Tell Noel Not To Go

Terror exists to silence. Questions exist to be asked. We must not let terror silence this question: whose terror is it? The massacre of El Bajio which everyone grieves, and right and left blame on the other, whose terror is it? If the revolution mirrors the terror tactics of the repressive state are we still the revolution? Whose terror is it? Public Letter to the Leaders of Liberacion, Isla Libre

From where she sat on her tiny rocker with Clotilde on her lap Adela stared through the low barred bedroom window. She watched Noel pace up and down the driveway outside his studio. He stopped pacing in the middle of the driveway and stared in the direction of the Presidio. Thick smoke floating bits of burnt paper still flowed from the ruined prison. She noticed now that Noel was smoking a cigarette. He hadn't smoked for months. Not since Pulgarcito. After the Presidio what difference could it make? She leaned into the rocker and stroked Clotilde.
Lydia lay on the bed, flat on her back. She fixed her eyes on the fan and said, "Keep me, Adela, keep me here." Adela took Clotilde and lay alongside Lydia. She held the little girl tight. Lydia sobbed without making any noise. She whispered between hard breaths. "If you wanted a baby why didn't you just take me?" Adela held her against her chest and looked into Lydia's honey brown eyes. She wanted to say, 'Yes. You can come be my little girl.' She wanted to say, 'I know that longing, the longing to be found at last by the real mother, the good mother.' She stroked the little girl's hair. "You have me Lydia. You always have me. I'm yours. I'm your Adela." Lydia clung to Adela's neck. "Will you still love me when you have your own baby?" Adela kissed the top of her head and hummed, "Duermete mi nina.” She kissed her again.”You'll always be my Lydia." She breathed deep of the scent of sunburnt little girl hair that overpowered the violet water Matilde had poured over Lydia's head that morning.
From where they lay she saw Noel drop the smoked down cigarette. He came inside and slid his portfolio from its place behind the bookcase by the door. "I'm heading to the UniEx to use the printshop and see students." She called him over, tugged at his hand. "Is the building open again?" He shrugged one shoulder. "I saw one of my students at the bodega and he told me they let him into the printshop. We made a plan to meet there." She pulled him to her by the hand. He sat on the edge of the bed. She took his face in both her hands and drew him to her and kissed him. “I’m glad I can’t get to my job. Who knows if I'll ever get to my job again. Are the roads still blocked around the Presidio? “ Noel stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. “It’s better if you never go back there. God only knows how the Infodes building, just a few yards away, was barely damaged when the Presidio blew up. Thank God you didn’t work late that night.” He laughed. “I like to picture Betzaida hiding under her metal desk after the first explosion.” Adela shuddered. “She wasn’t even scared. Or she couldn't tell she was scared. Sofia told me she’s working round the clock to get the program reopened even though the perimeter of the Presidio is closed and guarded by Jerez troops.” Noel shuddered. “How many disappeared in the prison explosion? Your dead phone must be getting thousands of calls.” Adela closed her eyes tight. “I can’t bear to look at the signs and photographs plastered everyplace. Have you seen? Last seen…Infodes can’t even find the living. How could we help with the dead?”
Lydia clutched Adela. "Tell Noel not to go. Don’t let him go." He let Lydia climb onto his lap and hugged her. "Pretty soon you'll be able to go back to school. You and Tina are the first little girls I know who’d rather go to school than stay home.” After Noel was gone, Adela spooned around Lydia who spooned around Clotilde. They fell asleep to the hum of the fan.
Clotilde's barking woke them before noon. Lydia yelled “Tina!” jumped off the bed and ran to peek through the window. "No es Tina. Two men in suits are climbing up the porch. Parecen de pelicula." Adela sat upright on the bed. Why did they dress like in the movies? Like jokes? She sat rigid and watched Lydia’s frenzy of activity. She let Clotilde out, ran out to the middle of the driveway where she could see the porch, ran inside right after the dog was done peeing, pulled Clotilde into the room, shut and chained the door, and jumped back in the bed with the dog. She was shaking.
After a few minutes Matilde knocked hard on the never used inside door to Adela's room. Lydia held tightly onto the dog. Matilde banged open the door. Behind her were the rows of cans and jars along the walls of the passage she'd just walked through, a pantry connecting this would be maid's room with the kitchen in the back of the house. She stood in the doorway. Her voice shook. "Buscaban a Noel. Que hizo?" Adela shuddered. "Even you know you don't have to do anything for them to look for you." Matilde sat on the edge of the bed and pushed Clotilde off. "He must have done something. Why else would they be looking for a paintor?" She stared hard at Adela who stared back and said nothing. Living with Mirta Elsa she'd learned how to stare crazed women down. She could barely breathe from the terror an enraged woman set off in her, but she knew how to not show it. At last Matilde shook her head. "I told them I had no idea where he was. Is he at the Uni? I'm sure they know where he teaches if they know where he lives. Si ustedes estan metidos en cosas...If you two are involved Nestor won't have it. Por algo tu padre te boto. " She rose and walked away. As she opened the interior door she shouted, “You’re father was right to throw you out.” She shut the door hard behind her. Clotilde sniffed around the back door she had never seen opened before. Lydia, sobbing again, hugged Adela. "Is Tio Nestor going to make you go away?" Adela shook her head no. First, somebody would have to reach him at the other wife’s house.
