The Arrival
Alejandra arrived at Hartsfield-Jackson Airport and went through immigration. A uniformed man looked at her passport with suspicion and checked her backpack as if it contained some illicit drug. All the bigger than life spaces and atriums, all the white mesmerized her. She could not believe that she had escaped. Only a few weeks before, she had been to a mass demonstration that ended in tear gas canisters thrown, rubber bullets, injured people.
There was a feeling of hope – esperanza – as she whispered to herself, esperanza as she looked at the busy hallway of the airport with masses of people moving up and down, esperanza as she studied the eyes of every person, trying to read their intentions. Would these people want to mug her, pickpocket her phone and money, steal her backpack, her laptop, the precious little things she had brought with her? Would this be a country with different attitudes, or just more of the wait until you took away and steal your things? She noticed that people looked inward. They rarely made eye contact, as if protecting their inner bubbles, focusing on their luggage, the people they were with, their mobile devices. She felt she had arrived not in a different country, but on a different planet.
A woman towards the end of the terminal held a hand-written cardboard sign with “Alejandra” on it. Unlike the others walking around in their inner bubbles, the woman was looking around. They made eye contact, the woman smiled. Alejandra did not know her. Alejandra was expecting her cousin, Elena.
“Eres Alejandra?”
She nodded.
“I knew it was you. You look like our own,” the woman said in Spanish. “Do you have any luggage?”
“No. This is all I have.”
“Soy Ana Maria. Elena sent me to get you.” They hugged and kissed.
As they drove out of the airport, Ana Maria explained that Elena was having a hard time with her newborn, living in a tiny one-bedroom with her husband. They arrived at the apartment complex and rang the doorbell. Elena opened the door displaying baggy eyes as if she had not slept for days. They went in and Alejandra smelled rice and a sofrito being cooked.
“Call me if you need anything,” Ana Maria said to Elena. The three of them exchanged hugs and kisses.
A few seconds after the door closed, the baby began to cry. Elena picked him up, tried to console him, breastfed him, but to no avail. The baby cried. In frustration, Elena passed him to Alejandra. He quieted for a few minutes and sucked Alejandra’s pinkie. Just as he stopped crying, he began again. She held him in her arms and tried to comfort him. Elena at one point rolled her eyes and went outside. After a few minutes, Alejandra joined her to give the baby back, only to find her smoking cigarettes and staring into the parking lot.
“Qué? Todos fumamos. So, don’t give me that look,” Elena said, taking a last drag and flicking away the cigarette.
Alejandra forced a smile and handed the baby to Elena. I just ended the worst chapter of my life…and now this?
The air was humid and hot. The whining of cicadas, screeching, overwhelmed all that was audible. A truck in the distance roared, breaking the cacophony. The baby cried again, so Elena rushed back inside slamming the door.
Breathe, breathe.
Alejandra went inside.
“How was your flight?” Elena asked after a while.
“It was…nice.”
“It was my mom who got the money so we could get you the ticket.”
“Is she up here?”
“No. Her situation is not as bad. She’s in Valencia – still enchufada – connected with the government. But she is fed up, risking too much.”
“Tell your mother that I will forever be indebted to her. I thank her and will pay her back.”
“She told me you would say something like that,” Elena said, smiling for the first time. “We’re family.”
Elena showed Alejandra around the small apartment – their bedroom, the baby’s crib, the bathroom, the kitchen, and the couch, where Alejandra would sleep. Outside, Elena pointed to the area in the complex with washers and dryers. Elena turned on the TV and watched while cooking. Alejandra asked how she could help and found herself heating up some black beans.
Elena’s husband, Manuel, arrived. He was covered in a mix of Georgia red clay and speckles of gray and dry concrete. He disappeared into the bedroom without saying a word and took a shower. Elena set the table and as Manuel emerged, they all sat down to dinner.
“This is Manuel,” Elena said to Alejandra as she passed the rice.
“Have I met you before?” Alejandra asked, puzzled.
“Who can forget you? I think I met you back in Venezuela at a family cookout.”
“They used to do paellas all the time,” Alejandra said, smiling.
