Tell Me Something True (15 page)

“Oh, Angel, I love it,” she says in wonderment, and impulsively, turns around and holds his face between her hands and, with
infinite tenderness, kisses him gently, lovingly, on the lips. For a moment he’s shocked into immobility, taken aback by the
purity of the gesture, and then he brings his hands to cover hers as they cup his face and he smiles back. An open, unguarded
smile of unadulterated joy. And for a moment, he is just a boy, and she is just a girl, and they are happy.

T
he first woman Juan José had sex with was a prostitute.

His father took him to see her. He was seventeen years old, a swaggering boaster, the coolest guy, the one who smoked cigarettes
during the week but who’d never gone beyond fondling his girlfriend’s breasts.

He grew tall that summer and girls were constantly calling. One Sunday with no preamble, after a long horseback ride, his
father, slightly drunk, announced it was high time his boy became a man. They were in the car—his dad’s silver Mercedes-Benz—and
he felt sticky and filthy in his dusty riding breeches and grass-stained shirt. His hair, matted with sweat from four hours
of riding in the sun, stuck to his skull like glue.

His father took him to a nondescript home in a quiet middle-class neighborhood, a part of town rich boys might drive by but
never stop at.

Her name was Ingrid. Or so she said. She was a skinny girl with very sleek olive skin and a tight, generous ass, the kind
so many mulatto Cali girls are famous for. When she drew him to her, her hands were cool and slightly sweaty and she smelled
of patchouli oil and rose water. He was terrified, but he didn’t protest. Defying his father wasn’t really an option. Besides,
how could he say no to an afternoon of sex? What kind of man would that make him?

She sat him in a chair covered with a white cotton sheet and knelt before him, taking off his riding boots and his socks.
His feet stank and he felt acutely embarrassed and ill at ease and completely at a loss as to what he was supposed to do.

“Relax, papito,” she said, bringing a wide pan with warm, sudsy water. She stripped him of his pants and underwear, placed
his fetid feet in the water, and again knelt before him and took him in her mouth.

He’d read about blow jobs, but didn’t know anyone who’d actually gotten one, and certainly no girls who gave them. The simple
touch of her lips against him sent him over the edge and he came in seconds.

He was mortified. When she started to laugh, he felt tears welling up in his eyes, as the shame swept over him in waves.

He reached down for his clothes, but she stopped him, firmly but not unkindly, and pulled him up instead, leading him toward
the bed even though he felt ridiculous and exposed, walking naked except for his stained shirt.

“I mustn’t cry,” he told himself. “Only babies and maricones cry.”

So he let Ingrid take him to her bed and take off his shirt and walk him with infinite care through the fine details of making
love.

Two hours later, when he was shown the door, his father was waiting in the car, smoking a cigarette.

To this day, he doesn’t know if he went for a drive or if he went to another room in the house. He never asked.

“Todo bien?” he asked.

“Todo bien,” he answered. His father laughed and slapped him on the back.

Juan José didn’t mention the embarrassment, the tears that almost engulfed him. How lost he felt on that bed, how awkwardly
he had moved inside her, like a child with no rhythm.

But afterward, he felt like a man. A real man. Spent but powerful.

He didn’t say anything to his mother that evening. When she kissed him good night, he hugged her tightly but saw her in a
different light.

She was una mujer bien, from a fine family. He was sure there were things his father never did with her.

The next day, he bragged to his friends in school, leaving out all the parts where he’d acted like a boy.

He went back to Ingrid over the years, when he felt overwhelmed or disappointed. When Ingrid was no longer there, he found
someone else, and then someone else. The only name he can still remember is Ingrid’s.

Whores, he found out, never demanded more than he was prepared to give. They didn’t want a long-term commitment, and they
didn’t want his money beyond the evening at hand. With whores, he always knew where he stood. With other girls, he could always
see the calculation in their eyes when they recognized the family name, when someone told them where he came from. Even if
they themselves were rich, his money beckoned.

He could be a blob, and those girls would still let him fuck them.

His head was cradled against my bare stomach as he spoke. He smoked and I gently ran my fingers through his hair as the sun
trickled in lazily through the blue shutters of the farmhouse. It was two in the afternoon and so stiflingly hot that all
you could possibly want to do was lie there like that, with the fan slowly twirling overhead and a pitcher of ice-cold lulo
juice sitting by the bedside. Juan José should have been working, but he owned his business and I owned my time, and right
then, I also seemed to own him.

“Y tú? Tú que quieres, Helena? What do you want from me?”

There was an antique porcelain water pitcher on its basin placed on a wooden table in the corner. It was white with pink flowers,
and the handle was chipped. The wall was bright yellow, the floor dark oak, and the irregular swaths of light that peeked
in through the half-closed shutter made the pitcher look like it was lit up inside. I gently lifted his head from me and got
up to reach the camera I had left on the armchair. I came back to the bed, to the exact position I was in before, adjusted
the lens, and snapped the shot.

That’s the way it is when you work with natural light. The moments are only seconds long. If you miss them, they’re gone forever.

I took a whole roll, and only then did I finally answer him.

“I don’t want anything, Juan José. I don’t want anything at all.”

W
hat’s this? The inquisition?”

When she gets off the elevator that opens onto her grandmother’s apartment, she finds Nini and Juan Carlos sitting in the
living room. Waiting for her. Obviously.

