Of Women and Salt, Gabriela Garcia [100 best novels of all time .txt] 📗

The girls ran to Daniel’s side when they woke, hugged him tight, chattered away.

“Today we’ll celebrate,” Dolores said to them. “You can stay home from school, Carmen.”

“Why?” Carmen looked up from her father’s shoulder, where she’d burrowed her head.

“Things are going to be better now.”

“What things?”

“All things, darling.”

She needed a plan. The coffee bubbled, filled the kitchen with the heavy, burnt scent of dark roast. It rose like chimney smoke through the barrel, hot and fragrant. She poured three little cups. She needed Carmen bright awake in case they had to run at any minute. Dolores shaky, sticky, in the kitchen, bending over the stove. A shiver up her spine.

Little cups before Daniel and Carmen. She drank her own in a sip.

“Me too?” Carmen asked.

“Yes, cariño. Celebrate with a little cafecito.”

She knew Daniel would never let her leave. He’d hunt her down; he’d find her. He’d said as much. She was most afraid for Carmen and Elena. If she left them. If she took them.

“What are you making?” Daniel slipped a cigar from the pocket of his shirt and lit it over the stove fire.

Dolores pushed open a window. “Tostadas. What else could I afford?” He ignored her remark. She cut slices of bread as Carmen peppered Daniel with questions.

“Why was work so many days?

“Where do you sleep or do you just work for days and days?

“How come you didn’t even come home for lunch?

“What did you eat?”

“Café café café,” Elena said, toddling on the ground.

“Both of you—quiet.” Dolores slathered butter on a piece of bread. Outside, the chickens, causing commotion.

She would wait until night. Whatever she was going to do, she would have to do it at night. She toasted the bread on a pan, flattened it with a foil-wrapped brick, and pictured her own head crushed beneath that weight.

“I’m going out to look for a paper,” Daniel said.

“But your bread?”

“When I get back, you can make me another one. I can’t sit around. I’m too excited.”

Relief. A few minutes to herself. Maybe even an hour if he stopped along the way to chat up neighbors and townspeople. The sun was out. The town would be buzzing.

As it was, Daniel took even longer. She paced and then cleaned to ward off her anxiety and then paced some more and then cleaned some more. She wondered what Daniel had felt when he killed a man for the first time and if it’d happened from afar, with a gun, or if he’d faced the man whose life he took, if Daniel had looked him in the eyes. And after? Did Daniel feel powerful? He’d decided a fate. That’s all it was, killing a man, squeezing the time line a little. Who knew if that man Daniel had killed would have died anyway, struck by a car in a year or contracting an awful disease. Perhaps Daniel had spared him a worse fate.

Daniel left for three hours, and the whole time Dolores was sure Carmen and Elena wondered why their mother kept saying she loved them, why their mother wouldn’t stop hugging them.

Dolores said they should celebrate. Daniel even gave her cash who knows from where to buy a whole pig from a neighbor, and they slaughtered it, made a hole in the ground, and left it to roast all day. The pig had screamed as Daniel slit its throat, and all Dolores could think was Marilyn Monroe Marilyn Monroe.

She got him drunk. Glass of rum after glass of rum. Some with Coca-Cola, bright and popping in the glass. Some pure, dark rum with an ice cube, frothy fire down the throat. She feared he’d grow angry as he drank more; it happened enough. But he was too elated from the victory that few even knew about yet, unless they were also glued to the radio. Jolly and red faced into the evening, swinging the girls in circles and promising them dolls and gifts.

Carmen and Elena delighted as well. Their mother doting on them, unable to let go; their father merry and generous, offering the world.

“Daddy, I love you!” Carmen shouted as Daniel hoisted her in the air and Beny Moré’s trombone shrieked.

“I love you, mi linda!” Daniel spun her and spun her.

Dolores made her move after she put the girls to bed. They’d complained, of course, asked to keep the party going. Carmen most of all. But Dolores told the girls they’d get their promised dollhouse if only they said their prayers and shut their eyes. Then Dolores dressed in her most formfitting wiggle dress and dabbed perfume on her neck. She painted her lips red.

Daniel at the table with another glass of Cuba Libre before him, already piss-drunk, slurring the words to “Dolor y Perdón” with his head down. Yo no supe comprender tu cariño, / vida mía, cariñito.

Fulgencio Batista was in the Dominican Republic, where he had fled in a plane in the night with over $700 million in cash and fine art. As Dolores waltzed toward Daniel, President Rafael Trujillo was welcoming the fellow dictator into his palace, probably consoling him. Perhaps they, too, shared a bottle of rum. And Dolores was guiding Daniel by the hand and he was wobbling and slurring. She was laying him on the couch.

“You look so good, mami,” he slurred. Daniel held an arm toward Dolores and brought her down on top of him. He kissed her neck. She sighed and moaned. She had planned to do whatever it took, to bear it, to hope Daniel had sex with her and then immediately fell asleep, as he so often did. But she didn’t have to go that far. He kissed her neck, and then turned his head, eyes fluttering, and drifted into easy, drunken sleep. He started to snore.

Dolores waited a few minutes to be sure he wasn’t going to wake. Then she eased away from Daniel’s body and gently kicked off her high heels. Barefoot, she tiptoed out the back door and shut