“Not anymore,” Elena said.
Cries came from the crib. Elena got up, lifted the baby, and walked up and down the apartment rocking and trying to console him. Manuel turned to a futbol game on TV.
“What’s the WIFI password?” Alejandra asked. Elena told her. Manuel got up and went to the bedroom. Elena folded some clothes, gave Alejandra some sheets to put over the couch and went to the bedroom.
Alejandra opened her backpack, took out her laptop, got online and told some friends down in Venezuela that she had arrived okay. She messaged Yolanda, her brother’s girlfriend, and asked how her mother was doing and to tell her that everything was all right.
She changed into some pajamas and rested her head, trying to make a mental image of all that had transpired that day. How early in the morning, she feared that they would not let her out of the country. Immigration guards would find something wrong with her papers, her visa, or that she was taking something out that was not permitted. There were soldiers everywhere. The engine of the airplane made a loud screech, the captain explained something, the flight attendant went through the motions about the seat belt. She was still tense, with a knot in her throat, feeling that at any moment the National Guards would rush through the cabin and take her. They had shot her boyfriend in the knee eight months before. Men in uniform arriving on motorcycles, grabbed friends that had been to demonstrations, threw them on the back of a motorbike between two soldiers and rushed them off. So why not rush the airplane and take her? As Alejandra remembered the intense acceleration of the jet taking off and veering to one side into the sky, she heard pounding from the bedroom, accompanied by moans and an occasional “dámelo papasito.”
Embarrassed at first, she tried to remember her own boyfriend, Antonio. How they would sneak to her own bedroom in the afternoons when her mother was taking a nap. They played with each other and kissed and touched. But suddenly a different memory destroyed that image: it was the storage room at the public hospital where her mother had her surgery. She could smell the foul sweat of the guard, as he pulled her pants down from behind her.
The pounding persisted in the bedroom, but now it felt like torture, something more to endure. Panic rose inside of her. She could not breathe. Anxiety filled her lungs. She got up, went outside to the constant sound of cicadas and air conditioners. When she felt better, she tried to open the door, but it was locked. She wanted to ring the bell but stopped. Had they finished? She didn’t want to interrupt, she didn’t want to exist, so she crouched and stared into the emptiness until at some point she fell asleep.
*
“I forgot to give you a key,” Elena said. “Why didn’t you tell us that you got locked outside?”
“Didn’t want to disturb.”
Alejandra spent the rest of the morning following Elena pushing a stroller to the Mexican Carniceria at the corner of the complex and to the laundry room. Elena pulled out a Ziploc full of quarters and washed clothes. Alejandra helped carry the bag with clean clothes while Elena pushed the stroller. At noon, Ana Maria came to visit and invited them to El Taco Veloz.
“So how do you know each other?” Alejandra asked.
It turned out Ana Maria was good friends with Elena’s mother, and when they wanted to come up to the States, she offered a room in the basement of Ana Maria’s mother’s house, which had become sort of a refugee camp for Venezuelans. Elena and her husband lived there for six months until Manuel began to find work, and they moved to the apartment.
“You should see the basement,” Ana Maria said. “We have people sleeping on couches.”
“Your mom must be really a nice person,” Alejandra said.
“Ha! She can be, but she hates it that all these people have taken over her house, her refrigerator, her cabinets.”
*
Days were filled with the constant cries of the baby, preparing food, washing clothes, listening to some futbol game or some telenovela. At night, Alejandra converted the couch into a bed. Some nights she had to listen to Elena and Manuel make love, or Elena trying to soothe the baby while pacing around their small apartment. Exhausted and distraught, Elena would stand outside the apartment smoking cigarettes while Alejandra held the baby.
When they all went to bed, Alexandra pulled the sheets over her face and tried to remember her old world, how she lived on the ninth floor of a condominium overlooking their great mountain. How in the morning, birds of all types would chirp and sing, later on, the blue macaws would land on balconies all around her and made their raucous honks. She had her own bed, her own room, her own existence. All that was shattered and it left her in a constant state of guilt and anxiety.
