I detest weapons, and this was one of those horrible knives, with an ugly black blade, something a gangster or a mugger would have. But it wasn’t strange enough that I suspected anything; often, the brothers would spend whole Sundays with their weapons. It was their thing. There are some men obsessed with metal, and that was them. So it wasn’t strange that Joe would have brought a knife as a birthday present. I went to our bedroom, changed my shoes, and returned to the living room with a coat in one hand and Hero in the other.
“I’m ready,” I said, “let’s go look for Greg.”
Joe was cleaning the knife with his handkerchief soaked in Diet Coke. When he was finished he dried it with a cloth napkin, then wrapped it in the same napkin and put it on a high shelf.
“I’ll be right down,” he said as he went up the stairs to the roof. “Wait for me here. Don’t move. And put that dog down, he’s not going.”
Hero seemed to understand and whined. While I was waiting, I thought the present was all wrong like that. It wouldn’t hurt to wrap it properly. So that it seemed like a real gift. It was one of those things that occurs to us women, who care about details. Details, that’s how we refer to such nonsense. But I thought I’d get a couple of pieces of tissue paper, scissors, and a blue ribbon. I wrapped it carefully, not touching it so I wouldn’t smudge it after Joe had cleaned it so carefully. In less than two minutes it was done, with a ribbon and everything. On the refrigerator door, among the pictures and other memories put up with magnets, there were a few of those “To… From” Christmas cards. I saved them all for sentimental reasons, I guess, that hang-up inherited from Bolivia that nothing gets thrown away because it could come in handy one day. And that all garbage is recycled, or simply kept, collecting in a box. I looked for a card that said “To Greg, From Joe.” And found one, in his handwriting, perfect! Greg would appreciate the detail, so I put the card on the gift and hid it high up on the shelves, thinking that if Joe saw it, he’d ridicule me, or throw a fit, so best if he saw it right before Greg got it. And then Joe started making some racket on the roof. Some dry blows, as if with a hammer, and then he started cussing, like he did whenever he grew impatient, and then again with the blows, hard smacks, as if he were striking a wall with a sledgehammer. What he screamed while he was doing this I couldn’t tell, but I did realize that he was having a fit, something had set him off, and I so feared these rages that I went back to our bedroom. I sat on the edge of the bed petting Hero to calm him down. The poor little thing trembled every time we had to deal with one of Joe’s fits. And that’s when I heard the door slam, not the door to the roof, but the apartment door on our level. A hard, violent slam, the front door smashing against the wall when opened. At first, I thought that Joe had left, swinging the door behind him. Sometimes he would do that, in a fury. But then I heard voices, male voices. And I realized that a group of men had broken into my apartment.
Sometime later, I don’t know, maybe two or three months, after I had arrived at Manninpox, during those weeks when I was so befuddled, I came upon graffiti that Las Nolis had painted in a hallway. Guess what they used as ink, Mr. Rose, it’s not that hard. The only paint handily available to them, their shit. Aside from their blood, of course, which is for more desperate circumstances. The graffiti said, “From my skin inward, I’m boss.” It was typical of them, trying to raise awareness of such things, but it made me angry with them, for their snobbishness, for preaching such pretentious nonsense. But there is everything cooking in this rotted stew, from the most rebellious to the most wretched, from those just barely crawling by, who do not have as much as a place to drop dead, to a few daughters of wealthy folk who indulge in more than a few extravagances. Like Tara, an ex-model in her fifties but still in good shape, who was my cellmate for a while. She swore that was her real name and we called her “Tarada,” Spanish for loony, because she was dumber than a mule. Who knows what her rich lover did for a living, or the money might have been hers, I’m not sure, but the guy sent her everything, creams, lotions, nail polish… and a pine-scented spray that was my misery, for every time someone sat down to do number two in the stainless-steel toilet embedded right in the middle of the cell — on its own, like a