The Heart Is a Busy Place (The Sylvie Diaries)

Doubt many things, my love, but never what I tell you. The heart is a busy place.

Into the newness of the day, her phone rang, the Dominican girl. Once she saw the area code flashing (809) she was anxious because she knew that her family never called with good news or gratitude for what she’d sent. They would only call if the last request hadn’t arrived. This is called keeping in touch.

"Di-me?"

It took them only thirty seconds to inform her that her brother was dead, Naphtali the youngest, the good one; the only man in the family who hadn’t been to jail yet. They always called him the little priest because he never got in trouble and was different. He stayed away from the Dominican trinity: cockfighting, cocaine and women, choosing Beisbol instead. They wondered where the hell he’d come from and questioned whether he was their brother at all. Now he was dead. Some robbery in the barbershop where he cut hair. He never even got to own it. He was still paying off the mortgage (or at least she was).

"So, you coming home for the funeral?"

"Why, will that bring him back?"

"No, Prima, but…you know, he was your favourite."

"I’ll send money, Conyo! That’s all you care about anyway. Te –veo!"

With that she put the phone down. She couldn’t stand to talk anymore. He wanted to tell her about how he was going to get even with whoever did the robbery. This would only mean she would soon have one more dead brother to have to bury. All she wanted now was the infinite and sinful luxury of sleep. One full day when she didn’t have to leave her bed, never mind her house and not even answer her phone. But she knew this was fantasy. "La vida es sueno, y sueno, sueno son." (Life is a dream and even the dream is dreaming.)

If she takes today off, she’ll want tomorrow too. So instead of sleep she gets up and takes a long bath. At least here she could get hot water, not like back home in the DR. She tried to think it all out, not lose focus. She had a plan; a five year plan, like the government.

In five years she’d make enough to go home and buy a house on Ponto Alegre, a house with walls and gates high enough to keep her family out. Well if she couldn’t afford to sleep all day, she was allowed to spend an hour in the bath tub. At least, this much she could do. That would be luxury enough. She turned on the water and checked for spiders; then entered slowly.

Her mind started racing. Until she was twelve she thought she was a boy because all six of her brothers were. It was only after twelve, did strange and unwelcome things start happening to her body. It was then that she had to go and stay with her Aunt Nadia. Tia Nadia, of the undying cigarettes. She always had one in her mouth even when she was cooking. If ash fell into the pot, she said it was pepper.

It was Tia Nadia who explained to her about her mother:

"Your mama, she died from too many babies. I kept telling her, tie your tubes, girl. She kept saying your father loved children. But you father, he don’t love nothing but roosters. That’s all he cares about."

Her father, who everybody called "El Coco" and behind his back, "Coco Loco," was the best cock-trainer on the island. Nobody was better at training birds for cockfighting. His birds always won. But he loved the birds more than money so he’d get upset when they died. Aunt Nadia would tell him:

"Hey it’s only a god -damn bird. Conyo, you didn’t cry like that for your wife."

The times she hated most was when Tia Nadia would brush her hair because she had a heavy hand and no mercy, Tia Nadia.

"Sit still. You just making it worse because I can’t finish and it’s going to last longer."

"But it hurts!"

"It’s suppose to hurt, you don’t have Pelo Blanco (good hair, white people hair). You have nigger hair. Just thank God, at least that you don’t look Haitian. And listen, stay away from your cousins otherwise you’ll end up with a baby as black as a telephone." (At that time all the phones were black). She soon got the point, nobody wanted a black baby. If you had one they’d say it wasn’t Dominican, it must be Haitian. All around her house Aunt Nadia had photos of General Trujillo, the dictator who ruled for over thirty years.

"He was the best. At least when he was in power we had plenty money."

"Auntie, didn’t he order them to shoot all the Haitians who live here?"

"Sit still. Anyway not all, just the black ones. If you couldn’t say Perijil (parsley) then he knew you weren’t Dominican." She bent over to whisper and some ash from her cigarette fell on the girl’s shoulder.

"Listen, they say he even killed his own grandmother because she was too dark and he didn’t want nobody to know what he came from." She paused and let the girl stand up.

"Well, at least you have your mother’s Culo. She left you that anyway. Just look out that it doesn’t get too big for you to carry."

"I don’t carry my, Culo. That’s silly, Tia."

"You’ll learn. Cuidado! You have the same sad eyes, (Ojos Tristes), the kind men like to help and hurt."

Her life in the village was predictable. She soon got used to being the substitute wife for her father, cooking, washing and cleaning and looking after her brothers. Her father swore he would never marry again because he had loved his wife so much. What that meant was it was too much trouble. And why should he when he had a perfect slave? She even learned to cook Mongo, the black stew with beans and pork and Yuca, just the way he liked it.