Alejandra wanted to tell Antonio, her boyfriend, what had happened to her, but in her head, she repeated the same questions he would ask. Why didn’t you resist the advances of the guard? Every time she thought about it, she felt dirty and disgusted by her own choices and would drown in a sense of shame. How else was she going to get back the medicines, the tools that she had brought into the public hospital for her mother’s appendectomy? If only she had known the guards did this type of thing. She twisted and turned with the what-ifs, when everything was said and done. The past could not be recreated. It just was.
*
Ana Maria invited them to the big house for a parrilla. Alejandra rolled the idea in her head, how that concept was practically impossible in the previous year. Back in Caracas, parrillas were inconceivable once she’d lost her job and having one of her uncle’s delicious paellas would take six hours by car or ten by bus. She’d found herself picking through the garbage cans outside of restaurants for something to eat.
They arrived in Manuel’s pickup truck and parked on the grass, along with many other cars. The house did not look large from the outside. It was a ranch style design with a long veranda, four bedrooms, and two baths, but it had a spacious basement where Ana Maria’s mother, Doña Teresa, had converted it into four other bedrooms with two different small living room areas with their own TVs. One of them was set up as an apartment with its own private bathroom and entrance. People moved up and down the house, having conversations, drinking beer, a power drink or tea. While in the back, Ana Maria’s brother, Carlos, cooked over an open grille an assortment of chicken, pork, beef, and different sausages.
“Is that morcilla?” Alejandra asked Carlos, pointing at a sausage that looked almost black.
“It’s close. You’re not going to find the type of blood sausage you find in Venezuela, so this is the closest I could find. They are Polish and quite good. Would you like to try some?”
“Oh. No thank you. I was just asking. It’s been years since I’ve seen so much food in one place. How long have you been in the States?”
“I came long before Chavez and the dictatorship – when Venezuela was the richest country in South America. Why would anyone in their right mind leave such paradise for this?”
Ana Maria introduced Alejandra to most of the people. The crowd moved to the veranda, smoked and drank beer while salsa played from a speaker.
Doña Teresa came out to tell them that the food was almost ready and complained about all the smoke, how people in this country didn’t smoke anymore and it was bad for you.
From the veranda, Alejandra noticed next to one of the cars, Elena holding the baby, while Manuel looked like he was arguing with her.
“I feel sorry for her,” Ana Maria said to Alejandra. “What a time to bring a baby into the world. She is having postpartum depression. Her baby is quite a handful and colicky.”
A compact car came up the driveway and found a space in the grass area between cars. A man a little younger than Alejandra came out. From the passenger side, a woman with flowing black hair exited. The two walked towards the veranda.
“Hola Mamá,” the man said to Ana Maria.
Alejandra was introduced to Juan and Maria. They moved around and rubbed cheeks and threw kisses in the air in the traditional Latin-American way.
“Is Tío Carlos cooking?”
“He is.”
“Maria, nobody cooks like my Uncle Carlos. Let’s go and say hello.”
Juan opened the door to the house, said hello to other people, and went inside.
“Don’t you think they make a great couple?” Ana Maria said to Alejandra.
“They are both so cute.”
“Yeah, but my mother doesn’t like Maria.”
One of the guys smoking a cigarette said, “Yeah, I’ve seen it. It’s subtle but persistent. No offense to Doña Teresa, but she is kind of racist.”
“What do you mean by that?” one of the girls sitting asked.
“Venezuelans are not racist, we’re classist,” Ana Maria said.
“Classist, racist, same thing. We all want to blanquear la raza – whiten the race. And Maria, your son’s girlfriend looks very Mayan.”
A few minutes later, Juan and Maria opened the door holding plates of food and bottles of beer. They sat on a set of chairs, and when they looked up, noticed everyone staring at them. Juan reddened and mumbled, “Oh, they asked me to tell you food is ready.”
*
On the way back to the city, Alejandra had a huge stomachache. Even though she had not eaten a lot, it was the most meat she had on a plate in the last two years. It reminded her of the times when they drove six hours to their uncle for family reunions and he made a huge paella. She rolled in her head some of the things they had talked about, but she didn’t quite equate them with race but rather class. Antonio, her boyfriend came from an upper-middle-class family, they were light-skinned and he was what they would call a catire, a blond person. Alejandra on the other hand had olive skin with black hair. Her features were very traditional Venezuelan, pointy nose, full lips, brown eyes. Yet, she could sense his family treated her as if she were one of the maids.
