Daniel Alarcón - At Night We Walk in Circles

Noelia took a deep breath. “No, Mama. Papa’s not in the fields.”

“And Jaime?”

“He’s in San Jacinto.”

“Then why won’t he pick up his phone?” The old woman frowned. “Who’s going to give this boy the money he needs?”

Mrs. Anabel slowly got to her feet.

“Where are you going, Mama?”

“I must have something in there somewhere,” Mrs. Anabel said. She was standing now, gesturing toward the room where she slept. “Something I can give him.”

“Sit down, Mama,” Noelia barked. “I said sit. ”

Mrs. Anabel gazed at her with big eyes.

“Sit! Now wait here.” Noelia called out for Nelson. She was angry. She wanted an explanation. She deserved one.

“Who is Nelson?” her mother asked.

“I knew immediately I’d made a mistake,” Noelia told me later. She turned back to her mother, attempted a smile, but it was too late.

“Who’s Nelson?” the old woman said again. “Why did you call Rogelio that?”

Noelia knelt before her mother. Mrs. Anabel was breathing heavily, looking pale and worried. Her voice trembled. “You said Nelson.”

“I know, Mama. I made a mistake.”

“Who is that?”

“It’s no one. Now calm down. Everything is going to be all right.” Noelia held her mother’s hands. “Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Anabel whispered.

Noelia put a hand to her mother’s cheek, and held it there for a moment, until Mrs. Anabel had closed her eyes. “Stay,” she said, then got to her feet and went into the room where Nelson had been sleeping these last three weeks. She didn’t knock, just pushed the door open, and found him sitting on the cot with his back against the wall. He had his legs stretched out, resting on top of his already packed bag.

“What’s going on?” Noelia said.

Nelson didn’t answer. He offered her a space on the cot, but she shook her head and stood with her arms crossed, unsmiling, unmoved.

“You know what’s going on. I want to go home. That’s all. I told her I was leaving.” His voice was full of exhaustion. “I told her I had to go see Jaime. She asked me what it was about, and I said money.”

“Why would you confuse her like that!”

Nelson turned very serious. “I never broke character.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m not the one who just called me Nelson.”

“He was right,” Noelia told me later. “And I’m not angry with him. Not really. I was then, but I’m not now. It’s just that I’d hoped things would work out differently.”

“Different how?” I asked her.

She thought for a moment. “I wanted things to go smoothly. I wanted it all to glide to the end. Most of all, I didn’t want my mother getting upset.”

Just then, they heard a voice — Mrs. Anabel — calling out for Noelia.

“Yes, Mama?”

Then to Nelson: “You can’t just leave like that. You have to give her warning. You have to prepare her. It isn’t fair.”

Again, Mrs. Anabel called for her.

“I’m coming, Mama.”

Nelson stood. “Of course it’s fair.”

Just then there was a shout.

Nelson and Noelia ran to the courtyard. Mrs. Anabel hadn’t gotten very far from her seat, only a few steps, in fact. She lay on the ground, face pressed against the stone path. She wasn’t moving.

“Mama!” Noelia shouted.

Nelson reacted quicker; he ran to her side, saw that she was breathing. He helped her turn over. She looked ashen. There was a cut just below her hairline, and a knot forming on her forehead. A tiny rivulet of blood ran down her temple. “Why did you leave me all alone?” she said.

Nelson held her gently. “We didn’t. We were here all the time.”

Mrs. Anabel shook her head. “I don’t know you.”

Noelia had stood back, but she hurried over now.

“Rogelio,” she said. “Go across the street and get Mrs. Hilda. She’s a nurse.”

Noelia held her mother. Nelson hesitated for an instant.

“Go now,” Noelia said.

He did as he was told.

I was the one who answered the door.

I HAD ARRIVEDon the bus from San Jacinto that morning. So began my direct involvement in all this. I had no firm plans for my visit: stay a few weeks, perhaps, not longer, spend time with my parents, help my old man repair the roof of their house. I’d brought along a couple of books to read, the long ones I never seemed to find time for in the city, and was determined to enjoy myself. As far as the roof, I was frankly enthusiastic about the task, a fact that surprised even me. The prospect of working with my hands, as my father had done for his entire life, as his father had done before him, seemed appealing. In the days before I left for my hometown, I must have been feeling something akin to what Nelson had, just before embarking on the tour: the heady anticipation of change, the desire to shake up my life, if only slightly, only temporarily. I’d been laid off and I was bored. My friends bored me, my routines. The block I lived on, with its drab storefronts and constant noise. The implacably gray city sky bored me infinitely, and every morning when I stepped out into the streets, I imagined squatting on the roof of my parents’ home in T— after a few hours of work (the details of which I had a hard time conjuring), looking out over the valley, the hills, the cartoonishly blue sky, and feeling good about myself. Proud. I hadn’t felt that way in many months.

That day when Nelson arrived, part of me couldn’t believe I was in T— again. I hadn’t been back in five or six years. Everything was the same, and yet not at all as I remembered, as if every item from my childhood home had been replaced by a smaller, and less impressive, version of itself. My old hiding place, for instance, the tree in the courtyard — from that spot, I’d spent many hours spying on my parents. I saw them argue on occasion, but on one family visit back to T— I also saw them kiss. I must have been eight or nine years old, and no gesture could’ve been more shocking. All displays of affection were scrupulously hidden from us, the children, and to see them touching so unself-consciously had dazzled me. My recollections of that moment are vivid, even filmic, but the tree, I realized now, couldn’t possibly have kept me hidden; it was thin and weak, with narrow knotty branches and a few scraggly leaves, suitable for hiding a cat but not a boy, and I was forced to consider the real possibility that my parents had kissed in the full knowledge that I was watching them.

This is what I was thinking when Nelson arrived. There was a knock, and my mother called from the kitchen that I should answer it. I went to the door. He was slight, with wavy dark brown hair, a little overgrown, and narrowed eyes that betrayed real worry. He was young, about my age, which might not have been important in any other context, but certainly was in a place like T—. It’s likely that on the day we met, Nelson and I were the only two men in our twenties in the entire town. Eric, the mayor’s deputy, was our closest contemporary, and he was still in high school. So we stared, neither quite believing in the presence of the other. If there was no complicity, there was, at the very least, curiosity.

But all he said was, “There’s trouble next door.” Then he asked for my mother. Noelia needed her, he said. Without quite understanding, I called for her. Though I offered, he wouldn’t come in; because I had nothing to say, I told him my name. The stranger nodded and introduced himself as Rogelio.

It was habit, I suppose. I don’t recall if we shook hands.

“Mrs. Anabel fell and hit her head,” he said to my mother when she came to the door, and a few moments later we’d crossed the street, the three of us, and were standing in the courtyard. This is what I remember: Mrs. Anabel sat on the ground, in the sun, looking very small, very frail. She had let herself sink into Noelia’s arms, and at first, didn’t appear to be in any pain, but such a flurry of words poured out of her — names, half sentences, questions — that it was clear she was not well. Noelia was trying to calm her down, and had cleaned her up as best she could with her shirtsleeve, which was stained pink with blood. There was an alarming bump on the old woman’s forehead, and she kept touching it gingerly, before pulling her hand away.