The Barbarian Nurseries A Novel - By Hector Tobar Page 0,139
set free not by monetary payment, but rather with truth and laughter, and this realization made her chuckle again, all by herself on the street corner, and reminded her of that folk saying: La que sola ríe, en sus maldades piensa. She who laughs alone is remembering her sins. “That’s dumb: I haven’t committed any maldades. I’m just a poor mexicana trying to find her way.” The detective had asked her, simply, for a phone number at which she might be reached—“in case we need some help with the investigation”—and had then handed her the plastic bag. She advanced one block down the street before she realized she didn’t know where to go next. Returning to the home of the Torres-Thompsons was out of the question. No los quiero ver. She did have the money in the plastic bag, and briefly considered buying a bus ticket to the border: she had enough for a ticket to Tijuana, and for a torta and taco once she got there, but not enough to go any farther. And getting her money out of the bank was impossible without returning to Paseo Linda Bonita. So she called Marisela, with a quarter dropped into the last pay phone left in the center of Aliso Viejo, and asked her friend for posada for a night.
“You were on TV,” Marisela said. “You’re still on TV.”
“Estoy cansada. I think I’ll sleep for two days.”
“Did they hurt you? When I saw them grabbing you on the news, when you were running, I told Mr. Covarrubias, ‘Oh, my God. They’re going to break her arm!’ And then we saw you walk out and you looked fine.”
“They were polite. Once they realized I am not a secuestradora … So can I stay with you?”
“Let me ask my Mr. Covarrubias and see what he says.” Araceli heard the sounds of dishes being moved about the kitchen, and the formless chatter from the television, and then the very clear jingle of a beer commercial, followed by an exchange of voices.
“He says he’s going to drive out there to pick you up,” Marisela said with a cheer. “He’s really angry about what he saw on the TV. He says we have to help you. He’s running out the door right now. Expect him there in about twenty-five minutes.”
In her home on Calmada Avenue in South Whittier, Janet Bryson was angry too, though for entirely different reasons. She watched television dumbfounded as Araceli Ramirez walked to freedom, perched on the edge of her old but homey and recently reupholstered couch, in a big house with a faulty air conditioner. The heat and the events on the television put her in a foul mood. She’d begun to follow the drama of Brandon and Keenan before dawn, in the final hours of her hospital swing shift, catching the first images of the boys on the television in the empty reception area. Later, at home, she searched for details on the Internet and then sat down in her living room to watch the final, insulting denouement of the day’s events live on Channel 9.
“They’re letting her go? What is this?”
Janet Bryson did not personally know any of the protagonists, of course, although her home happened to be eight blocks from Scott Torres’s old home on Safari Drive. She was a nurse technician, and a divorced single mom raising a teenage boy in a two-story ranchette with a layout identical to the former Torres residence, a home plopped like his on the flat surface of forgotten cow pastures, alongside a concrete drainage channel called Coyote Creek. A small thread of brackish liquid ran in Coyote Creek during the summer, fed mostly by the runoff from storm drains that collected the water wasted by neighbors who babied their lawns, rose gardens, and low riders with twice and thrice-weekly deluges. That thread of brackish water attracted crows and cats and, occasionally, a flock of feral parrots with emerald and saffron plumage, and now, as Janet slumped back into the newly stiff cushions of her couch to fully absorb the release of yet another illegal alien criminal suspect into American freedom, one of the parrots gave a loud, humanoid squawk just beyond her backyard fence.
“Oh, shut up, you stupid bird!”
Janet Bryson felt roughly the same about Araceli Ramirez, the nanny kidnapper, and all the other Mexicans invading her space, as she did about the untamed parrots. Like the Spanish-speaking families in her subdivision, the parrots were intruders from the south. They were