Carmen Elcira: A (Love) Life

T. S. Ponnalagusamy—Samy for short—landed, seemingly from out of nowhere, in Carmen Elcira’s class. She imagined him dropping straight down from the moon in a parachute until she overheard him say that he was from India. The teacher rolled a globe to the front of the room and asked him to point out India. Samy turned the globe carefully and said, in perfect Spanish, “Here. This is India.”

The teacher invited questions. They sounded more or less like this:

“Is India more than a hundred times bigger than Panama?”

“How do you know Spanish?”

“Why did you come here?”

“Who is the president of India?”

“In India, does everyone know Spanish?”

“Do you like Panama?”

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

At the last, Samy blushed, a tint that was visible despite his very dark skin. “No,” he said, in his delicate, soft-spoken way.

During lunch, Carmen Elcira went to the library and read everything she could find in the encyclopedia about India. It was raining after school, so she waited under the zinc roof that covered the walkway from the school’s front entrance to the street. She smoothed the front of her uniform and tugged on the straps of her backpack until, finally, Samy walked out. As he neared, Carmen Elcira said, “Happy Independence Day.”

Samy stopped. “Me?”

“Yes. Happy Independence Day to you.”

“It’s Independence Day?”

“No. Not today. It was a few days ago. On August 15. If I had known you on August 15, I would have said it to you then. I’m sorry it has to be a belated wish.”

“August 15 is Panama’s day of independence?”

“No. November 3.”

Samy shook his head, puzzled.

“In India, it’s August 15, no?” Carmen Elcira asked, beginning to panic that she had remembered the wrong date from the encyclopedia.

“Oh, that’s what you were saying.” He smiled. “Yes, that’s right.”

“In 1947,” Carmen Elcira said.

“Exactly. In 1947.”

Carmen Elcira waited.

“Do you know a lot about India?” Samy asked.

Carmen Elcira let a smile play on her lips as she blinked at him. “Not yet,” she said. “But I would like to.”

They spent the next few months getting to know each other—taking walks after school, sharing dulces at the panadería, going to movies, huddling under doorways during rainstorms—and when, after school one day, behind the Panafoto store on Via España, Samy, tasting of honey and mustard seed, kissed her, Carmen Elcira whispered into his cheek, “That was my first kiss. It felt nice.” He took her face in his hands and kissed her again. But when, a few months after that, Carmen Elcira spied Samy kissing Mariana Candelaria at the bus stop in much the same way, she marched up to the two, slapped Samy across the chin, and said, “That was the first time I slapped a man who deserved it, and it felt terrific,” before walking away.

Carmen Elcira was in her third year of university, studying administration. Her ambition was to become a secretary in a bank. She had visions of herself at a desk on the 30th floor of a glass building overlooking the bay, tapping a pen against her teeth as she pressed buttons on a black phone that looked complicated enough to be in the wheelhouse of a ship. That, or she wanted to be a movie star.

She was taking her daily bus to school, bumping over potholed streets in the humid air, holding her breath against the exhaust swimming through the open windows, when suddenly the bus stopped. The bus driver honked his horn and waved his arm out the window; he was only one of many drivers in their own vehicles doing the same thing. Carmen Elcira crossed her arms and slouched in her seat. Earlier in the week, riots had broken out in Panama. Student groups and labor unions, tired of being kept down by the government, gathered in the streets with sticks and signs and megaphones and rocks. They started small fires, assembled human blockades across busy streets, scrawled brazen graffiti. She found it all a bit ridiculous, to tell the truth. She let her head fall against the scratched window and watched a group of young men awkwardly roll a large rock into the middle of the street to disrupt traffic. When they finished, one of the men mounted the rock, yelling and pumping his fists to the sky. The police stood in a line across the street, impassively surveying the protesters. Then Carmen Elcira sat up and squinted. She recognized him. Did she? Maybe. She ran off the bus to the rock and tugged on the man’s pants. He glanced at her and continued chanting. Carmen Elcira tugged harder. The man, looking annoyed, motioned for one of his comrades to take his place on the rock. Then he jumped down and said sharply, “What?”

