The Barbarian Nurseries A Novel - By Hector Tobar Page 0,191
Union Station surveillance camera that showed Araceli, Brandon, and Keenan, seen from an eye high above the waiting area, the shiny floors reflecting the atrium daylight into an odd glare, so that Araceli and the boys stood in a menacing glow. The prosecutor had a sheriff’s detective state the video’s provenance and act as narrator. “The defendant enters the frame at one forty-five p.m…. You can see the victims walked in after her …”
“Were you able to determine if the two boys have any relatives in the vicinity of that station?”
“To the best of our knowledge, they have no relative within thirty miles of the station.”
The video representation of Araceli turned her head in several directions, mulling which direction to take as the boys studied the high ceilings above them. Video Araceli walked away and out of the range of the camera without saying anything to them and they followed after her. Araceli looked at that footage and saw what everyone else did: an impatient woman who never wanted to take care of children, who rushed out of the home without leaving a note because she was too anxious to be rid of them. The video doomed her. Am I really that selfish and mean? But how had she allowed herself to be placed in such a predicament in the first place? You are going the wrong way, woman! Go back to the house and wait! Why was she always at the mercy of other people? Seeing this stupid woman projected on the screen, Araceli felt an impotent rage that made her want to stand up and shout in Spanglish, I am a pendeja! Looking for the grandfather? ¡Pendeja! But she said nothing, and slumped back in her chair suddenly and folded her arms, and shook her head with silent violence. “What’s wrong?” Ruthy Bacalan asked. They are going to put that woman in the video back in jail and then send her home with plastic ties around her wrists because she is a callous simpleton. Araceli fought to hold back the water welling behind her eyes; she couldn’t let these people see her cry. Now I understand why there are all these boxes of tissues in the courtroom. There was one box on the table before her, another perched on the railing where the witnesses stood, two more in the empty seats of the jury box. People come to cry here. To see their follies projected on a screen, and then to weep.
The prosecutor turned off the video, the deputy left the courtroom, and the next witness entered the courtroom.
Detective Blake marched down the gallery aisle like a middle-aged man in a hurry, rose to the stand, said “Yeah, I do” in response to the oath, and plopped down into the witness chair. He was soon asked to relate Brandon’s tale of his journey with Araceli.
“The neighborhood this boy described to you,” the prosecutor began. “Would you say it bore a general resemblance to the neighborhood near the intersection of Thirty-ninth and South Broadway?”
“Very general. Yes.”
“What did Brandon tell you about that place?”
“That it was dirty and grimy. That a lot of people came and went there. That he heard a man screaming. That he slept on the floor, next to a child who was a slave, or an orphan, or something like that.”
“On the floor, next to an orphan?”
“Yes.”
“Did he say anything about seeing people with scars on their faces?”
“Yes.”
When the prosecutor had finished, Ruthy Bacalan rose to begin her cross-examination. She was dressed in her own idiosyncratic version of summer courtroom dress: a white jacket with gold-braided epaulets on the shoulders, and wide white pants and white sandals, an outfit that suggested she had come to represent a defendant being brought on trial before the captain of a luxury cruise liner.
“Generally speaking, during the hour or so you spent with Brandon, did he seem frightened to you?” she asked the detective.
“No.”
“Did he appear intimidated by his experience with the defendant?”
“No. Probably the opposite.”
“The opposite?”
“Yeah, he seemed like he was having fun telling his story. It was all sort of, uh, fantastical to him. ‘Magical’ is the word, I guess.”
“And how much of that story were you able to verify?”
“Excuse me?”
“Did you make any effort to find out how much of Brandon’s story was true? For example, did you find anyone who looked like they had been through a war, like the, quote, ‘refugees’ Brandon mentioned?”
“You mean, did we find the war refugees Brandon told us about?”