Beyond the Ties of Blood (28 page)

“But why did it happen in the first place? Why do the news programs want to talk to her all of a sudden?”

“Well, Laurita, it's understandable that you wouldn't have been keeping track. Your mama and I, well … we've been following the story for several months now, but it didn't seem necessary to call your attention to it until something had really happened.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There's big changes going on in Chile,
mi amor
. At the beginning of next month there's going to be a special election, a plebiscite, to decide whether or not Chileans want Pinochet to continue as president. I think some of the debate finally ended up catching the attention of the media here in the United States. When the local news stations called around to find out who would be a good expert to interview, people recommended your mom. So she got a call.”

“But why was she crying?”

“You know it's still a pretty sore subject for your mom. But I think she was also caught off guard. She called me after the recording session was over. The anchor started asking her about the Allende years, about her own experiences back then. They asked her some pretty personal questions, and at one point your mama starting talking about your papa.”

“Oh, my God. Does she feel embarrassed now? Is she okay?”

“She's going to be fine, sweetie. But I think she's a little worried about what you're going to think since, being on the evening news and all, you'll probably get a lot of comments from your friends.”

Laura was glad she had a chance to see the interview on video before she went back to school on Monday. It had been decided that, as part of the special birthday celebrations, Marcie would stay overnight. So when they got back to the apartment Laura, Marcie, and Eugenia, still wearing her grey suit, watched the video together.

After it was over, everyone was quiet for a while.

“So, what do you think?” her mother finally asked.

Laura looked at Marcie. Her friend was sitting on the couch, her knees up against her chest. There was a puzzled line between her eyebrows. Then Laura looked at her mom. “What was that question about torture?” she asked.

Her mom played with her hands, pulling at a piece of skin on her left thumb, before she answered. “Well, there's no reason you would know this, but the military hurt a lot of people after they arrested them.”

“Like how? What did they do?”

“
M'hijita
, there's a good reason I didn't talk about it in the interview. They did some pretty awful things.”

“Like what? What did they do to you?”

When her mother finally answered her voice was ragged but firm.

“Look,
mi amor
, I don't think there's any point in going into detail. Let's just say it was not pleasant, and that a lot of people suffered.”

“This is why you have nightmares, isn't it,” Laura said. It was more of a statement than a question.

“And what do you think, Marcie?” Laura's mother asked after a long silence.

Marcie busied herself smoothing the legs of her jeans, then folding her feet under her. “Well, Mrs. A,” she began, “I thought it was kind of cool, about the two of you falling in love, and then how you ended up running from the police. I think the kids at school are gonna focus on you running from the cops.” They didn't discuss the interview much more after that.

“Are you okay?” Marcie asked Laura after they'd turned out the lights and settled in for the night.

“I guess so,” Laura said. “It's just a shock, you know? It never crossed my mind that my mom was tortured. I can't even really wrap my mind around that. It doesn't seem real. And then, it turns out that my parents were hippies and outlaws, and they never married. I don't know, when I think about your parents, and how they've been together so long, and …”

“You know what?” Marcie said. “My parents are boring. They say boring things. At least your mom is interesting.”

“My mom's always been unpredictable, you know?” Laura said after a short silence. “I never know if she'll be sad, or happy. I haven't been able to figure it out my whole life. And then, out of the blue, she moved us here.”

The first days after her mother's interview aired on the news, a couple of Laura's friends stopped her in the hall in school and said things like, that was your mother on television, wasn't it? I didn't realize you'd had such a hard time growing up, without a father and everything. So she began to relax. But on Friday that week, she ran into Jacob in the lunch room. Since they'd stopped hanging out at parties, he'd always just nodded his head but kept on going. This time he stopped right in front of her as she was putting her tray down on the conveyor belt.

“Wow,” he said. “I didn't know your parents were radicals running from the cops. It's like a spy movie or something.”

Laura kept her eyes focused on the tray, trying to look like she was being extra careful putting it down. What was she supposed to say? But he kept standing there.

“Now I understand why your last name is different from your mom's,” he continued. At that Laura turned to face him.

“Actually, Jacob, I tried to explain that to you before,” she said. “In Latin America a woman doesn't take her husband's last name. At most she adds it to her own. But the kids get their dad's.”

“Yeah, I remember,” he said. “But maybe you should've kept hers anyway since your parents were never married. And besides, you never knew him, did you?”

Laura found Marcie after school and they decided to take a walk. They talked a lot about what a bastard Jacob had been.

“I think it's because you called it off with him first,” Marcie said.

At home, her mother was reading in the living room and got up to give her a hug. “What happened?” she asked as she pulled away. “I can feel your back and it's all tight.”

Laura headed toward the kitchen. “It's not important,” she said. “Besides, I'm hungry.”