By the time she was seventeen she had had enough. What she wanted was Santo Domingo, the capital. There at least there was something different than cooking. There was possibility. The first thing she would do was to change her name. Lose the dull Inez and call herself Bachata, the music she loved to dance to. Every day, she would practice in front the mirror, the only time she felt free.

She hated Merengue, the music of her father’s generation. As to him, he only had one answer: No.

"I’m not going to have my one daughter walking the streets."

"I won’t be walking the streets"
"How would you live?"

"I’ll get a job."
"On your back. No, you stay right here and get married. And I don’t want to hear nothing about babies."

She tried running away like many before her, but he found her (with the help of her brothers) and brought her back with a good kick in her mother’s culo and some well-placed slaps. But by then she had enough and went on strike.

"No more Mongo." It was a battle of wills but in the end she won. They learned to cook for themselves. She stayed in her room and watched Spanish soap operas with blonde actresses, like everyone else in the DR.

Then one day things changed. It all started because her father refused to sell his prize bird to El Jefe, the man who ran all the major-cockfights. He was a man who wasn’t used to the word "No". Everyone kissed his ring because he was rich and had everyone in his pocket. Everybody, that is, except Coco-Loco who was too stupid to listen. So he decided to teach Coco Loco a lesson. He sent someone to kill his roosters and leave him a message. He came home, the old man, and saw a trail of feathers leading to the chicken coop. He washed his eyes with tears, the old man. He didn’t say anything but he reached for his white straw hat, the one that he knew was too big for his head. Then he went to "reason" with El Jefe.

Of course, he lived in a mansion surrounded with huge walls. It was said that it once belonged to General Trujillo. That fact alone meant that he had to own it. He liked to walk around in riding boots though he never rode a horse in his life; he found that they gave him a bit of much needed height. When the old man arrived to see him, he made certain that he kept him waiting outside in the sun for a good half hour before he came out to greet him from his veranda.

"Well Viejo, what brings you here, have you got something you want to tell me?"

"Yes Jefe." Here he did the peasant shuffle. As his father had done and his father before him. He never looked up from the ground as he spoke.

"My birds…"

"What about them?"

"They’re dead. "They’re dead, Jefe."

"That’s too bad. You should take better care of them. Not all are dead I hope."

"No one of them is still alive. I had him with me."

"So, have you come to your senses finally? You see what happens to a man who stands alone with no protection. Come inside. It must be hot there standing in the sun."

"Yes, very hot, Jefe."

"Come have a drink, wipe your shoes first."

He wiped his feet on the mat; first the one and then the other, and entered timidly, the old man. He removed his hat and held it against his chest like a penitent.

"How is your daughter?

"My daughter?"

"Inez. Tell her she should come and see me. I’m looking for a new housekeeper. Mine is getting old. You understand?"

"Yes I understand." The old man started to mop his face with his handkerchief. "So, my birds aren’t enough. You want my daughter too!"

He couldn’t believe how quickly the old man moved. Suddenly he was holding the pearl handled open razor which was hidden in his hat, Open. The blood flew from Jefe’s throat like a spirit. He stared wide eyed, disbelieving, his throat cut from ear to ear. Like a Cock.

When the police came for him, they found him at home burying his birds. He had buried each one separately. Then he swept his yard using an old fashioned broom made of lemongrass and wire. It had no handle which meant he had to bend over like a penitent.

"Popi, I can do that," Inez said.

"No you can’t," was all he answered.

He hadn’t tried to run and so they waited until he’d finished. Then they led him away in handcuffs. She’d seen this too many times before, when they came for her brothers. She just went inside and packed her suitcase. She knew she would never enter this house again.

Now she found herself in the big city of Santo Domingo. Finally. She had come to be a star, someone on television. But she was too dark for television. She couldn’t compete with the Pelo Blancos. So she found something she wasn’t too dark to do. She lasted a year before she stopped doing it for free. It wasn’t that she minded but what bothered her most was that she had to admit that her father had been right after all. She had come to find a career and got a cell-phone instead. She was waiting tables just to survive when it came to her in a revelation that she could have stayed home in the village and do that.

"I can wait tables and I can cook Mongo, so what?"

This was not what she had come for. She was expected to not only serve the customers but serve the owner too. For free.

"You say you want an advance on your salary to pay your rent? Fine, just step in my office and bend over the desk. It won’t take long: Abre los muslos, Corazon!"

She knew if she refused she would be replaced before night fell. Replaced by any of the hundreds of girls who came in daily from country as she had. Searching.