They made their way slowly to the park. By the old fat tree Lydia found Tina. Adela sat on a bench with Tomasa's biography on her lap. She meant to finish the book now that she had time on her hands. She stared blankly at the girls. Lydia got Tina to climb up to the crook of the first thick low branch. They sat there with their backs to Adela. Watching them pulled her attention away from the book. They faced the plume of smoke rising from the rubble of the Presidio. Two women with babies in strollers argued on the next bench. The rounder brunette punctuated her thesis raising and lowering her fist. "Yes, that's the smell of corpses rotting." Her friend, with a long blonde braid, shook her head. "Impossible. The corpses all burned. The fire went on for days."
Just then the little girls climbed down and began stuffing bits of straw into an empty cigarette pack which Tina pushed into the hole in the heart of the tree. Every day they played bomb the Presidio. Every so often Lydia or Tina let out a horror movie scream. Clotilde jumped back and barked. Soon three little girls left the swings and ran to join them at the tree. Lydia directed them to climb onto the low branch. Tina placed another paper and straw bomb in the heart of the tree. At Adela's signal the girls jumped down screaming. Clotilde joined the screams with her barks.
When it was time for Matilde's almuerzo Adela walked the two girls home. "You know how to make real bombs, don't you Tina?" Tina looked down at the ground. "Her father's a real General." Tina walked faster and broke into a run heading for home. Lydia didn’t chase after her. "I've seen his picture in her room. He's got a uniform and its full of medals."
Adela bit her tongue not to scream at her, 'Have you ever said a word to her about me and Noel?' Had Tina been in her room long enough to see her stack of Verdades? Of course Irma had been there. Irma knew her. Would Irma tell? Would she maybe tell and not even know she was telling? Or Tomas. Sometimes Irma sent the children to their father. Not often. But sometimes. Was that why the men had come to the house? She breathed deep. She caught hold of her thoughts and pulled them in. Tina was a little girl. Tina knew nothing. And there really was nothing for Tina to know. She and Noel had resigned.
The image of a man’s body by the side of a narrow road, naked, with blackened eye sockets where the eyes had been gouged out filled her mind. She remembered being not much older than Lydia and finding in her Father’s closet behind the typewriter case an old copy of Pueblo magazine with the black banner diagonally across the cover and the big white letters spelling Sin Censura. Leo had brought the Pueblo magazine from Ventura when he went into exile but Adela didn't know the magazine was old and came from far away. At that time only Liberacion members knew there was torturing in La Isla as well. Adela hadn't known at first but soon found out what Sin Censura meant. Page after page of photographs of dead men tossed by roads, eyes and fingernails gouged out, of women's and men's corpses stacked in an underground well. One woman had one breast cut off. The caption said men and women together were held in the well for days without food or water, in their own urine and feces, before and after their nails had been pulled off their fingers and the women’s vaginas had been douched with acid. She still had nightmares of that well.
They ran into Zuleika and Matilde just outside the bodega. Zuleika grabbed Adela by the shoulders. "Se llevaron a Noel. " Lydia screamed. "Adonde, Mami, adonde?" Zuleika took Adela by the shoulders . Perucho, his student, just came to the house to say some men took him near the Uni. Lydia still had one of her paper and straw bombs and she threw it down and threw herself on top. Adela ran to the house. Now she had no choice but to call the Partido. She was not brave enough for what life would demand of her. She'd known ever since that Pueblo Sin Censura that no matter how much she hid she would end up in the line of fire. Not ready for it. How had Tomasa felt just before she was killed, as she was about to be killed, not long after her Carta Publica, in an uprising that according to Enrique had been premature, impulsive, a recipe for what not to do. Where was Noel and what was he feeling right now? The adrenalin, the heat of her terror, reached El Nene. He did his capoeira dance, kicking fast, fast, fast, against her belly.

She woke up in the middle of the night cold with dread. Lydia was asleep beside her. Lydia had no Zuleika. Adela had no Noel. Matilde had no Nestor. Casa de abandonadas. All of them in the motherless place. The terror images from the Pueblo Sin Censura filled her mind. Where was Noel? She knew the disappeared were seldom found. She knew this terror. This was her natural state, the color of her childhood was this slate gray, middle of the night, stone cold terror. Then, as now, she lived in a world whose workings her reason could not unpuzzle.