The House of the Scorpion

  María murmured something. Her face was pressed against his shirt, so it was hard to tell what she was saying.

  “La Llorona drowned her children because she was angry at her boyfriend. And then she was sorry and drowned herself,” Matt said. “She went to heaven, and Saint Peter shouted, ‘You bad woman! You can’t come in here without your kids.’ She ran down to hell, but the Devil slammed the door in her face. Now she has to walk around all night, never sitting down, never sleeping. She cries, ‘Ooooo . . . Ooooo. Where are my babies?’ You can hear her when the wind blows. She comes to the window. ‘Ooooo . . . Ooooo. Where are my babies?’ She scratches the glass with her long fingernails—”

  “Stop it!” shrieked María. “I told you to stop it! Don’t you ever listen?”

  Matt halted. What could possibly be wrong with this story? He was telling it exactly the way Celia had.

  “There’s no such thing as La Llorona! You made her up!”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Well, if she’s real, I don’t want to know!”

  Matt reached out and touched María’s face. “You’re crying!”

  “I am not, you eejit! I just hate nasty stories!”

  Matt was horrified. He’d never meant to scare María that much. “I’m sorry.”

  “You should be,” María muttered, sniffling.

  “Nothing can get through the window bars,” Matt said. “And there’s tons of people in the house.”

  “There’s nobody in the halls,” María said. “If I go outside, the monsters’ll get me.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “Oh, great! Maybe not! When Emilia finds out I’m not in bed, I’ll be in really big trouble. She’ll tell Dada, and he’ll make me do the times tables for hours, and it’s all your fault!”

  Matt didn’t know what to say.

  “I’ll have to stay here till morning,” María concluded. “But I’ll still get into really big trouble. At least the chupacabras won’t eat me. Move over.”

  Matt tried to make room. The bed was very narrow, and it hurt to move even a few inches. His hands and feet throbbed as he clung to the far edge.

  “You really are a hog,” complained María. “Got any covers?”

  “No,” said Matt.

  “Wait a minute.” María jumped off the bed and gathered up the newspapers Rosa had spread out on the floor.

  “We don’t need covers,” Matt objected as she began arranging them on the bed.

  “They make me feel safer.” María crawled under the papers. “This isn’t too bad. I sleep with my dog all the time—are you sure you don’t bite?”

  “Of course not,” said Matt.

  “Well, that’s all right,” she said, snuggling closer to him. Matt’s mind churned over the punishment María would endure because she had brought him food. He didn’t know what the times tables were, but they were probably something awful.

  So much had happened in such a short time, and Matt couldn’t understand half of it. Why had he been thrown out on the lawn when everyone had been so eager to help him at first? Why had the fierce man called him a “little beast”? And why had Emilia told María he was a “bad animal”?

  It had something to do with being a clone and also, perhaps, with the writing on his foot. Matt had once asked Celia about the words on his foot, and she said it was something they put on babies to keep them from getting lost. He’d assumed everyone was tattooed. From Steven’s reaction, it seemed everyone wasn’t.

  María wriggled and sighed and flung her arms out in her sleep. The newspapers quickly fell to the floor. Matt had to scoot to the extreme edge of the bed to keep from being kicked. At one point she seemed to have a nightmare. She called, “Mama . . . Mama . . . ” Matt tried to wake her, but she punched him.

  In the first blue light of dawn Matt forced himself to get up. He gasped at the pain in his feet. It was worse than last night.

  He dropped to his hands and knees and moved as noiselessly as possible, pulling the bucket along with him. When he got to the end of the bed where he thought María couldn’t see him, he tried to pee silently. María turned over. The noise made Matt jump. The bucket tipped over. He had to fetch newspapers to sop up the mess, and then he had to rest with his back against the wall because his hands and feet hurt so much.

  “Bad girl!” shouted Rosa, flinging open the door. Behind her was a covey of maids, all craning their necks to see what was inside. “We turned the house upside down looking for you,” Rosa yelled. “All the time you were hiding out with this filthy clone. Boy, are you in trouble! You’re going to be sent home at once.”

