Monkey Boy by Francisco Goldman (free ebook reader for pc txt) 📗

Dedham. Memo knows how your father treated Yoli; he always knew. Because of that he couldn’t stand to be with Bert.

I didn’t notice that conversation between Aunt Milly and my mother at the funeral. As a boy, I wasn’t aware of Tío Memo’s hostility toward my father. I was deaf to the icy notes in the forced bonhomie with which Tío Memo spoke to his brother-in-law.

My mother sobbing in bed with her nightgown ripped off her shoulder, her skin scratched and bruised, scratch marks that bled, Feli seems to think I saw that too. Bloody claw marks on my mother’s soft bare shoulder, how could I not remember? My father, Feli tells me, sat on the edge of the bed, face in his hands, then got up shouting at my mother and went into the bathroom, slamming the door. That didn’t happen just once, Frankie, she says. Maybe I saw it or maybe hearing the commotion, I ran to the bedroom door, but if I did, I don’t remember. When Mr. Goldberg tried to make love to Doña Yoli, says Feli, he couldn’t. Then he would be enraged and that’s when he would hit her. Mr. Goldberg was impotent, she says. My mother would tell Feli to take me downstairs. Your mother, she told me everything, says Feli. Because in those days, Frankie, she had no one else.

Her uncle, by whom she meant Rodolfo Sprenger Balbuena, the Guatemalan army colonel who eventually rose to general, who she always says was like a father to her, told Feli that she should leave our house. She had no obligation to us or to anyone to endure such ugliness and sadness, her powerful military relative said. She was young and had to look for her own happiness. But I couldn’t leave your mother alone with your father, she says. Or abandon you and Lexi. I couldn’t, Frankie.

Feli tells me that Tía Meche used to phone from Guatemala to thank her for taking care of my mother and of me and Lexi. Tía Meche was right to thank Feli, I think. Because of Feli I was happy, shut away, as much as was possible, in our own world in the basement, out playing Down Back, walking with her to the town square to buy penny candy, sometimes even going into Boston with her on her day off to see a matinee movie and eat pizza in the North End.

I used to find your mother shaking, Frankie, shaking like this. And Feli puts out her hands and makes them shake. He was brutal with her, Mr. Goldberg was, says Feli. Oh, she suffered, Frankie. Your mother suffered and she couldn’t talk to her family. Your abuelita was such a strict Catholic. You could never divorce. You were supposed to accept your fate. Doña Yoli was always telling her mother that everything was fine so she wouldn’t worry. I felt like I was responsible for your mother, says Feli. I wasn’t afraid of your father. God gave me strength to stand up to him. I would get between them and say, I’m going to tell them in Guatemala what’s happening, and that would scare Mr. Goldberg. That’s when he’d turn and go away. Doña Yoli used to call me her salvation. Cony, tu eres mi salvación, she’d say. Her studies and then her teaching, that saved her, too, says Feli. That was your mother’s escape. Her Latin American Society too.

I do remember being left at home with Feli almost every day because my mother would drive off in her car, whatever car it was that came before her Rambler. Some adults remember the terrible things they saw as small children and can be powerful witnesses at war atrocity trials; others forget or block it all out. But war atrocities, come on, that’s a bit much. Lexi’s memories of incidents like that one when I was “almost murdered” are much better than mine; it seems she even remembers Bert’s beating me more vividly than I do. Yet my memories are detailed, even pristine, of so many other long-ago things. It sure doesn’t seem like Feli is making all this up.

The Jaguar’s door shuts with a neat click, and I slouch down into the seat’s plush red leather, and the engine ignites with a smooth purr. This is class, I say, as if it’s what you’re required to say when getting a ride in an old Jaguar. Feli drives me to the Newton Highlands T stop. So Mamita used to tell Feli: Cony, tu eres mi salvación. But she was my salvation too. Feli has always loved to talk and gossip about my mother, about our whole family, but she’s never before told me what she did today about my parents, about my mother wanting to leave again, about my father becoming violent with her, about his problemita. Why now? Maybe she’s wanted to tell me for years and today sensed or decided it was time. Sometimes people like to hear family horror stories from their own distant past because they can seem to excuse and explain so much. But I would never have wished to be told what Feli just told me about my father. I concentrate on this new knowledge of my mother as a woman who suffered that violence, a young woman alone in this country, trapped with him, and a kind of panic fills me. I practically need to restrain myself from throwing my arms around Feli like a frightened boy. We’re parked by the T stop now, near where the sidewalk leads down to the tracks. I have my hand on the door handle, and I’m about to say goodbye and get out, but instead I turn to Feli and ask, Why did you decide to tell me what you did about my parents today, Feli? Why now and not years ago?

Feli, both her hands high on the wooden rim of the wheel, looks a little frightened. Maybe I seem too agitated. I