MICHAEL BLUMLEIN

REVENGE

Michael Blumlein's last story to appear here was "Paul and Me" in our October
issue. The following tale is a very different proposition entirely, a strange
vision that draws upon Dr. Blumlein's work as a physician and puts a whole new
spin on the notion of vengeance. Michael Blumlein lives in San Francisco and is
currently working on his third novel (after X, Y and The Movement of Mountains.)

The burial took place at Our Lady of Tears in Colma, and Luis stayed until the
others had gone, until the diminutive grave was filled and tamped with dirt and
the gravediggers had shouldered their shovels and gone on to dig elsewhere. He
stayed until he was alone, and so it was that he alone saw the child ascend.
Barely a week old when she died, she looked slightly older now, a child of
perhaps three months of age, driven by hunger and other primal urges and forced
to look outside herself for help. Her eyes wandered this way and that,
unfocused, it seemed, uncensoring, until at last they fixed on her father. She
seemed to recognize him. Her face, which up to that moment had been a minor
chaos of muscle contraction and relaxation, became still.

Luis was mesmerized. Emotion left him. He waited for her to speak.

She told him she had died too soon. She blamed the doctor. "The blood is on his
hands, Father."

Luis believed the same. "What should I do?"

"Blood for blood," she said.

Luis nodded. This, too, he believed. "How?" he asked.

"Man to man. And do not wait too long. The sooner the better."

Luis, who had been floundering since her death, agreed. He was happy at last for
a way to channel his grief, and with more hope than he had felt in many days, he
rejoined his wife Rosa, who was being comforted by her family. At his arrival
she took his hand, which was cold, and by that, and the look on his face, she
knew immediately what was in his heart. Despairing, she beseeched him otherwise.
She begged him, she kissed his hand, she pressed his palm to her heart. But Luis
could not be moved. His hand stayed cold, and Rosa, foreseeing another tragedy,
broke down in fresh tears. Dutifully, Luis took her in his arms. One of her
sisters muttered a blessing. An aunt, wringing a tear-stained handkerchief,
invoked the love of God. Someone keened.

A week later, Rosa tried to reason with her husband. "I have spoken with a
lawyer," she told him after the boys were in bed. "He wants to meet with us."

"I have no interest in lawyers," replied Luis.

"He asks for no money. He just wants to talk."

"I have nothing to say."

"He wants to help us, Luis. He says there are grounds for a strong case."

"Grounds, he means, for him to get rich."

"He knows of another baby who died at this doctor's hands. We are not the first.
The lawyer says the doctor could be charged with negligence."

"Rosa," said Luis. "Look at us. Who are we to accuse a doctor?"

"Not us. The lawyer. He would do the talking. He's a smart man, Luis. He asked
questions that made me think. Questions, he said, they should have asked in the
hospital. I trust him."

Luis was silent. He had no time for lawyers, no trust in anyone but himself. Man
to man, she had said. An eye for an eye. It was his duty. On the other hand, he
did not want to cause his wife unnecessary grief.

"Then go to him," he said.

"Talk to this lawyer." "Yes?"

"By all means. Please. We must do what is right."

Luis by nature was not a violent man. Before the death of his daughter, he was
tender with his wife and gentle with his children. And even after, the violence
he planned did not spill beyond its target. He didn't yell at the kids or bark
at his wife, didn't lose his temper at work or with friends. If anything, he
seemed more docile than usual, except to Rosa, who knew him best. She worried,
but she also held out hope that with time his wounds would heal.

Luis owned a machete from his days as a field hand in Mexico. He had used it to
cut wood, clear brush and on occasion kill a chicken for dinner. It had an ebony
handle that he polished and a steel blade he kept sharp. Three weeks after his
daughter's death, he left in the morning as usual, but instead of going to work,
he drove to the medical building where Dr. Admonson had his obstetrics practice.
He wore a white button-down shirt, pressed pants and cowboy boots. His hair was
slicked down and parted, his mustache neatly trimmed. He carried the machete
loosely in his left hand, drawing curious glances from passersby, none of whom
took it upon himself to comment. At the medical building he rode the elevator to
the third floor, where he exited with two youngish women and an elderly man. Dr.
Admonson's office was at the end of the corridor on the left. The waiting room,
whose pastel walls were hung with watercolors of flowers and idyllic landscapes,
was full of women. Some were at term; some were just getting started; one or two
suckled newborns. Luis was the only man in the room. He was also the only person
carrying a machete.

