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06-24-2007

In case anyone wonders, I'll be away from WB for 2-3 weeks while I handle some personal business away from home.

Take care, everyone,
keep writing!

-Jillian

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Short Story: Olla Podrida

Olla Podrida


El Paso, Texas
Present-day



Rain lashed the windows and Manuela went to close the blinds. Not that it helped much. The water pounded on the roof as though it wanted to beat the small house into submission. She went throughout the rooms and turned off the lights one by one. Then she returned to the kitchen. Her pot of olla podrida bubbled on the stove, filling the air with the scent of garlic and pepper.

Little Paulito sat at the table with his crayons and coloring book while she lifted the lid on the pot and dipped her wooden spoon into the stew. The brew smelled like it was ready. The beans were soft and the beef cooked through and through. She ladled the stew into two wooden bowls and sliced some pan dulce to go with Paulito's helping. The boy looked on, eyes round with hunger. She wished she could do better than 'garbage stew,' as her husband Gerardo once called it, but for now, dinner was what it was. Her grandson ate heartily, spoon in one hand and a chunk of sweetbread in the other. She unfolded her napkin and readied to take her first bite when the phone rang.

"A Dios mio," she muttered. "Who is calling at this hour?" Her knees twinged with pain as she stood and waddled towards the chirping phone. She hated the thing. In the outskirts of Teguchicalpa, Honduras, she and her family hadn't needed such contraptions as telephones. Manuela considered them nothing but a nuisance. If people wanted to talk to her, they should do her the courtesy of coming over for a visit in person.

"Hola," she said into the receiver, and waited.

"Mama, it's me, Julio. You need to take the boy and leave the house right now! The police will be coming soon to see you."

She paused for a moment and then sighed. "Why should they bother me? I have done nothing."

"They are looking for me and you know you don’t have your papers. Just do what I say and leave now. They may take Paulo and try to use him to get to me." Julio's breath came out in strained puffs of air, like he'd been running. Not that it was any surprise. Julio, her daughter's husband, was always running from something. She wondered what it was this time. Something having to do with drugs, most likely.

"I have nowhere to go. Paulito and I will stay here." Her brow furrowed. "You do what you want."

"Mama, you must go-"

She hung up the phone, unwilling to listen to him any longer. Behind her, Paulito had emptied his bowl and held it up for more. She smiled at him. Her beautiful grandson needed her. She would do anything for him; the only one of her fourteen grand-babies she'd ever held in her arms, and that only because her daughter Maria had gone into the arms of Christ much too early. She went to the window and lifted the blind. Outside, the street was empty and quiet. Asphalt glistened, connected to the thick, pregnant skies with silken strings of rain. No policia would come out on a night like this, would they? She let the blind go and went to refill Paulito's bowl.

Still, Julio’s warning refused to leave her mind. She would be a fool to ignore it.

"Eat quickly, child," she told Paulito in Spanish. Julio wanted her to speak nothing but English to the boy, but she ignored his wishes. Only respectable men got their way. Julio hadn't seen his own son in three months, so why should he worry about the boy now? While Paulito ate, Manuela went to the tiny bedroom and gathered Paulito's clothes and other belongings and packed them into a canvas zip-up bag. She hadn’t even packed her own things yet when the pounding came at the front door. She peeked through the curtains and saw three men in khaki uniforms on the front porch. A metal badge on one of them glinted in the sick orange light thrown down by the street lamp.

They were not la Policia. Julio had bent the truth, as was his way. It was la Migra. The American immigration troopers.

Paulito stared at her in honest fright when she flew into the kitchen and lifted him from the chair.

“Nana? Where are we going?”

She shushed him and carried him back into the bedroom, hoping all the while that la Migra hadn’t seen her shadow pass in front of the blinds. The knock came again, shaking the door in the frame. Her heart fluttered and a sharp pain spread throughout her chest. Her heart medication. She mustn’t forget it just because they were in a hurry. She fumbled in the dresser drawer, found her pills and swallowed one dry.

