Free The World in Half by Cristina Henríquez Page A

one who exiled that bit of her past to begin with. And of mine. It was such an inexplicably fucked-up thing to do. But with everything that she’s going through, hearing from him again might make her feel better. After all these years, I think she would finally talk to him again if the opportunity to talk existed. With or without Danilo’s help, I need to find him.
    I start in the direction Danilo and I walked yesterday to catch the bus, my orange bag slung diagonally over my shoulder. I’m not far when I hear Hernán shouting after me, “Wait, please! Please wait!”
    I turn around. A car stops in front of the hotel and honks, but Hernán ignores it and strides toward me. “Where are you going?” he asks before he even reaches me, his voice raised.
    I tell him the address.
    He makes a face. “Why?”
    Like Danilo, he asks a lot of questions. But there’s a tenderness about Hernán, a protectiveness in how he treats me that I find endearing, unaffectedly sweet.
    “I’m meeting someone there,” I say.
    Hernán takes off his cap and slicks his sweaty charcoal hair back against his scalp, then replaces the cap. “It is not a good area,” he says matter-of-factly. The car that pulled up in front of the hotel honks again. Hernán whips his head around and throws up his hands. “Wait a moment!” he yells.
    “How are you getting there?” Hernán asks.
    “I was going to take the bus. I know which one is the right one.”
    Hernán raises his eyebrows. “You know which one is the right one?”
    “The one with Fidel Castro.”
    “Ha! That is what you think? But they are all painted differently. There could be ten buses that go where Fidel goes! And then again, Fidel could be taking the day off. Those bus drivers work according to their own schedule, and you never know what kind of night the driver had last night”—he imitates someone throwing back a shot of alcohol—“that might make him skip a day of work today. I have seen it before. Ambitious guests try to take the bus to somewhere ten minutes away, and the next thing they know, they’re on a three-hour trip to a whole other province! And they don’t make it back to the hotel for days! No, I will call you a taxi. Do you have money?”
    “Hernán, come on, that’s never really happened, has it?”
    “It has happened. It hasn’t happened. What’s the difference? It could happen. Do you have money?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then you will take a taxi. Today, for me, please take a taxi.”
    Before I can argue, Hernán whistles until he attracts the attention of what looks like nothing more than a regular car, an old brown Hyundai, idling across the street, which now makes a U-turn and pulls up to the curb. Gallantly, Hernán opens the back door and motions by sweeping his arm back and forth like a pendulum for me to get in. Then he pounds the passenger-side window until the driver leans across the seat and cranks it down.
    “She’s going to Santa Ana. Across from the San José Church.”
    “Five dollars,” the taxi driver replies.
    Hernán balks. “The fare from here to there is two dollars.”
    “She’s American, no?”
    “No. Two dollars.”
    The driver grunts assent and rolls up the window. Hernán waves at me as we pull away.
    I know that Hernán said I wasn’t American because he wanted to get me a better fare. But it was still so odd to hear him deny it like that. No. She’s not American. And yet, to the taxi driver, I clearly didn’t pass as Panamanian. What does he think I am now? French? Portuguese? Dutch? When I was growing up, my mother never made any kind of point about my cultural connections, or disconnections. File it under A Topic That Came Too Close to My Father, and therefore A Topic That Would Not Be Discussed. But I do remember when, in fifth grade, a girl from Puerto Rico enrolled at my school toward the end of the year. Her mother and our principal had walked her out to the playground during recess so she could see who her