Ghost

The morning Mr. Marroquín died I woke up with a black eye. I was already in sixth grade and had gotten a beating during recess the day before on account of the effeminate satin scarf my grandmother wrapped around my neck every morning—as she said—to prevent a throat infection. In the last days of Mr. Marroquín’s life I saw him very often. After I came home from school, I gulped down the hot tea and bread Grandmother had waiting for me on the table and rushed next door, leaving the same sentence lingering in the living room air as I hurried out: I’ll be back for supper, Abuela.

Everything had really started two days before, when one cloudy afternoon I decided to prop a ladder against the wall that divided our house from Doña Victoria’s. I had known her from a distance, passing in front of her door every morning on my way to school. She sat on the threshold and greeted everyone. I always asked, “How are you, Señora?” and she always answered with nonchalance, “Here, taking the air.” With its clean, red brick façade and wrought iron windows, her house was the smartest on the block. I had never been inside, but then, standing at the top of the ladder, the sight dazzled me. In contrast to our bleak yard—a littering ground for rusty cans, dung, and twirled wires left over from my father’s abandoned projects—Doña Victoria’s roof garden was covered in a pristine blanket of terracotta tiles. Along each of the four walls that enclosed the terrace, there were containers made of plaster. Tomatoes, chilies, and bell peppers grew among flowers and squash vines that cascaded to the ground.

I hesitated for a few moments before trespassing. My heart beat fast, not due to the danger of a possible dog or of being caught by Doña Victoria, but rather of my grandmother finding out what I was doing. She had become a little angry since my parents had separated five years before. She took care of me, the house, and her faltering health while my mother worked long shifts two bus rides away at the other end of town. In the beginning my mother came home every night after work, but soon she moved in with her boyfriend and left me in my grandmother’s care. She said she wanted me to finish the school year in Avellaneda, the Buenos Aires suburb where Abuela lived. She visited me some weekends, and we went for rides on a neighbor’s borrowed bicycle or walked down to the railroad tracks, holding hands and placing one foot in front of the other slowly, like gymnasts on the balance beam. She was in her early twenties, though her skinny body and giggly personality made her seem younger and fragile. Her visits eventually became less frequent, and after a while I stopped asking my grandmother why Claudia never came home on weekends anymore. “You should call her Mamá,” my grandmother would answer, wearing her usual expression of defeat.

I suppose the real reason that I climbed onto Doña Victoria’s roof was that I needed to make a decision. The night before, my mother had paid me an unexpected visit. She came into my bedroom and woke me up, asking what I thought about moving in with her and her boyfriend. I said I didn’t know. She told me to think about it and went into the kitchen, where Abuela must have been washing the dinner plates.

I swung a leg over the wall and tiptoed to the nearest planter. I began to inspect the chilies, which hung from the bush in hues of yellow, orange, and red. I reached over and plucked one. As I brought it close to my nose, I looked up and saw Doña Victoria standing at the top of the stairs. She was in her seventies, small and wrinkled, but with a straight back. She cast an uncertain glance on me, then winced and said, “Those are ají putaparió. They are so hot your eyes will swell up and fall off your face if you get too close. Come wash your hands.”

“I’m sorry, Doña Victoria. I should have asked permission.”

“I know. Now come downstairs wash your hands. I don’t want you to go blind like me.” She turned and began to walk away.

I followed her. “Are you really blind?”

“Not yet, but it won’t be long.”

The stairwell to the ground floor was made of cement and painted pink. We descended onto an inner courtyard with three-legged flower pots in each corner and a collection of pothos creeping up the walls with leaves the size of serving dishes. In the bathroom to the left I could see a toilet streaked with rust. Two of the three rooms across the way had their metal shutters closed. The room in the middle, however, had its double doors wide open in the afternoon breeze.

“Go wash up,” Victoria said. “I want you to meet my husband.”

When I came back, she was waiting by the entrance of the middle room. Inside, it was musty. When my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw a bed in the center of the room and a man covered with a white blanket. He looked trapped under the carefully tucked covers. His arms rested beside his body, and his feet, pointing upward, reached over the edge of the mattress.

Victoria touched the man’s forehead, which gleamed with sweat. “Agustín, our neighbor, has come to greet you.”

