Toni, Coltor, and the Comet: Chapter 6

Chapter 6: Radioactivity: Heraldo

Rating: 13+: Strong Language, mature themes

Heraldo limps through the opening of his white rusted iron gate and leans against the cool metal bars. He tries to catch his breath as the wind picks up and sways the coconut palm trees in front of his 3-bedroom home.

“That bastard,” he mumbles as he rubs the bruises forming on his abdomen from Coltor’s body slam.

Heraldo closes his eyes and runs a calloused hand over his bald head, glistening with sweat. Behind his eyelids, he sees Toni staring at him the way his mother would when he would steal mangoes from the market.

“I didn’t raise you to be a thief,” she would say, while prying the mango from his little mud-caked fingers. He always wondered why she would get so angry at him for stealing mangoes, but never angry at his father for hitting her.

“Azucar is tough,” she would say as she folded clothes with a bloody lip and a freshly bruised eye.

“Lots of people have tough lives, Mama, but it doesn’t mean we should hit our family,” little Heraldo would say as he chewed on a thin piece of straw. He remembered his mother smiled softly, but never responded to his words.

“Mama, why were you in front of me like this?” he whispers, opening his eyes slowly.

The salty smell of the ocean mixes with the subtle scent of molten sugar from Acosta Azucar outside of Heraldo’s home. He turns to the front gate and stares at the peeling bright red roof and chipped white paint of the family home, then sighs.

“Caleta needs to get this fixed,” he says before walking through the opening.

He places his hand on the age-rusted doorknob and turns it slowly. The door creaks open as Heraldo gently steps inside, so as not to wake their grey pitbull, Elio, sleeping in front of the door. He slides his bare foot around the sleeping dog and pushes his back against the cool interior wall next to the door. He stops for a moment and catches his breath, smelling the beans and rice still simmering on the stove.

Streaks of moonlight shine into his home and illuminate the worn-out brown leather couches in the living room. Yellow exposed foam protruded from the love seat, along with scratch marks from Elio on the large sofa. Heraldo takes a deep breath and sees their classic TV flickering on and off with a vitamin commercial humming between static images. Heraldo’s teal breakfast plate from this morning with remnants of salsa sits on the living room table. 

Heraldo limps down the steps in front of the door, walks softly on the clay tile floor, and reaches for the plate. Suddenly, a loud buzz followed by  “La Bamba” by Ritchie Valens plays from his cell phone.

“Shit!” he says as Elio stirs in the living room, “Why is she calling so late?”

He picks up his cracked black Android off the plastic kitchen table and slides the answer button.

“What?” he says.

“Are you home?” Caleta asks.

“Of course,”

“Where did you go?” she asks.

Heraldo places his hand on his left hip, his cargo shorts hanging loosely around his stomach.

“Since when do you care where I go?”

She pauses, “Amore, you know I don’t care where you go,” she sighs, then takes a deep breath.

Heraldo stands up straight, then shifts the phone to his left hand as his heart rate slowly increases. He knows what the silence means, but he is too afraid to acknowledge it.

“I’m driving back to the inn,” she says, her voice slightly trembling.

Fear? In his 27 years of marriage to Caleta, he has never once heard her voice tremble. Heraldo moves his phone to his right hand and lays his left on the kitchen table. 

“Is everything alright?” he asks. 

“Everything is fine,” she snaps, “Why wouldn’t it  be?”

“You just sound-”

“You must be comparing me to another woman, you met while you were drunk!”

“Leta your voice is shaking-”

“I’m tired because I have a good-for-nothing son and lazy husband,” she yells, “My voice is trembling because I prayed to Mother Mary, asking her what sins I committed to have married a man who would make me do night pick-ups.”

“I was just-”

Heraldo hears the line click and sees his phone go white in his peripheral. She’s hiding something. She always calls Heraldo and Antonio, their son, “good-for-nothings”, but this time feels different. 

“Something happened,” he says while twisting his foot into the clay tile like he was killing a roach.

Heraldo stares into the dark hallway of their home, then takes a deep breath before walking towards their bedroom. He told his son to replace the lighter fluid in the wall lanterns last week, but he was, in his words, “too busy to get to it.”

“Yeah, busy being unemployed,” Heraldo mutters while shaking his head.

Heraldo reaches out his right arm and feels the cool, painted walls greet his hand as he cautiously walks down the hallway. When he reaches the master bedroom, he turns on the lamp, then reaches under the end side table for the key he wedged under the lifted part of the broken wooden edge. He places the key between his fingers like a cigarette, then pulls the cloth-bound journal from under the nightstand. 

