An Uninterrupted View of the Sky Read online

  “Your father didn’t do anything wrong.” Mamá rubs Pilar’s back. She sighs again. “Not that being innocent makes any difference.”

  The brick walls of our house are always bouncing sound back and forth, little scrapes and whispered words echoing on themselves so that it’s never really quiet inside. But right now, the walls have nothing to say.

  “What do you mean?” I ask. “If he’s innocent, we’ll get him out.”

  “Francisco, we spent our entire savings to buy your father’s taxi last year. We can’t afford a lawyer, or the court fees, or the bribes needed to put his case in front of a judge. We barely make the rent each month, and that’s with both my income and your father’s. Without his?” She draws a hand over her mouth like she’s wiping away words she doesn’t want to say, but that she can’t seem to hold in. “It’s impossible.”

  “I can drive the taxi, Mamá. I’ll take over Papá’s work and help us make the rent.”

  It’s not like I need a reason to leave school. If Papá would have allowed it, I would have quit years ago. Maybe if I’d been working all this time, he could have passed up that fare.

  Mamá shakes her head. “The taxi was impounded. Confiscated by the police as evidence.”

  “Evidence of what? Papá’s not driving cocaine around in his taxi all day. That is ridiculous!”

  Mamá’s angry too, that this happened to Papá. I can see it in the clicking of her jaw, in her hand whipping into the air and down again. But, more than anything, I think maybe Mamá is mad at Papá.

  The sun sets, and the sky begins to yellow at the edges. Mamá pulls the pot filled with leftovers from last night’s sopa de maní out of the refrigerator and sets it on the stove. Pilar moves a stool in front of the cupboards and lifts down four bowls and four cups. Then she looks at the dishes in her hands and slowly puts one set back. Her shoulders hitch, and her eyes slide toward Mamá. They’re big and brown and just . . . sad.

  There are only three of us tonight.

  I leave the kitchen for my parents’ room. Papá’s still there, all the little pieces of him. The sheets where he slept last night are pooled in little circles where his hips and shoulders rested. A glass of dusty water waits by the bed, the imprint of his lips on the rim like the mark on a communion cup before the priest wipes it away. Papá’s notebook lies open, the lined page indented with the ghost letters of the last poem he wrote. I run my fingers over the ragged edges of ripped-out pages.

  I walked out on him this morning. He was trying to tell me something, and I just walked out. Heat rushes up through my bones and flexes my fingertips. My brain hasn’t even begun to catch up, but my feet are set and my right shoulder cocks back and—BAM. My fist slams into the side of the bookcase. And then my left, and my right again.

  The bookcase is solid wood. It doesn’t split, but the skin over my knuckles does. Pilar rushes into the doorway, and the lace curtains at the window throw veined shadows over her face. A drop of sweat slides into my eyes, and I blink the sting away. My chest heaves with angry breath.

  “Francisco?”

  “Just leave me alone.”

  I back away, cradling my throbbing hand against my stomach, and head to my bedroom.

  I brush the sheet aside and fall into bed. I stare at the ceiling, too many thoughts fighting with one another for space in my head. My hand is on fire. The inside of my skull is noise.

  I shake my head to clear it, and a flash of white catches my eye: a folded square of paper tucked under the lamp base.

  I reach with my not-busted hand and pry the paper out from its hiding spot. It crackles as I unbend the folds one by one—looks like it’s been that way for a while. I smooth the page open. Narrow stanzas spill down the creased page.

  My hands begin to shake.

  My father is a poet. He was born and raised in a small Andean community on the high plains, the Altiplano, which stretches between the Cordilleras twelve thousand feet above sea level. The Altiplano is huge—too big to be contained by the boundaries of any one country. There are a few cities up there, but in the space between them, it’s all thousand-year-old ruins and tiny settlements and empty swaths of rugged, untouched land.

  Maybe if Papá had grown up someplace like Oruro or Potosí, that had electricity and running water and good schools, it would have been different. Instead, he grew up in an isolated community that had watched the rise and fall of the Inka and of the Spaniards, and though they were driven to the ground again and again, held to their ways as the world shifted around them.

  There was only a simple school where my father grew up. They taught whoever showed up how to read and write in Spanish, the language of the conquistadors. Papá got in only two years of school. There’s no time for study when you have to work the fields so you can eat.

  But the words he learned there stayed with him long after he left for the busy city below. Maybe it was the thin air of his childhood that made my father hear symphonies in paper napkins tumbling down the road, that made him see mosaics in the flutter of pigeon wings lifting from the plaza stones. Or maybe it was just who he was all along.

  Every day, for the past twelve years, while Papá drove a taxi from one end of Cochabamba to the other, he arranged words in his mind, scribbling down a phrase or two in between fares. At night, he’d tuck the finished poem—a folded piece of paper—into my shoe, or Mamá’s hair, or the coat pocket of Pilar’s doll.

  This was one of those. Maybe my father’s last poem for me.

  For My Eagle, My Francisco

  The rooster struts on the roofline of his hutch, his palace,

  Master of all he surveys,

  His beak, with each step, stabbing the air

  As if to say, You—

  I will cut you

  And you

  And you—

  How exhausting to be on attack all day!