He found an empty place on a couch next to a woman with a toddler in her lap and
took a seat. A hush fell in the room as everyone took note of him. He stared at
the floor. The toddler, drawn by the gleaming machete, squirmed away from her
mother and went for the blade. Luis quickly blocked her way and shook his finger
in remonstrance. An instant later, her mother snatched her back. A nurse in a
starched white lab coat opened an interior door and called the name of a
patient. The two of them disappeared inside, at which point Luis got up and
tapped on the receptionist's frosted window. It slid open.

"May I help you?"

"I want to see the doctor."

The receptionist was a woman in her sixties with silver blue hair and glasses
that magnified her eyes. She sat at a low desk from whose vantage point the
machete was hidden.

"Are you here with someone?" she asked.

He shook his head.

"Do you have an appointment?"

"He delivered my baby. I want to talk to him."

She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and peered at Luis. "Pertaining
to what?"

"My baby," he repeated. "Maria Elena Hermosilla Rodriguez."

Dr. Admonson had a number of patients named Rodriguez, but the receptionist kept
up with the mothers, not the babies. The name was not familiar to her. She
looked at her appointment book.

"I have an opening tomorrow at two."

Luis stared at her blankly. He was not prepared to negotiate.

"Two tomorrow?" she repeated.

"Today," he said.

"We're very busy today."

This met with no reply, and the receptionist, a retired retail clerk with
passing knowledge of the vagaries of human behavior, deemed it an inopportune
time to persevere. She rechecked her book.

"All right. I'll try to squeeze you in. You'll have to wait though."

Luis nodded and returned to his seat. Several more patients were called by the
nurse, while others entered the office to take their places. He was troubled. He
loved women of all ages and types, but most of all, he loved women who were
carrying new life. Pregnancy was a miracle and a sacrament to him, a time for
women to be honored, protected and loved especially hard. How could he kill the
doctor without creating panic among them? Even behind closed doors they would
hear him hacking away, they would smell the blood and suffer. Then the burden of
guilt would be on him.

The nurse appeared at her door and called his name. Slowly, he stood, machete in
hand, hacking edge out, tip to the floor. He was caught between duty and love,
between command and conscience. The nurse took a step toward him. He shrank
back. She took another. She said his name.

He fled.

Two days later, at Mass, Maria Elena visited him again. She was dressed in Mary
Janes and a pink crinoline skirt and wore a bow in her hair. She had some
questions, chiefly why her father had not done what he had promised.

"I cannot kill a man like an animal," Luis replied with downcast eyes. "That
would make me an animal too."

"An eye for an eye," said Maria Elena. "That was our agreement."

"I beg your forgiveness, little one, but I cannot."

She looked at him in such a way that he felt guilty of being less than a man.
Then her expression changed.

"Another way perhaps."

Luis brightened. "Yes. Anything but cold-blooded murder."

"The doctors are smart. The doctors and the lawyers. Smart and powerful. We must
be cunning. And patient. We must plan carefully."

This was a relief to Luis, who did not want a repeat of the debacle with the
machete. The thought of what he had nearly inflicted on those innocent women
filled him with shame.

"Do you have an idea?" he asked.

Maria Elena did, but she wasn't saying, not just yet. Instead, she gave him an
enigmatic smile, and for a moment he got a glimpse of her as a young woman. She
had an uncanny resemblance to someone he knew, and then it dawned on him that
that someone was himself, that his daughter now looked just as he might have
looked had he been born female. Long lashes, dark eyes, broad cheeks and lips.
Hair the color of coal. Skin like clay. It was unsettling. The girl had
something up her sleeve, and suddenly, he wasn't sure he wanted to know what.

He was sitting in a pew at the back of the church. From the pulpit the priest
gave the call to prayer. Reflexively, Luis fell to his knees and clasped his
hands together. Organ music filled the air, then the choir began to sing. Maria
Elena joined in, her voice soulful and sweet. It eased her father's heart to
hear her sing. Here especially, in the bosom of the Lord. What did he possibly
have to fear?

A week later, he shaved his mustache and made an appointment to see the doctor.
He gave his name as Luis Flores and neither the receptionist nor the nurse
recognized him. He was ushered uneventfully into the doctor's office, and
fifteen minutes later, Dr. Admonson swept in. He was a rangy man in his early
fifties with silver hair, liquid blue eyes and a disarming smile. He shook
Luis's hand, glanced at his chart, which was blank, then sat opposite him at his
desk.

"What can I do for you, Mr. Flores?"

