Patricia Engel - The Veins of the Ocean

“I only have a minute but I wanted to tell you, in case you’re still wondering, and so you never wonder about it again, there is nothing to forgive, hermanita. You’re my Reina. You’re my guerrera. Your brother loves you. Remember that when I die.”

He hung up the phone, probably because he knew I would say he wasn’t going to die, not as long as I had anything to do with it.

He could rely on my denial. I was the only one who listened when he said that even if he deserved to die, the state didn’t deserve to kill him.

The only sort of death that seemed possible for my brother was his execution, but maybe by then he already knew he would take care of things himself.

He used to ridicule other inmates who took their own lives, calling our father spineless for slicing his own throat rather than facing the rest of his days in prison.

“And he wasn’t even in solitary,” Carlito said, like Hector’s life sentence was some kind of vacation.

Carlito thought of himself as a prisoner of conscience, victim of legal prejudice, saying there were gringos who committed way more heinous crimes who got out in fifteen years or less.

Sometimes he said if he’d really meant to kill anyone he would have just gotten himself a gun and gone after Tío Jaime, who Carlito always suspected of being the original guilty party: the one who lusted after our mother so much that he deliberately infected his brother Hector with the jealous psychosis that sent him to the bridge that day with baby Carlito.

“I would have made that motherfucker get on his knees and sing for his life,” Carlito said. “And then I would have killed him anyway.”

Carlito and I were both in high school when some delinquents started a trend of jumping off the bridge into the bay at the very spot where Hector had launched his son into the ocean. Groups of teenagers gathered by the railing to see who was brave enough to climb the wall at the bridge’s highest point and jump over. People claimed it probably wasn’t high enough for a person to be instantly killed by the fall. In most cases, people were known to shatter a bone or be so shocked by the impact they forgot to breathe and others would have to dive in after them before they drowned. It was part of the thrill, seeing if you had the instincts for survival.

For a while, I tried to convince Carlito that we should try it. I thought it might undo his trauma and get him over his aversion to water. I thought there was something poetic about it — Carlito returning as a grown man to the location of his almost-murder.

I pictured us climbing over the railing one leg at a time, finding our balance on the slim concrete ledge of the bridge, hands on the rail behind us, our bodies dangling over the ocean.

We could throw ourselves off the bridge as a pair, and when we came up through the waves, taking our first breaths, we’d each see the other waiting, and find our way back to land together.

Carlito refused.

I knew he went back to the bridge on his own though, walking the length of it. He knew that bridge well, long before he returned to it with the baby in his arms.

Witnesses said she was crying desperately. She’d loved Carlito like he was her own father, but that day it was as if she knew he was stealing her from her mother forever, and the thick hands that held her would soon let her fall.

When they found Carlito dead in his cell, his prison suit was rolled down around his waist. That’s what they told us anyway. Carved across his chest in a fine and shallow yet bloody line was an arc he only could have dragged through his flesh with a pen because Carlito wasn’t allowed to have any sharp objects in his cell. The line bowed from his rib cage up to the base of his collarbone and back down on the other side. The prison people first described it to my mother and me as a mutilated attempt at a rainbow, just another improvised inmate tattoo. But when we arrived at the prison morgue and were given a few moments alone with Carlito, gray and cold, his soul departed, we saw for ourselves the bloody bend he’d scrawled across his heart and knew we were looking not at a rainbow but at the bridge.

I still have her phone number. I’ve come close to dialing it many times but always stop myself, unsure of what to say. I know the white house with the brown door she grew up in with her parents, where she and I sat on her bedroom floor as girls and traded secrets, where Carlito would later sneak to at night because she always left her window open for him. She’s remarried now. She must live somewhere else with her new husband and new children. I sit in my parked car long after my mother drives off, until I finally have the courage to call.

I don’t know if she recognizes the number but she answers quickly.

“Isabela. This is Reina Castillo.”

I wait for her to respond but she’s silent.

“I’m sorry to bother you. I know you must be busy. I was wondering if I could talk to you.”

“We’re talking now,” she says gently.

“I moved away but I’m in town today. I was wondering if we could meet in person, if it’s not a problem for you.”

“We can do that,” she says slowly. “I have my kids with me. Can you come to my house?”

I tell her yes and she gives me the address, just a few blocks from her parents’ place.

I drive south, ahead of the rain, through our old neighborhood, though I avoid the lot where our house once stood.

When I arrive at Isabela’s, I see evidence of her family’s world: small bicycles in the driveway behind a minivan, balls and toys scattered across the front lawn.

This, I can’t help thinking, could have been my brother’s life.

I step out of my car and ring the bell. I hear voices within, then see her silhouette behind the frosted glass of the front door. She opens it and we take each other in for a moment. Isabela, as beautiful as ever, though thicker in her face and body, luminous even with her mussed wavy hair and none of the makeup she used to wear so much of.

“Reina,” she says, stepping outside with me, closing the door behind her. “What a surprise to hear from you. You look good. So where did you move to?”

I see that she’s barefoot, hear the kids laughing in the house behind her.

“Down south. The Keys.”

“Must be nice.”

“It is.”

“We’re always talking about taking the kids down but we never make it.”

I remember Christmas when I saw her at the hotel.

“Have you been down there at all lately?” I try to sound casual, despite the strangeness of our being face-to-face.

“Not in years.” She looks suddenly wistful. “Not since Carlito took me down there when I turned twenty-one. We rented Jet Skis. I kept falling off.”

I study her hair, the way she still tilts her head for no reason, and I am sure it was Isabela I saw that day in the spa, though I realize now, it couldn’t have been.

“So what is it? What did you want to talk to me about?”

I take a deep breath, as I would before a dive with Nesto watching me on the line to make sure that I’m safe, that I come back up for air without blacking out.

“I have to tell you I’m sorry. For everything.”

“I know you are. We’re all sorry.”

“No, there is more you don’t know. I’m the one who told Carlito you were cheating on him and who made him go crazy that day. It’s my fault he took Shayna from you. I didn’t tell him to do it but it’s my fault. I’m the one who started everything.”

I can’t face her. I stare at our feet but feel her eyes on me. Then her hand grazes my shoulder, soft as a feather.

“I knew that. I’ve known for a long time.”

I look back up at her. Her face hasn’t changed. Still calm, full of mercy.