Fruit of the Drunken Tree Read online

  Her behavior was so suspicious I rushed to Mamá’s room to watch from under the Galán posters. In the garden, Petrona ran dirt through her fingers. She squatted, then zigzagged across the garden, inching closer and closer to the gate. I hid when she looked over her shoulder. I counted to ten. When I lifted again, Petrona was kneeling under the Drunken Tree, holding a flower over her nose taking deep breaths.

  She swayed. I searched myself for a feeling of alarm, but there was nothing. I watched Petrona reach her hand to the gate to steady herself. I thought she would come inside the house now, but instead she stood up and plucked a fruit from the tree. I thought to myself I should probably move now, or in the least say something, but I did not. I looked on as Petrona broke the shell of the fruit and her hand became full with seeds. I watched as Petrona put a seed in her mouth and chewed. I watched as she fell to her knees.

  “Mamá, Mamá!” I ducked under the poster and jumped on the bed. “Mamá, wake up! Petrona is possessed!”

  Mamá sat up, “What?”

  “Petrona, Mamá! She’s eating from the tree.”

  Mamá flung the sheets aside and we ran down the steps and into the garden and there we came upon Petrona, rolling from side to side, laughing, clawing at space, Drunken Tree flowers lying on the ground all about her.

  Mamá dropped to her knees and gripped Petrona’s wrist. Petrona growled like an animal, and I fell back. Mamá held on fast to Petrona’s hands and Petrona tossed her head and laughed long and maniacally. In the few seconds before Mamá next spoke, as I gripped the grass, recoiling from Petrona, I saw, for the first time, objectively, that she really was thirteen. She was thin and rosy, and stuck somewhere between woman and girl, alive with secrets.

  “Petrona, calm down,” Mamá commanded, and instantly Petrona smiled and hugged the dirt, her legs twitching. She became again the Petrona I knew. I reached my hand to her and Petrona lifted her face. The black of her pupils was large in the amber of her eyes. I did not touch her. Mamá placed the back of her hand on Petrona’s forehead. The touch of Mamá’s hand seemed to soothe her, and Petrona shivered now like a puppy.

  “That new girl of yours is no good.” It was la Soltera speaking to us. She leaned over our planters at the front porch, holding a cigarette, closing her white bathrobe at her breast. “Serves her right, that girl.”

  Mamá told Petrona, “Let’s go inside.” Petrona sat up. When she was on her feet, Petrona gave me a ghastly grin. I shrank back. “Come along, Petrona,” Mamá said, and Petrona got under Mamá’s arm and they walked to the porch. I stayed in place, afraid to go after them, afraid to stand too near the Drunken Tree flowers that looked so delicate and white against the grass. Mamá said, “Keep walking, Petrona,” and I saw Petrona was frozen in place at the red-tile patio, her breath coming in little convulsions through her nostrils. She pointed and stared at la Soltera like la Soltera was a spook. Mamá said, “Nearly there, just a few more steps,” and Petrona kept pointing, but she let herself be pulled into our house.

  La Soltera scoffed. “What ever is the matter with that girl?” She ashed her cigarette over our planters and I made a run for our house.

  Inside, Cassandra stood by the stairs. “What happened?”

  In her bed, Petrona’s breathing was fast, then slow. Cassandra knelt down next to me, and we stared at Petrona twitching, dying, we didn’t know. Since Petrona’s family didn’t have a telephone, Mamá called the corner store near their house and left a message with the clerk. She told the clerk to tell Petrona’s family that Petrona had fallen ill with food poisoning, and that she would be recovering at our house over the next few days. The clerk said he would pass on the message no problem; Petrona’s brother came every night to pick up some soda for the family. After it was done, Mamá got a bottle from her closet and poured its contents into a glass. She gave it to Petrona to drink and told us it was a special drink that would absorb the poison. The glass was filled with a black liquid tar.

