Hard Eyes 09-27-06

Hard Eyes

The high pitched whistle was Peri’s big brother Franco calling Gaby and Peri outside. They snuck like rebeldes past Peri's mother at the stove, ran out the kitchen door, and followed Franco's whistles to the gate. Peri pulled hard o n Gaby's arm. "He's going to the Rio Caiman!" Gaby ran faster. This was the place in Los Santos he most wanted to see and never got to see, except in the crocodile dreams that kept him awake and made Mami call him Hard Eyes. They chased after Franco, slowing down only when they passed the barracks, in case the caqui soldiers with their long guns could tell they were rebeldes. Gaby led Peri into the bushes by the river. "I'm El Rubio." Peri threw himself on the ground and crawled. "I'm the bravest rebelde in la Sierra Vertebral." By the time they caught up with Franco he was in the river. Gaby and Peri stripped fast and jumped into the water feet first.
Nothing had ever felt this good to Gaby. He didn't think of the caiman crocodiles of his bad dreams. Franco put his arms under Gaby's knees and waist and Gaby floated on his back and looked straight up at the sky. The pink was fading, and in one breath the sky was nearly black. Franco took Gaby's feet and pulled him to the shore. The boys climbed out, grabbed their clothes and ran naked along the river bank.
Gaby saw the eyes first and stopped and screamed. The eyeballs were in a little pile in a hole in the ground. He'd almost stepped right on them, some brown, or maybe green. Franco kicked dirt over them. They dressed fast then ran along the straightest maze of streets to Gaby's house. Franco waited until the boys were inside and left. Gaby and Peri walked through the almost bare living room, past the wooden cane seat sofa and two chairs, peeked into Papi and Mami's bedroom, saw it was empty. Had they gone to church without even knowing where Gaby was? They collapsed onto Gaby’s bed and wrestled until they calmed themselves.
It was a long time before Peri spoke. "I heard my Viejo talking about torturas." Gaby looked Peri in the eyes. "When we're rebeldes and they torture me I'll know how not to talk." He'd spied on Papi praying with a man in the room in the middle of the house where he wrote his sermons. He heard the man say he had been torturado. Papi called out, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." Gaby studied Peri's closed eyes and slow breathing. Had he gone to sleep? How could he even close his eyes? Only by looking through them could he be sure his eyeballs woul d remain where they belonged. Gaby'd show Mami now just how hard his eyes could be.

After the Sunday night culto Gaby almost never had to go to, Papi took Gaby and Mami straight to the bus terminal on the other side of the plaza. Papi said the sargeant opening people's suitcases took away one man's caqui pants so he couldn't be a rebelde dressed up like a soldier. Papi kissed Mami on the lips, hugged her from the side to avoid the big belly, and told her he would join them in La Capital as soon as he got the telegram. Papi walked them to their seats all the way in the back where he said Gaby would have room to stretch out and sleep. Did he really think Gaby would ever fall asleep again and leave his eyeballs unwatched? Papi bent down, kissed Gaby, told him he was now an hombrecito, a little man who must take good care of Mami and the new little brother who might turn out to be a sister. He might be a little man but was feeling a bit baby.
Through the dusty bus window Gaby studied the people sitting on the benches in the plaza and walking on the narrow sidewalks of Los Santos. So far, everyone had eyes. The bus crossed the bridge over the Rio Caiman and now at last, he was inside the Sierra Vertebral. Up close the trees were green and not purple the way they looked from his bedroom window. This was heaven, he knew, and he looked hard for the heaven people from Sunday school, maybe his favorite Jose with his coat of many colors. He looked hardest for Peri's sister's novio, El Rubio, who'd gone to the Sierra to be a rebelde.
Mami had been sleeping for a long time with her eyes wrapped in a small feather pillow, but Gaby had his hard eyes wide open when the two men with bandannas on their faces stepped in front of the bus and made the driver stop. These men with guns wore green and not caqui. They must be rebeldes and not heaven people. There were no guns in the Bible. They walked through the bus all the way from front to back, bringing their faces (with eyeballs) close t o each passenger and yelling, "Who is Miguel Carlos?"
Then the men did a second pass, back to front, asking for contributions. This was like the offering in church but with long guns Gaby had never seen this close. He'd only seen them from across the street when he passed the soldiers' barracks, and once in a cowboy movie. For the most part, movies were sin. He'd only gotten to go to the cine because his Prima Cari was visiting from La Capital and Papi took pity that she was bored in Los Santos. When the bandanna man came to Mami she hid the hand with the wedding ring and gave the man her earrings.
Gaby clutched Mami's hidden ring hand and they filed outside with the others, last on the long line. In the dark Gaby could make out another bus in front of them. Passengers gathered on the side of the road saying nothing. A boy not much older than Gaby held a gun to the group Gaby and Mami were brought to. If only Peri were here to see this. How did you get to be a rebelde boy with a gun? He felt Mami's hand tremble and he squeezed it. She pulled him over to the Gunboy. "I have to get to the Capital." She pointed to her belly.
The Gunboy shrugged. He pointed to a large group gathered on the other side of the road. Just then Gaby turned his ojos duros their way. Mami took two steps in their direction. The rebeldes had been yelling but just that instant there was a hush. One of the men in green raised his machete and swung it sideways and cut off a man's whole head in one swoop. Peri needed to have seen this because he was never going to believe it. Now his companion was yelling, ove and over,"Miguel Ajusticiado, Alto a la Impunidad." The killer used the head like a giant crayon. He wrote Miguel Ajusticiado with blood on Gaby's bus.