  The eagle does not strut

  He does not fluff his feathers

  Or preen or scream,

  Rake his talons across the winds

  That dare to sniff out his lofty nest.

  He is still

  He is calm, assured

  Master of himself.

  Papá thinks if I just reach for this better version of myself, my life could be some noble thing. But he didn’t grow up in this city. He doesn’t know what it’s like. He doesn’t realize that a scrappy rooster is the best I’ll ever be.

  Mamá doesn’t sit down once all night. She scours the house for soap and combs and towels and clothes, and shoves things into boxes, filling the trunk that has been in her family for eight generations. Since General Ballivián, she always says.

  She continues to work long after Pilar goes to sleep. I lie down, too, but I’m just throwing my weight back and forth on the creaky springs, unable to sleep without the low rumble of Papá’s voice in the other room, and the buzz and breath of his snores.

  All night, I hear the sound of clinking glasses, the muffled thuds of heavy things bumping against one another, as though the bones of the world I have lived in my whole life are breaking and being knit back together at odd angles, against their will.

  October 8

  Pilar and I skip school, Mamá calls in sick to work, and we walk together to the bus stop. We climb on and squeeze into the space between bench seats. Mamá’s carrying a bag over her shoulder with a few things for Papá, and she presses Pilar to her side.

  The chatter and clatter of people crammed together elbows me from all around. I hold Papá’s notebook against my chest. The skin on my bruised and split knuckles stretches, and I loosen my grip. My eyes find the window. Only a scrap of blue is visible above the maze of dusty brick walls.

  We get off, walk the last few blocks, and stand in the plaza opposite the men’s prison. Stark letters frame the entrance: CÁRCEL SAN SEBASTIÁN. Cars whizz by, honking and swerving. P
eople saunter through the plaza, unaware of what’s going on behind that cracked yellow stucco. Then again, maybe they know and they just don’t care.

  This part of the street is blocked off, and—who knows why—filled with wooden bed frames. We could cross, but we don’t. Pilar grabs Mamá’s hand as her eyes travel up to the high, narrow windows, to the row of shacks—cells, I guess—balanced like birdhouses on the roof. Two guards stand on the upper wall with guns on their backs, watching everything below.

  “It will be noisy in there, and crowded,” Mamá says. “It’s not like those gringo TV shows you watch at Reynaldo’s house—with concrete walls and floors, and cells with bars and electronic locks and prisoners in jumpsuits. This will be very different.”

  Mamá keeps shifting her weight to one foot and then the other, almost taking a step forward and then pulling back again at the last minute.

  She runs a hand across her mouth. “It’s over, once you end up in there.”

  “What is?” Pilar asks. “What’s over?”

  But Mamá doesn’t answer. Shadows from the palm trees above cut across her forehead and the bridge of her nose. I can’t see her eyes.

  “He’ll be waiting for us. We can’t stand here all day,” she says, but it’s like she’s convincing herself more than anything.

  We cross together, pass through a set of carved wooden doors and into a dark entryway. The only thing between us and the prison is a metal gate. Mamá stops to sign in with guards in green uniforms holding rifles across their chests. They’re not only guards. They’re policemen. Just like the ones who arrested Papá.

  Bastards.

  With a clank and a sliding chain, we’re in.

  I don’t know what I thought a men’s prison would look like. But not this. The center of the place is a courtyard packed with people—men talk in groups and play cards and carve little wooden toys. It’s loud. And really crowded.

  There are no guards inside, only prisoners.

  Plastic tables bake in the sun, and a basketball hoop without a net hangs from one of the balconies. On all four sides of the courtyard are stalls and little stores that sell toilet paper and toothpaste, or picante de pollo with chuño. In the empty spaces, mattresses are propped up against the walls.

  A voice crackles over the intercom, calling a prisoner to the guard station. The sounds of saws and hammers echo out of the hallways that peel away from the center of the prison. All around us are cells. Some of them are so small you have to crawl to get inside. Or they’re stacked on top of each other and you have to climb a rickety ladder to get in. Some are just pieced-together slabs of junk that look like a tower of cardboard boxes.

  Is that where Papá slept last night—in one of those?

  It’s noisy. It’s dirty. My skin itches. My lungs close. How can Papá be here? How can my gentle papá belong in this place?

  And then I see him—dressed in the same clothes as yesterday, only rumpled, his face smeared with dirt. The skin under his eyes is heavy and dark. He waves a far-off wave, like even though he’s only a few steps away, we’ll never be able to reach him. He smiles, but it isn’t a smile I recognize. That isn’t him.

  “Papá!” Pilar drops Mamá’s hand and runs to him. She wraps her arms around his waist and stares up into his face. “I want you to come home.”

  “I want that too, so much, wawitay. But I have to stay here for now.”

  Pilar’s arms loosen, and she turns her face to the side, resting it against his stomach. “But why?”

  Papá pries Pilar’s arms away and kneels in front of her. “I have to stay here until I can prove that I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  She blinks at the dark hallways sliding one into another, the milling crowd of haggard men, the dangling electrical wires hanging like jungle vines from the walls. “Where will you sleep?”