Her mother followed her into the kitchen and watched her take out some bread and put it in the toaster. She waited until Laura had taken it out, buttered it and put some jam on it, taken out a glass of juice to go with it, and sat down at the table with her snack.

“What happened?” her mother repeated.

“Mamita, I already told you, it's not important.”

“Is it about my interview on TV?” Her mother put her hand on Laura's arm, preventing her from getting the toast to her mouth. “That's it, isn't it?” she said.

Laura gave up trying to eat the bread. She looked up. “It's nothing, really, it's just that—”

“What?”

“Well, there's this boy in my class, and I think he has a crush on me. He asked me out once but I said no, and I think he got angry. Today he just said some mean things.”

“What did he say?”

“He'd seen you on TV. He talked about you running from the cops, and then he said that it would have been better for me to take your name instead of Papa's, because I never knew him anyway.”

“Ay, Laurita.” Her mother brought a chair over and sat next to her. “He doesn't have any idea what he's talking about. Some people are just ignorant,
m'hijita
.”

Her mother offered to complain to the principal, but Laura said no. Finally her mother relented. But Laura couldn't shake the feeling that, in the end, her mother's anger was more about herself than about her daughter.

After the new year, Marcie and Laura began going to parties again. Laura started talking with a new guy, Simon, who seemed to think that the stories circulating about Laura's life only made her more interesting. Mysterious, was the word he used. At first Laura felt that same old pain in the pit of her stomach, that same old awareness of being different. But unlike Jacob, Simon was actually interested in getting to know her, and they spent hours talking. Although sometimes she wondered if he even found her attractive, Laura also found that with Simon, just talking made her feel like she belonged. And she really needed that, especially since she was getting more and more worried about her mother.

Her mother was smoking more, and she was dreaming again. Mama's room began to reek of tobacco and sometimes, when Laura got back late from a party, she could hear her moaning. She'd be tempted to go in and make sure Mama was okay. But then she would wonder what would happen if, in the middle of it all, Mama would really wake up and start trying to get involved in her life again. So she didn't enter her mother's bedroom, but simply lay in bed listening to her voice until she calmed down. Even on the rare occasion when she returned at one in the morning, it would take several hours before that happened. There were times, especially toward the end of the spring, when Laura saw the sun come up before her mother was finally quiet.

It was a relief when, for her fifteenth birthday, her mother gave her a new Walkman. She had just started high school, and all the kids were getting them. She and Marcie compared favorite albums. But the best part was that when her mama dreamed, she could put on the earphones and turn up the music. The louder her mama dreamed, the more she turned it up. At first she listened mainly to the same music they played at their parties, like Michael Jackson's “Billie Jean” and “Beat It,” or Madonna's “Express Yourself.” Prince's “When Doves Cry” tore her heart out every time.

One day, when she was at the music store, she heard a different sound coming over the loudspeaker. It was not the kind of music her friends listened to. There was a twang to it that was almost like country music, the kind that made Marcie roll her eyes. It was mixed with some heavy rock guitar, and the combination really intrigued her even though she knew she could never share it with her best friend. The singer's voice was just a bit ragged, but the energy, the anger, she didn't know exactly what it was, but it called out to her. And then she began to listen to the words. It was something about a family, a broken home. Then the singer said he wished he knew where his father was. She walked up to the counter. The young man at the cash register had long hair and was wearing a flannel shirt. Marcie would have called him a refugee from the sixties.

“Excuse me. Can you tell me what album's playing right now?”

“It's Neil Young,” he said. “His new album ‘Freedom.'”

“I'd like to buy it,” Laura said.

At the beginning of December, the elections heated up in Chile. Laura was not paying too much attention, though occasionally she'd catch bits of the reports on the public radio station her mother listened to. It was then that her mother's dreams turned violent. There were nights when she'd get home and her mother was moaning so loudly, she was afraid the neighbors would hear. Finally, one night when she got home to hear her mother howling, she decided it was enough. She took a glass of water in with her to her mother's bedroom and set it on the night table. She came in close to the bed and placed her hand briefly on her mother's shoulder. A sharp intake of breath, and her mother propelled herself into a sitting position. Luckily Laura managed to jump back before Mama's whirling arm hit her right in the jaw.

“Mama. Mama! Wake up!”

“Ah! What?”

“Mama, you're dreaming. You're howling so loud, you're going to wake the neighbors.”

Slowly, as her mother woke up, she calmed down. Laura felt secure enough then to sit on the edge of the bed. Her mom reached out for her and put her head on Laura's shoulder.

“Ay, Laurita. I can't stand it anymore. The elections, I don't know, they've just brought all these things back, I …”

Laura felt strange with her mom's head on her shoulder, almost as if she were the parent.

“Is it your torture you're dreaming about? You've been so loud recently, howling and everything.”

Her mother sat upright and moved away slightly.

“I don't know,” she said, her face turned to the wall. “By the time I wake up, it's gone.”