I approached the bed and waved at the man. “Hello.”

“Mr. Marroquín is very sick and needs to rest,” Victoria explained. “He doesn’t talk very much, but he can hear you.”

“Hola, Señor.”

Mr. Marroquín did not move.

“Touch his feet,” Victoria demanded. “He likes it.”

Hesitantly, I followed her command. I took his bare, clammy toes in my hand and squeezed them, trying not to apply too much pressure. I felt a couple of his bones crack, and I let go immediately. A faint smile grew on his sickly face.

Victoria left the room and returned an instant later with a handful of candy. “Here, I keep these around for sweet people like you.”

“Thank you, Doña Victoria.”

“Let’s go see the tomatoes now,” she said, then headed back towards the stairs.

I gave Mr. Marroquín a final look before leaving. He raised his eyebrows and puckered his lips slightly, never opening his eyes.

“Good evening, Señor,” I said, then exited the darkened room.

On the roof, Victoria knelt by the pot with the tomato vines and shuffled leaves, as if searching for something.

“I should get going now, Doña Victoria. My grandmother must be waiting for me with supper.”

“You know, he is not mute,” she began. “I take good care of him. Only sometimes we run out of his medication and therefore he cannot talk. You will hear him speak once he gets better.”

“I am sure,” I replied, not altogether certain of what she meant. I could sense a certain defensiveness in her tone, but did not know why. I swung my legs over the wall that separated our houses and went down the ladder into our grim backyard.

***

The next day I knocked on Doña Victoria’s front door, holding a jar of flaxseeds behind my back. She opened almost immediately. “Hello, dear. Come in.”

“I brought you these,” I said, presenting her with the seeds. “I found them in my grandmother’s pantry. I planted them once, and they bloomed into tiny blue flowers.”

She seemed in a hurry. “That’s very nice of you. Would you like to greet Mr. Marroquín?”

“And touch his feet?”

“I have to go to the pharmacy to retrieve his throat medication,” she explained, hanging her purse over her shoulder. “Do you care to come with me?”

My chest filled with excitement. “Yes.”

“Then go tell your grandmother while I put these away. We can scatter them in the front later.”

“No need to do that. She expects me to be gone for a few hours.”

“Let’s hurry, then, so we don’t miss the subway.”

We took a bus to the subway station. Victoria bought two tokens and instructed me to cross the turnstile. Immediately, the smell of machinery made me think of the greasy railroad switch that once caught my shoe while walking with Claudia on the tracks. She had thrown the lever this way and that to release my foot, and then we couldn’t remember its original position. For days I kept wondering whether we had caused a wreck.

“Do you smell the sawdust and gunpowder?” Victoria asked. “It reminds me of the match factory where I used to work.”

I smiled. “I like it.”

Downstairs, the station was empty. We walked to the A train.

“Look at this disgrace,” she said, placing her index finger in front of my face. The nail was missing. “It happened at the factory. I got distracted on the boxing line, and the machine chewed my finger.”

The subway pulled into the station.

“It looks weird,” I said, “like okra.”

She regarded her hand with a slanted look. “It was my fault. That day I was distracted, thinking that Mr. Marroquín was having an affair with my coworker, Bernarda Hipólito. She worked during the day at the match factory, and at night she cleaned rooms at a hotel just down the street from here. She said Americans liked to eat chicken wings and Brazilians hearts. She always had stories to tell. But that day as she spoke and I boxed matches absentmindedly, the labeling machine mangled my finger. I let out a faint ay, for, quite frankly, it did not hurt very much. It was Bernarda who, seeing all the blood, could not stop screaming. They bandaged my finger in the infirmary and sent me home. I paid no heed to it and returned to work within hours. A few days later I removed the gauze and saw this funny thing sticking out. I thought, ‘what a big splinter.’ I touched it, squeezed it—not feeling anything—so I pulled it out.”

“And so it finally healed,” I added.

“It did. But do you know why it looks weird? It was my bone I pulled out.”

“Your finger has no bone?” I asked, considering her digit the consequence of not only an accident, but of her actions, which seemed at once brave and self-destructive.

“I worked at the boxing line for another twenty years, until I retired.” She fixed the strap of her purse over her shoulder. It had been sliding down her arm with every shake and wiggle of the train. “Our stop is next.”