Luis had rehearsed what to say, but the sight of the doctor unnerved him.
Suddenly, he was back at the hospital, with all the attendant feelings of
helplessness, panic and despair. Rosa's bag of waters had broken six weeks ahead
of time, in itself not a terrible tragedy, except that labor had not followed.
The baby could have been delivered by Caesarcan section, but Dr. Admonson had
said no, he wanted to give it as much time as possible to mature inside its
mother, whom he put in the hospital at bedrest and visited daily, monitoring her
for signs of infection or fetal distress. None occurred, and Rosa and Luis
waited, a week, then two, then three. Their anxiety mounted, and repeatedly,
they questioned the doctor about the wisdom of waiting so long. Repeatedly, he
reassured them. And finally labor arrived, and the child was breech, and instead
of doing a Caesarean section and bringing it out safely through Rosa's belly,
Dr. Admonson, who decried unnecessary surgery, elected a vaginal delivery,
during which the baby's head got stuck, so that forceps had to be used. Luis
remembered the clink of metal as the blades were engaged, the beads of sweat on
the doctor's forehead, his strained words behind the green surgical mask. And
then the tugging of his daughter through the birth canal, the gentle but
insistent pressure that had inadvertently broken her neck, so that instead of
kicking and wailing at delivery, she had come out limp and blue. And then the
bleeding on the brain that followed, and her being rushed to intensive care and
put on a respirator and other machines to keep her alive. And how after a week
-- when she couldn't survive on her own -- the machines were turned off, and she
was allowed to die. And Rosa's tears, and from her breasts the rivers of warm
milk. And his own tears, and his rage, and his vow of revenge.

Dr. Admonson bridged his fingers and awaited a reply to his question. It was
rare but not unheard of that a man came to him alone, a husband without a wife,
a beau without his belle, looking for advice. Often, like this man, they were
shy. Usually this meant that the reason for coming involved questions of
fertility. What they thought of as their manhood. He tried again.

"What brings you in today, Mr. Flores?"

"I need help," Luis muttered, which was manifestly true. It was also what Maria
Elena had told him to say.

"In what way?" Admonson asked.

Luis stared into his hands. The plan, such as it was, had been to ask for help
and then to receive it, in this way insinuating himself, however tangentially,
into the doctor's life, thus buying time to plot his revenge. The plan's
weakness was that, beyond this vague request for help, he had nothing more to
say.

"Mr. Flores?"

Luis attempted to elaborate. "I need a doctor."

"Of course. But as you must be aware, I am an obstetrician. On occasion, a
gynecologist. This means I take care of women. Is there a woman involved somehow
in this? A problem at home? Elsewhere? I have no moral agenda, Mr. Flores, and
frankly, there are few things that either surprise or offend me. But you have to
help out. You have to speak your mind."

Luis shrunk from the doctor's ease of delivery, his fluid command of the
situation. His purpose in coming, ill-defined to begin with, drained from him
completely. He felt as he had as an immigrant boy fresh from the farm, when the
English-speaking school teacher had upbraided him in a language he did not
understand. His mind went blank. He picked at a piece of skin in his palm and at
length muttered an apology and got up to go. He looked for his hat, but he had
left it at home. What could he have been thinking, he wondered, to have come
without his hat?

To his surprise, Maria Elena was not cross. She understood how lacking he was in
cunning, how disinclined to subterfuge and deception. Patiently, she worked with
him, built up his courage, rehearsed what to say. When in these practice
sessions he faltered, she reminded him of the doctor's offense, appealing to his
pride and sense of justice. For maximum effect, she sometimes appeared to him as
she had at the moment of her birth, head grotesquely ballooned with blood, body
limp as a rag. At other times she used a different tactic, coming to him as a
girl, or a young woman, splendid in appearance, vivacious and full of promise.
In this way she reminded him what had been cut short. The flower that had been
denied its bloom. She was diligent in fanning the flames of his deprivation and
discontent.

Two weeks later, wearing a bolo tie and white cowboy shirt with mother-of-pearl
snaps, Luis returned to the doctor. He apologized for his previous behavior. He
admitted it was not easy saying what he had come to say.

"And what is that?"

"I want you to be my doctor."

Admonson regarded him. "But why?"

Luis faltered.

Admonson became impatient. "I don't see how I can."

"By saying yes."

"And what will I do for you? What is it that you need?"