Outside, the three men shouted at her to open the door. Manuela told the boy to keep still, then she knelt to push the braided rug away from the trap door. She lifted the door open and an immediate smell of wet, moldy earth wafted upward. The basement was her husband’s last effort at self-preservation before he left to go to work one morning and never returned. He’d done a terrible job of it, though. The rain leaked in from time to time, and the way it fell tonight, there could be at least a foot of water down there.

She turned, picked up Paulito and his bag and carried him down the rickety wooden steps. With her free hand, she closed the door above her and slid the bolt. La Migra would find the door easily enough, but it would take them some time to break in.

In the darkness, Paulito began to cry. Her feet sank into cold water. The pain in her chest crept upward, into her neck. She swallowed and drew a sharp breath, hugged the boy close to her and trudged through the water to the other side of the room. She groped and found another door. She prayed that the padlock wasn’t still in place. Paulito squirmed as she felt around for the latch, found it and yanked it open. The door hinges protested with a loud screech. Though it was so dark she could barely see, she knew an earthen tunnel yawned before her, also shin-deep in flood water. From above came the thudding of heavy footsteps. La Migra were already inside, searching.

She would have to hurry if she wanted to save the boy. Paulito buried his face in her hair and moaned in terror. She drew the door closed behind her and began to walk. To quiet the boy, she sang to him, her voice calm and soft.

#

The tunnel led to the sewers beneath the city, just as Gerardo had told her it would. Paulito clung to her as she walked to the metal grate, lifted it and stepped through. The concrete-lined tube stank of rotten food and feces, but at least in here she could see. A few light bulbs studded the rounded ceiling, some lit, some not. The feeble pools of yellow light revealed brown water with all sorts of refuse she didn’t even want to think about. It came to her then that she had left her pot of olla podrida on the stove over a low flame. La Migra had arrived before she could get a decent bite of it. Now, here she and Paulito were, slogging their way through the frigid, rank olla podrida of Greater El Paso. Gerardo had told her the tunnel would lead to the sewer, but he hadn’t told her where that, in turn, would lead her.

Perhaps, she wondered, the sewer wouldn’t lead her anywhere, except to her death or capture. Somewhere behind her, La Migra must have discovered the tunnel by now.

#

Hours passed. Or, so it seemed.

Manuela could no longer feel her feet, which was a blessing of sorts. Her nose had grown used to the stench. Paulito had fallen asleep, but he held on to her without ever once loosening his grip around her shoulders and neck. Her chest pain was now a steady, throbbing burn. But, like the shit-smell, she became inured to it. All this for wee Paulito.

After a while she began to see metal ladders on the walls. They were spaced several dozen feet apart on the right side of the tunnel, bolted to the curving walls. Every time she stopped at the base of one, she looked up and saw the underside of a steel cover. The covers were far too heavy to lift, so she shrugged the boy higher on her shoulders and moved on. Sooner or later she would find one that someone carelessly left open. At least she hoped so.

Her legs grew tired.

Each step required a monumental effort of lifting one foot and then another. The tunnel went on and on without end. While Paulito slept, Manuela felt the first of many hot tears slide down her face. Then, tunnels changed.
The olla podrida had begun flowing faster and higher, swirling around her thighs. She felt a gradual slope beneath her feet. Hope blossomed and she pushed herself on until the tunnel came to an abrupt end. Or, she decided, a middle.

She hoisted the boy higher and stepped into a cathedral-like central room. Here, the tunnels met. The ceilings were high, soaring upward into darkness. All around her were ladders and several mouths to yet more tunnels. The olla podrida rotated here in a weak vortex before being sluiced off into a drain somewhere in the center of the room beneath the surface. One light bulb guttered candle-like beside one of the ladders on the other side of the room. She genuflected out of habit, seeing the lighted ladder as a sign. She waded toward it, sticking close to the walls so she and the boy would not to be swept off their feet and be sucked down into Satan’s toilet. When she reached the base of the ladder, she looked up. This time, she saw light.