throne, in full view — every time someone sat down to poop, Tara would bring out the spray, and squirt the fucking thing everywhere, smothering us, until it seemed as if someone had taken a big shit in the woods. But Tara’s lover sent her everything, including the soybean pellets that she had to apply subcutaneously. Can you believe it? I didn’t even know such a thing existed, soybean pellets. They’re these superexclusive beauty products that Tara knew how to inject under her skin near the hip; with a Gillette she made a tiny little cut, put the pellet inside, closed it up with Micropore tape, and that’s it. To regenerate the hormones, awaken sexual desire, and rejuvenate the skin. Each pellet cost $280, and her lover bribed the guards so that she got her monthly dose, or bimonthly, I can’t remember, and that razor, but she always got her soybean pellet on time so that her treatment wouldn’t be interrupted. And meanwhile those lunatics Las Nolis writing such nonsense on the walls with their own shit. From my skin inward, I’m boss. Nothing could be further from the truth. That there is some pure shit. Maybe Tara still has her skin intact thanks to her creams and her soybean pellets. But my story is different. My skin is no longer mine. I’m skinless, one of those who goes around in the raw flesh. It’s a figure of speech, of course — not literally. The thing is that ever since those guys got to me I feel as if I’m burning, as if my whole body is on fire. I’m talking about the FBI men who broke into my apartment on the night of Greg’s birthday.
One of them, whom the others called Birdie, locked himself with me in the bathroom, threw me on the floor, and hurt me, asking me where the money was. “The money,” he screamed, “the money.” He needed to know where who knows what money was.
“The only money here belongs to the Virgin of Medjugorje,” I told him.
“What did you say?”
“She appears, the Virgin of Medjugorje…”
“Shut up with this bullshit.”
“I’m telling you, I don’t believe in it either but my brother-in-law and my husband are very Catholic and they’re saving money for a pilgrimage there,” I blurted out nervously.
“What are you talking about?”
“The sanctuary of the Virgin of Medjugorje, it’s in Bosnia, or so I’ve been told. My husband and brother-in-law are saving money to go see the miracle. But take the money if that’s what you want. No problem, it’s in the kitchen in a jar.”
But that’s not what Birdie was looking for. He shut me up with a slap and started to go nuts. His eyes bugged out and he began to strike me in the face till I saw stars. I thought it was just a saying or something that happens only in comic books, but that night I realized it was real. I saw stars. After each blow, things went black, and in that blackness there were points of light like stars. Birdie kept on shouting at me, “the hundred and fifty thousand, you bitch, the hundred and fifty thousand dollars, quit acting stupid.” I had no fucking idea. Of course, I’d have told him if I knew.
The men ate Greg’s kapustnica, spread out like pigs on the living-room furniture. They put on some cowboy program on the television with the volume all way up, while the others wandered around the apartment, searching, emptying boxes, kicking everything around, and swallowing up anything they found. I asked about Greg. “Where is my husband? Tell me where my husband is,” I screamed, or I wanted to scream but they didn’t hear me, or they heard me and ignored me. “Don’t be acting stupid,” they repeated, and kept demanding the money. I was handcuffed in the bathroom. But I must warn you, Mr. Rose, that night for me is a blank; it has no substance, a fog that lifts only momentarily. The voices still echo in my memory, that’s certain, I hear them laughing, but the rest is very hazy. I think at times that I was left alone. Maybe because Birdie got tired of hitting me, or else he needed a break to gather his strength. Everything is off-kilter as I remember it, as if it had happened a hundred years ago or to another person. But I remember the coldness of the tiles. Those cold wet tiles made me shiver, maybe because they had pissed on them; the stink was intense. It smelled like males in heat and like my own fear. And I remember my neck pressed against something, maybe the toilet or the bathtub. They didn’t like the soup, I heard them say, but they ate it, and they drank beer, and I knew they were making a big mess, the dishes dirty, the glasses shattered, the tablecloth soiled, and their shoe prints on my white rug.