She waited for him to recognize her.

“You again!” he shouted.

“Still a gentleman, I see.”

“What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?”

He smiled. His teeth were white as dinner plates. “That’s not an answer.”

“My bus can’t get through. I was on my way to school.”

She watched him steal a glimpse at the marooned bus. Instead of an Afro, his hair was slicked and combed to one side, and he wore mirrored aviator sunglasses. He had a cigarette behind one ear.

“A shame,” he said. “I guess that means you’ll have to stay.” He took her hand, but she shook it free.

“I could walk to school if I wanted,” Carmen Elcira said.

He smiled again. “I believe you could. You’re a headstrong girl. But I think it isn’t what you want.”

“Well, that’s true. What I want is to take my bus to school, but at the moment that’s impossible.”

“That’s really what you want?”

“Yes.” She jutted her chin forward.

“Because you could stay here instead. You could stay here with me.”

“You’re very presumptuous, no?”

“Only a suggestion.”

Carmen Elcira pursed her lips. The sun was pounding, and she felt a bit light-headed. She remembered the sensation she’d had the last time she was near him—that, just for a moment, she was starring in a film. After several seconds, she turned to leave.

He snatched her wrist. “OK, then, I want you to stay,” he said. “With me.”

“Why?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. I just don’t want you to leave.”

Carmen Elcira was very aware that he still had his hand around her wrist, his thumb firm against the underside, where her skin was smoothest. “I don’t even know your name,” she said finally.

“If I tell you, will you promise to stay?”

“No.”

He sighed, but the amusement on his face was plain. “Diego Arosomena. And you?”

“Carmen Elcira Salazar.”

“Carmen,” he repeated.

“Carmen Elcira.”

“No. That’s how people refer to little girls. You … To me, you look like just ‘Carmen.’”

It was a long day in the sun. The fumes of spray paint came in waves, mixed with the smell of saltwater from the bay. Carmen Elcira never left Diego’s side as he bumped more boulders into the middle of traffic and stood on top of them, shouting. She smiled for the television cameras when they came to film the disruption. Later, during a lull, she slipped into a grocery and, in the reflection from the metal meat case, re-pinned her thick black hair and rubbed her teeth with her finger until they shone.

At nightfall, after everyone had gone home because the camera crews would not be back until the next day, Diego took Carmen Elcira to the seawall along the bay. Together, they sat on the weathered stones, gazing out over the water, the moonlight glimmering on the quaking surface like breathing light. Diego lit a cigarette.

“So what are you so angry about?” Carmen Elcira asked.

Without looking at her, Diego exhaled and said, “You’ve heard of Héctor Gallego?”

“The priest who died?”

“Do you know how he died? Or why?”

“No.”

“He didn’t believe that the campesinos should have to live by the rules of the land barons. He was encouraging them to find their own way. But Torrijos is in with the land barons, you know? He didn’t want anyone trying to disrupt the balance of power.”

“Torrijos killed the priest?”

“Well, he had his men set fire to Gallego’s house. But that didn’t work. So he sent them to take Gallego up in a helicopter in the middle of the night. They pushed him out.”

“How do you know?”

Diego shrugged. “It’s the truth.”

Carmen Elcira watched as Diego held his cigarette over his knee and flicked it, the ashes drifting to the rocks below like sullen confetti. Just for a second, she thought she might cry.

“We’ll be here again tomorrow,” Diego said. “If you want to come back.”

“Maybe.”

Diego flung his cigarette into the dark. He hopped down onto the sand and held up his arms.

“Jump,” he said.

“What?”

“I’ll catch you.”

“So?”

“I’ll always catch you.”

Carmen Elcira smiled.

“Carmen,” he said, “I thought about you for a long time after that party.”

“You did?”

“I couldn’t get you out of my mind.” He wiggled his fingers at her. “Now come on. Jump.”

Carmen Elcira looked at her shoes dangling not more than a meter above him.

“Jump,” he said again, and she did.

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