“And Bernarda?” I asked.

“I never knew for sure if Mr. Marroquín went out with her, but the suspicion alone cost me a fingertip.” She shrugged. “My mother used to say, ‘don’t touch the things you don’t want to grow’. Of course I didn’t know whether she was referring to a penis or to those truths one cannot handle. Come on, we’re here.”

The subway doors opened, and we walked off onto the muggy platform. Passengers came and went in every direction—some filed toward the exit, others elbowed their way onto the crowded train. As we began to climb the stairs onto the sidewalk, a couple of men collided with us. At first I thought Victoria had tripped, but soon I realized one of them had taken hold of her bag and was trying to steal it.

She resisted, and the thief wrestled her. I did not know what to do. Everything was happening so fast, so I began to scream, “Leave her alone!” and threw a kick at the man. This did not bother him. He continued to struggle with Victoria. His partner shoved me, and I went flying down the stairs. I landed on my side in an awkward position, from which I continued to shout things like “Socorro!” and “Ladrón!” A few bystanders looked on but did not come to our rescue. Meanwhile, Victoria had locked her elbow in such a way that the strap of her purse was lodged inside her arm. She was tugging away and away until, suddenly, she yanked the bag out of the man’s grip and swung it at his face. He snatched her purse in midair, and with the strength of a body some forty years younger than hers, disappeared among the mob of pedestrians outside. I wanted to run after him, but I hesitated, realizing that I would never reach him. I was better off making sure Doña Victoria was not hurt.

“Are you okay, Ma’am?” a stranger asked.

“I am fine,” answered Victoria, composing herself. “Are you?”

The man gave us a confused look and continued on his way.

I tapped her back. “Is your arm okay, Doña Victoria?”

“It’s fine. Did you get hurt?”

“No, but can we sit down?”

Outside the station the sun shed on everything, softening the asphalt and making us wince. We sat at a nearby bench on Plaza Miserere, the busy park in Buenos Aires’ Jewish quarter where peanut vendors perfumed the air with burnt sugar and textile stores flashed their neon signs all day, advertising cheap wedding gowns. Pigeons gathered at our feet.

“I suppose you won’t hear Mr. Marroquín’s voice for another month,” Victoria said, letting out a long sigh. “The medication we came here to buy reduces the swelling in his throat, which is why he cannot speak.”

“What kind of disease does he have?”

“Lung cancer.”

“My grandmother boils a pot of eucalyptus leaves in my room when I have a cough. She says it helps clear the throat.”

“I am afraid that will not help Mr. Marroquín now.”

The cooing of the birds blended with the noise from traffic. I reached into my pocket and produced the money my grandmother had given me for groceries. “Let’s go before the pharmacy closes for the day,” I said, getting up. “We can use this money.”

Victoria looked at the cash in my hand and stood up.

At the pharmacy counter I handed the carefully folded bills to her, but she pushed my hand away. She explained to the store tender what had happened at the subway station and promised to pay next month, when she came back for more medicines. She took the brown paper bag and said thank you several times. I followed her down the street. A few yards away she turned to me and asked, “Will you buy me an ice cream?”

I nodded. “Only if you can finish it.”

I ordered vanilla. She chose mint and sabayon. Cones in hand, we returned to the bench with the pigeons. We were quiet for a while, our bodies making long shadows on the ground. At some point she elbowed me and said, “How about a movie?” She raised her eyebrows in the direction of the theater across the street, which listed in white letters on the marquee a rerun of Honeysuckle. “Take me, Agustín,” she pleaded in a childish tone. “I love Libertad Lamarque. Did you see her in Adiós Argentina?”

“No,” I said. “But my abuela loves her too.”

It did not occur to me then, but days later, as I lay in bed revisiting with fondness the events of that evening with Doña Victoria, I realized that I had never been to the movies before. Perhaps my feelings owed to the serendipitous nature of how we came to watch Libertad Lamarque on the big screen singing tango songs in her high-pitched voice, our hands sticky with ice cream. Perhaps it was how I noticed, from the corner of my eye, Doña Victoria laughing with the movie while rubbing the shoulder that hurt from the wrestle with the thief. Maybe it was the number of unexpected turns that day had taken, in stark contrast to my life, comprised of a routine between the bullies at school and our littered backyard. I felt happy.