It was a difficult question, and Luis waited for Maria Elena's help, which she
had promised. Moments later, she materialized, wearing a peasant blouse
embroidered with finches and other colorful birds. Her hair was wound in a thick
braid and her face painted with makeup. She slid behind him on the chair and
eased him forward, until he was perched on the edge. She pushed his knees
together in a feminine way and folded his hands demurely in his lap. She bowed
his head ever so slightly, in deference to the doctor's position of superiority.
She added a faint sibilance to his voice.

"I put myself in your hands, Doctor."

It didn't take a genius to get the message. Nor, once it registered, was it hard
to understand why the man insisted on being so vague and indirect. Admonson
chided himself. He took pride in his ability to read people, and it irked him
when he couldn't. He had been misled by the man's attire, his cowboy boots and
starched shirts. By his calloused hands and yes, his Mexican background. The
only men posing as women he had ever seen, and these from a distance, were white
and anything but shy. He asked if Luis had spoken with anyone else regarding
this matter.

"No, Doctor."

"There are specialty clinics, you know. People with more experience than I have.
To tell the truth, I have none at all. You would be my first, my only, patient."

Luis inclined his head to signify he took this as a compliment.

"I really shouldn't," said Admonson, who was, despite himself, intrigued. "Apart
from a basic standard of care, it's a question of common sense. Simply put,
you'd be better served by an expert in the field."

"Please, Doctor."

Admonson resisted. "I could give you a referral."

Flatter him, whispered Maria Elena. Appeal to his skill. His reputation.

"You know how to treat women," said Luis. "You're the best there is. Everyone
says."

Admonson demurred.

Luis insisted. "I beg of you."

"I couldn't," said Admonson.

Tell him the truth, Maria Elena enjoined. That your fate is in his hands.

"My fate is in your hands," said Luis.

"I hardly believe that," replied Admonson, flattered nonetheless.

Luis inclined his head, gave a chesty sigh and slowly stood, striking a posture
midway between disappointment and defeat. "I am sorry then. I should not have
come. I should not have bothered you."

He turned to go and had his hand on the door, when Admonson called him back.

"If I consent to be your doctor in this, I'll need your full cooperation. You
understand that."

"Yes, Doctor."

"And you're willing to accept the risks. Psychological, emotional, physical.
Whatever. You'll sign a document to that effect."

"Yes."

Admonson weighed the situation one last time. Something didn't seem quite right,
but he was not one to back down from a challenge. He could always change his
mind later.

"All right. You're willing, I'm willing." He motioned to the chair Luis had
recently vacated. "Have a seat. We might as well get started."

Thereafter, his questions became blunt and sexually explicit. Luis's cheeks
burned with embarrassment, and he would have run from the room had Maria Elena
not been there to help out. She did the talking: it was shocking some of the
things she said. But she made no apology. It was necessary, she told her father.
If he wanted his revenge, this was the way.

And so it was that Luis Flores, formerly Rodriguez, began his daily doses of
estrogen, putting his trust in the hands of the man whose hands had caused his
greatest grief. Maria Elena appeared frequently the first few months of his
treatment to encourage him and insure he kept his appointments with Dr. Admonson
for his monthly injections. She was with him when, at the doctor's insistence,
he took the battery of psychological tests to determine his personality profile,
his mental stability and adjustment potential. She helped him brave the furtive
curiosity of the pharmacist who dispensed his medication, and she stayed with
him through the bouts of nausea caused by the pills. She did not explain the
specifics of her plan for revenge. She had, in fact, little at all to say about
the future. When Luis asked, she was either vague or else told him to be
patient, so that eventually he stopped asking. He gave himself up to the
treatments and did what he could to ingratiate himself to Admonson. As time
passed, Maria Elena came less often, until, at length, for reasons known only to
herself, she stopped her visits altogether.

Not long after, Rosa came across his bottle of pills. She had done the laundry
and was piling his underwear in the top drawer of the bureau when she felt
something in the toe of one of his socks. Normally, she would not have given in
to curiosity, but under the circumstances, which included an increasingly moody
and uncommunicative husband and a marriage on the verge of collapse, she felt
justified in investigating. The bottle, which had no label, was half full. The
pills were small, oval and white, with a line down the center and a number
embossed above the line. She recognized them as the same pills her mother had
been taking ever since her ovaries and womb had been removed. This puzzled and
alarmed her.

That night, after the children were in bed, she confronted her husband. She
accused him of having an extra-marital affair, which the pills were somehow
connected to. She lost her temper and screamed at him. This was most unusual.

