Twilight at the Equator: A Novel

4. Twilight at the Equator

4 Twilight at the Equator Midway this way oflife we're bound upon, I woke tofind myselfin adark wood, where the right road was wholly lost and gone. DANTE, The Divine Comedy: Hell My sister Rosita was dead. She had swallowed scores of Valiums and slashed her wrists. Her body had been found by her landlady in the room Rosita rented in Jackson Heights. The news of her death came at the end of the harshest winter in memory. I felt bad for Mother, who had died four years before, not knowing what had happened to Rosita. Now that Rosita was dead, I felt as if there were no more links to my Colombian past. The day after the police called, I went by the morgue to identify Rosita's bloodless, gypsum, frozen corpse. In the nine years I hadn't seen her, she had aged considerably-ravaged by drugs. But in death her face looked peaceful, pain free; there was even etched on her lips the slightest suggestion of a smile as if, at the moment she died, Rosita had glimpsed a world that was friendlier and less tormented than the one she had lived in. It didn't come as a surprise when Lieutenant O'Connor of the State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigations informed me that Rosita, under the alias of Silvia, had been working for years as a prostitute in Jackson Heights. Lieutenant O'Connor gave me the key to Rosita's room in the boardinghouse where she had died, and a note to her landlady au1 °7 thorizing me, as next of kin, to collect Rosita's belongings. I made my way to the house on Eightieth Street and Northern Boulevard where she had lived. I rang the bell, introduced myself to the landlady , and showed her the police letter. The old lady gave me a sorrowfullook , and crossed herself when I mentioned Rosita's name. She showed me the way to the attic Rosita had rented. The room had that pungent smell of dried blood. As I drew the curtains to dispel the darkness, the late afternoon light poured in and the first thing I saw was a huge brown spot on the beige carpet-the stain left by Rosita's spilled blood. I told the landlady I wanted to be alone for a few minutes, and closed the door behind her. I sat down on Rosita's bed, buried my head in her pillow, and wept bitterly, opening the gates to the pain that had accumulated for so long. Eventually, I sat up on the bed again, dried my eyes, and inspected the small room longingly, imagining Rosita there: sitting on her chair watching television, or sitting in front of her dressing table, getting ready to go out. Overwhelmed with sadness, I decided to get out of there as soon as possible. I started looking for whatever possessions of Rosita I wanted to keep as mementos. I was surprised that she had copies of all my books, in English and Spanish; I also found an album of family photos, many of them going back to when we had been children in Colombia, and to the first years of our immigration to this country; photos of her wedding , and then no more photos, as if in the last twenty years she had found nothing worth preserving. I gathered the few possessions of hers I wanted, put the photo album in my backpack, and took one last look at the room where Rosita had died. When the landlady saw me reach the ground floor, she approached me. "Can I offer you a cup of coffee?" she asked, in typical Colombian fashion. I realized that this woman was the only link I had to the years when Rosita had been absent from my life, so I accepted her invitation . The old woman took me to her kitchen, in the back of the house. "My name is Mercedes," she said, as she poured me a cup of coffee and sat down across from me. "Silvia lived here for the last year 108 of her life. She was such a pretty girl, but she was always sad, and I know she suffered. I knew she had a drug problem, but I didn't want to kick her out because she was very quiet and, when she wasn't you know ... twisted, she was so sweet." "Her...