  “I’ll get a cell soon,” he says. “As soon as I can pay for one. No lazybones here.” He wiggles Pilar’s shoulders side to side. She always laughs when he does that, but it doesn’t work this time.

  “You have to pay for your cell?”

  Mamá slaps my arm. Okay—I guess I deserved that. I should have said something else, like hello or are you okay?

  “Yes, if I want to sleep in a cell I have to rent the space. Don’t worry, Francisco. As soon as I have a chance to explain, I’m sure they will let me go.”

  I hold out Papá’s notebook and pen. He takes them and closes his arms over the creased binding.

  “Thank you, my son.” He stands and places his hand against the back of my neck, warm and steady. How can he still be so steady in here?

  I should say something to make him feel better. I should feel something besides my own fear. But I swear, those walls are closing in on me. Like if I let that prison gate close behind me, I’ll never get out again.

  Pilar and I sit on the stone steps in the prison courtyard with Mamá and Papá, staring at nothing and everything. Something is up with my parents. I don’t think she’s raised her eyes above his chin all day.

  And she doesn’t touch anything. Mamá perches on the edge of the step, her arms crossed and her knees pressed together, like if she keeps to herself, this place can’t get to her.

  We don’t talk. What more do we have to say to one another? So I watch the sun move behind the clouds. The high walls and fluttering laundry crop the edges of the sky into a jagged square—you can’t see where the blue meets the ragged brown of the hills surrounding the city.

  Even in the open courtyard, it’s oppressive.

  • • •

  Sometime after noon, the gates open and a dozen kids—some I recognize from school, others even younger than Pilar—file into the prison, their white uniforms coated with a layer of orange dust from the streets outside. Once they’re in, they disappear into the back of the prison or tramp up the stairwell to the upper levels, where cells rim the balcony overlooking the courtyard below.

  One of the guys from school stops and looks me over. José, I think. No one Reynaldo and I would hang out with. Not because he’s younger than us, but because he always looks like he rolled in a trash heap before coming to school. I guess now I know why.

  José’s eyebrows raise in a question, and I want to knock it right off his face. No, I am not just like you. I am not anything like you.

  “Do those kids live here?” Pilar asks.

  “Yes,” Papá says. “If they have no other place to go, the whole family moves into the prison.”

  We watch as half of the kids leave again, their school uniforms traded for street clothes, their arms filled with trays of wooden toys or food to sell outside. Anything that will help their families pay for life in here.

  Mamá goes back through the gate to the guard station in the entryway of the prison to ask about visiting hours, and meals, and notes from the outside coming and going. Papá takes us to see the wood shop where the prisoners make furniture to be sold in the plaza across the street. The beds they make support the families that live with them in prison, or the ones who can afford to live outside the walls.

  “I can quit school and help pay the rent,” I say to Papá. “I can get a job until they let you out. I can take care of Mamá and Pilar, and you, too.”

  “No, Francisco. You think because I am in prison, that means my plans for you have changed? You think I will give up on you so easily?”

  • • •

  The hours pass slowly. I leave Pilar with Papá and go looking for the bathroom at the back of the prison. The smell lets me know when I’m close. Inside, there’s a rusted metal sink in the corner where one of the prisoners is scrubbing sharp-smelling soap into a bucket full of clothes. He cuts his eyes to me as I step inside.

  “I wouldn’t go in there. Toilet’s backed up again.”

  And that’s when I notice the floor. The drain in the middle of the concrete can’t k
eep up with the water and . . . other stuff flowing out of the toilet. I pick up my feet—the soles of my shoes are slick with it. My throat seizes, and I back out of there, a hand over my mouth to keep from retching.

  Never mind, I don’t have to go.

  My eyes water as I make it into the hallway. I’m not looking where I’m going, and I almost run into two guys pinning another prisoner against the wall. One of them has a knife. All three of them are staring at me now.

  I can hold my own in a fistfight with other guys my age, but this? I’m not cut out for this. I back away and break into a run. What was Mamá thinking, bringing us here? And how is Papá ever going to survive this place?

  When I get back to the courtyard, I slow my run to a walk. The last of the kids are back, spilling in and out of shadowed doorways. Most of them disappear into cells, the doors clicking one after another and locking them inside. Yeah. I’d lock the door too if I had to live here.

  The stream of people coming in and out of the prison gate slows to a stop.

  “You two should get going now.” Papá stands and wipes off his hands. “I wonder what’s taking your mother so long?”

  There’s a catch in his voice. Papá’s shoulders are slumped, and his head droops low. I look away as he turns and walks over to the gate between us and the guard station, where Mamá passed through a while ago.

  “Come on, Pilar.” I tap her on the shoulder. “It’s time to—”

  “My wife did what?” Papá yells.

  Pilar and I run over to the gate. Papá’s eyes are wide, his hands clamped against the sides of his head.

  “Papá?” Pilar whispers.

  He lowers his hands, and pulls us close.

  The guard on the other side of the gate looks bored. He shrugs his shoulders. “She left. About thirty minutes ago.”

  Papá blinks, like he’s trying to catch his mind up to the things he’s hearing. “What if something happened to her? What if she’s—”