He unties the white silk cloth patterned with swans and reveals a brown leather-bound journal, with the letter “E” carved into the bottom. Heraldo runs his hand over the smooth cover and feels a pang in his chest. He breathes in the tobacco smell still lingering on the journal while closing his eyes. 

He remembers a young woman in a silk red dress, a mass of frizzy hair, and two thick golden bangles around her left arm, bending down to meet his ten-year-old gaze. Her large eyes, painted with heavy liner from burnt wood and charcoal, looked deeply into his without saying a word. The tan woman smelled like incense and essential oils, foreign ones that he’d only smelled when the monks came to Acosta Azucar to prevent the workers from committing suicide. 

Heraldo remembers grabbing at the sides of his pants and looking at the ground to avoid the intensity of the woman’s gaze. “I’m a catholic,” he murmured under his breath.

Her large eyes showing no expression, looked deeply into his as she reached her henna-covered hand toward him and nodded once.

 “Let’s trade,” she said calmly. 

Ten-year-old Heraldo quickly shook his head in protest and hid a ripened mango behind his back.

The woman laughed, then looked up at him, “I promise you, what I have is sweeter than any mango you’ll ever eat.”

“And how do I know you’re not lying to me?” his younger self asked.

“Do you think I’m lying?” Her eyes softened as she responded.

“You could be,” he stamped his foot and faced her, “What if I give you my mango and you have a rock behind  your back, or, or, a lump of old sugar?”

“I guess you'll have to find out,” she smiled, then chuckled. 

The two of them spoke in an alley behind the fruit vendor’s cart, where he stole mangoes every weekend. The little alley was wedged between a wooden cabin and a corner store that always smelled like onion and bean soup. The owner of the cabin cooked the same soup every day, and always made sure the townspeople could smell it by leaving his window open.  An orange tabby mewed from the roof of the corner store, as the crickets chirped gleefully in the full moon’s light.

“No,” he said as he turned his body away from hers, “I’m hungry.”

“Fine,” she rose to her feet, “But you’ll regret it.”

As the woman in the red dress went to walk away, young Heraldo felt a pang in his stomach. 

“Wait!” he yelled.

The tan woman stopped in her tracks, then turned to face him.

“You know about my mother, don’t you?” he said, “Esme.”

The woman cast her eyes to the ground, and a hint of sadness glimmered across them.

“You knew she died on the ships to America,” he took the mango from behind his back, “Is what you have behind your back from her?”

The woman’s head hung to the ground as she pulled a white silk cloth decorated with swans from a pouch beneath her dress.

“I asked the captain,” Heraldo’s breath shook as he spoke, “He told me she tried to run away to the Americas, but kept bleeding from her head.”

“Why was she bleeding?” the woman asked in a solemn contralto.

“Because my father threw a bottle at her head,” he looked to the ground.

The woman turned her eyes away from Heraldo and jutted the white cloth toward him, “Give me the mango,” she said.

He walked toward the woman as the buzz from the mosquitoes filled his ears. 

“This was Esme’s,” she said as her voice quivered, “That stupid girl,” 

Heraldo handed the softened mango to the woman, who bent down to receive it. She reached into a pocket in her dress and pulled out a silk red handkerchief embroidered with two trees with interlocking roots, and a comet skating across the top in white stitching.

Sixty-five-year-old Heraldo shakes the memory from his head and feels tears forming in his eyes as he opens the leather-bound journal to reveal the same silk red handkerchief pressed behind the cover. He picks up the silk fabrics and delicately folds them before putting them at the corner of his metal spring bed. 

He opens the first page of the journal and sees an intricate hand drawing of a forest with two large trees and interlocking roots, beneath a comet bursting across the sky. A young man and woman with curly hair stand between the trees, holding hands while kissing beneath the stars.

Heraldo squints and reads the words, “Tempora mutantur. Tanah has arrived.”

“What does this mean?” he mutters to himself. 

For 55 years, he read his mother's journal back and forth, but could never understand the cryptic words she’d written.

  “Why did she always write in code?” he turns the page to see an intricate drawing of circles, math equations, and hieroglyphic symbols. 

He turns another page and sees a self-portrait drawing of three women who all look exactly like his mother, but with different hair lengths. One drawing featured a woman with long, wavy black hair that framed her face and concealed the sides of her jaw, while another depicted a curly pixie cut, reminiscent of his mother's. The last drawing looked like a mix of the two, but with the same curly close-cropped style as his mother’s. Underneath this drawing bore a question mark, and the words, “El Cometa ha llegado.” 

The comet has arrived. 

Author's notes:

Chapter 7 will be coming in October 2025. Stay tuned!