Jennifer Clement - Prayers for the Stolen

One door in the bedroom was closed and we didn’t look inside. Jacaranda explained that was the dressing room where they kept their clothes.

That door is locked, she said.

Next to the bedroom was the boy’s room.

He’s little and does not go to school yet, Jacaranda explained. You’ll have to play with him.

This was the one room that looked lived in. There were toys everywhere, piled on every surface and all over the floor. There were at least thirty stuffed animals thrown on the bed like a pile of pillows. On one chest of drawers there were three large glass jars filled with candy. The red, yellow, and green M&M’s shone in the Acapulco sun.

The boy’s bed was carved in the shape of a whale.

The next room Jacaranda showed me was the television room. It had a wall-to-wall television screen so it was like a movie theater. In front of the screen were two sofas, three armchairs, and two large beanbag chairs. One wall was covered from floor to ceiling with a collection of DVDs.

This is what they love to do. They watch movies and eat popcorn or hot dogs. They can watch the same movie over and over again, Jacaranda said.

I had seen the house on television.

I had never walked on a marble floor before, which was like walking on a piece of ice, but I had seen it. I had never sat down at a perfectly set table, with two forks, two knives, a soup spoon, and an ironed linen napkin, but I had seen it. I had never used a saltshaker or looked at star-shaped ice cubes in my glass, but I had seen it.

I knew then that I could go to the Pyramids in Egypt and they’d be familiar. I was sure I could ride a horse or drive a Jeep on a safari in Africa. I knew how to cook lasagne and lasso a calf.

I remembered some of the violence and catastrophes I’d watched on television that had helped to build my television-knowledge.

When I thought of this, I tasted sour milk in my mouth like milk that sat out on the table in the jungle heat for too long. Yes, a flood could feel familiar. Yes, a car crash could feel familiar. I thought yes, a rape could feel familiar. Yes, I could be dying and even the deathbed would be familiar.

Then I thought of Mike at that ranch and the blood splattered on his clothes and I knew what had happened even though I had not been inside that broken-down shack.

I’d seen my life on television.

The first night in my servant’s room I lay in bed and looked at the tiny window that opened onto the large garage and the cars.

There was nothing else to look at.

A smell of gasoline filled my room. It was like sleeping in a Pemex gas station.

I knew that I didn’t have to worry about insects. The house smelled like rotten lemons from constant fumigations.

That night there was one question that would not let go of me. I wondered if Maria knew by now. They must have told her that this was the reason God punished her with a harelip. It was the curse for her mother’s infidelity with my father. Someone must have told her the truth and explained why my mother shot her.

Was Maria looking in the mirror and seeing my daddy’s face all over her face?

I wanted to know if what Mike said was true and that my father sent Maria’s mother money. If my mother ever found this out, she would find him. She would. The time of hunger for him would be over.

I thought of all these things as I lay on the mattress where I’d hidden Paula’s photos and her notebook and Mike’s plastic bag with a brick of heroin in it.

A large brick made fifty bags.

The very next morning Julio , the gardener, walked through the front door and I fell in love.

He walked right into my body.

He climbed up my ribs and into me. I thought to myself, Say a prayer for ladders.

I wanted to smell his neck and place my mouth on his mouth and taste him and hold him. I wanted to smell the smell of garden and grass and palm tree, smell of rose and leaf and lemon flower. I fell in love with the gardener and his name was Julio.

I spent the morning following him around the garden. He trimmed, dug, and cut. He rubbed the leaves of a lemon tree between his fingers and smelled them. He took a few flat silver seeds out of the back pocket of his jeans and pressed them into the dirt. He used long shears to cut the grass.

After an hour, he left and went to get a ladder from the garage so that he could cut the Mexican-pink bougainvillea that grew along one wall and beside the life-sized bronze horse. As he snipped at the overgrown branches, yellow pollen was shaken into the air and the flowers, like paper flowers, covered the ground.

Julio was in his early twenties. His skin was deeply tanned from working in the sun all day. He had a short Afro that stood up like a black crown above him and light brown eyes.

Julio was kind to the flowers and the leaves. He cupped the roses with his hands as if he was honored to hold them. He twirled vines between his fingers as if they were locks of hair. He walked gently on the grass as if he did not want the small blades to break or even bend under his weight.

Plants in my life had always been something to fight against. Trees were filled with tarantulas. Vines strangled everything. Large red ants lived under roots and snakes hid near the prettiest flowers. I also knew to stay away from the unusual dry brown patches of jungle that were suffocating from the herbicide dropped by the helicopters. That poison would continue to burn through the land for decades. Everyone on my piece of mountain always dreamed of the city and all that cement where no insect survived. We could never imagine why anyone would want a garden.

Because I loved Julio, the cars and trucks outside on the street sounded like rivers. The diesel smoke from passenger buses smelled like flowers and the rotten five-day-old garbage by the front door smelled sweet. Cement walls became mirrors. My small ugly hands turned into starfish.

In those hours that I followed Julio around the garden, he never spoke to me.

After Julio left each day, I sat in my room and prayed. I prayed that the beautiful garden of bougainvillea trees, roses, bowers, lemon and magnolia trees would dry up and that the lawn would become overgrown with weeds. I prayed that Julio would have to come to the house every day to take care of his sick garden.

Very late, after I had fallen asleep, my cell phone rang. It was my mother. She was furious.

I did not know if she was drunk or not but I did know she was standing alone in the dark up on the clearing and screaming into her phone. The connection was poor. I started to yell also as if my voice could reach her across the city streets and over the mountain, down the highway and up into her ear.

Between the bad connection and her screams, I could not understand what she was calling about.

What are you doing all alone up there on Delphi? It’s late. It’s dark. Go home! I cried.

You stole it! You took it and you didn’t even ask my permission!

What did I take?

Don’t give me that! You know what you took!

What?

You get on a bus and bring it back right now!

This conversation went back and forth and finally we were cut off. I never understood what it was she thought I’d stolen. She did not call back.

I closed my eyes and imagined what happened next. My mother cursed and turned off her phone. She plunged down the mountain toward our little house with her toes craned over the front of her flip-flops, hanging onto the plastic soles like a parrot’s talons to a branch. I could see her stumble and slip.