Tell Me Something True (32 page)

The authorities didn’t know what happened. Later, after they investigated, after the lawsuits, we learned that it had been
a pilot error. Apparently, the pilot programmed the automatic pilot to the wrong destination. It’s a rare thing, but it can
happen. They say that an alarm would have sounded out to signal the pilot that he was approaching a mass, the mountain in
this case. He was going to crash against a mountain.

About a year afterward, I ran into one of the survivors—he was a friend of Helena’s, as it turned out. He didn’t remember
anything. He just remembers waking up in the cold. I hope Helena didn’t hear that alarm, either.

Every time I get on an airplane, I think about that crash. I think about my daughter, my daughter, fastening her seat belt.
Looking out the window perhaps. Combing her hair. And then, I think about this awful, loud siren. I wonder what she thought.
I wonder if she knew she was going to die. What could she have thought of at that moment?

I like to think that the alarm never went off, because if it had, Helena would have looked startled or frightened. But she
didn’t. No one did.

The people I saw, looked… asleep. They weren’t burned. Some were bruised but not burned. Some were still strapped to their
seats. It was like a giant dollhouse, full of misshapen dolls, with their limbs twisted in the wrong direction. That’s what
made it look so wrong. And the silence. So quiet. You couldn’t even hear a bird chirp. No insects. It felt as if everything
had been stunned to death and covered with a huge blanket of sadness.

I couldn’t find her. I didn’t know what she was wearing, but I kept telling everyone: She has long, curly hair; she has long
curly hair. Please find my daughter with long, curly hair.

They found two people alive. Two. I was certain she had to be one of them, because I hadn’t felt her die in my heart. I loved
Helena so much, I just didn’t think it was possible that she could die and I couldn’t feel her light flicker off, no matter
the distance.

But I was so wrong.

When Gabriella was younger and would try to summon her with that horrible Ouija board, I knew there was no spirit world in
which to look for her.

People die, and they die.

That’s what I discovered that day. But I didn’t have the heart to tell Gabriella that.

For a long time I wondered if maybe Helena was alive after the crash. Maybe she died during the night, and we weren’t able
to save her. And for a long time I thought I would have known. I thought I would have somehow
felt
her calling me, heard her through the night. But I didn’t feel a thing. I didn’t hear her call me. I didn’t even hear her
say good-bye.

I wasn’t even the one who found her.

One of the Red Cross medics did. He remembered the hair—with Helena, you told people she had long, curly hair, and then they
would actually see the hair and know exactly what you meant—that’s what he told me later. He told me he saw them bringing
her to the helicopter and he saw the hair. And he ran to get me.

She looked—Oh. She looked so beautiful. Even like that. There was nothing in her face to indicate that she’d been in such
a terrible accident. That she had fought against anything. That’s been my consolation all these years. That perhaps she never
knew what happened.

She was just so terribly pale. Not pale. Gray. Even when she was asleep, Helena just burst with life. Her soul was too large
for that little body. When she was a child, I used to come into her room late at night, and I would just watch her breathe
in and out, her breathing trying to keep up with her heart. You could see the blood bubbling underneath her skin. The waking
hours were never enough for her.

But there was none of that left when I got her back. As if someone had sucked the life out of her. And, of course, that’s
what had happened. She was so cold, and so white. I kept rubbing her hands, but they never warmed up.

She was wearing that red gauze shirt and jeans. We never found her shoes.

We took her to Cali right away. My husband called everyone he knew to make sure things went smoothly. So things wouldn’t be
painful for me. And we buried her the very next day, as soon as Marcus arrived. I never felt she had a proper funeral because
there was no time to mourn her properly. But those days, there were funerals every day. Twenty, thirty funerals a day.

My poor husband. In retrospect, I think he might have had that first stroke that very night, but he never said anything. I
didn’t even know there had been a first stroke until the second one killed him two months later. I just wasn’t myself. I missed
all the signs, all the details. I didn’t take care of him, either.

They called me about her things around the same time. They said they had personal effects that they thought were Helena’s.
So I went to the airport, to the department of aviation. They took me to this room full of lockers. Rows and rows of belongings
in little cages.

They opened one of them and gave me the purse. Wrapped in plastic, with some identifying document. Incredible. A red leather
purse, made by hand, survived a crash against a mountaintop. But the people didn’t. We are so frail. And we really can’t take
anything to the grave.

A
t three in the morning, it’s quiet in the hallways of the Imbanaco Medical Center, and even her flat heels click and clack
loudly against the bare, antiseptic floor.

She spent the rest of the evening and the next day being questioned by detectives, returning home to a quiet Nini who resignedly
watches her pack, getting ready to leave before her vacation is over. All her best intentions have been for naught, she thinks,
not saying a word.

Now she has two policemen at her side, as much for her as for him, and when she gets off the elevator, soldiers flank each
of the doors. At the end of the hall, where the staircase is, she sees two more.

They are quiet in deference to the other patients on this floor. But they’re here for Angel. His face has been plastered all
over the news, Luis Silva’s only son, miraculously surviving a murder attempt that left three of his bodyguards, two gunmen,
and two innocent diners from adjacent tables dead. He took four shots that in one of those quirky twists of fate, good luck,
and anatomy missed any vital organs, save for the shot that hit his left lung, making it collapse, making him almost choke
on his own blood.

The cops walk her to his door and gesture for her to go inside.

She doesn’t know what she expected. She’s never seen anybody in intensive care before, and her vision is that of someone simply
lying on a bed.