In the Capital nobody was there to meet them even though Papi had telegrammed before they left. Mami asked three people for help and found the busstop. She was dragging the suitcase by the time they reached Abuela's front porch. Abuela Rosario and Tia Catalina jumped up from their rockers and Tia Cari jumped up from where she sat in the big swing beside a tall young man with a thin moustache.
Gaby felt himself hefted up into the air by Tia Catalina. Up close he saw too much of her eyeballs, huge through the thick lenses of her glasses. "Un hombrecito!" Abuela Rosario kissed him and pummeled him with her fists."Un hombrecito." And here was his best Prima Cari kissing him. Last time she'd been a little bit woman but mainly girl, and now she was mostly woman, with a novio. The tall guy said he had a meeting at the Universidad, ran down the porch steps and into a dented Carros Gris taxi, and drove it away. Prima Cari stared after the car looking mad. "We’ll go to the movies soon, Gabito. Oscarito will drive us."

Maybe Mami was sleeping. She was lying on her side in the big bed where, usually, Prima Cari slept. For three days Cari had been sleeping with Abuela in the next room. Gaby lay on the edge of the bed as far away from Mami as he could get without falling off. He stared at Oscarito's eyeballs in the photograph on Cari's bedside table. Oscarito's eyeballs stared right back at him. He listened to Cari laughing loud out on the porch with Oscarito, and to the music from the novela Tia Catalina and Abuela were watching in the living room. Cari said they were really watching her and Oscarito through the window making sure they didn't get to kiss.
Was Mami moaning? She had a pillow under her top leg and one under her head. He watched the huge belly and wondered if the baby swam all the time or sometimes slept, and how it slept under water. Had she moaned? If he asked her why she was moaning , would she bug out her eyes, swing her hand back to slap him,and yell at him,"Diantre Ojos Duros?"
He had so many secrets, the eyes, the head, the Reverend's wife beats her son. He wanted to tell the secrets when the grownups gathered in church after Papi's sermon, or here in the Capital, when they sat around the long dining table. Or just before bed when Abuela and Tia and Cari crowded by their bed to feel the baby kicking inside Mami's belly. He'd like them all to know so they too could stay up all night safeguarding their eyeballs by keeping their eyes hard.
Mami moaned louder. Maybe the time had come for the baby to leave his ocean. What would an hombrecito do? He could hear Catalina's husband Tio Justo clacking his heels down the hall. He'd rather watch these hombres than be one, and Justo, when he turned up, was one of the best to watch. He wore a dark blue policia uniform and had a short gun. He cursed and Papi said nothing. Usually when he came home from his patrulla late at night Justo clacked his heels right past Gaby's room and went straight to the kitchen. But this night he paused by the door and listened to Mami's moans. Tio Justo's eyes were always roaming, watching everything. He clacked back to the front of the house and came back with Abuela and Catalina. They felt Mami's belly and announced it was time for the Hospital de la Policia.
Just when Gaby thought everyone had gone to the Hospital in Oscarito's Carro Gris and left him alone, Cari came back in from the porch and crawled into bed with him. She was crying. She turned Oscarito's photo upside down. "I'll die if he leaves me to join the rebeldes in the Sierra." She sobbed. In the soft glow from the hallway light he could see straight into her eyeballs. Why couldn't he see her thoughts? He wanted so much to tell her about Miguel's head. But what if he did and the men in bandannas came to kill them? He got closer and whispered in her ear. He made her swear on the new baby not to tell, not Catalina, not Abuela, not Justo, not her upside down novio Oscarito. He was still awake when Abuela came to get Cari to go make the breakfast cafe con leche. Abuela kissed him and whispered, "You have a little sister.”