  Petrona tipped it back and swallowed, black streaking down her chin. She tossed and turned. Mamá said Petrona was intoxicated. Mamá held a wet towel on her forehead. Petrona sat up after a while, saying she had misplaced her bowl of soup in the sheets, and asked me to help her look. Mamá nodded so I pretended to look with Petrona. We dug around her sheets and I wondered who in their right mind would sniff from a Drunken Tree flower and then eat from its fruit? Mamá said it wouldn’t be long now, the black liquid would clean Petrona out. She told us to go to our room, Petrona was about to be very sick. Cassandra and I half obeyed. We set up camp in the living room. We were quiet, lying sideways on the couch together with our blankets hearing Petrona retch. I didn’t think of anything, just wordless worry, the feeling pulsing through every heave and moan and whimper coming from her bedroom.

  Once it was dark, it got very quiet and Mamá emerged from the kitchen. She put on a coat and told us she had to go to the pharmacy and get some serum for Petrona’s dehydration. She came back with a bottle for Petrona to drink and Cassandra and I finally fell asleep.

  * * *

  The next day Petrona was normal, except she didn’t remember the day before at all. It was just like when Papá drank too much and he didn’t remember the stories he told. She listened mystified as we told her about the way she stared at la Soltera, all the time that she knelt in bed looking for the bowl of soup. “I wonder what I was seeing,” she said, and Mamá waved the air. “The important thing is you leave stupidity aside and do as I say, Petrona—didn’t I tell you to stay away from that tree?”

  Petrona seemed to be completely recovered, but Mamá insisted she stay in bed and drink as much water as she could. Mamá didn’t say anything about Petrona playing, so Cassandra and I brought down our Barbies. We had a box deep with Barbies. Our Barbies had blue eyes and short, jerky bobs because Cassandra had cut it, swearing their hair would grow back. They had no legs or arms because Cassandra had chewed them off. Cassandra had a habit of chewing the limbs when she watched television or took long showers or did her homework. She would hold the Barbie head of hair with her hand and sink her teeth into the rubbery fingers, ankles and wrists, calves and thighs and forearms, until her saliva and teeth broke the pieces of vinyl off. She entertained the feel of them in her mouth, the squishiness between her teeth, the taste like old gum, and then she would swallow, and start anew on another limb.

  We thought it to be a real tragedy.

  At first we invented elaborate stories about how our Barbies had come to their paraplegia. But later, our favorite game became pretending they were war veterans and victims. And this is the game we invited Petrona to play.

  Cassandra’s Barbie, Veracruz, had lost her arms and legs running from the guerrillas. She had run a million miles for a thousand days until her feet grated off against the road, and then she ran with her hands, but her hands rubbed off too. My Barbie, Lola, had been the boss of guerrillas in Putumayo, but her men revolted against her and chopped her up and left her for dead in a jungle. She had a red bandana around her forehead and penciled-in bags under her eyes.

  When she saw our Barbies, Petrona covered her mouth and laughed. She was sitting up, looking paler than usual, but she laughed violently, leaning and slapping her thigh. Petrona wiped a tear from her eye and, sighing, she reached her hand in the box, Barbies piled on each other. She pulled out a Barbie wearing a shiny blue dress. The dress was close-fitted and stopped just after the separation of her thighs.

  Petrona caressed the short blond hair of her Barbie and then looped her index fingers under the Barbie’s hard plastic armpits, and dangled the torso with stubbed legs and stubbed arms in front of her like a baby.

  “I’ll call her Bianca,” she said. “And she was born like this.”

  “Really, Petrona?” I said. “With no arms or legs?” It was an interesting problem.

  “Sí, niña, of course, it’s common,” Petrona said. “Her mother s
moked and drank during pregnancy. Plus, she was dropped on her head when she was a baby.”

  On Petrona’s bed where the light waned from warm yellow to gray and we had to turn the overhead light on, we bounced our limbless Barbies and flipped their hair. Veracruz and Bianca became friends when they sat next to each other on a bench. After all, what were the odds of meeting another woman who was only a torso like you, and who like you, had to get around by doing somersaults?

  Bianca was on her way to the supermarket, when she spotted Lola. Bianca was so excited to see a third like them, armless and legless, that she rolled to befriend Lola right away; but Lola didn’t want friends, she wanted more people for her guerrilla army.