They arrived at the apartment. Manuel turned on a game and fell asleep. Elena held the baby, and for what seemed the first time, everything was quiet. Alejandra took a walk and studied their neighborhood, hoping her stomach would settle. Vietnamese, Korean, Malaysian, and Chinese eateries, interspersed with restaurants that served tacos al pastor, Sinaloa Mexican chicken, Salvadoran and Colombian foods.
When she arrived back to the apartment, they had retired to their bedroom, so she set up her blankets, put on her pajamas, and went to bed. For the first time since the incident at the hospital, Alejandra slept without anxiety, without all the weight that brought her down into the abyss of her own thoughts.
*
Ana Maria came to pick them up one day. She was going to take them to Lenox Mall, but Elena didn’t want to go. She didn’t want to wish for things she couldn’t have while going around with the baby. Ana Maria tried to convince her but to no avail. Alejandra and Ana Maria went without her.
The moment the two walked in the mall, they looked around as if they were in a fairy tale. They stopped by the perfume and make-up counters at Macy’s, looked with suspicion at the undergarments at Victoria’s Secrets, and absorbed the colors, smells, sounds that surrounded them.
“There was a time, Alejandra, when we lived this way down in Venezuela, and our malls had nothing to envy the ones here. I miss those times.”
“Do you think it will ever change?”
“Not the way…” Ana Maria stopped and held her breath. “Nothing is forever. We can always have faith.”
They ended at the food court, and Ana Maria offered to buy something to eat. Alejandra got herself French fries and dipped them in creamy chocolate yogurt ice cream. Ana Maria ordered a chicken sandwich.
“All you need is a pickle and it will be complete,” Ana Maria said. They laughed as they enjoyed their food.
When they got back to the apartment, Alejandra took the opportunity to take a long shower. Warm water ran over her body. In the mirror she noticed she had gained some weight, which was good in her case since she was so skinny, but she also noticed that her breasts felt big and perky. Nothing she had ever felt before. Perhaps it was a good sign. Perhaps little by little things would improve.
*
One evening after dinner, Elena ran out of cigarettes and asked Alejandra if she could watch the baby while she went down the block to buy a pack. Sure, she had no problem. The baby began to cry, so she took him to the kitchen table, opened a tapioca container, and spoon-fed the boy. Manuel came to the table, sat with them and made funny faces at the baby.
“Elena tells me that we are too noisy in the bedroom and that you may find it annoying,” Manuel said.
Alejandra kept feeding the baby and instead made a face of embarrassment.
“Does it bother you, or do you like it?”
She didn’t particularly like the way he said do you like it and a strange feeling crept inside of her.
“It’s your apartment. It’s your privacy. Is not for me to decide. I only thank the two of you for your generosity.”
She continued to feed the baby, while Manuel watched, following the spoon into the boy’s mouth, then making a funny face.
The door opened and Elena came in. She walked towards the table and looked at both of them.
“Oh my god. I can’t believe it! How is it that you can get him to quiet down? Thank you.”
*
Ana Maria and Alejandra became best buddies. While before Ana Maria would ask Elena to join them in their little trips to some thrift shop, some Chinese medicine store, or one of those places that had tarot cards, crystals, and all types of stones, now she just came and picked up Alejandra.
“I need to find work,” Alejandra said to Ana Maria. “I need to start sending money back to my mom.”
She was running out of money and felt bad not helping with the food or even getting coins for the laundry. Ana Maria didn’t work herself, but every now and then did some babysitting. She told Alejandra that when she got some of those, she would pass the ones in English to her.
They arrived at a consignment store and moved around the different stalls with trinkets, old jewelry, furniture, and clothes. In one of those, Alejandra felt dizzy as if she were going to pass out. They continued to walk around the place but Alejandra almost lost her balance.
