“Mayra honey,” Sonia said, “why don’t we go upstairs and open it.”
It was too late. It would be opened right there, on the sidewalk between the step and the street. She was already tearing into the paper, using her little hands and her teeth and all of her urgent enthusiasm.
Sonia stood from the step and gave me a kiss, slipping her right arm under my jacket and around my back. She whispered a question in my ear, why I was late, and I mumbled a response about telling her later. She said she had something to tell me too, then she bit my earlobe softly.
The package, once opened, left Mayra a bit befuddled. It was a simple gift really, with two lipsticks, a small hairbrush, and some powders and blushes that I thought might be fun for my little girl to play with. She was stuck on the box. “Is she old enough for this?” I asked.
Sonia frowned and knelt down to take a closer look.
“What is it?” Mayra asked.
“It’ll make you even more beautiful than you already are,” I said.
“Lipstick!” Mayra exclaimed. She had pried it free, twisted the bottom until it was fully extended, standing in a shiny red salute.
“You couldn’t have gotten her a book?” Sonia asked.
“I want her to like me.”
She smirked. “What do you say, Mayra, baby?”
“Thank you, Papi,” my daughter purred, and all the day’s small troubles and all the grander ones seemed distant and unimportant.
“Next year Daddy’s going to get you a book,” I said.
Mayra stuck her tongue out. I scooped her into my arms.
There was a movie to see and ice cream to have and balloons and conversation and strolling and hugs. For the first time in Mayra’s short life, I let Sonia pay. When I pulled out the fifteen soles I had, she wouldn’t take them. We took a cab to Miraflores and walked along the boardwalk, high above the sea. The summer sun slipped toward dusk in lurid red streaks. We stopped at the park to watch the hang gliders, dozens of them floating high above the city’s coastline.
Mayra had never seen them before. She asked if they were giant birds.
I said they were, but Sonia shook her head. Poor Mayra looked at the both of us, bewildered.
“What are they then, babe?” I asked Sonia.
“Not giant birds,” she said, backtracking. “No, no. Enormous birds.”
“Is that bigger than giant?” Mayra asked.
I reassured her it was, and she seemed pleased.
I put Mayra on my shoulders so she could have a better look. She squinted against the dying sun, pointing at them as they swept in slow motion, left and right above the horizon. I took Sonia’s hand in mine, and she gave it to me easily. Enough time has passed, I thought. Tonight she might finally say yes.
I have proposed in her parents’ home. In a fine restaurant, after wine and dinner served by waiters with European accents. At the zoo, two years ago, with balloons and a trumpet I’d borrowed from a friend. And on Mayra’s fourth birthday, in the naked intimacy of Sonia’s bedroom. Last year, like every year, she told me she loved me but wasn’t sure that was enough. I told her it was enough for me, that I loved her. It’s not that I haven’t thought of giving up; it’s that I don’t know how.
A few months after Mayra was born, Sonia traveled to the States to learn English. Her family wanted to get her away from me, from the stress. For half a year I visited my daughter three times a week, suffered through awkward silences with the Sepulvedas, who didn’t know whether to hate me or applaud my persistence. I sat on their sofa, under the dour gaze of Mrs. Sepulveda, rocking little Mayra in my arms. At night I created scenarios that ranged from the tragic to the blessed: Sonia in the States, meeting a man who swept her off her feet. A tall, white man. A rich man. A man more handsome and more intelligent than myself. Kinder certainly. A better father. These were my nightmares when I thought I had lost her. But I let myself dream as welclass="underline" Sonia returning, chastened by what she had seen there, overwhelmed by the depravity her father had described, forgiving, wanting a fresh start.
Back when I worked for my uncle, we made a delivery once in San Juan de Lurigancho. I left the back door of the van unlocked. We were only inside a few minutes, but when we came out, it was open, and a few scraggly dressed kids were running off with boxes of foundation and perfumed lotions and soaps. We started to chase after them, when the owner said she recognized the thieves. Come back later, she said. I’ll straighten this out. We made a few more deliveries, came back a couple hours later, and followed the woman to the first child’s home. It was humble, the door made of wooden slats so poorly constructed you could stick your fingers through the yawning gaps. A small woman let us in, listened with her hands behind her back as we explained what had happened. The home smelled of boiled vegetables and mud. The sheepish child appeared when he was called, twelve at most and barefoot. My uncle spoke. The boy curled his toes into the dirt floor and rocked back on his heels. His mother apologized profusely. Then the boy left and reappeared with a box of fingernail polishes. My uncle noted there was one missing.
“I used it,” his mother said. “It was a gift.” She held her colored nails out for us to see.
Her nails were painted a deep, earthy red. “It looks very nice,” I told her.
I remember telling Sonia this story, years ago. It was a late morning in bed and she sat on top of me, drawing her name on my chest and stomach with a blue ballpoint pen. When she pressed hard into my skin, it tickled.
When I got to this point in the story, she looked up. “What did you do?” she asked. Her hair fell in my face.
The truth is my uncle took the nail polish. He resealed it and we sold it. He apologized to the woman and he felt terrible, but he did it. Money was tight.
“We let her keep it,” I said. I’m not sure why I lied. It just seemed so terrible.
Sonia went back to her work, her tongue poking out, applying another baroque S to my body. I tried to peek over my chin to see.
“What?” I asked.
“I mean, weren’t you broke? Wasn’t your family broke?”
“You would have taken it from her?”
“It wasn’t nail polish she needed.”
“It was a start!”
“Oh, Miguel,” Sonia said and kissed my stomach. “First take care of your own, babe. That’s what I’ve always been told.”
The woman didn’t protest. She thanked us politely for not going to the police. I exchanged glances with the boy, knowing he wouldn’t be punished. He knew it too. He hadn’t done anything wrong. He was sure of it.
I lay there, felt the nib of the ballpoint pen tracing letters on my skin. I closed my eyes and Sonia laughed exquisitely. “I’m done,” she announced. “You can look now.”
When I opened my eyes, she pulled off her shirt in one quick move. It amazed me. Her breasts were small and round. She handed me the pen. “Now it’s your turn,” she said, smiling. She closed her eyes and waited. “Hurry!”
We were in the cab riding home when she told me Mayra had received another gift for her birthday, that it had come in the mail and that it was postmarked from the United States. There was a heaviness in her voice that surprised me.
“Really?” I asked. It was late and I felt suddenly tired. “From your uncle?”
She shook her head. From an American. A travel writer who had written a review. He had stayed awhile in Lima. Apparently I’d met him. Didn’t I remember? Sure. The tall man, the white man, the rich man of my nightmares.
“I didn’t realize you were staying in touch,” I said. “That’s nice.”
The city was dark, our daughter asleep between the two of us.