rich man, América assures herself, I wouldn’t have become as uppity as she has. It’s not in my nature. But Yamila has always been that way. Always acting superior to everyone else. Now that she lives in
the hills with the Yanquis, you can’t even look at her.
América climbs the steep hill flanked on either side by the gated mansions of El Destino. The houses here are built on a monte with a view of Phosphorescent Bay and, beyond it, the turquoise Caribbean Sea. Each house in this neighborhood has a four-wheel- drive vehicle in its marquesina, the lawns are neatly trimmed, and potted plants sway from hooks on the shaded decks. The community was devastated by Hurricane Hugo. Within a year of the hurricane, however, the lots were owned by Yanquis who have built cement-and-glass mansions dangling from precipitous slopes, adorned with elaborate wrought-iron rejas at the windows, doors, and marquesina gates. Rejas that seem to be decorative but are meant to protect the part-time residents from the vandal- ism and robbery they fear is imminent the minute they turn their cars in the opposite direction.
América stops to catch her breath before stepping in front of Yamila Valentín’s house. A prissy dog runs out of a rear door and growls at her feet on the other side of the gate as América bangs on the lock.
“Yamila Valentín Saavedra, come out and talk to me!” She feels the eyes of Yamila’s neighbors on her back. A doctor lives on this street, so does the Américan accountant who handles Don Irving’s finances. América has been in this neighborhood many times, cleaning the houses of the doctor and the accountant, the retired navy colonel, the developer who has built almost every new house on the island since the hurricane, the Italian count who comes every winter and stays three months.
“Yamila Valentín Saavedra!” she calls again, and this time a gate scrapes shrilly against cement, and the ratlike dog runs to- ward the door at the far end of the marquesina, from which Yamila Valentín Saavedra emerges wrapped in a white bathrobe, wet hair flat against her skull and down the nape of her neck.
“Who’s calling me?” “It’s América Gonzalez.”
A look of distaste crosses Yamila’s face, and her pretty features harden into a mask of imperturbable dignity. “I was in the shower,” she says icily, and she wraps the robe tighter around
herself. She comes closer to the gate but makes no move to open it. The dog resumes its screechy harking, and Yamila picks it up and holds it against her chest, where it growls and shows its tiny teeth at América.
“Have you seen my daughter?”
“Why should I know your daughter’s whereabouts?” She arches her thin eyebrows, kisses the top of her dog’s head.
“Because your son sweet-talked her into running away with him.”
Yamila’s mouth flies open, her eyes water, and the mask of impassivity breaks into a look of shock, disbelief, then rage. “My son! With your daughter!” She drops the dog and runs inside the house through the same door she’d come out. América hears her yelling at someone inside, and a lot of shuffling and opening and closing of doors, and then Yamila comes out again, her face con- torted into a grimace that América can’t interpret.
“That little slut! What has she done to my son?” Yamila throws herself at the gate, attempting to reach América through the iron bars. But América jumps back, dropping her purse, its contents spilling and rolling in every direction.
“Your son seduced my daughter! She’s a child, just fourteen. How dare you call her a slut!” América reaches through and grabs Yamila’s wet hair, but Yamila’s long, well-manicured nails scratch at her with the ferocity of a tiger.
“She’s a slut and you’re a slut and so is your mother, you bitch!” An elderly woman emerges from inside the house and tries to pull Yamila away from América, but she’s too old and weak. Screaming obscenities, América and Yamila claw and punch from opposite sides of the gate, their fists connecting more often against the curved wrought iron than against each other. Neighbors run out of their neat houses and stand on their porches or lean out of their windows, but no one comes to stop them. A woman holds a phone to her ear and narrates what’s happening to someone on
the other end.
Forceful arms wrap around América’s waist and drag her away from Yamila’s claws. She kicks back at the man, losing a
shoe in the struggle. He presses his left forearm around her neck and with his right pushes her in front of him, up against a car parked across the street. He squeezes his arm tight around her throat, until she can hardly breathe, and leans his whole weight against her. The struggle has excited him, and América feels his erection pressing against her buttocks.
“I knew you’d come here, you stupid hitch. Settle down, you’re making a fool of yourself!” Correa snarls into her ear.
“Let me go! You ass-kisser, always kissing up to these rich bitches!”
“Settle down and shut your dirty mouth, or I’ll shut it for you!” He turns her over to face him and slaps her hard, once on the right, once on the left, drawing blood where her teeth cut her bottom lip. She tries to kick his groin but misses. Across the street, Yamila screeches abuse at them both, while the old lady mumbles ineffectually at her side.
Correa lifts a struggling América into his jeep, slams her against the passenger seat, fastens her seat belt as if it will hold her in place. “You stay here,” he warns, backing away. He picks up her lipstick and wallet, hairbrush and compact from the slanted curb in front of Yamila’s marquesina, all the time keeping an eye on América.
She sits in the passenger seat staring daggers into him. Rumma- ging through the glove compartment, she comes up with a crumpled tissue to wipe her bloody lip.
“Great macho you are, getting your kicks from hitting women,” she says loud enough to hear herself but not so loud that he does. Her dress is torn at the collar, and a splotch of blood has fallen on the only white spot in the flower print of the bodice. She tugs here and there, pulls her skirt down, unpins her hair, runs her fingers through it, then pins it up again. In the fight with Yamila she lost a couple more nails. Her arms are scratched, and her lip hurts. She can feel it swelling inside her mouth.