Humiliated at being discovered and stung by her accusation of infidelity, Luis
was speechless. He had not considered the effect of his clandestine behavior on
his wife, had not thought of much else but his own wounds since his daughter's
death. He had never intended to hurt anyone but the doctor. Certainly not Rosa.
If anything, he had assumed that her suffering, like his, would be placated by
revenge. Once the shock of her accusation passed, he vehemently denied having an
affair. Lamely, he tried pretending the pills were for someone else. This only
made matters worse, so that finally, he told his wife the truth. The pills were
his. Then he told a lie.

"They're an aphrodisiac."

Rosa found this hard to believe.

"I want another child," he said.

She frowned. "You've hardly touched me since the tragedy. It's hard to make
babies without touching."

His mind had been full of other things, he wanted to say, but he was afraid to
tell her what. So he said nothing.

"You blame me for her death," said Rosa.

"No. I blame the doctor." He hesitated. "Forgive me, but sometimes I also blame
God."

Rosa was not surprised. "I worry for you, Luis. In church I pray for your
bitterness to end."

"I pray also," he said.

"For what do you pray?"

He looked down.

"I am your wife," Rosa reminded him. "Please, show me your face."

With an effort Luis lifted his head and met her eyes. They were dark and steady
and inviting of trust. The eyes of a woman, he thought, the eyes of a mother. He
wanted to be like her, worthy of trust. Like the women he had sat with in the
doctor's waiting room. New mothers, expectant mothers, women inextricably bound
to life.

"I pray for another chance," he said.

Rosa was touched, and her face softened. Then something came over her. Rarely
the initiator in matters of sex for fear of offending her husband's manhood, she
cast fear aside and reached out and touched Luis's cheek with her fingertips.
She stroked his skin, the wings of his nose, his lips. He responded by kissing
her palm, then embracing her. It was their first such contact in weeks, and the
joy of it kept them from letting go, until finally Luis freed an arm to turn off
the light. He was anxious to put his wife's mind at ease, eager to show his love
further. Fleetingly, it crossed his mind that, hope beyond hope, they might even
conceive a child.

High hope, deep despair. When the time came, he could not harden enough to enter
Rosa, much less plant the seed. They tried one thing after another, they sweated
and toiled, but success eluded them, and finally, they gave up. It was an
embarrassment to both of them, an admission of troubles deeper than they
imagined. It was a long time before they tried again.

In the months that followed other changes befell their relationship. As his
breasts swelled, Luis took to dressing and undressing in private, so that Rosa
would not see. Once or twice a week he took a pill he had gotten from the doctor
to get rid of the excess water and feeling of bloatedness the hormones caused.
On these days he was in and out of the bathroom so many times at work that his
boss started to complain. Fearful for his job, Luis took to taking the pills at
night, so that instead of missing time at work, he missed sleep. This made him
cantankerous and moody. He became subject to fits of temper, and once, to the
fear and amazement of his wife and children, he actually broke down in tears.
When he recounted this embarrassing episode to Admonson, who was, ironically,
the only person in this time of distress he felt capable of confiding in, the
doctor explained that it was probably the medicine at work. Women were often
temperamental when their hormones were surging.

"Am I a woman now?" asked Luis, displaying a naivete that worried Admonson.

"No," he replied. "You're a man on hormones. You're far from being a woman."

Luis wasn't so sure. If he were a man, he would have killed this socalled doctor
long ago.

"Am I a homosexual?" he asked.

Admonson regarded him. "What do you think you are?"

"I'm following orders."

"Not mine," Admonson was quick to reply.

Luis would not meet his eyes.

"I'm getting a funny feeling here," Admonson said. "Like you're not sure about
the way things are going. You're not happy. Maybe we should put things on hold
for right now."

"On hold?"

"Stop the medicine. Re-think what we're doing here."

"I'm doing what I'm supposed to," replied Luis.

"You said you're following orders. Whose?"

Luis scolded himself for saying too much. This doctor was cagey. He made you
think you could trust him, made you almost like him, then he turned the tables,
killing your baby, betraying your trust. A person had to be careful.

"My orders," said Luis. "I'm doing this for myself."

"That's the way it has to be. It has to come from you. From inside. It has to be
what you want. What you truly think you are."

Admonson was winging it. By rights he shouldn't have taken the case at all, but
curiosity had pushed his hand and now vanity kept him from letting go. He had
done some reading and talked to a few colleagues. As long as the treatment was
merely a matter of prescribing hormones, it was reversible and relatively safe.
He hadn't decided what he would do once they tackled the issue of surgery. As a
physician he was as well-acquainted as anyone with the subtleties of the female
form, but he had absolutely no experience at all in molding that form from one
of the opposite sex. The knowledge of what he would have to cut was actually
rather unsettling. He asked Luis if he had given any thought to the matter.