When we returned to Doña Victoria’s home, the sun had long set. She let me inside her house, told me to make myself comfortable, and went to give Mr. Marroquín his pills. I lingered in the yard until she returned.

“Your grandmother must be looking for you,” she said. “You should go.”

“How about the flaxseeds?”

“We can scatter those tomorrow.” She began to walk toward the front door. I stayed behind. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I don’t want to go yet.”

“But you cannot stay here all night. Your grandmother is probably worried about you. I’ll take you.”

We walked the few yards that separated our doors and rang the bell. My grandmother opened immediately with an expression full of anxiety. She asked where I’d been, and she said she was afraid something terrible might have happened to me. Victoria told her about our day and, after exchanging a few pleasantries, bade us both good evening.

I set the table—a flowered cloth, soup bowls, and a basket of bread. Grandmother announced, “Dinner is ready,” and came in carrying a hot pot from the kitchen. The house smelled of winter, and her glasses became foggy with the steam rising from the soup. She had wide shoulders and hair that changed hues at the end of each month, when she could not remember the name of the hair tone she had used. She insisted it was called ash blond, but when the keeper of the drug store said that color didn’t ring a bell, she reached for whatever was on hand.

We ate in silence. As she served me another ladleful of soup, she said, “Agustín, your mother wants you to move in with her.”

I stared at the flower pattern on the tablecloth. “I know.”

“What do you think about that?”

“Nothing, really.”

“Agustín, I know she asked you only days ago, but you cannot delay this indefinitely.”

I put down my spoon. “Every time Claudia has a boyfriend she thinks she’ll marry, she wants me to move in with her. Where has she been all this time?”

“Your mom misses you,” she said in her usual understated tone. “She has the right to see you. She works very hard and her job is far away from here. All I am saying is you should consider it.”

“I don’t know, Abuela.”

She placed her elbows on the edge of the table and laced her fingers. “The issue is not going to vanish, Agustín. It will continue to linger, like a ghost.”

“I know,” I added.

“If you don’t make a decision, someone else will decide for you.”

I nodded and reached for her plate. “Are you finished?”

“I am, thank you… And I hope you don’t forget the groceries again tomorrow.”

I went to my bedroom thinking about what it would mean to live with my mother. I would have to make acquaintances with her new boyfriend, whoever he was. I would go to a new school, make new friends. I imagined my grandmother without me, her constant worry. Unlike Victoria, she did not have a sick husband to care for or a luscious garden with soil in which to dig her hands. All that would be left was an empty house and a television set that only worked in good weather, when the wind didn’t jerk the antenna on the roof.

I lay awake in bed for a long time, pondering my grandmother’s suggestion. Maybe I did want someone else to decide for me. It often crossed my mind that my mother had abandoned me, that I had always been a burden to her. Before I fell asleep, my last thought was whether she would grow tired of me again once I moved in with her. That thought would rob my sleep for many nights to come.

***

The following day I touched Mr. Marroquín’s feet again. He opened his eyes and said “buenos días” in an asthmatic voice. The house reeked of boiling celery. Doña Victoria was in the kitchen; I could hear the clutter of utensils. Mr. Marroquín’s still body, the silence of the room, and the smell of closed windows seemed like an appropriate preamble to anyone’s death. It occurred to me I was in a funeral parlor, witnessing his wake. The only difference was that we were waiting for Mr. Marroquín to die. And that, as it turned out, would happen in a matter of hours.

He rolled to the side, attempted a smile, and dropped an arm over the edge of the bed. “Pass me that,” he said, pointing at a bottle on the floor. It was a carafe, and it seemed filled with urine. I gave it to him, hesitating between helping him sit up and calling Victoria.

He placed a finger on his lips. “Shhhh…” and took a swig of the liquid.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

His face brightened, and a hue of pink colored his cheeks. “Your eye must hurt. Beer is good for pain. Want a sip?”

I shook my head.

He drank some more. “My nephew. He paid me a visit this morning. He poured the beer into this carafe so my wife thinks it’s my urine. I asked him to keep it a secret.” His speech was labored. “Can you keep secrets?”