Gabriella is annoyed and guilty and angry and defensive, even before the speech starts, because she knows what the speech
will be about.

“Gabriellita, no one wants to put you on the spot, but we want to make sure you know what you’re getting into,” says Nini
firmly, but her voice is trembling with barely suppressed outrage. “This boy you’ve been going out with, he’s Luis Silva’s
son. We’re talking about a very dangerous man. You should have told me who he was.”

“Nini, Luis Silva is in jail, and anyway, Angel is not in his father’s business,” says Gabriella, not sitting down, retaining
the advantage of height and stance over her diminutive grandmother.

“Gabriella, don’t pretend to be silly. It doesn’t suit you. Of course, he’s involved,” says Nini impatiently. “And even if
he weren’t, what do you suppose he’s going to do if you no longer want to go out with him? If you meet someone else? Gabriellita,
this is just not advisable—”

“Do you remember the story of the girl a couple of years ago?” interrupts Juan Carlos. “She was dating some little mafioso,
and he whacked her new boyfriend! This is no joke. Gabriella, this isn’t a good thing.”

“I…” Gabriella’s voice trails off. How to explain when they don’t know him. “If you spoke with him, you wouldn’t say what
you’re saying,” she says helplessly. “Maybe you should get to know him. Invite him to dinner or something,” she adds with
a shrug, ignoring Juan Carlos and looking at her grandmother instead.

Her grandmother looks at her stone-faced, and for a ridiculous moment, Gabriella stifles a giggle.

“I can’t believe this!” shouts Juan Carlos, affronted at Gabriella’s lack of respect. “What are you, deaf or just plain stupid?”

“Juan,” says Nini warningly.

“Oh, please. All you care about is what people will say about you, Juan Carlos,” interrupts Gabriella, folding her arms angrily
in front of her.

“Okay, I do,” Juan Carlos answers, pounding the sofa with his fist, nodding vehemently. “I do care what people say about me.
I live here. This is my city. And I care. And you should be considerate of that, because in a few weeks, you’ll be gone again,
and you can pretend this didn’t happen, while we have to live with the consequences of your little fling.”

Juan Carlos stops to catch his breath. Gabriella has never seen him like this, and she feels just a twinge of guilt. Just
a little.

“I honestly think you’re overstating this,” she says. “Nini,” she says, turning again toward her grandmother, her palms turned
up in entreaty. “Angel is not that way. I’m not embarrassing you. I’m not going to embarrass you. I don’t do that, Nini.”

“But this is more than that,” says Nini. “At this point, I’m worried about your safety, and frankly, about my safety and the
family’s safety.”

Gabriella pauses. She hadn’t considered that her family could possibly be in any danger. But, she rationalizes, the only one
who’s a target is Angel, and he is too zealously guarded to instill real fear into her. And the idea of Angel himself being
dangerous simply doesn’t factor into her equation. For a brief instant, she sees his face above hers, feels his hand stroking
her stomach, and involuntarily she closes her eyes.

“He is not going to hurt me. Or you,” Gabriella says, decision imparting firmness to her voice. They are trying to make her
feel like an obtuse teenager, which she isn’t, and she wants them to understand that, despite everything they may think, they’re
simply mistaken. “I know where he comes from. I know who he is. But, he’s not in that life. He’s—he’s normal! He can’t help
who his father is. But he’s not his father!”

It doesn’t sound right, she knows.

“I like him. I like him, Nini,” she says earnestly. “And why, why can’t I be with someone I like? I’m not married. It’s my
right.”

Nini stares, the skin around her mouth pinched and tight.

“It’s your right,” she says finally. “But not in my house. I’m going to have a talk with your father tonight. And I’m going
to have to tell him about this. It’s my responsibility.”

Gabriella feels a hole opening in the pit of her stomach. Her father, whose calls she’s ignored, who she can’t bring herself
to speak to. He will come personally and get her, she’s sure. He is not going to let this one go by.

“You tell him,” Gabriella says carefully, “and I’ll tell him that you knew about this Juan José character and my mother. I’ll
tell him how she had an affair while staying in your house, and you let it happen. And
that
, you didn’t have a problem with.”

The words spill out before she can stop them, and she’s appalled at how awful they are.

She wants to grab them back, but now they hover in the hushed room and she can see them poisoning the air, physically attacking
her grandmother, who suddenly and for the first time looks to Gabriella like an old woman.

“What the hell?” says Juan Carlos, confused.

But it’s Nini whom she sees looking at her with an expression of bafflement and profound hurt. Nini so taken by surprise she
doesn’t even scold Juan Carlos for the language.

All these years she has kept silent, thinks Gabriella. She knew all this time. But I couldn’t. It’s been only three days of
secrets, and yet, it was killing me.

“Tell him,” Nini finally says in a tiny whisper. “Go ahead and wreck his life, and wreck what’s left of mine. Will that make
you feel better?”

Gabriella can’t bring herself to speak.

She shakes her head no, looking beyond Nini, because she can’t bear to look at her face now, she feels so ashamed.

“Who told you?” Nini asks.

“No one,” she answers, almost under her breath. “I read it. I read it in her diary.”

For a few seconds, no one speaks, and Nini resists the urge to stand up and put her arms around her granddaughter.