Papi and Mami filed past Gaby's door, heading for the dining room, not even looking at him in his bed peeking from under the sheet. Papi got the telegram and he came from Los Santos for La Nina, not for Gaby. Mami had La Nina in a little bundle in her arms. From his bed Gaby watched the grownups gathering around the long table for the afternoon merienda, adoring little Micaela. Papi was saying she was named, like Gaby, after an angel in the Bible. He heard Papi tell abuela he expected another boy and was going to name him Miguel. Miguel like the headless man!
They didn't care Gaby wasn't with them. He felt heat in his chest curl his hands into fists and shoot hot tears from his eyes. He hadn't been paying attention to Cari talking and now she raised her voice and he couldn't believe what he was hearing.
"They cut off his head." She yelled the words. Gaby jumped up from the bed and ran to the comedor. Papi bent down and ran his finger across his neck. Mami kept looking at Micaela who as usual was sucking on her breast. Abuela and Catalina bent over laughing. Tio Justo spit out his cafe con leche. Did grownups laugh when they were scared? Gaby wanted to bite Cari's arm. Instead he dug his fingernails into his own palms. Cari told, even though she'd sworn on the new baby. He looked to see if anything bad was happening to La Nina. She unplugged herself from Mami and began to cry. Maybe she cried because now Cari had cursed her, or because her jet black hair stuck out around her head like the sea urchin she must have been in her private ocean.

Gaby climbed into the columpio in the front porch where Oscarito was reading to get a close look at his Sucesos magazine. Cari was with La Nina because Papi had taken Mami to the Hospital de la Policia. "Draw me a horse." Gaby tried hard to see the photos Oscarito flipped past quickly looking for blank space. The lines Oscarito made with his big black fountain pen on the margins of a perfume ad looked almost like a horse.
The photos had invaded Gaby's eyeballs. A row of bodies on the side of a road; a circular tank stacked with bodies; a hillside strewn with bodies missing parts; bodies melting into dirt. There was a photo of a man just like Miguel, still alive and with a head. Gaby took hold of Oscarito's hand. "Let me see them." Oscarito didn't hit him or call him diantre or muchacho presentao. Instead he said, "I didn't mean for you to see them but you did." He turned the pages slowly. His voice was soft but a little like Papi's sermon voice. "These atrocities are because of the Dictator's greed. They kill us and more rebeldes rise up to fight. After we win there won't be any more need to chop off the heads of vende patrias."
Just then Tio Justo marched up the porch steps in his navy blue uniform. He paused by Oscarito and Gaby in the columpio, looked at the magazine spread open between them. "All we need is for you to fill his head with shit." He marched inside. Gaby sat stiff. For one second he pictured himself running into the house after Justo the way he usually did. He looked up at Oscarito who was looking at him. "You have to feel sorry for Justo. He doesn't even know which side in this fight is really his."
Gaby chose. He inched closer to Oscarito and crawled halfway onto his lap. He got very close and whispered in Oscarito's ear about the eyes. Oscarito shook his head. "A boy shouldn't have to know about torturas." Next thing Gaby knew it was dark on the porch. He'd slept at last on Oscarito's lap. What woke him was Miguel's head moving its lips. It wanted to say something but it had no throat.

Mami and Papi and La Nina were on the bed in the room across from Gaby's. He could see la Nina sucking away on Mami's teta from where he sat in the big hallway between his room and theirs, rocking, watching, and sucking on a baby bottle. Mami said an hombrecito was too big for bottles but he asked so many times she finally let him have just one. "When you break it you won't get another one." That morning he watched Abuela Rosario milk the tetas of the goat she kept in the big patio and now he was sucking that goat milk, slowly so his tongue found the way it was sweet. By giving himself over to the sweet milk he could stop himself from hearing Papi, Tia Catalina, Prima Cari, Tio Justo and Oscarito in the dining room, having lunch and planning the trip to Los Santos for La Nina's baptism . He shuddered. He never wanted to cross la Sierra Vertebral again, not even in Oscarito's Carro Gris.
Watching the grownups he studied how to tell from just looking at one if he was a rebelde or a torturer. What was the difference between a torturer who took out eyes and a rebelde who cut off heads? That was the mystery of grownups, were they good or were they bad? He rocked and sucked and watched and let the sweetness make a milky gauze around him.
And then the bottle slipped out of his hand and landed on the floor and smashed.
He ran to the door to Cari's room. He heard himself scream and saw his own hand punch Cari's bedroom door. The hand had its own life and went right through the slats. He looked at hi s hand. The knuckles were bleeding. He felt a hot energy rise up from the middle of his chest into his hands and he punched through the persianas again. He turned back to look at Cari who was coming toward him. Before she could reach him he punched throug h the slats one more time.
Mami handed La Nina to Papi, raised her arm and brought her hand hard onto his shouder blades. "Diantre. Ojos Duros. Estas loco?" Mami had never hit him in front of Papi before. The hitting was their secret. Maybe at last Papi was going to make her stop. She hit him again, in front of Tia Catalina and Abuela Rosario, and Prima Cari, and Tio Justo and Oscarito. Maybe now they would all stop her. Gaby looked to Papi. He was bouncing La Nina. Mami left off being careful where the blows landed.
Gaby felt himself float up to the ceiling. He watched the beating from above like a movie about his own life. When Mami beat him he knew how not to show the pain, so he knew when he was a rebelde and was torturado he wouldn't talk. Gaby didn't know exactly when the beating stopped but next thing he knew Tio Justo was looking at the broken slats and nodding his head."Calmense. This is one thing that can be fixed." Gaby saw Oscarito kneel beside him. He hid his face against his chest. Cari took Gaby's hand and said, "Come with us to the movies." Gaby got to sit between them on the front seat of Oscarito's Carro Gris.

