Luz: book i: comings and goings (Troubled Times 1) (34 page)

What clarity I now possessed. What inner vision. The critic in me had come full circle. Jesus wasn’t a common criminal. He was a political prisoner. He reminded me exactly of that: a prisoner of politics hung in ruthless display.

Never could I imagine the hopefulness that this understanding would offer me, the inner light it produced. At
long last I was granted my hours of solitude. Even better—I had acquired real solace. Knowing the full extent of his struggles and the suffering he went through gave me strength. Understanding the pain he endured, and the isolation he must have felt, gave me the courage to overcome my own abandonment. Sure, I knew of his arrest and crucifixion, of the hurt he withstood. But even the brutality of the Passion had gotten altered in my mind, been sterilized somewhat. The manner of his death had lost its sense of horror, taking on that same watered-down, storybook quality of his pacifist image. Not with these new observations. Seeing Jesus as pursued and persecuted closed the circle. Seeing him as the pariah that his own people turned him into made his predicament all the more poignant and powerful.

What did all this mean? What did it mean for me, and more importantly, for this daughter to be born?
If
she was born. She certainly wasn’t being sent here as a new Savior. It was obvious that Jesus would remain the only Savior the world ever knew and needed. And she certainly wasn’t being sent here to undo anything he had done or to rewrite any of his deeds. His acts would always remain untouchable, immutable. What then? Why? What would she be able to do? What would she say? Would she perform miracles and heal? Would she teach and minister? I didn’t know. I couldn’t figure it out. Maybe she was being sent here to rescue Cubans from Fidel. To liberate us from the confines of Communism. Maybe since the Eagle seemed incapable of trampling the Alligator, and maybe since no other force on Earth had toppled Fidel in almost fifty years, the only person with the power to depose him would be this new daughter of God.

It hit me. Why I’d been admonished
not
to leave Cuba. Maybe this daughter’s mission would also be political: to have Cubans shift their faith from Fidel to Freedom, from faith in Government to faith in the Gospels. Or maybe she was being sent to rescue Cubans from themselves, to separate the Cuban from the Canine. I was more troubled than ever, more confused than ever. I had embarked upon this journey to gather clues and get answers, but now I had more questions than answers, more theories than explanations. So
much for the critic in me.

So much seemed unexplained, so much omitted. Why was it that, out of four Gospels, we knew nothing about his childhood? Nothing except the famous scene in which a twelve-year-old Jesus, already an architect of argument, was found discussing philosophical and theological matters with doctors and lawyers outside the temple. It was there that a worried Mary and Joseph asked him why he had tarried behind in Jerusalem, causing them such worry. But it was also there that Jesus answered them unapologetically.
“How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?"

Hadn’t the disciples learned anything else about his childhood? Where he had played? What he had thought and daydreamed about? Whether he had ever been disciplined? How he had gotten along with his other brothers? How Joseph and he had interacted? And what about Mary? Why was it that Mary barely appeared in any of the Gospels? The visitation by the Angel Gabriel was mentioned only in Matthew and Luke. Mark did not recount it, neither did John. Why did I imagine she had played a more central role in this all? That she had figured more prominently in her son’s life? Yet she hadn’t. Not really. How many times did Jesus disregard his mother coldly? Like the time he was told that she and his brethren were outside looking for him and he answered dispassionately,
“Who is my mother? Who is my brethren, if not those who do my Father’s work?”
Or at the wedding of Cana, when Mary informed him there was no wine for the feast, and Jesus again answered her,
“Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come.”
How badly I felt for Mary. No wonder Luke wrote,
“All these things Mary guarded within her heart.”