  Petrona’s Barbie Bianca bounced on her stubbed thighs and said she already had a guerrilla army of her own. Lola wanted to start a war against Bianca’s army, but Bianca said that wasn’t how guerrillas worked. Their real enemy was the rich.

  “Oh,” I said. “Like the Oligarch.”

  “Kill the rich!” Lola said.

  Cassandra joined in and raised Veracruz’s stubbed arm. Veracruz chanted, “Kill the rich! Kill the rich!” Bianca sang, “ ’Tis the final conflict, let each stand in his place. The international working class shall be the human race.” Cassandra lifted her eyes from her Barbie. “What is that?”

  “Just a song,” Petrona said.

  Mamá opened the bedroom door. She was carrying a tray with a large bowl of soup and juice. “Go on,” she told Cassandra and me. “Leave Petrona alone, she has to rest.”

  Petrona smiled at me and put Bianca facedown on her bed and sat up to receive Mamá’s tray. Cassandra picked up our Barbies and threw them into the box with all the others. She picked up the box and said, “Hope you feel better.”

  “Feel better,” I echoed and we went out. Mamá was asking Petrona something quietly and then Cassandra said, “That song was weird.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s probably nothing.”

  As we made our way through the kitchen I noticed that the broom with the upside-down bristles was not in the corner. I wondered if a witch had landed on the roof and made Petrona eat the seeds of the Drunken Tree. A shiver ran down my spine. I looked around but everything else seemed to be in its usual place. I followed after Cassandra as we went up the stairs, staring at the white ruffle of her socks, too scared to say anything out loud.

  Petrona

  Little Ramón had been at the coast packing freight trains. He brought back money and Mami bought juice and poured us all a glass and said what a godsend, our family still our family. I was angry at Abuelo Andrés for saying our little Ramón was guerrilla. But I couldn’t stay angry because Ramón was a little man now—his chest was wide, his back strong, and even his knuckles had grown new, rougher skin. I daydreamed about Ramón on the coast. I imagined him hoisting boxes, filling train cars, finally a good son for Mami. I sang to myself. Ramón was working with the same train company but in Bogotá now and overseeing packages. I stopped passing the envelopes. If Ramón kept working, I could go back to school. I could take a class or two, and become a secretary.

  Mami and Ramón talked on the phone every day at six in the afternoon. Mami went to the corner store. She walked up and down the mountain to be there for the phone call in spite of her asthma. Mami talked to Ramón about the weather, then she talked to him about the future: the house they would own, the food they would have in the fridge. Then Ramón said, Mami, la bendición, and Mami gave him her blessing. Mami was worried the train company was working Ramón too hard, and I told her as long as they paid.

  One evening Ramón didn’t call and Mami nearly went out of her mind. The corner store owner, Señor David, felt so sorry for Mami he got out of bed at three in the morning when Ramón’s call finally came in. He climbed the mountain to our hut and helped Mami down to the store. When Mami picked up the phone, Ramón sounded dead tired. Is everything all right, mi’jo? He sounded cheerful for a moment and Mami relaxed. La bendición, he asked, and Mami gave it, Dios me lo bendiga, mi’jo. They were quiet and then Ramón said he needed to go rest. The next day some kids hunting turkeys found his body, dumped in the Hills, like the other body, except people said it wasn’t the army this time but the paras, because everybody knew Ramón was guerrilla, that he had been packing dynamite and explosives, that the money he gave us was guerrilla money, that when he called to ask for a blessing it was before going on missions, and we were stupid not to have seen it.

  * * *

  We kept the casket inside our hut for two days. It was everything we could afford. I looked at Ramón dressed by Mami in a T-shirt and jeans she had scrubbed clean. He was not a little man. He was a boy of twelve. His skin was like clay, his eyebrows wiry, his face like a mask. I knew where the bullet holes were, our little Ramón, how they climbed all over his back. I took his hands in mine and swore I would prove he had been doing honest work. When I wiped my face clean of tears there was the smell of gunpowder. I smelled my shirt, but my scent was just dust and sweat. I smelled little Ramón’s hands, fell on my knees, and cried. Mami looked at me with so much hate. His hands don’t smell like anything, you liar, liar, liar.