Crafty, thought Luis. Trying to scare me off. He sensed the doctor's
trepidation, which made him glad.

"Sometimes I feel like I'm burning up," he said, thinking the news of this might
worry the doctor further. "Like there's a fire in my skin. A fever."

"Hot flashes," said Admonson.

Luis frowned.

"The hormones," he explained. "I did warn you."

"I don't like it."

"What's to like? No one said it was easy becoming a woman. Maybe if you grew
your hair long. Learned to use a little makeup. A little lipstick." He reached
for a framed photograph that sat on the comer of his desk and held it out to
Luis. "My wife. She spends half an hour every morning at the mirror. And again
in the evening, if we're going out. It's work being a woman. It takes
commitment." He paused, grinned. "But then if you're lucky, you get a man like
me."

Luis felt simultaneously humiliated and confused. For want of a reply he looked
at the photograph of Admonson's wife, a delicately boned, elegant-looking woman
in her forties. He wondered what she did to stand up to her husband. And,
conversely, what attracted her to him.

"I have no wish to get a man," he said quietly.

Admonson pondered this, shrugged. "No. Of course not. You're married." He took
back the picture. "My wife and I have been together twenty-two years. She's a
real trooper. A diamond in the rough. Don't know what I'd do without her." He
glanced at Luis. "You haven't spoken of your own wife lately. What does she make
of all this?"

Luis stiffened. The thought of Rosa made him defensive. "There are no arguments
in our family. Whatever I am, I am still the head of the house."

"It's a man's world," agreed Admonson. "Are you sure you want to give it up?"

Luis had never considered it. True, his thirst for revenge had been hottest
early on, before he had begun his treatments. He had changed, was changing, but
whatever he ultimately became, he expected to be able to call back his former
self on demand.

"I give up nothing," he said.

"Ah. A feminist."

Luis frowned. "Women are the salt of the earth. The ones who love. I don't
understand you. How can a doctor of women not like women?"

"I have great respect for women," replied Admonson. "I'm not sure I could ever
get through labor as they do. Or have children cling like little monkeys to my
breast. Or suffer mood swings every month when I'm about to menstruate." He
shook his head at the marvel of it all. "Women are amazing creations. They
deserve all the credit in the world. They wake me at night, they get me going in
the morning, I'm with them all day. My life revolves around women. How can I not
like them?"

He returned his wife's photograph to its spot on his desk, then added, "And they
pay the bills. What more could a man ask?"

Luis churned inside. He was no match for this doctor, who parried and twisted
everything he said. Revenge, it was clear, would not come in the form of words.
He stood up.

"I'll take my shot now."

"Of course." Admonson, ever the gentleman, left his chair and extended his hand.
"It's been good chatting. And don't worry. We'll take this thing one step at a
time. I'll see you in a month."

That night Luis had a dream. A nightmare rather, against which he fought and
flailed, twisting the sheets, throwing off the pillow, straining the plastic
buttons on his pajama top until, stretched to the breaking point, they popped
off. When he woke, drenched in sweat, the overhead light in the bedroom was on,
because Rosa, hearing him cry out, had feared that something was wrong. Upon
seeing his naked torso, with the rounded breasts and pink nipples of a young
woman, she knew that she was right. She had let things go on too long. Her
husband had passed beyond help, at least beyond hers. She muttered a prayer,
crossed herself and spent the remainder of the night on the living room couch.
The following morning, children in tow, she moved out.

Luis was grief-stricken and full of remorse. He vowed to stop the treatments.
But each time he tried, he failed. On three separate occasions he made a point
of tossing the bottle of pills in the garbage only to find them back in his
sock, or in his hand, a fresh tablet on his tongue, or tumbling down his throat
to his stomach to work its magic. He called to cancel his monthly doctor's
appointment, but when the receptionist came on, the line inexplicably went dead.
He called again and did cancel, but when the day came, he went anyway. He was in
the grip of something he couldn't control, and he suspected his daughter's hand
in it, even though it had been months since she had bothered to pay a visit. He
wondered where it was all leading. More than anything, he prayed that it would
soon end.

