The lacquered dark wood stairs creaked under my weight. I was headed to the second floor of a large, two family home with a sizable attic that could house a small family if they were willing to be in closer quarters.
It reminded me of my own childhood home, another two-family in a similar style that my great grandmother bought in the 1960s. The moan of the planks was the sound of my childhood. I skipped up and down the winding stairs of my home a thousand times. Now I was ascending to witness the christening of a friend’s baby who would start part of her childhood here, among the sounds and smells of an elder’s home near a century old.
The door was left ajar, laughter pealing from the crack, along with Latin music. I could already catch deep, savory scents and knew a few grandmothers had toiled since the early hours for this celebration. I added my pair to the pile of shoes on the landing and gave a soft knock as I entered the apartment.
The doorway opened onto a spacious living room with slightly mismatched furniture in shades of green and tan. The walls were pocked with family photos from the home country in lush rural hills and the warmth of family. I smirked at that the obligatory one of white Jesus. At the far wall was a trellis of silk flowers and a small three legged side table with an ornate bowl atop it.
A local priest would perform the baptism underneath that trellis. Someone who wasn’t aware of the state of things might find it somewhere between charming and strange. A priest making house calls. But the tension outside on the streets was buffered by the levity of this celebration. There was life and liberty here.
To right of the trellis was a sun porch casting golden light onto the parkay floors and to the left, a hallway which led to three bedrooms and the bathroom.
Just then a tiny body crashed into my legs.
“Hi Mommy!” he yelled above the music.
I rubbed Alex’s back, then ran my hands over his freshly plaited and oiled braids. “Hi honey. Where’s Mama?”
“She’s in the kitchen helping.”
He darted away back to his playmates, who were probably squealing and gossiping. I wondered briefly what six-year-olds might talk about.
After waving my greetings to aunties and cousins, I poked my head into the kitchen, which was just past one of the longer couches at the left. It was a modest room with a small dining table along the wall lined with foil pans of food. My friend Carolina’s mother looked up from pot of soup and leaned her cheek to me for a peck. My own mother stood at the sink with her back turned.
“Hi Mrs. Gonzalez. Hi mom,” I called.
I had taken to calling my own mother madre in my childhood as a compromise because calling her “mother” sounded very Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest. It seemed disingenuous to say it here, though.
Mom turned enough for me to kiss her on the cheek. I squeezed next to her to see that she was washing lettuce for a salad. She was used to being one of few vegetarians at parties and often tended to the vegetables and the soup. Few outside the family knew she could prepare any meat that would have you on your knees without ever tasting the result.
She lowered her voice to above a whisper.
“Danni, his hair was not done.”
I tempered the frustration inside me. It was one thing to read about how moms are always responsible, always criticized for the condition of their kids’ hair, clothes, and table manners. It was quite another to have the demerit levied on you in real time, in public.
It wasn’t enough to have two jobs or be an abandoned mother or be hanging on the edge of complete exhaustion in your friend’s kitchen. I had to be scolded too. I was old enough to rent a car by myself when I had my son. I was grown. But when my mother looked at me down the top of her glasses, her mouth set and her eyes sharp, I was a child again.
Before I could concede and say “Yes, mom,” her face relaxed and she spoke.
“I did his hair last night.”
“I saw. Thank you, mom.”
“You’re welcome, baby.”
Then her eyes narrowed and I tensed out of habit.
“Did you bring anything?”
“Yes, I brought it last night,” I lied. Our Caribbean sense of social order demanded we never show up “with our long hand” to accept rather than give. Only my friend Carolina and I went back to our high school years and had some tough times in college as naive and wide-eyed girls in Manhattan. We had more than paid our debts to each other.
As I was exiting the kitchen, Carolina was coming in, and lit up when she saw me.
“Oh my god, Danni! I’m so glad you could make it!” Carolina said.
“Come on, have to be there for my goddaughter. Where is she?” I said.
“She getting a quick nap. Javier is with her. I think my brother is somewhere around here too.”
“Okay. I’ll catch up with him. Godparents have to stick together.”
