Tarnished Beauty (3 page)

Dr. Martinez pulled Jamilet's blouse up to her shoulders, and her skirt up to her hips to assess the full dimensions of the mark. She listened to his breathing, steady and low as it entered and exited his lungs, and felt the heat of his gaze on the mark. After a few minutes, she was surprised to hear, not derision, but fascination in his voice. “I've never seen anything quite like it,” he muttered. “The medical term for the mark, as you call it, is a hemangioma. The condition is not uncommon. Approximately one in every one hundred children are born with some sort of birthmark, but this particular one…” He seemed at a loss for words as he pressed down on the protrusion at the base of her neck, thick with veins, like noodles in a little broth. “This one is quite extraordinary.” After several more minutes, he asked Jamilet to sit up, indicating that his examination was finished.

“In many ways you're lucky,” he said. “A fair number of hemangiomas like these appear on the face. And I've even read of cases, although much rarer, where the entire body is affected, and then other complications come into play, but I gather you've not had problems, say, with your heart or liver…seizures?”

“What are seizures?” Lorena asked, her hands white and stiff on her lap.

“It's a neurological problem,” Dr. Martinez said, searching for words his humble patients might understand. “Something that happens in the brain. The electrical impulses are interrupted and—”

“Jamilet is as healthy as a horse, doctor,” Lorena said. “She's never been sick, not even a sniffle.” She dropped her head and stretched her fingers out, as if looking at them for the first time and marveling at their ability to move independently. “But…sometimes she stares into space and won't answer me when I talk to her. I believe she's daydreaming.”

“Is that so?” Dr. Martinez turned to face Jamilet. He produced a tiny flashlight from his jacket pocket, and passed the light across her eyes several times. He placed his hands on his hips. “Do you hear your mother at these times when she says you're daydreaming?”

“I like to make up stories, and sometimes I don't hear anything but my own voice in my head.”

Dr. Martinez furrowed his brow. “How long have you been making up these stories?”

“Since I was little, even before I learned how to talk.”

“Is it only your voice you hear? Or do you hear other voices as well?”

Jamilet inched herself to the edge of the examining table. “I hear many voices. It's like a whole play in my head, like the ones they do in church during Easter, except I'm the one who makes up all the words, and if the play is really good, I can see it all in my mind too.”

Dr. Martinez smiled at the curiosity of this simple child, speaking with such zealousness about her stories. “I don't think there's anything to worry about here.” He gently thumped her forehead with his finger. “There's a very good brain inside that lovely head.” He turned back to Lorena. “I should also add that there is some evidence to suggest that hereditary factors may be associated with this condition.” He considered the baffled expression on her face and continued. “It can be hereditary and passed down from relatives, like eye color and height. I assume you don't have anything…”

Lorena shook her head, her lips pressed together, preparing for what she knew would come next.

“And the father? Do we know…?”

“My husband died many years ago, Doctor, and he didn't have the mark, or whatever it is that you called it.”

“He was killed by bandits,” Jamilet added, as she'd recently decided that this was the version of his demise she found most worthy of retelling. “They shot him right between the legs.”

Dr. Martinez's eyebrows flickered in surprise, and then he politely coughed and reached for a chart on the counter.

Lorena's voice was shrill. “And what about a cure, doctor?”

“A removal, you mean?”

Lorena nodded anxiously, her eyes teary as she opened her purse in search of a tissue.

Dr. Martinez's expression, which had been so confident before, grew doubtful. “I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I'm afraid there's little we can do at this stage in the way of removal. Perhaps when Jamilet was younger we could have treated it aggressively, but now it would be impossible to remove without risking severe injury.”

“It's okay, Mama,” Jamilet said when she saw the tears streaming down her mother's face.

“But, Doctor,” Lorena implored, no longer caring if she appeared composed or appropriate. “How can she go through life with that horrible thing living on her back? Look at her face. She's a beautiful girl, my Jamilet. There must be something we can do, somewhere else we can go.”

“I understand your concern,” Dr. Martinez said, and his eyes crinkled with well-rehearsed compassion. “There are some new treatments I have little experience with, involving the use of lasers, a kind of very intense light. There have been some promising studies, but I sincerely doubt that in your daughter's case—”

“Where can we find these treatments?” Lorena snapped.

“In the north…in Los Angeles I believe a few clinics are beginning to use the laser on more superficial birthmarks.”

Lorena wiped her brow for the third or fourth time. She was breathing heavily and her eyes appeared to float, as though loose in their sockets.

“Are you quite all right, Señora?”

“I'm fine,” she said, her head dropping. “Just a little tired.”

“Mama!” Jamilet jumped off the examining table as her mother slipped off the chair and collapsed in a heap on the floor.

 

Lorena was diagnosed with heart problems, and hospitalized for several days. When she was discharged, she was no longer able to work at the Miller house or anywhere else, for she was to rest her heart as much as she could and be spared any and all bad news. She was to sit on the porch during the day when the weather was agreeable, or stay in her bed and face the window overlooking the back field so she could watch Jamilet play and tend to the chili plants.

The Miller family visited a couple of times, and brought along boxes filled with cans of beans, vegetables, and meats that were already cooked, a rare luxury. Not possessing a can opener, Gabriela demonstrated her proficiency with a hammer and knife, and was so delighted with the gifts that she barely flinched when the knife slipped and she cut her finger.