Three days after leaving, Rosa returned to the apartment to pick up some
clothes, expecting her husband to be at work. But, bereft at his family's
departure, Luis had called in sick. The meeting between them was awkward in the
extreme. Rosa tried to get in and out without talking, but, driven to the brink
by her husband's relentless apologies and entreaties to return, she lost
control, bursting out in a torrent of questions, none of which he was able to
answer to her satisfaction. Was he sick? she asked. No, he replied, not sick.
Crazy? No, not crazy either. He was afraid to tell her about Maria Elena, not
because she wouldn't believe the child might visit but because she wouldn't
believe she would be so cruel and ruthless as to orchestrate her own revenge.
Rosa would assume he was either lying or possessed; so he said nothing.

Given so little to work with, Rosa had little choice. If Luis wasn't willing to
trust her, she couldn't very well trust him. She needed to look out for herself
and the children, and thus stood firm in her decision to separate. It was, she
felt, her duty as a mother.

Luis was heartbroken, though he couldn't honestly blame her. He shared his
wife's belief in motherhood as a sacred trust, and he made her promise to keep
herself and the children safe. For his part he promised that all the trouble
would soon be over. This made Rosa cry, and Luis hugged her. I love you, he
murmured. She squeezed him. I love you too.

He insisted she and the children have the apartment. He would find something
else, a room somewhere, a studio. When the dust settled a little, they would
talk again.

He took a room in a cheap hotel and a week later moved to a flat occupied by a
practical-minded widow from Guadalajara who shared a bedroom with her mother and
disabled daughter and rented out two others to make ends meet. Luis got a clean
room with a bureau, a wooden armchair, a throw rug and a window overlooking an
alley. Across the hall from him was the other boarder, a laconic Salvadorean
gentleman in his sixties, who liked to drink alone. Relationships in the
household were cordial but circumscribed. Luis left early for work, returned
late and kept to himself. He sent the bulk of his paycheck to Rosa. What little
he had left went to the doctor, the medication and the occasional thrift-store
shirt or sweater to accommodate his new shape. For fear of running into Rosa and
the children he stopped going to church, although he continued to pray,
sometimes feverishly, in his room. He had not seen Maria Elena for months and
worried that she had forsaken him. He longed for her reassurance and sense of
purpose. Her wits and determination. He prayed that she return, and at the same
time he prayed for Rosa, whom he missed dearly, and for the children, whom he
loved beyond measure. And he prayed for himself, because, of everyone, he needed
it most of all.

As the anniversary of Maria Elena's death approached, he started to unravel. The
rage and sorrow and despair he had kept inside seemed all to bubble up at once.
He missed work. He holed up in his roon. When the date came for his monthly
visit to the doctor, it was all he could do to struggle into some clothes and
get out the door.

Admonson seemed pleased to see him. He asked if there was anything new to
report.

"I'm being poisoned," said Luis.

Admonson became instantly alert. "What do you mean?"

"I'm suffering. She has left me. She must think I am worthless. Beneath
contempt. Yet I do this for her."

"For whom?"

"My daughter. My beloved Maria Elena." He fingered the wooden cross he had taken
to wearing around his neck.

Admonson did not conceal his alarm. "What daughter? What poison?"

Luis felt close to bursting. There was a letter opener on the doctor's desk. He
could kill him now. Kill him, then kill himself. Be done with it.

A voice suggested he hold off a minute.

Luis almost wept with relief. It was Maria Elena, and though he couldn't see
her, he knew she was close by. Leave the doctor, she said. Leave him now and
come to me. The time has arrived. Come to me.

Luis trembled with joy. Without another word he fled the doctor's office, fled
the waiting room full of mothers and infants, fled the medical building and
headed for the streets. All that day and all the next the voice followed him. It
called to him in the wind off the hills and the steam rising from sidewalk
grates, in the electric buzz of trolley wires and the squeal of car brakes. It
sang to him in the hiss of his shower and the flush of his toilet, in the fog
and rain and rising sun. He listened in rapture, he who had been so forlorn. He
begged to see her face.

But Maria Elena chose not to show herself. Instead, she kept repeating the same
half-dozen words over and over, until Luis grabbed his ears and cried for her to
stop. She did not, and this made him angry. He scolded her, father to daughter,
occasioning his landlady, who happened to be nearby, to ask who he was talking
to.

"Maria Elena," he replied.

She cocked an eye.

"My dead daughter," he explained.

The woman crossed herself and went away, but the next day, with apologies for
the inconvenience, gave Luis his notice. Two days later he was out on the street
and driven to distraction by his daughter's relentless chatter. Her words had
ceased being words, and the drone had become impossible to bear. In desperation
he made his way to his old apartment, arriving at the door just as Rosa was on
the way out. She was dressed in black.