  The people of the Hills knew what had happened, but nobody stopped by our hut. I imagined they wanted the whole thing to go away, but we had nowhere to bury the casket so we put it in front of our house.

  * * *

  Leticia came with a bunch of flowers. They came in a plastic cover so I knew she had spent money on them. Leticia held a little piece of cloth to her nose. The smell of Ramón filled the air. There was a young man next to Leticia. He’d known my brother. People called him Gorrión. Gorrión looked at me. Leticia said something but I could not hear properly, because there were Gorrión’s eyes in front of me, attentively watching, pools of brown sucking me up, from which I could not look away, but I did, to look at his hand coming forward to meet mine. It was soft and gave me a jolt of electricity when I touched it. He grazed his afroed hair with his fingers, and then I looked into the glow of his eyes again. I felt seen in a way I didn’t know was possible and it quenched something in me, and so I uncovered the casket for this man who had the power to see, because I wanted him to see what was happening to little Ramón too.

  Leticia staggered back, Dios mio. She gagged by a tree, but Gorrión did not move, and I was thankful. His dark cheekbones bounced off sunlight. I read on his face that he was sad, but not surprised like most people, who did not expect Ramón to be deflating like a busted balloon. Gorrión smiled sadly at me and I smiled in sadness too. He spoke. He said he wanted to pay for Ramón’s burial. How? I asked, holding on to his voice that seemed to go under my feet, but I meant to say, Don’t. Gorrión pulled out an envelope from inside his jean jacket and he put it in my hands. He said it was his savings. I stared at the thick white envelope resting on my palms not able to understand such kindness from a stranger; then the envelope was slapped to the ground. It was Mami who had come out of the hut. Leticia was gone. Mami threw dirt and rocks at Gorrión, who dodged her attacks and then lunged for the envelope and ran away. Mami called after him: bestia, animal, atrevido, desgraciado, how dare he give us his dirty money, she knew where that money came from, of course he was black, black like the dirt he was. Mami yelled at me, I never want to see you talking to that black man again.

  * * *

  At night I went to throw out the dirty dishwater and Gorrión came out of the shadows. Stay away, I whispered, but he came forward and put an inhaler in my hand. I stared at it, dumbstruck. Where did this come from? There was a rush of wind through the trees. Gorrión stretched to look over my shoulder. The front door curtain of my family’s hut was bright from the candlight inside. Ramón was my friend. He told me to take care of you, so I am.

  Inside the hut there was a small clattering sound, and I glanced back and then at Gorrión. He stepped back into the shadows. Can I visit you where you work? he whi
spered. Maybe we can have more time to talk. I stepped toward his voice. I found his hand then I kissed his cheek. It was too dark to see his face, but he lingered next to me for a few more seconds before he ran away, rustling the trees where he went. It brought on a sweet kind of pain, his leaving. I didn’t want Mami to destroy the inhaler, so I told her it came from the Santiagos, that they sent their condolences and Mami frowned but she took it.

  * * *

  The next day Abuelo Andrés came saying we could put Ramón in the same plot with his wife. I didn’t know Abuelo Andrés had had a wife, but in the Hills we don’t ask too many questions in case we end up knowing something we’re not supposed to. We hauled the casket by mule to the cemetery. The hole was already dug. The caretaker helped us put the casket on top of the one that was there. The stone read Diana Martínez, beloved wife. That was Ramón’s resting place. We threw dirt down into the hole, the little ones and Mami and me, and my eyes filled with tears. I looked everywhere around me, wanting to feel something else. I glanced at the bushes, the trees, between the cemetery stones, but there was nothing to shore me up.

  * * *

  I felt light, even though la Señora had said I could die, taking big breaths off the flower of that tree in the Señora’s garden. I lay one seed on my tongue and bit into it even though I tasted bitterness. I must have grinned, or at least it felt like it. Things blurred and my knees went weak. Then my pain became small. My life opened up clean and clear before me.