Carolina beamed. She was a first generation American like me who grew up translating leases and government documents for her parents until they were better able to understand. She paid her own way for everything since her parents emigrated from the Dominican Republic with very little, and after all that struggle, found a husband who took care of her.
As we parted, she tapped my belly.
“Go get something to eat.”
“Yes, yes. I will,” I assured her.
I sat down on a chair near the front of the room just in time to hear one of Javier’s cousins raise her hands for quiet like a conductor. The music was switched off and as if a practiced symphony, everyone bowed their heads and clasped their hand together. Mrs. Gonzalez and my mother emerged from the kitchen.
“Dios… Usted es la rey de nos corazones…”
She continued, working up the guests into a low rubble of hums and grunts of agreement.
“Dios es contigo esta dia…” she said pointing to the ground.
I took the time as I always did, to be naughty and peek at the crowd. Some had their hands raised, others, their closed eyes pointed to the ceiling above, to their lord.
When the prayer concluded, a relief washed over everyone like water. The exhale was communal. The music crept back on, lower this time as the elders prepared a long table for the buffet.
The sound of the door slamming against the wall as it flew open pulled every muscle in the room taut like a rubber band. We had not heard the pounding on the stairs before the prayer and they had mercifully waited for us to complete the devotional before thundering in.
It was an oil spill of masked faces and body armor. Their combat boots pressed into the delicate area rug and inside, I wished they had the respect to at least remove their shoes.
They held their weapons up, pointing above our heads and we ducked to avoid them. They barked simultaneously like a pack of animals, baying and bleating orders no one could follow. In the confusion, the children came from the back room and found their mothers. My son found me. I was seated with my legs bent under me, almost expecting I’d be rising up any moment. He sat in front of me and I held him tight.
The oil spill parted and in walked a scrawny, bird-like man, pale as death. He had on a white undershirt with a blue stripe down one side and navy blue unzipped coveralls with the sleeves tied at his waist. I looked for a name or agency insignia and found none. Dread settled heavy like stones in my belly when I realized who they were.
The invader crouched down to level his brown, beady gaze directly into my face and asked, “Are you the owner?”
His lips were thin and dry and his Roman nose was a foot from mine. Cropped hair jutted out like brush bristles from the sides of his head. Where I expected sweat, he smelled of sandalwood and crisp, ironed fabric.
I croaked a reply, “No.”
A switch flipped in his eyes as if something in focus had suddenly evaporated. I had never felt so invisible watching that man look through me as if I didn’t exist. His boots squeaked as he rose to tower over me.
“Me!” Someone called.
It was our friend Milana. She had appeared a few feet away from me, kneeling.
“I’m the owner,” she said, tipping her chin up in defiance. At that moment I admired and pitied her bravery. The most we could ever ask of a friend was to stand shoulder to shoulder during a struggle. She did more than that with those three words.
The man crouched in front of her. His eyes roved over her face, greedily taking in every detail. He let his grin spread wider to reveal a set of white teeth with prominent canines. It dropped as quickly as it came.
I stole a glance behind me to see my mother. She was stone-faced and stock still. I wanted to apologize right then for the way I felt in the kitchen. She was trying the best she could to help me raise my son. She had been abandoned too and knew what it was like to be judged. She knew it would never be easy, so there was sternness but also love.
I turned back in time to see the invader in the same position, just staring.
“What time is it?” he asked.
Milana kept her chin up, sobbing softly as if she knew exactly what he was asking and refused to provide the answer.
The humorless grin came again and Milana wept into her hand to keep the noises from escaping.
He asked again, with the patience of an instructor with a stubborn student. He gave her a concerned look and said, “0.2:00”
Point two o’clock. What?
The question resonated in the minds of everyone in the room. I was like a low resonance shockwave. Barely perceptible murmurs surfaced.
“Yes. Point two o’clock.”
Her face twisted in confusion, at the impossibility and absurdness of it. Her tears returned in earnest. She didn’t understand. None of us did. But I looked up at the armed sentries leaking through the doorway, practically skyscrapers from our vantage points. I could hear their feet shifting on the creaking stairs. There were at least 10 of them. There were over 30 of us, including children, packed into that living room.
