“When were you going to tell me?”
“I hoped you would never ask. But all of that is far behind me now, I want you to know.”
I shook my head. “You’ve been lying to me my whole life. Why should I believe you?”
His eyes flitted and his grip on the wheel tightened. “How was I supposed to make you, a little girl, understand? Maybe I shouldn’t have told you now. I thought you might be old enough.”
A breeze blew in through the half-opened window and raindrops stung my cheeks. “I won’t say anything,” I said.
We drove on, the mud thickening as the lane sloped down at the bottom of the fields. He turned off, and we headed toward a cluster of trees; I had never been to this part of our property before. “I want you to see something,” he said.
Matted, skinny dogs descended upon the truck, barking. He slowed to a crawl. Several dozen shanties built out of scrap metal, bamboo, and cardboard leaned among the trees. Laundry hung on lines between branches. Women squatted in the murky shallows of a creek, washing clothes. A child of five or six, bare below the waist, crouched behind a fallen branch as he defecated; he hugged himself and ducked down as we rumbled past. The air smelled of burnt garbage, and trash littered the ground everywhere: metal cans, scraps of paper and plastic containers, a torn canvas shoe. A few men sat around on crates or logs, or even in the dirt. Most of them didn’t move as we crept by, but some advanced at a clip, extended their hands and called out, “Jefe, tiene más trabajo, jefe?” One had droopy eyes and a scar down his face that made my stomach curl. He said, “Boss, your truck is dirty. Let me wash it for you!”
Papi spoke to them through his half-open window, shook his head, and waved. “Why aren’t you in the fields, planting?” he shouted at them. The oldest among them muttered a reply, something about other jobs at the main house. “No, no—what do you know how to plant, other than coca? You, tell me the crops you’ve grown.” He pointed from one man to the next, and each shook his head no. “The men in the pickups can tell you where to get the seeds, yuca and corn. Okay? Next time I drive through, don’t let me see grown men lounging around like housecats.” Then he touched the gas and we charged up the slope on the other side of the trees, out of the settlement.
From there we passed the cement-block houses and smaller plots of land, one after another, of our tenant farmers. I had seen their homes before; these simple dwellings were a vast improvement from the shacks we had just passed. Chickens clucked in the yards, dogs lunged and circled on their chains. A few children tottered and chased one another, barefoot in shorts and shirts. Several mothers bent over hoes in small gardens, most of the others alongside husbands in their plots. Two women carrying a hamper between them waved as we rolled past. At one property, Papi pulled off and jumped out, leaving me in the cab.
Talking to the tenants, he bent down to plug his fingers in their garden plot and poke the toddler in his belly; the child let out a delighted squeal. Papi accepted an envelope from the farmer and briefly checked the contents before the couple led him over to their cottage, where a set of shiny pipes ran up the outer wall and inside. I imagined my father exchanging suitcases of money on the boat docks of Barranquilla, or over sacks of cocaine amassed inside a warehouse, surrounded by men with handguns—images I had gleaned from TV and movies. Something told me these depictions weren’t quite accurate. Could there be other groups beside the ELN and the FARC, or the Autodefensas, the AUC paramilitary army, and why did he maintain ties when he seemed strained just talking about it? Had the ELN been to blame for his parents’ murders?
He returned. We left the row of tenant plots behind and cut back across the fields. I tried to picture myself as thirty years old, driving a pickup, discussing the harvest cycles with the jefes and collecting rent. But I couldn’t.
“You’re quiet,” Papi said. “What you saw down there must have shocked you.”
“No, the coca.”
“I had thought you might have figured it out. But I wasn’t a kingpin or anything. I tried to stop as soon as I could, but once you’re in—it’s difficult, almost impossible. Please, keep this quiet.”
Haciendas dotted the cleared foothills—how many had been built with blood money? Behind our house, past the coffee shrubs where the alpaca had gone missing, might Papi allow peasant farmers to grow coca? The alpacas dozed underneath a tree in a great heap, the valley too hot for them. Their eyes remained slits as they slept, forever on the lookout for predators; the breeze carried their musty scent. The broken one he’d had to shoot—what had they done with it? I only hoped they’d given it to one of the men begging for work, for his wife to roast over a fire and not the vultures to eat. “Why did you show me the displaced?” I cried.
The truck stopped. The gate inched open. “Because, my daughter,” he said, “that is how close the poor are to us, and why we must provide for them in small ways. Otherwise, if thousands continue to pour out of the hills with the guerillas, squatters will take over. That’s what happened in Nicaragua. The guerillas and the poor drove the people like us out, seized plantations, and let the lands go to filth and ruin. Even more suffered and starved. Then we will be the displaced, and Colombia will descend into even more of a bloodbath.”
“Is that what happened to your parents?”
He shot me a sharp glance, and his face flushed red. “Who told you that?”
The engine revved as we clambered from gravel onto the stone pavers. One of the alpacas popped up her head, ears twitching. “Nobody, I was just wondering,” I said. We zipped through and the gate shut swiftly behind us.
Papi opened the door but his hands dropped to his lap, and he leaned back in the seat. “Not because of land.” He sifted the keys in his palm, stared at the fields. “Someday I may tell you.” The dogs hurdled down the stone steps, jumped and crowded the truck. He greeted them, smiling and calling their names like children on his way to the house.
In Ana’s upstairs living room with the Virgin Mary eying us from the wall, we cranked up Gracia’s dance music, sipped Fanta (a treat, as Papi did not allow soda), and talked about our boyfriends. It was late Sunday morning. The rally was set to take place that afternoon. With Ana’s parents at morning mass and no one but the maids downstairs, we were able to speak freely. Ana had made reservations for Carlos’s birthday at the Mirador. Afterward, we might all go out to a club; she was thinking of booking a room at the Intercontinental and buying, for herself, some sexy lingerie. She stared at her lap as she said this, but a slight smile played across her lips.
“What happened to his present?” I asked, prodding her rib.
She shrank away, feigning protest. “He wants sex. What else do I get? Colored condoms?”
I laughed but Gracia wrinkled her nose. “Those are awful,” she said. “Use the pill.”
“I thought you didn’t want to be having sex with Carlos,” I said. “Are you sure you want to stay the night with him somewhere?”
Ana waved at me, brief and dismissive. “Oh, it’s fine. He’s into me.” She giggled and sipped her Fanta, then asked how things were going with Manuel.
Grinning, I told them he knew what he was doing, and it was better than I had ever imagined. “But he insists sex is a sin, that he won’t,” I said.
“Are you kidding?” Gracia said. “I give you a month at the most. Just be sure you use something, or else.”
A beat of silence hung in the air. We all knew what she meant. Only two options existed for a pregnant teenage girl in Colombia—either to drop out of school and life, marry her novio, and give birth to the first in a long line of babies, or seek out one of the illegal abortion doctors.
“So our sexy guitarist Manuel is hard to get,” Ana said. “That means he lives his faith.”
“Oh,