He’s not just doing that. He’s hooked up to a ventilator, a plastic mask covering his mouth and nose, and every breath he
takes is exhaled with a helpless, high hissing sound. An IV drips slowly into his arm, and a feeding tube goes down his throat.

He doesn’t look strong or imperious or sexy like this, but thin, so thin under the stiff white sheets. Even his beautiful
bronze face is ashen against the white pillow.

Damaged. He is so damaged.

Gabriella wraps her arms around herself, raking her nails hard, up and down her arms, to keep herself from crying.

“Buenas noches.”

The voice makes her jump. She hadn’t seen Chelita sitting in a corner in the dark room. Her proud Indian features look old
now, the face tired, drawn down by the bags that weigh heavily under her bloodshot eyes.

She looks at Gabriella appraisingly, then slowly gets to her feet, and now, Gabriella sees the shotgun that’s been lying on
her lap this whole time.

“You’re leaving,” she says, and it isn’t a question but a statement, like Angel’s statements used to be.

“I have to, Chelita,” she says, and despite herself, she hears the defensiveness in her voice. “My father and my grandmother
say I have to go. For my safety.”

Chelita looks at a loss. And angry.

“He’s a good boy. A good boy,” she repeats fiercely. “Mi muchacho. He didn’t deserve this.” She gestures toward the bed, the
tubes. “And he doesn’t deserve to have you walking out on him. You know that. Now when he needs you.”

She remembers Chelita’s story. How her husband was murdered. Her son. She imagines her angry impotence and her refusal to
back down. But Gabriella isn’t Chelita, she thinks. She has other things in the world. She has a life, and she isn’t willing
to put it at risk, not here, not now, not even for him.

Gabriella steps back before the harshness of Chelita’s voice. She’s helpless to make things right for him.

“Chelita.” She shakes her head. Now she understands what people mean when they talk about being heart-broken. She feels like
her heart is truly going to break, it hurts so much. “I can’t. I can’t. I don’t know how to make things better for him. I
love him. But this…” She gestures to the bed, but it’s not the bed. It’s everything; it will crush her. “I can’t,” she repeats
quietly. “I thought I could, but I can’t.”

She comes close to him and tentatively reaches out and touches his hair, the face whose bones she’s memorized, the smooth
cheeks that now have a tiny layer of stubbly beard. She lightly grazes it with her fingers, back and forth, trying to bring
back his smell, but catching only the whiff of antiseptics.

One afternoon, one of those many afternoons that they spent in his bed, she woke up to find him lying on his side beside her,
watching her intently.

“What are you doing?” she had asked sleepily.

“Memorizing your face,” he replied.

Then he leaned over and cupped her temples lightly between his palms, holding them there for a few seconds, then running his
palms firmly down her neck, her shoulders, her arms, her hands, traversing her body one inch at a time until he reached her
feet.

“And now, what are you doing?” she had asked, amused.

“Now, I’m memorizing the way you feel, so I can remember, even if you’re not beside me.”

She had laughed, but tonight, she remembers that day, and now, she understands what he meant. The bars are up on the sides
of his bed, but she reaches out between them, gently touching his head, careful not to move the mask, and slowly goes down
the length of him, his broad shoulders, his tattooed wrist, the flat stomach, his legs, strong and warm underneath the sheets.
She lets her hand glide all the way down to his feet, trying to make her fingers memorize his long, elegant shapes and his
smooth texture.

“And now,” she tells his expressionless face very quietly so Chelita can’t hear her, “I’m memorizing the way you feel, so
I can remember, even when I’m gone.”

Angel breathes evenly, and in the silence, she imagines his eyelids flicker, but then the movement is gone as quickly as it
came and she’s left with the shuttered face again.

She wants to shake him, to make him look up, but after minutes of looking intently at him, all she can muster are words that,
even to her, sound pathetic.

“Chelita, please tell him I had to go, tell him I didn’t have a choice?”

“You always have a choice, miss,” Chelita replies, her voice as leaden as her footsteps as she takes her seat again. “You
always have a choice,” she says again. “That’s the problem.”

Gabriella straightens uncertainly. If she doesn’t leave soon, she’ll miss her flight.

Sensing her impatience, Chelita looks up at her, and in her black eyes, Gabriella sees she’s already moved on.

“I’ll give him your message,” she says simply. “I wish you luck,” she adds after a pause.

Gabriella nods.

“Lo mismo, Chelita.”

Gabriella stands hesitantly, wishes she had something of more weight to say, because her paltry fifteen minutes with him seem
anticlimactic and stale, so different from these past few weeks, the most wonderful weeks of her life, weeks that beg for
a big finale, a big musical climax, and not this awkward silence.

But there is nothing more to say to someone that can’t say anything in return, and finally she backs up to the door, unable
to let go of his face, willing him to open his eyes, to please open his eyes, to look at her, to say something that will make
her stay, that will make up for the last forty-eight hours. But only his chest moves, slowly up, slowly down, and the last
thing she hears is the shaky hiss of the breathing machine, following her down the hall, all the way to the elevator doors.

Querida Mami:

Ha pasado un año desde que no voy a Cali. One year since I don’t see the mountains or the valley or Juan Carlos or my room
with your presence inside it.

I’ve hardly even spoken any Spanish since I’ve been back, either.

Los Angeles is so strange, a city full of Latinos, and yet no one speaks Spanish. When I open my mouth, they assume I’m a
gringa trying to act Latin and they answer me in English. Now my tongue seems to have turned to dust. I stumble over the words.

I called Nini yesterday and told her this. I told her I needed to go back, because I was losing myself.

She told me I had to ask Daddy. She told me even if I had my own money, I still had to ask Daddy.