But it was in the Gospel of John where I saw just how much Mary had been marginalized. The images of this Gospel revolved around light and darkness and salvation and eternity, but the principal theme centered around Father and Son. Where the Father loved the Son and the Son loved the Father. Where if you hated the Son, you hated the Father.
Where everything the Son did was for the sake of the Father. And where Son and Father were so inseparable they were nearly as one; in fact, they
were
one. Even John's depiction of Jesus in this gospel was that of the incarnate divine word who revealed the Father to those who would receive Him. Nowhere, however, was there any mention of the mother or a revealing of her. Nowhere in this Gospel—or the other three—did I come across any consideration for the mother or of love for the mother or of the bond between mother and child. Even at the end of John, when Jesus was dying on the cross and Mary watched from nearby, where surely she suffered her own death while witnessing the death of her son, Jesus only said to her,
“Woman, behold thy son.”

How was this supposed to make a mother feel? If this visitation really had been true, and if a daughter really was destined to come into being, would she one day treat me in the same dismissive fashion? Would she one day disregard me because of her own spiritual calling? Would her sole focus in life be on her Heavenly Father and the work she was sent to do for Him? Would she forget all I had ever done for her or the sacrifices I had made? Or even that I had carried her light in my darkness? Truly, this bothered me. It gave me new cause for concern and worried me all the more. All these things did I now guard in my own heart. Who would I now use as a guide, if not Mary? How would I know what to do? How had Mary reared the son of God and how did one begin to raise God’s daughter?

I’d had enough! This was pointless, fruitless. It was time to stop this spiritual sojourn. What did it even matter? There may have been a son, but there was no daughter. I had found absolutely nothing to answer my questions. No clues to any of this. And this latest insight only reinforced a strongly held belief: I didn’t want to have children. I was a writer. A critic. A dweller in the land of argument. An insurrectionist against Revolution. I had no interest in being a mother and for good reason.

My journey was nearing its end. I felt it conclude as I closed up the Bible and that inner tube came floating back to
shore. But it was not some distant coast I would soon be landing on, just old familiar terrain. As I drifted somewhere in that sphere between sound and silence, a familiar voice called out to me, a familiar knocking rapped on the door. I tried resisting. I tried fighting that current, but it was too strong for me, too powerful. It kept pulling me back until I came crashing into consciousness—the full throes of it! No longer was I stuck in a time warp. Minutes were separating from Hours, and Day was dividing from Night. Everything seemed familiar again except for this knocking on the door and the voice that accompanied it. The knocking was a pounding. The voice an urgent pleading.

“¡Clara!” it called out to me, the insistent voice of my Cuban mother. “I demand you open up this door, hija! Open it right now! Do you realize you’ve been in there for three whole days now? Please, hija! There’s someone here to see you.”

Three days?
No! Had it really been that long?
Three whole days!
I couldn’t believe it. Not when it had only felt like hours. Not when that candle by my bedside continued burning fluidly, eternally. Who was here to see me? Who and what was Mamá talking about?

“¡Clara, hija! ¡Open up, hija! There’s someone here to see you and you need to come out at once! I’m not letting one more day go by without you eating! You hear me?”

I sprang up in bed. I jumped to the floor and headed over to the mirror. I was too scared to look at my own reflection, but I forced myself, glancing at the image of a frail and gaunt creature. I really didn’t look that bad anymore. I seemed improved somehow. I even felt better. My face no longer appeared red or blotched. My eyes no longer sunken or lifeless. And it really must have been three whole days because I was starving, ravenous. I no longer felt nausea or motion sickness, but the ruthless pangs of hunger ripping through my abdomen!

“¡Clara, hija!” the voice called out again, the doorknob rattling and growling hungrily. “Open up, hija! Please don’t
make matters worse and open up!”

Oh, that Cuban mother of mine and her sneaky ways—
bless her
. I had always loved her with all my heart and always would. I had always shown her nothing but the highest respect and would continue doing so. But now I would manifest my affection all the more: love her all the more, appreciate her all the more, and heed her frantic beckoning at once! What was the matter with me? That was my mother calling me! But first, I must take care of something. Before heeding that rattling doorknob, I had to unseal this vault.