It was raining and she felt so depressed that she decided to go inside the Catholic church for shelter. It was cheap. A dollar for the candle and silence. She hadn’t been to church since arriving in Santo Domingo. Once she graduated Catholic school there had been no need to. The nuns had taught her to read and write (in between slapping and caning her and some who even felt her up while supposedly searching her for hidden cigarettes). Having taught her at least enough to read the Bible, if not to understand it; and to light candles in churches and make her Novena. That done, they felt no more responsibility for her life. She could take it from there. She would never make a nun anyway.

And yet here she was on this rainy afternoon taking shelter and lighting candles. She looked up at the statue of the pale and porcelain Madonna above her head with her white face looking down on her. She began to cry after everything that had happened to her in the last year. Suddenly she heard a voice close to her."

"Calmate! What’s wrong, what happened?" She turned and saw a woman kneeling beside her on the bench.

"Me Muero! You scared me. I didn’t see anybody here."

"So what you crying about?"

"My life. Me Vida mierda! That’s what I’m crying about. You mind?"

"You got babies to take care of? asked the fat woman.

"No, I don’t have no babies. Thank God."

"You got a man who beats you everyday?"

"Hell no!"

"So what you crying for then? You want one? I can get one for you in five minutes if you want. He’ll do it right here in church. Give you something to really cry about."

"Pa fuera, Cabron! Get the hell out of here, are you crazy?" But she had to laugh, this woman was loca, crazier even than her father but funny. Inez couldn’t even think about her without laughing. She had been a successful Puta for twenty years and was none the worse for wear although she started to put on weight now she didn’t give a damn really because she had officially "retired".

Her name was Luz, everybody called her La Luz (the light). She knew more about a man’s urinary track than most urologists and rumour had it that she could make even the dead rise. La Luz. When Inez told her what her boss had made her go through to get her pay check, she just laughed and said:

"Welcome to Santo Domingo. I’m a Puta but not a slave and if you don’t know who you are, then they won’t."

It was then that Inez decided to become "a working girl."

"And stay away from those young boys who think they’re Rubirosa."

"Who?" asked Inez.

"Oh you wouldn’t know. You too young." She then told her about the Dominican playboy legend.

"Porfirio Rubirosa, was this playboy who used to live in Santo Domingo. He was small but he had this Pendejo. In other words, he was hung like a donkey. He said it was a gift from God. Anyway, he was doing good until one day he tried to share this "gift of God" with one of General Trujillo’s daughters (Flora). Well Popi found out and put a contract out on him. First castrate him. Then give him time to heal. Then kill him!"

"Guys play rough here!"

"The only thing that saved him was that the daughter got down on her knees and begged her father not to do it. She said she would cut her wrist if he did. She was serious too. So Popi spared his life but he made them get married so there would be no scandal. Then he made "Rubi" an ambassador to some country as far away as possible so he wouldn’t have to look at him and remember. Rubi didn’t care. He made a career of sleeping with millionaires’ daughters, owning race cars and playing Polo. Anyway, that’s who all these guys in Santo Domingo want to be. They can’t do nothing for you. They want you to do for them. You’re better off with the old ones. They at least have money and won’t rob you."

Inez sat listening to her, hypnotized.

"And make sure you get the name and numbers of all the taxi drivers in Santo Domingo."

"Why?"

"Because they see and hear everything. Plus, they know where everyone lives. Taxi drivers are the only ones who might save your life, not the police. Tu Sabes?"

"Entiendo!"

"And here are things that you should always carry with you in your bag: (She made a list for her.) Condoms, Vaseline and Q-tips for your bruises. Oh and some hydrogen peroxide; put some in a small vaporizer."

"Why, to bleach my hair blonde?" asked Inez.

"No, idiota! If he says: Mama-me-lo, (Suck it!). You use it to gargle after. Best thing."

"Oh!" Realizing for the first time just how dumb she was to the ways of the street.

"And listen, in case he doesn’t want to pay you after, you spray it in his eyes and get away. Okay! And you run like hell and get out of there. Call up one of those taxis to come get you. This is no Juga escondidas (hide and seek). Some of these guys are crazy. They’ll kill you. So you better know what you’re doing and make up your mind if you serious or not. Otherwise go back to the country."

"No. I’m serious. I’m not going back. Nunca!" (Never!).

They were sitting together in the restaurant/rum-shop called Quescaya. They were talking, or at least Luz was. Inez was merely listening. Suddenly a woman approached the table, put her hand on her hip and started:

"Puta!" But Luz had seen her coming from the corner of her eye so she was ready.

"Oye, Flaca, what is your problem?

"You, Gorda, you’re my problem. Leave my husband alone. Dejarlo solo! Puta!"

"I may be a Puta but at least I’m not a mentirosa like you. I always give him just what I promise, as long as he pays for it. That’s why he keeps coming back. I didn’t trick him into marriage like you. So which one of us is a Puta?"