The light came form yet another bulb and it was high up, maybe fifty feet or so. Her way out was there before her. All she needed to do was climb. The flickering bulb showed her a metal door, too, not a steel cover. She opened her mouth a released a wail of relief. Paulito stirred and lifted his head.

“Nana? Where are we?”

“You need to hold on to me tightly now, Grandson,” she said. “Do not let go. We are leaving this bad place.” She studied the ladder. It was rusty and it shook when she set a foot on the bottom rung. “Dios,” she whispered, “vaya conmigo.”

Be with me, God. Please. Give me the strength.

And with Paulito and his bag secured on her back as best she could, Manuela kicked off her sodden shoes and began the climb.

#

The ascent was far worse than the sickening river of olla podrida flowing through the tunnels below. Her toes, thankfully, were numb, but her fingers burned with an insidious cold fire. The urge to let go and let herself fall danced around in the back of her mind. Had Paulito not been her burden, she surely would have ended her agony right here.

Her arms and legs weakened steadily with each rung. Every few seconds she had to pause and attempt to wipe th moisture from each of her hands onto her blouse, which was dry miraculously enough.

Step...lift...step...lift. The silly mantra kept her focused. After a while, she glanced up and saw the metal door and it was closer. Only a few feet away now. Step...lift...breathe...step... lift. Ah, Dios mio. Why did her chest hurt so badly?

At last, she reached the final rung. Just above it was a concrete lip and a few steel hand-holds embedded in the wall. Beyond that, a narrow walkway and the door itself.

“Paulito, climb off of me and get onto the ledge, there,” she said. Her voice came out in a ragged whisper, but the boy heard her plainly enough. He did as instructed. When his weight left her, she heaved a sigh and pulled herself up and onto the lip of concrete. Once safely on it, she sat down hard. The boy settled in beside her.

“What is that door for?” Paulito said, looking behind him.

“It’s the way out. Now, do Nana a favor and try to open it, will you?”

The boy nodded and got to his feet. She couldn’t bear to look as he reached for the door’s bar grip and pushed. If it didn’t open, she didn’t know what she would do. The sounds of metal clanking and Paulito’s labored breathing echoed in her ears.

No. Please, let it open.

She finally turned to look at her grandson and watched his useless struggle. He let go of the bar and came back to sit down beside her. “It won’t open. It’s stuck. Can you open it, Nana?”

“I would, Grandson, but I have no more strength left. Just let us sit here for a while so I may gather my breath and then I’ll try it.”

The door had to be locked from the other side. She wanted to cry but held her tears for the boy’s sake.

“I’m hungry and it’s scary in here,” he said in English, his eyes downcast. “I wanna watch cartoons now.”

She hugged him close to her and chewed on the insides of her cheeks. “How about I tell you a story instead?”

He nodded without looking at her. She drew in a breath, not liking the rattling noise her lungs made and began to tell Paulito of his mother, when she was a little girl in Teguchicalpa. She told him of the day Maria first learned to bake bread in the brick oven, and how wonderful the scent of it was. She told him of Teguchicalpa and how the children there didn’t have cartoons and how they made their own toys out of whatever they could find. As she talked, more tears came and her voice hitched. Why had she left Honduras to come to this place?

She kept telling him stories, talking on and on despite the sudden stab of pain deep beneath her left breast. The boy lay in her lap now, sound asleep, but still she went on. Eventually, the pain ceased and her eyes closed. The last sounds Manuela heard were faint. There was the gentle chuff of Paulito’s snoring and the creak of the metal door behind her coming open. And there were voices, several of them, tinged with concern. They spoke in English, but at least now, Paulito was safe.

*******Copyright 2007 Jillian Clayton**********