Jamilet took the opportunity to show Mary the garden she'd tended for so many years. The peppers were bright and plump and considered to be the best in the market, she was proud to say. Mary considered them briefly, and agreed that they were indeed beautiful, although she did not care for peppers, as they burned her tongue and caused her to sweat profusely. Jamilet directed her attention next to the brook that ran several yards behind their modest house, which was even smaller than the shed where the Millers kept their car and gardening tools.

“On the other side of that river is the end of the world,” Jamilet informed her friend, for she always thought it was so, and had never been any farther north than that.

Mary nodded, not particularly impressed. She seemed much more concerned with the condition of her new shoes. After she'd stepped in the loose earth that Jamilet had recently turned and watered, the satin finish became spotted with a fine smattering of mud. “That's no river,” Mary said, swiping at her shoes with her bare hand. “If you want to see a real river, you should go to the Rio Grande. It's a hundred times bigger than this.” She stood up, irritated with her lack of progress in removing the dirt. “Do you have a napkin or something for my shoes?”

Jamilet looked about for something that would do, but seemed at a loss.

Mary said, “That's okay, just show me where the bathroom is.”

Jamilet pointed to the river and smiled.

That was the last time she ever saw Mary. Months later they learned that the Millers had moved back to Texas. Jamilet pictured her American friend with her blond ponytail swishing back and forth as she walked along the paved streets, smooth as plates, lying end to end. She was laughing and enjoying her reflection in the glass of the buildings, as tall as mountains. And she was happy, very happy, to have clean shoes.

 

Lorena's heart trouble, which had been well managed with repose and inane conversation, took a turn for the worse. Jamilet, now seventeen, evaluated her own practicality in the face of her mother's imminent death and it troubled her. She should have been devastated by the prospect of losing the person she loved most in the world, but her sadness was suspended somehow and hovering just out of her reach, and she was strengthened by a yearning she could not easily explain to herself or to anyone else.

She'd become aware of it when she saw the mark for the first time. At that moment, it felt like her intestines had tied themselves to the bedpost to keep her from lifting off the mattress and bursting out through the roof of the house. She'd also felt it gather fiercely within her when she'd finally accepted that she'd never go to school, and that the most she could hope to receive from the villagers was stiff regard, born of pity in the best of circumstances and restrained loathing in the worst. She'd learned, having had more than ample opportunity to study the phenomena, that people didn't merely enjoy their fear, they savored it as steady and reliable entertainment. When she went to the market, or ventured down the street on an errand, she reminded them that they were lucky no matter what their circumstances were, for at the end of the day, when they washed in the river or the well, whether they had the benefit of soap or just friction and water, they'd be clean from head to toe, front and back.

“Her mother is dying and she doesn't shed a tear,” the villagers said. “Her face is perfect, like a statue. Not a tear.”

“Does that surprise you?” they whispered. “She has the heart of the devil, and the devil is not saddened by death.”

“There is rumor that she will leave for the north after her mother dies.”

“I've been praying for years that she would. Ever since she was born, my fields have yielded much less, and hers seem to flourish. She's cursed us all.”

“Yes, she has. My baby died three weeks after Jamilet was born, and I have no doubt that Jamilet should have died instead.”

 

As her mother's illness progressed, Jamilet's stories evolved beyond the imaginings that had served her as a child and into deeper longings that had the power to soothe her soul. She passed the hours away with eyes semiclosed and fluttering as her mother slept. Gabriela instructed Jamilet to pray whenever she felt that her heart would wither with pain, but her fantasies, as impossible as she knew them to be, eased her pain better than anything else.

 

“Wake up, Mama. It's time for breakfast and you've been sleeping too long. Do you expect me to do all the work around here?”

Lorena's eyes open and she smiles. “How long have I been sleeping?”

“Too long,” Jamilet says, pulling the covers off. “Come and see what I've made for you.” Lorena gets out of bed and wraps a shawl around her shoulders as she's led into the kitchen. The table is set with a breakfast of tortillas, chorizo, and eggs, with fresh chili sauce and two steaming cups of hot chocolate.

They watch each other from across the table as they eat, incredulous with joy.

“You seem so happy, Jamilet. I've never seen my little girl so happy.”

“I have a surprise for you, Mama.”

Lorena claps her hands like a child. “Another surprise? What is it?”

“We're going north, Mama. We're leaving today. We're going to make a new life in the place where the shiny buildings touch the sky. I talked with Mr. and Mrs. Miller and they already have jobs for us there. And there's an extra room in their mansion that they don't use. They say we can have it until we find our own house, and we can take all the time we need to find just the right one.”

“What about your grandmother? She's too old to live alone.”

“She doesn't want to go, Mama. I've already asked her and she's very sure she would be miserable there and very happy here with the chili patch and chickens to look after. The doctor told me today that she's as strong as a horse, and that having a little extra room would do her good.”

Lorena accepts this without question. “Well then, I suppose we have some packing to do.”

“I packed while you were sleeping, Mama. All we have to do now is go.”

“And what about the mark, Jamilet? I can't bear to think that we'll have to explain it to a whole new group of people…people who won't understand.”

Jamilet places an envelope on the table.

“What is this?”