Luz then proceeded to discuss the wife just as if she wasn’t there.

"Listen Inez, you know what her trouble is? She’s one of those girls who can’t open her legs like a woman. She can’t do it and you want to know why she can’t open her legs, even to her husband? Because she can’t open her heart. That’s why. She don’t want nobody to get in there. There’s a lot of them like that."

Inez turned to regard the woman as if she was watching a movie. Inez went on with the humiliation.

"The thing is that she hates me because she thinks I’m her enemy because I can do for him what she can’t." She suddenly turned and looked at the woman, (Rosa, alias La Flaca, The skinny one).

"The truth is, you should be buying me gifts instead of hating me. If it wasn’t for me he would have left your skinny Culo long time ago. I told him to stay with you because of the baby."

She turned back to Inez.

"You see her mother told her: Si no desnudo, no es pecado (if she doesn’t do it naked, it’s not a sin)." She looked over her shoulder at Rosa.

"Idiota, you’re married already, it’s not a sin." Then turning back to Inez.

"He’s never seen her naked. Believe that? They’ve been together ten years, had a baby and everything."

"He told, you!" Cabron! said Rosa in tears!"

"He tells me everything! You want to keep him? Abre los Muslos, Abre los Muslos, Perra!" (Open your legs, bitch!)

She stood there with her hands on her hip and Rosa, couldn’t face her eyes. She left the restaurant. Luz sat down again with Inez.

"I think she’s my cousin."

"Your cousin? Conyo!"

But everyone in the D.R. were family. All of them Taino. All looked like one Indian family. And because Haiti was just a mountain away, they saw them as a common enemy because Haiti was Africa whereas Taino meant at least your master was Spain. And so, they would stop fighting among themselves long enough to fight against them.

Inez followed Luz’s advice to the letter. She had been the closest thing to a mother she had ever had. She got her a good apartment in the city, one which she could go out and yet find her things when she returned. She kept in close touch with the taxi drivers as she had been instructed. They told her things and brought her clients. She figured out finally that she was the daughter that Luz always wanted but could never have. She felt safe with her.

Then one day her father sent word from the prison that he wanted to see her. Her heart started beating hard. First of all how did he even know where to find her? So she went to Najaya Jail in St. Cristobal to see him. The men were behind bob wire. They called to her. She needed no translation to know what they wanted. It was as if they could all smell her and taste her at the same time. What power she had over them. This was six months after the attempted escape. Her father never bothered to leave his cell. He stayed in his cell with his rooster. He alone was allowed to have an animal in his cell because he cared for the guards and their birds.

He looked the same, her father. No older then he had when last she saw him a year before. He lived in his mind and so cells didn’t matter. He was still Coco-Loco. She brought tobacco for him. She didn’t know if they would allow it. They said no, but that they would give it to him later (some anyway).

"Daughter, you like your life?"

"Yes," she stammered not knowing what he was leading to, but knowing her father always led to something.

"And you, Popi, how is it with you?"

"Nothing bad last a hundred years."

"True," she agreed. Whatever the hell he meant, it wouldn’t last more than a hundred years.

"I want you to do me a favour, daughter."

"A favour, Popi.?"

"Yes, whatever you doing, please go do it somewhere else. Somewhere I can’t hear you."

"Hear me? How can you hear me, Popi? I’m in Santo Domingo. Oh…"

And then she got it. In a single sentence he had let her know that he knew what she was doing it and that it all got back to him. It was no sense bothering to lie to him. She never could anyway.

"You know , of all my children…" He stared right through her to the green walls. "Of all of them, boys included, you are the one most like me."

"Conyo, Popi, I sure as hell hope not." It was all she could say.

She left, fearing the terror of tears. Outside, Luz was waiting for her. Had she not agreed to come with her, Inez would have never come.

"Well?"

"Well, what?"

"Why did he send for you?"

"To tell me to get the hell out of Santo Domingo, that’s all."

"Stop crying, you cry too much, Inez, Conyo!"

"Can’t help it."

"Well, the more you cry the less you piss, anyway!"

She had to start laughing.

"Maybe he’s right , you should try someplace else."

"But where?"

"It’s not just Santo Domingo that needs Putas."

"But I want my Bachata!"

"So take it with you!"

So she took her suitcase and herself, away. The Bachata, the music of men and their women too dark for television, who had killed for love. Even if that love was just for a rooster. Or themselves.

La Luz paid her fare and waited with her at the airport when no one else would. And so it was that she found herself one day mysteriously, on the small volcanic island of the place they called Montserrat. A place that looked so much like the village she fled from. But here, even the volcano held no terror for her. The voice of La Luz was in her ear:

"First you have to know who you are. Then they will."

Because the heart is a busy place and so, doesn’t have time for fear.