“Are you okay?” Ana Maria asked.
“No. I feel dizzy. I feel like I’m going to throw up.”
They walked outside, and in the parking lot, Alejandra vomited.
The two got in the car, started the engine, and had the air-conditioner run for a while. Neither one said anything. Ana Maria drove to the apartment. Again, there was silence, but as Alejandra undid her seatbelt and opened the door, Ana Maria looked at her and said, “no matter what you decide, Chama, you’ll have my support.”
Inside, Elena was feeding the baby while glued to some show she was watching on her phone. Alejandra sat on the couch and stared at the large flat-screen TV seeing her reflection on the black monitor like a mirage on a road. A cloak of dark feelings came over her with a tightness in her stomach and throat. She felt that way in Caracas when she had lost her job, used all her money, and had to find food in garbage containers to subsist. The shame and humiliation felt so deep that several times she sat by her balcony looking at the nine floors below her, at the hedge that bordered the concrete and she wondered if she would splatter on the concrete, or part of her would hit the hedge.
And now the evil was inside of her. It wasn’t enough that her world down in Venezuela had been destroyed, her world up here was non-existent. All she possessed was a laptop, the clothes in her backpack and a blanket to put over her face to find some solace, some privacy. But what troubled her the most was that she couldn’t decide, perhaps she should keep it as punishment, perhaps she should get rid of it and put the past behind.
*
Alejandra’s breasts got larger which under different circumstances would have been great, but now when she walked around, she noticed Manuel looking at them and then Elena glancing at Manuel. It also meant that whenever she was alone with Manuel, even for a few minutes while washing the dishes and Elena was changing a diaper, he’d throw an indirect comment at her, “You look fuller now that you’re eating.”
Elena would get up from the table to get something and Manuel would stare Alejandra up and down while chewing on his food. She wanted to tell Ana Maria, but Manuel had not crossed any line, so she didn’t know how to address it.
Alejandra also wanted to tell Ana Maria what had happened to her, about the rape, about how she became pregnant, but she couldn’t. She was still processing the information, in shock. She tended to be irregular with her period, so it never occurred to her she was pregnant until she vomited. It was too chaotic in her head and she felt so much guilt, so much shame. To share that information with someone else felt like the last remnants of sanity she had would end.
In the meantime, her nightmares got even worse. She could smell the rancid smell of the guard’s sweat, his breath, the inflection of his voice, the sound would echo over and over. She even had vivid dreams of the baby being delivered, looking just like the man with his unshaven face.
One morning, her nightmares gave her an anxiety attack and she woke up, yet remained under her sheet. She heard footsteps. The lights in the kitchen went on. Through the sheet, she could see Manuel’s shape. He walked all the way to where she lay. Her eyes were wide open and she could hear her own heart. He breathed just inches from her face. He went to the kitchen and pulled something out of the refrigerator. He turned one of the kitchen chairs and sat facing Alejandra. Through the fabric, she could see his outline, legs akimbo, every now and then lifting a hand to have a drink of whatever he was drinking and then putting his hands between his legs. That went on for a while until at one point he took a deep breath and produced a faint moan.
Alejandra didn’t move, but one of her hands began to twitch. Manuel got up, washed the glass, put it to the side to dry, walked back to the bedroom, and closed the door.
*
Ana Maria came to visit and the two decided to go to a farmer’s market that had not only great produce but products from every corner of the world. It also had the best fish market in the city, according to what Ana Maria had read.
As they arrived at the parking lot Ana Maria asked, “So, what are you going to do Chama? I think you still have time, but that window is about to close soon. You need to decide.”
“I think I need to let it go,” Alejandra responded, hesitant with dewy eyes. “But I can’t do it alone. I can’t be on that couch afterward.”
“You can stay with me, but we can’t let my mother find out, she is so…anti. And. Oh my god. She knows enough to be dangerous.”