I had to bring my face very close to his mouth in order to understand him. “Sure, Mr. Marroquín,” I said, smelling the beer in the air and suddenly remembering a trip I had taken with my mother about a year ago. She and her boyfriend, Pablo, took me to Lake Lobos, a popular fishing and camping destination two hours west of Buenos Aires. Pablo had a potbelly, tousled black hair, and must have been my mother’s age. When I first got into the car, he was holding several cans of beer on his lap, which he drank the whole way. By the time we arrived at the camping site, Pablo was slurring. He got on the boat with us despite my mother’s insistence that he stay on land. Minutes after we departed, a short few yards from shore, Pablo fell overboard. Nothing terrible happened to him, as the water was shallow and calm. We simply continued rowing further into the lake, and I watched Pablo struggle ashore. When we returned, he complained about us taking too long and said we had forgotten about him. He had fired the grill and began to ask for fish, so I followed my mother’s orders and went to clean our catch at a sink near the tents. Pablo came behind me, took a small pejerrey from my bucket, and swallowed it whole.

“If you don’t hurry up,” he said, “I will eat them all.”

His chin was smeared with fish innards, his breath foul. A number of scales clung to his lips, twinkling like sequins as he spoke.

He said he needed some fresh air and went for a walk. My mother and I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to figure out how to make the tent. She took my shoulder and asked me if I wanted to know a secret. When I nodded she whispered into my ear: “The day you were born was the happiest day of my life.” But I knew her well enough to know she was trying to make the best of the situation. I smiled, and we continued to place stakes in the ground, following the directions printed on a piece of paper now wet from the can of beer Pablo had knocked over in his ire.

Victoria walked into the room balancing a bowl of soup on a tray. She helped Mr. Marroquín lean forward, then noticed the carafe on the floor. Once she laid the tray on his lap, she said, “If you are not going to stop it with the beer, you should at least ask your nephew for a good stout.” She went to the door and drew the curtains together.

Meanwhile, Mr. Marroquín pushed the tray aside. “Leave me alone, Victoria,” he said, with as much anger as his tired voice could muster, but Victoria had already left the room.

I stood there, uncertain as to where to go. I wanted to follow her, but I felt pity for Mr. Marroquín, so I sat on the edge of his bed and tried to feed him some lunch. He agitated the broth in his mouth as if trying to chew it. It took him some effort to swallow. When he finished, I put the tray on the floor and got up. Before I walked away he glowered at me and said, “I don’t like stouts.”

I mounted the pink staircase to the terrace, not knowing that those would be Mr. Marroquín’s last words. I found Doña Victoria plucking dry leaves from her tomato vines.

“What happened to your eye?” she asked, casually pointing at the bruise on my face.

I knelt next to her. “At school. Some kids mocked me for my scarf. I hate that thing.”

She giggled.

“Why are you laughing?” I asked.

“It’s ugly,” she answered. “That thing is ugly.”

I lowered my neck and began to undo the knot.

“Look,” she said. “We make decisions every day. You, me, your mother… everyone is constantly faced with having to decide from the simplest to the most important things. For example, I decided to marry Mr. Marroquín. He decided to drink a lot of beer. The tricky part is living with our decisions.”

“I don’t understand. I didn’t decide to put this silly napkin around my neck.”

“No, but you kept it.”

“Are you telling me to disobey my grandmother?”

“I am saying you had the choice to act differently before getting into a fight at school. Now you cannot complain about that ugly eye of yours.”

“It wasn’t a fight. I was pounded.”

She ignored my comment. “Just like you could have decided not to jump over this roof and invade my house.”

I stopped and looked at her. “I am glad I did.”

“Good. Now help me with the chilies, and then we’ll go down to scatter the flaxseeds.”

***

When I came home from school next day, I saw a hearse parked in front of Doña Victoria’s house. Tea and bread awaited me on Abuela’s table. I looked for her; she usually sat in the living room reading a magazine or mending clothes. I found her in her bedroom, lying on her covers with her arms crossed on her chest. Her television was on, without volume.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Resting a little. Come lie with me. We can watch Batman if you’d like.” She referred to the 1960s television series she did not let me watch because she found it too violent.

I sat on the edge of her bed. “What is that car in front of Doña Victoria’s house?”

“They came to collect her husband,” she said, unaffectedly. “He died last night.”