The movie's famoso sat on his white horse behind a clump of bushes and a big round rock waiting for los malos in their black clothes and dark horses. A skinny man walked down the cine aisle and down the row behind them and patted Oscarito on the shoulder. He finally had to stop kissing Cari. After the man was done whispering into his ear Oscarito whispered to Cari, ruffled Gaby's hair, got up, and left. Cari clutched Gaby's hand, and began to sob. Gaby kept his eyes on the screen. He wanted to know how el famoso got el malo and prayed Cari didn't make them go. He never got to know. The lights went out. Police filled the aisles, they pointed flashlights, swung night sticks, and told everyone to leave.
Outside the movie house Gaby saw a river of screaming people carrying signs and banners. All the stores were shut. A woman beside him said this was the general strike the rebeldes had been promising. Cari began to sob again as she led them into the crowd, hundreds of people flowing like the Rio Caiman down a narrow street in the Sector Colonial.
Down the street there was a sound like a gunshot and the crowd began to run. All around them people screamed and shoved. Cari froze. "We'll be trampled." Gaby yanked her arm hard and pressed both of them into a doorway. If only Peri could see him. He was a real rebelde like Oscarito and El Rubio, the famoso of his own movie. The crowd began to flow. At last Gaby made out what they were chanting. "Abajo la tirania." He and Cari marched and screamed and waved to the people waving back from their windows and balcones.
His body forgot it was tired and moved on its own, on and on. They didn't have to walk the whole way home after all. Close to the Doblevia a Carro Gris pulled up beside them. The driver was Oscarito's friend and the people in the back seat made room. They each sat on somebody's lap, Cari bent almost double with her head leaning over the front seat and Gaby squeezed against the door. Everybody in the car talked at once. The driver said the huelga general was in its seventh hour and the soldados were doing a massacre. The way he said massacre he knew the word belonged with rebelde, revolucion, tortura. "Que es masacre?" Oscarito would tell him. And now a young woman squeezed against the opposite door looked straight at him and said, "When la tirania kills and kills." He saw her clench her fists and bring them to her eyes.
At last they were home. He ran to Papi who was standing on the porch steps and picked him up and hugged him hard. He handed him to Mami and she hugged him and kissed him. Everybody was hugging and kissing everybody, everybody who was there. Gaby didn't ask where Oscarito or Tio Justo were. Cari was crying in Catalina's arms. "I would have been trampled and Gaby saved my life." They walked together down the hallway to the kitchen. Gaby saw Tio Justo had already fixed the slats he'd punched through Cari's door, except for the color. Abuela Rosario fed Cari and Gaby on the long comedor table, rice and beans and meat with olives in the sauce. No food ever tasted better.
Mami and Papi didn't say no when he followed them into their bedroom. Mami stood by the dresser folding La Nina's clothes and Papi stretched out on the bed next to La Nina. Gaby lay beside her. Nobody said,"Don't touch her." So he lay with his face next to Micaela's. She was awake and she wasn't crying. Gaby looked into her eyes. They were light brown, soft, with a deep light coming from inside. Watching his hermanita he felt a sweet warmth from his chest to his fingertips. He kissed her tiny forehead and took one of her little hands in his. He wished she'd smile at him but he could tell she was loving him too anyway from the light in her eyes. As he drifted off to sleep he thought, La Nina knows everything, she just doesn't have the words.

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