  María sat up, blinking at the sudden light from the doorway. Rosa whisked her off the bed and wrinkled her nose at Matt cowering against the wall. “So you aren’t housebroken, you little brute,” she snarled, kicking aside the sodden newspapers. “I honestly don’t know how Celia stood it all those years.”

  5

  PRISON

  That night, when Rosa brought him dinner, Matt asked her when María was coming back. “Never!” snarled the maid. “She and her sister have been sent home, and I say good riddance! Just because their father’s a senator, the Mendoza girls think they can turn their noses up at us. Pah! Senator Mendoza isn’t too proud to have his paw out when El Patrón hands around money.”

  Every day the doctor visited. Matt shrank from him, but the man didn’t seem to notice. He grasped Matt’s foot in a businesslike way, doused it with disinfectant, and checked the stitches. Once he gave Matt a shot of antibiotics because the wound looked puffy and the boy was running a fever. The doctor made no effort to start a conversation, and Matt was happy to leave things that way.

  The man talked to Rosa, however. They seemed to enjoy each other’s company. The doctor was tall and bony. His head was fringed with hair like the fluff on a duck’s bottom, and he sprayed saliva when he talked. Rosa was also tall and very strong, as Matt had found out when he tried to get around her. Her face was set in a permanent scowl, although she occasionally smiled when the doctor told one of his bad jokes. Matt found Rosa’s smile even more horrid than her scowl.

  “El Patrón hasn’t asked about the beast in years,” remarked the doctor.

  Matt understood that the beast was himself.

  “Probably forgotten it exists,” muttered Rosa. She was busy scrubbing out the corners of the room. She was on her hands and knees with a bucket of soapy water by her side.

  “I wish I could count on it,” the doctor said. “Sometimes El Patrón seems definitely senile. He won’t talk for days and stares out the window. Other times he’s as sharp as the old bandido he once was.”

  “He’s still a bandit,” said Rosa.

  “Don’t say that, not even to me. El Patrón’s rage is something you don’t want to see.”

  It seemed to Matt that both the maid and the doctor shivered slightly. He wondered why El Patrón was so frightening, since the man was said to be old and weak. Matt knew he was El Patrón’s clone, but he was unclear about the meaning of the word. Perhaps El Patrón had loaned him to Celia and would someday want him back.

  At the thought of Celia, Matt’s eyes filled with tears. He swallowed them back. He would not show weakness in front of his tormentors. He knew instinctively they would seize on it to hurt him even more.

  “You’re wearing perfume, Rosa,” the doctor said slyly.

  “Ha! You think I’d put on anything to please you, Willum?” The maid stood up and wiped her soapy hands on her apron.

  “I think you’re wearing it behind your ears.”

  “It’s the disinfectant I used to clean out the bath,” said Rosa. “To a doctor, it probably smells good.”

  “So it does, my thorny little Rosa.” Willum tried to grab her, but she wriggled out of his arms.

  “Stop it!” she cried, pushing him away roughly. In spite of her unfriendliness, the doctor seemed to like her. It made Matt uncomfortable. He felt the two were united against him.

  When the
y left the room, Rosa always locked the door. Matt tried the knob each time to see whether she had forgotten, but she never did. He pulled on the window bars. They were as firmly attached as ever. He sat disconsolately on the floor.

  If only he could see something interesting outside the window. A section of wall blocked off most of what lay beyond. Through a narrow gap he could see a green lawn and bright pink flowers, but only enough to make him want more. A thin ribbon of sky let in daylight and at night showed a few stars. Matt listened in vain for voices.

  Scar tissue had formed a knot on the bottom of his foot. He inspected the writing frequently—PROPERTY OF THE ALACRÁN ESTATE—but the scar had sliced through the tiny lettering. It was more difficult to make out the words.

  One day a frightening argument erupted between Rosa and the doctor. “El Patrón wants me by his side. I’ll come back once a month,” the man said.

  “It’s just an excuse to get away from me,” said Rosa.

  “I have to work, you stupid woman.”