“Oh,” I said, getting up from her bed. “I have to see her.”

“Don’t go. Stay here with me. Doña Victoria’s gone with her nephew.”

“How do you know?”

“She came this morning and asked me to tell you.”

Several days went by without any signs of Doña Victoria. I walked in front of the house every morning but never saw her sitting at the door. One afternoon I propped the ladder on the wall and climbed to her roof. I noticed that most of her plants had wilted, so I rushed downstairs and came back with two buckets of water. I spent some time plucking dry leaves and collecting all the ripe tomatoes and peppers. I went down again to look for a basket for the tomatoes and realized I had never been anywhere else in the house except for Mr. Marroquín’s room.

It was silent and dark, the smell of boiled celery still trapped inside. I walked through each space, inspecting Doña Victoria’s bedroom and the dining area adjacent to the kitchen. On a sideboard sat a picture of her and Mr. Marroquín’s wedding, several portraits of small children, and a haphazard snapshot of a family gathering. I wondered if any of the children were Victoria’s, but she had never mentioned anything of the sort. The china cabinet contained knick-knacks and wine glasses covered in a film of dust. A lace ribbon rested across the length of the table with a silver fruit tray on top. In the kitchen, which consisted of a small bench in lieu of a counter, a two-burner stove, and a deep enameled sink, I arranged the harvested items neatly on the silver tray. I left it on the counter, imagining the surprise on Doña Victoria’s face when she returned home and saw that abundance.

The next day I repeated the task. I checked on Doña Victoria’s vegetables and collected the ripe tomatoes, leaving them downstairs on the tray. This became a custom, a daily chore I enjoyed doing. One day as I was crossing the gallery towards the stairs, I caught another glimpse of Doña Victoria’s wedding photograph. It was hard to believe the man standing next to her had been Mr. Marroquín. I took a rag and set out to dusting all the frames. While doing so, I gave each person a name—Ramón, Mabel, Santiago, Ana—and turned them to face Mr. Marroquín.

I stopped wearing my scarf to school. I let Abuela place it around my neck in the morning, but I took it off before stepping into the classroom. My black eye had caught the teacher’s attention. I told her who had done it, and that same day I got into another fight on the street behind the school building. Some kids had come to watch, as word went around quickly of any fights that were to take place after class. We went at each other at once, our backpacks still strapped to our shoulders, shouting insults while rolling on the ground in a knot of kicks and punches. In the middle of it all I remembered Doña Victoria’s wrestle with the thief at the subway station, and seconds later some of the kids watching untangled us. Though I did not exactly win the fight, for the first time I had not been punched in the face, which I knew would make Doña Victoria proud.

Several nights passed, and I still had not seen my mother. I thought she would have come by already to take me with her. Some of the plants on Doña Victoria’s terrace had begun to die, so I took them to our yard to rehabilitate them. She would be happy to have them back upon her return. The tomatoes and peppers I had left in her kitchen days before were spoiling. Despite my attempts to keep everything normal, things had started to look and smell abandoned.

One day at dinner, I asked my grandmother if she knew anything about Doña Victoria, and she said she had heard Victoria would not come back to live there. For some reason, this information made my decision suddenly clear. That night, I told my grandmother I was going to stay home.

“I am glad, dear,” she said, her glasses foggy from the steam rising from her plate. “I would miss you terribly if you left.”

I reached over and took her spectacles, wiped them, and gave them back. “Let’s clean the backyard and grow some tomatoes.”

“I think that is a fantastic idea.”

I finished dinner, and in the darkness of the night, I began to collect all the scattered items in the yard. Then, I went to Doña Victoria’s home with the intention of throwing away the rotten vegetables and putting away the silver tray back on the dining room table. I was in the kitchen searching for the garbage pail to dispose of the tomatoes and chilies when I drew the little curtains below the sink and saw dozens of bottles of beer arranged neatly in a row. They were all full. For a moment I was confused, but I soon realized that Victoria was an accomplice to her nephew, who let Mr. Marroquín believe this was their secret. Of course she knew all along. I threw the tomatoes in the garbage and returned the tray to its original place. Upstairs on the roof, I looked in the distance. The evening was crisp, and the downtown lights glowed on the horizon. I took a deep breath, crossed over the wall, and descended to our home.