Mouthful of Birds(35)
Over time, he started to reject certain foods. He would eat only meat, mashed potatoes, and pasta with simple sauces. If we gave him anything else, he would push it away, so Mirta started cooking only the things that he liked.
Every once in a while the customers would give him coins, and when he had saved enough he bought from the store a blue plastic cup with a convertible car in relief. He used it at breakfast, and in the morning, when reporting the state of his bed and his room, he began to add, “I also washed my cup.”
Mirta told me worriedly that one afternoon she’d been watching Enrique play with a boy who’d come into the store, and he suddenly grabbed a superhero figure and refused to share it. When the boy started to cry, Enrique stomped off and locked himself in the storage room.
“You know how much I care about Enrique,” my wife said that night, “but we just can’t let him get away with things like that.”
Although he still had his genius when it came to reorganizing the merchandise, over time he also stopped playing with the little articulated dolls and the Legos, and he archived them, along with the board games and model kits, on the now overcrowded upper shelves. The range of toys that he still reorganized and kept within the customers’ reach was so small and monotonous that it barely attracted the youngest children.
“Why do you put those things up so high, Enrique?” I asked him.
He looked disconsolately at the shelves, as if, in effect, they were too high for him as well. He didn’t answer; he was quieter all the time.
Little by little, sales went back down. Enrique’s rainbows, displays, and castles lost the splendor of those first days, when almost all the toys participated in his radical remodeling. Now everything happened at knee-level and below. Enrique was almost always hunched over or kneeling in front of a new pile of toys that was ever smaller and more amorphous. The place had started to empty of customers. Soon we didn’t need Mirta’s help anymore, and Enrique and I were left alone.
I remember the last afternoon I saw Enrique. He hadn’t wanted his lunch, and he was wandering up and down the aisles. He looked sad and lonely. I felt, in spite of everything, that Mirta and I owed him a lot. I wanted to cheer him up, so I climbed the moving ladder—which I hadn’t used since Enrique had started helping me in the store—to reach the highest shelves. I chose a model kit for him, an imported one of an old-fashioned train. The box said that it had more than a thousand pieces, and, if you added batteries, its lights worked. It was the best model train we had, and it cost a fortune. But Enrique deserved it, and I wanted to give it to him. I climbed down with the gift and called to him from the counter. He was coming back from the farthest shelves, a violet stuffed animal—I think it was a rabbit—hanging from his right hand. Head down, he stopped and looked at me. He looked small among the shelves. I called to him again but he suddenly crouched down, as though startled, and stayed there. It was a strange movement that I didn’t understand. I left the train on the counter and approached him slowly to see if something was wrong.
“Enrique, are you all right?”
He was crying, hugging his knees. The rabbit had fallen to one side, facedown on the floor.
“Enrique, I want to give you—”
“I don’t want anyone to hit me anymore,” he said.
I wondered if something had happened that I hadn’t seen—if some customer had given him trouble or if he’d had another fight with a child.
“But Enrique, no one . . .”
I knelt beside him. I wished I had the model train right there; I was sure it would be something special and it hurt me to see him so upset. Mirta would have known what to do, how to soothe him. Then the door to the street opened violently, almost slamming against the wall. Both of us froze. From the floor, we saw, under the shelves, two high heels advancing down the next aisle.
“Enrique!” It was a strong, authoritative voice.
The high heels stopped and Enrique looked at me in fear. He seemed to want to tell me something, and he grabbed my arm.
“Enrique!”
The heels started moving again, this time in our direction, and a woman appeared at the end of the aisle.
“Enrique!” She stormed toward us. “All this time I’ve been looking for you,” she yelled as she stopped very close to him. “Where the hell have you been?”
She slapped him so hard that he lost his balance. Then she grabbed his hand and yanked him up. The woman cursed me, kicked the stuffed rabbit, and practically dragged Enrique away. I followed them for a couple of steps. They passed the counter, headed for the door. When they’d almost reached it, Enrique tripped and fell to the floor. On his knees, he turned to look at me. Then his face crumpled. She grabbed his hand again, yelling, “Enrique, come on!”
I stayed where I was, watching and doing nothing. Just before the door closed, I saw his little fingers trying to pull away from his mother’s as she, furious, leaned down to pick him up.
UNDERGROUND
I needed a break, and a drink to clear my head. The road was dark and I still had to drive several more hours. The truck stop was the only one I’d seen for miles. The interior lights gave the place a certain warmth, and there were three cars parked in front. Inside, a young couple was eating hamburgers. There was a guy in the back facing away from me, and another, older man at the bar. I sat down next to him. The things you do when you travel too much, or when it’s been such a long time since you’ve talked to anyone. I ordered a beer. The bartender was fat and slow-moving.