  “Don’t you call me stupid!” the woman snarled. “I know a lying coyote when I see one.”

  “I don’t have a choice,” Willum said stiffly.

  “Then why not take me with you? I could be a housekeeper.”

  “El Patrón doesn’t need one.”

  “Oh, sure! How convenient! Let me tell you, it’s horrible working here,” she stormed. “The other servants laugh at me. ‘She takes care of the beast,’ they say. ‘She’s no better than a beast herself.’ They treat me like scum.”

  “You’re exaggerating.”

  “No, I’m not!” she cried. “Please take me with you, Willum. Please! I love you. I’ll do anything for you!”

  The doctor pried her arms away. “You’re hysterical. I’ll leave you some pills and see you in a month.”

  As soon as the door closed, Rosa hurled the bucket against the wall and cursed the doctor by all his ancestors. Her face turned chalky with rage, except for two splotches of red on her cheeks. Matt had never seen anyone so furious, and he found it terrifying.

  “You’re responsible for this!” Rosa shrieked. She pulled Matt up by his hair.

  “Ow! Ow!” yelled Matt.

  “Bleating won’t save you, you good-for-nothing animal. No one can hear you. This whole wing of the house is empty because you are in it! They don’t even put pigs down here!” Rosa thrust her face close to his. Her cheekbones stood out beneath her taut skin. Her eyes were wide, and Matt could see white all around the edges. She looked like a demon in one of the comic books Celia got from church.

  “I could kill you,” Rosa said quietly. “I could bury your body under the floor—and I might do it.” She let him slump to the floor again. He rubbed his head where she had pulled the hair. “Or I might not. You’ll never know until it’s too late. But one thing you’d better understand: I’m your master now, and if you make me angry—watch out!”

  She slammed the door as she left. Matt sat paralyzed for a few minutes. His heart pounded and his body was slimy with sweat. What did she mean? What else could she possibly do? After a while he stopped trembling and his breathing returned to normal. He tried the door, but not even rage had kept Rosa from locking it. He limped to the window and watched the bright strip of grass and flowers beyond the wall.

  That night two gardeners, who refused to look at Matt, removed his bed. Rosa watched with a look of bitter satisfaction. She took away the waste bucket Matt had been forced to use since he arrived.

  “You can go in the corner on the newspapers,” said Rosa. “That’s what dogs do.”

  Matt had to lie on the cement floor without any covers and, of course, without a pillow. He slept badly and his body ached like a tooth in the morning. When he had to use the newspapers in the corner, he felt dirty and ashamed. How long could this go on?

  Rosa merely plunked down the breakfast tray and left. She didn’t scold him. At first Matt was relieved, but after a while he began to feel bad. Even angry words were better than silence. At home he would have had the stuffed bear and dog and Pedro el Conejo for company. They didn’t talk, but he could hug them. Where were they now? Had Celia thrown them out because she knew he wasn’t coming back?

  Matt ate and cried at the same time. The tears ran down into his mouth and onto the dry toast Rosa had brought. He had toast and oatmeal, scrambled eggs with chorizo sausage, a plastic mug of orange juice, a strip of cold bacon. At least she wasn’t going to starve him.

  In the evening Rosa brought him a flavorless stew with cement-colored gravy. Matt was given no utensils and had to put his face in the bowl like a dog. With the stew came boiled squash, an apple, and a bottle of water. He ate because he was hungry. He hated the food because it reminded him of how wonderful Celia’s cooking had been.

  Days passed. Rosa never spoke to him. A shutter seemed to have come down over her face. She neither met Matt’s eyes nor responded when he asked her questions. Her silence made him frantic. He talked feverishly when she arrived, but he might have been a stuffed bear for all the notice she took of him.

  Meanwhile the smell in the room became appalling. Rosa cleaned the corner every day, but the stench clung to the cement. Matt got used to it. Rosa didn’t, and one day she exploded in another fit of rage.

  “Isn’t it enough that I have to wait on you?” she cried as he cowered next to the window. “I’d rather clean out a henhouse! At least they’re useful! What good are you?”