The invader plucked her phone from her shirt pocket and tapped the screen.
“What time is it?” he asked.
It said 1:15pm. I suddenly remembered my own phone. I had kicked myself for not creating a plan for a moment like this. There was no button I could press to cascade a series of security lockdowns. I had wanted shortcuts to send texts to a couple people, letting them know I was in danger, with information they’d need in my absence.
There were no less than five pairs of laser eyes I felt were boiling me from the inside. I chanced looking down. I could dictate a text while our captor was otherwise engaged. I couldn’t bring myself to, though. A paralysis gripped the room and no one moved. We listened for the creak of the stairs and flick of fingers against steel triggers.
I held my breath and thought for a moment I had called too much attention to myself. I feared more than anything, looking over to the invader only to see I had rematerialized and his focus was completely on me. At the corner of my eye, the scene was uncomfortably unchanged. He was holding her phone, still expecting an answer about the time. Droplets of fear hung in midair.
“1… 1:15pm,” she said.
“Okay,” he said, calling up what seemed like a great deal of restraint dealing with her incompetence. “What’s half that?”
An echo of nos and murmurs rose to conversation level. He was toying with us. The charade was exposed and he rose to his feet laughing, mocking us all.
He leaned to speak to one of the sentries, chatting as if idly . “See who has babies still breastfeeding. They can eat before they go so we don’t have to stop for any meals.”
The soldier was dispatched to the back of the apartment where nursing mothers were still hiding. Piercing screams escaped a room down the hall. Three mothers and their silent, clinging children lined up and marched out of the doorway. I imaged the children could feel their mother’s hearts pounding and knew they were in danger. They knew to be quiet.
The older children were next. Some were too young to realize what was happening and shifted around in line as if they were going back to class. When their mothers did not follow, panic bloomed like an accelerated spring and soldiers grabbed at them to haul them out the door and down the stairs with the echo of their screams resonating in the back stairwell.
I held my son to my chest. I had never said goodbye to him like this. No mother in the room had until that moment. I didn’t know if he would be ripped away, so I buried my nose into his hair, smelling a mix of his fading baby scent and jojoba oil. I thought with regret that I had nothing to hide in his braids and wondered if he’d remember me if we were separated. When would my voice fade from his mind?
I considered my phone again. I didn’t make any calls. I let no one know what was happening. The only thing I could do was power it off so they couldn’t pry. I slipped it underneath the couch. It would otherwise end up resold and far away, along with all my sensitive information once it was pried open.
My own tears started then, wetting my cheeks. I swiped them away so they did not mar Alex’s braids. I thought, will he be separated from me? And how long would I be detained illegally? Would my job pay out vacation to keep me employed? Would they fire me? The practical and existential clouded my mind like all those wall photos.
I thought suddenly that our chance to fight had passed. There were more of us, all fearless in some way, but we had been seized while under the illusion we were safe. We did not expect a battlefield on our weathered couches after our prayers had been said.
The man continued discussing his plans with his team and the room emptied of more and more of us. They handled us like weeds being torn from the ground.
Our eyes met and the invader gave a slow nod. His subordinate’s neck creaked to look at me. I had materialized and his attention was focused on me. My arms reacted and squeezed my son tighter. Our unbroken stares were the only fight I had in me.
A heavy hand planted onto my shoulder and squeezed. They were the talons of a hawk pressing into soft flesh, poised to hoist me up and away from my nest, from my young. I might be torn apart on the flight before dropped into a dark hole where I would be devoured, pecked at piece by piece, a stinking lump of carrion at the side of the road.
I quivered with the sobs vibrating my whole body. I pleaded silently to a masked and merciless face that had already decided. Whoever I was, whatever I’d done, didn’t matter at that moment. I was a stain to be rubbed out.
I closed my eyes and tilted my head back. One last prayer.
This piece is a true story, true enough for people all over the world who have sought moments of normalcy and even celebration in impossible circumstances. The idea came to me in a nightmare where the catchers finally caught me and I could not escape.
What’s next?
Artist collaboration
On publishing and submitting
Cover photo by Francesco Ungaro on Unsplash
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