Ana Maria bought a beautiful whole red snapper and took it to the big house to bake. The two women went downstairs to the end of the different halls where Ana Maria had a room that was like a little apartment. One of the walls was covered in lit candles. Ana Maria had several effigies of Buddha, San Antonio, San Judas Tadeo, the virgin of La Chiquinquirá and a poster of Jose Gregorio Hernandez – a real doctor from Venezuela who at the beginning of the century cured so many people that petitions were made to canonize him with the Vatican. As they went outside of Ana Maria’s room, Alejandra noticed a couch stuck in a little cove.
“Who sleeps here?”
“Nobody. They hate this spot because it is too narrow and there’s no access to a TV.”
“Do you think your mother is going to hate me? Think I’m too dark?”
“Please. Alejandra, I’ve seen this with not just my mom, but many other people from Cuba, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, even Mexicans. They come here and forget where they came from, so they act like the white people here. They hate illegal immigrants and want to build the freaking wall and all that. Because they can blend in, they pretend. But, in the end, you cannot forget your roots. You can’t forget who you really are, and you know the saying in Venezuela, ‘Don’t put people down because those who do not throw flechas, play the tambores.’ So, don’t worry about my mom, I’ll set her straight.”
Ana Maria and Alejandra got online and made an appointment. As it was required by law, there would be first a consultation and examination. From there on, schedule the actual procedure. The appointment was for ten the next morning.
“Can I stay here?” Alejandra asked Ana Maria.
Over dinner, Doña Teresa kept looking at Ana Maria and Alejandra. “You two are so quiet, are you okay?”
“Is it okay if Alejandra stays with me for a few days?”
“A few days? Is everything okay?”
“It’s the baby,” Ana Maria said.
Alejandra’s eyes grew big.
“He got sick and they want to contain it,” Ana Maria finished.
The two went downstairs, Ana Maria lit a candle for good luck and burned some incense. On her computer, they looked at news and video clips from Venezuela. At first, Alejandra watched, but it made her nauseous so she went to the bathroom and tried to throw up. She sat on the couch that faced the side of the hall and stared at the wall. A while later, Ana Maria came out of her room with a blanket.
“I’m sorry. I can’t watch. It’s too much,” Alejandra said.
“I know. I know.”
As Alejandra propped herself to sleep, she could hear the wood creak above her as people walked from one area of the house to another. She closed her eyes and the memory of the baby screaming and crying played in her head. Jesus, the irony, she thought. The images of the baby crying faded as she heard laughter and saw Antonio asking her to follow him, run with him. She heard waves crashing, music playing until a gunshot stopped that image, and Antonio was surrounded by uniformed men, kicking him. The ground filled with blood. She screamed in her mind, nooooo, nooooo. A man laughed. It was the guard, now whispering things from behind her ear and she was in the utility room at the public hospital. Say it. You like it. Say it. The man laughed as he touched her. She felt violently ill to her stomach. She got up, went through Ana Maria’s room to the bathroom. She sat on the toilet. Convulsions and immense pain hit her stomach and without having a chance to do anything she threw up all over herself.
*
Alejandra woke up and realized that she was in Ana Maria’s bed. She wore a t-shirt and some pajama pants.
Ana Maria arrived in the room holding a tray with a steaming cup.
‘Here. Drink this. Chinese herbal tea. It will soothe you.”
Alejandra smelled the tea and drank, but was afraid she would get nauseous. She felt something strange, different, the perkiness of her breasts was gone.
“You made a mess in there, and blood,” Ana Maria said.
“Sorry, I didn’t…”
“Your body knew. Do you still want to go to your appointment?”
“I don’t know.”
“Let’s get your things from Elena’s place and… go one day at a time.”
This is the ninth story of a yet to be published novel about Alejandra.
L. Vocem is a Venezuelan-American writer whose works have been recently published in Acentos, Touchstone Magazine, Tulane Review and riverSedge Journal. Other stories have appeared in Litro, Ghost Town, Wraparound South, Azahares, Zoetrope All-Story Extra and others. His work has been finalist in the 2023 Rash Award in Fiction, Editor’s Choice Award in the 2020 Raymond Carver Short Story Contest, First Finalist in the 2018 Ernest Hemingway Prize and shortlisted for London Magazine’s 2018 Short Story Prize. He lives in Johns Creek, Georgia. Read more at lvocem.com.