I went to remove the chair, the one wedged tightly underneath the door knob. Mysteriously, I no longer had to. The chair had dislodged itself and lay flat against the floor. How? How had this happened? Had someone or something come into my room? Had some otherworldly force visited me again? I looked up and down and all about the room and, in so doing, caught sight of my reflection again. I suddenly wanted to undress. I wanted to strip down and discard my drab and dirty clothes. My skin felt insufferably oily. My hair intolerably greasy. And a stench so unpleasant rose from my pores that I couldn’t stand the scent of my own flesh. I removed my garments and let them drop to the floor. I was also starving and wanted something to eat. I had never eaten any, but I craved that Middle Eastern bread I had heard my father talk so much about: that soft, warm bread dipped in salt and oil and a hint of vinegar. My mouth instantly watered at the thought.

“¡Clara, hija,! Open up, hija! There’s someone here to see you, someone you need to see! Not to mention you must be starving. Are you even alive anymore? Have you passed out again?”

“No, Mamá,” I replied. “No, chica, I haven’t. Just give me a moment, will you?”

What could I do? I had to go out there and face whoever was there to see me. I had no choice but to throw my drab and dirty garments back on, insufferable as they would feel against my flesh.

“Oh, hija! Thank God you’ve spoken!
¡Gracias a Dios!
It’s so good to hear your voice, hija. Are you all right?”

The door to the vault finally opened. I flung it back all the way so she could judge for herself.
All right?
Was that what this woman had just asked me? Could she not behold I was all right? What was her problem? What was she so worried about? Didn’t she know there was a reason for sequestering myself from the world for three days? A reason why I’d taken this necessary journey? Didn’t she understand I had only been conducting my daughter’s business?

With the door to my room wide open now, I felt greatly at peace again. Despite all I had learned and not learned and the frightening insights I had gained, I felt a semblance of solace. The long biblical journey of the last three days had alternately clothed and stripped me of calm and equanimity, but I felt my spirit immersed in solace once more.

But it wouldn’t last long. I’d be stripped of all this comfort once more, much as someone is stripped of his garments before a taunting crowd. Before I ever stepped out of my room armed with the knowledge I now possessed, I knew who had come to see me. I could hear that siren’s voice all the way from the living room as it intermingled with the much softer voices of Pilar and Angélica. I could hear the righteous indignation in her tone as it declared she would not be leaving until she spoke to me and saw me face to face.

Mihrta. My mother-in-law. The woman whose influence had reached far and wide into my marriage and who had made it her mission to destroy me. If anyone ever doubted the importance of the relationship between mother and son, there was no denying that significance when it came to my mother-in-law. Father and son meant absolutely nothing when it came to her. Thank God she would have nothing to do with my daughter. Thank God she was not related to her in any real way.

I might as well forget about showering. I doubted Mihrta felt like waiting. Besides, the sooner we got this over with the better. And what did showering matter? Such comfort was
only temporary. Such solace was only secondary. What consolation was there in knowing that sure, you could wash and shower in the morning, but by midday you’d be drenched in sweat again? It mattered not the dirt that one carried on the outside, but that which one harbored within.

It had finally all caught up with me. I was so drained, so exhausted, I thought I would collapse right there on the floor. But I might as well forget about sleeping. And since washing was no real form of cleansing, I would go out there covered in sweat and grime and sand and clay. For not only had my mother-in-law come to pay me a visit, she’d come bearing momentous news. I could hear it down the hallway as she broke it to my sisters. I heard it loudly and clearly even as I stood distant shores away. Rigo had arrived safely in the United States and was doing just fine. So had Amalia and Henry and some fourth individual whom she knew not.

So the Maloja had made it. It had sailed triumphantly after all. But in just an instant of hearing that woman’s voice and picturing her solid frame before me, it was I who found myself violently capsizing and sinking fast. That’s what it felt like: that I was drowing, that I was dying. And in a way that’s what I hoped for: that this world I had always known and callously been tossed about in would come to a quick and painless end, that it would all dissolve and I might know peace at long last. Yes, for just an instant it felt as if this impending moment might finally be the end of the world for me, and I was more than eager to emrace it, I was ready to die. But something kept pulling me back, a force greater than I who would not extinguish my life source. Not until I had answered each and everyone one of her questions to her full satisfaction.