"I was wondering if you'd come," she said.

"Forgive me. I'm half crazy. I could think of nowhere else."

"Do you need a ride?"

"I need help."

This she could believe, and though her husband's urgent manner and disheveled
appearance made her wary, she was not dead in the heart. She took his arm.
"Come. We'll go together."

It was the anniversary of their daughter's death. Rosa drove to the cemetery,
where they were joined by other members of the family, including their two sons,
who came with an aunt. Luis wept to see them again, wept to see Rosa, wept anew
when the prayer for Maria Elena was given. The girl stopped chattering long
enough for him to hear. The force of her silence was overwhelming. He felt light
as a cloud. When the prayer ended, she appeared to him for the last time.

She came as a mature woman and exuded a sense of contentment and imminent
satisfaction. Luis could not understand why. Apart from a year of waiting, he
had done nothing to avenge her death. At best, he had only marginally insinuated
himself into the doctor's life, and to what effect? The doctor was not
suffering. Far from it. He seemed to have the upper hand at every visit.

It was August, and a fog-driven wind cut through Luis's clothing. He hugged
himself and blew into his hands, but the chill, like a tide, crept inward. Like
something from the grave, it made him tremble. The feeling of weightlessness
vanished. Suddenly, he was cold. And frightened. He thought his time had come to
die.

Maria Elena hovered a foot or two above the grave. Her feet were planted in air,
her legs slightly spread, her arms akimbo. Her expression was resolute, yet
there was a certain playfulness in her eyes.

The wind picked up, tossing Luis's hair across his face. He heard laughter, then
noticed that a bird now perched on Maria Elena's outstretched finger. A sparrow.
In its beak it held a seed.

Maria Elena had hair the color of coal. Eyes that matched the polished ebony of
her father's machete. Lips the flesh of saints. When she smiled, her face burst
to life and the sparrow took flight, circling once in a halo around her head and
once around the grave. Then, straight as an arrow, it headed for Luis.

Afterwards, he would remember a parting kiss. An inner quickening. A warmth. The
bird vanished inside him, and moments later his precious daughter, his treasure,
Maria Elena Hermosilla Rodriguez, was gone.

They named her Angelica. At her birth nine months later Dr. Admonson used a
modified Caesarcan section. Perhaps this was because he had been chastened by
past failures with natural childbirth. Perhaps because, despite an exhaustive
search, he had failed to locate the mother's vagina. Whatever the reason, he
exercised the physician's prerogative to usurp Mother Nature in favor of a
surgical delivery. The Csection served another purpose as well: it allowed him
to look inside Luis to see just what the hell was going on.

What he saw was not so different from what he always saw: a term infant attached
by a cord and placenta to a source of nutrition, in this case the blood-engorged
wall of Luis's lower intestine. After removing the baby and severing the cord,
he took a sample of the attachment site for further study. He looked around for
anything else out of the ordinary and finding nothing, sewed his patient up.
Then he went to talk to the press.

Rosa, who was not present at the birth, met her husband and new daughter in the
recovery room. Luis's impregnation, which to many had come as a shock and
embarrassment, was to her a miracle, the answer, if slightly outlandish, to her
prayers. She was as thrilled as any new parent. More, perhaps, because she had
just landed a new job she would have hated to leave, even for a month or two.
Now she wouldn't have to, and at the same time she could have the joy of a new
face, a new spirit in the family. It was as close to Heaven in mortal flesh as
she could imagine. She felt deeply blessed.

Luis was still recovering from the anesthetic when she entered the room. He
didn't completely recognize her, but she kissed him anyway and held his hand
while he slept. The baby was wrapped in a flannel receiving blanket and tucked
in a bassinet next to his bed. When she started to cry, Rosa instinctively
picked her up. She cradled her in her arms and held her to her chest, but the
child's wailing only grew louder. Finally, Luis opened his eyes. He motioned to
his wife.

"Give her to me," he said feebly.

Rosa complied. "She's hungry."

Luis pulled his gown aside and placed the child at his breast. She rooted a few
moments before latching on. Luis felt an instant of pain, then the milk started
to flow. It was an incredible sensation. He thought of all the things that might
have happened, all the things that did. Who was he, he wondered, to deserve such
a miracle? The Devil had been inside him. Now the Devil had turned to light.

He transferred the baby to his other breast, where she promptly fell asleep.
Luis soon followed, and what he dreamed did not remember, and when he woke was
ravenous, and ate a meal that was quite enough, said the astonished nurse, for
two grown people, or even, God forbid, three.