  Then an idea seemed to occur to her. She halted in midrant and looked at Matt in such a calculating way, he felt cold right down to his toes. What was she planning now?

  Back came the sullen gardeners. They built a low barrier across the door. Matt watched with interest. The barrier was as high as his waist—not tall enough to keep him in, but high enough to slow him down if he tried to escape. Rosa stood in the hallway, watching and criticizing. The gardeners said a few words Matt had never heard before, and Rosa turned dark with rage. But she didn’t reply.

  After the barrier was finished, Rosa lifted Matt outside and held him tightly. He looked around eagerly. The hallway was gray and empty, hardly more interesting than the room, but at least it was different.

  Then something happened that made Matt’s mouth fall open with surprise. The gardeners trundled down the hall with wheelbarrows piled high with sawdust. They dumped them, one after the other, into his room. Back and forth they went until the floor was full of sawdust heaped as high as the barrier in the doorway.

  Rosa suddenly swung him up by his arms and tossed him inside. He landed with a whump and sat up coughing.

  “That’s what dirty beasts get to live in,” she said, and slammed the door.

  Matt was so startled that he didn’t know what to think. The whole room was full of the gray-brown powder. It was soft. He could sleep on it like a bed. He waded through the sawdust trying to figure out why it had suddenly appeared in his world. At least it was something different.

  Matt tunneled. He heaped the shavings into hills. He threw it into the air to watch it patter down in a plume of dust. He amused himself this way for a long time, but gradually Matt ran out of things to do with sawdust.

  Rosa brought him food at sundown. She spoke not a single word. He ate slowly, watching the tiny yellow light that belonged to the Virgin and listening for far-off noises from the rest of the house.

  • • •

  “What in God’s green earth have you done?” cried the doctor when he saw Matt’s new environment.

  “It’s deep litter,” said Rosa.

  “Are you crazy?”

  “What do you care?”

  “Of course I care, Rosa,” the doctor said, trying to take her hand. She threw him off. “And I have to care about the health of this clone. Good God, do you know what would happen if he died?”

  “You’re only worried about what would happen to you. But don’t lose sleep over it, Willum. I grew up on a poultry farm, and deep litter is by far the best way to keep chickens healthy. Y
ou let the hens run around in it, and their filth settles to the bottom. It saves their feet from getting infected.”

  Willum laughed out loud. “You’re a very strange woman, Rosa, but I have to admit the beast’s in good condition. You know, I remember it talking when it lived in Celia’s house. Now it doesn’t say a thing.”

  “It’s a sullen, evil-tempered animal,” she said.

  The doctor sighed. “Clones go that way in the end. I did think this one was brighter than most.”

  Matt said nothing, hunched as he was in a corner as far from the pair as he could get. Long days of solitude in Celia’s house had taught him how to be quiet, and any attention from Willum or Rosa could result in pain.

  The days passed with agonizing slowness, followed by nights of misery. Matt could see little from the barred window. The pink flowers withered. The strip of sky was blue by day and black at night. He dreamed of the little house, of Celia, of a meadow so intensely green, it made him cry when he woke up.

  And gradually it came to him that Celia had forgotten him, that she was never going to rescue him from this prison. The idea was so painful, Matt thrust it from his mind. He refused to think about her, or when he did, he quickly thought of something else to drive her image from his mind. After a while he forgot what she looked like, except in dreams.

  But Matt still fought against the dullness that threatened to overwhelm him. He hid caches of food under the sawdust, not to eat later, but to attract bugs. The window wasn’t glassed, and so all sorts of small creatures could come in through the bars.

  First he attracted wasps to a chunk of apple. Then he lured a glorious, buzzing fly to a piece of spoiled meat. It sat on the meat, just as though it had been invited to dinner, and rubbed its hairy paws as it gloated over the meal. Afterward Matt discovered a writhing mass of worms living in the meat, and he watched them grow and eventually turn into buzzing flies themselves. He found this extremely interesting.

  Then, of course, there were the cockroaches. Small, brown ones struggled through the sawdust; and big, leathery bombers zoomed through the air and made Rosa scream.