The Sum of Our Days (25 page)

I told Lori about the woman wrapped in the black plastic bag I'd seen crying on Fifth Avenue, and also about Tabra's most recent experience. She had just returned from Bangladesh, where my foundation maintained schools for girls in remote villages and a small clinic for women. Tabra went there with a friend of hers, a young dental hygienist who wanted to offer her services at the clinic. They filled suitcases with medications, syringes, toothbrushes, and any supplies they could collect from dentist friends. When they reached the village there was already a line of patients at the door, a hot building infested with mosquitoes, where there was little to be seen other than the walls. The first woman had several rotten molars, and had been maddened for months by persistent pain. Tabra acted as assistant while her friend, who had never pulled a tooth, anesthetized the woman's mouth with trembling hands and proceeded to extract the bad molars, trying not to faint in the process. When she finished, the unfortunate woman kissed her hands, grateful and relieved. That day they saw fifteen patients and removed nine molars and a variety of other teeth, while in a tight circle outside, the men of the community observed and commented. The next morning Tabra and her friend arrived early at the improvised clinic and found the first patient of the previous day with a face swollen the size of a watermelon. Her husband was with her, irately shouting that they had ruined his wife, and that the men of the village were meeting to take revenge. Terrified, the hygienist gave the woman antibiotics and painkillers, praying that there would be no fatal consequences.

“What have I done? She's deformed!” she moaned when the two left.

“That wasn't from your procedure,” their interpreter informed them. “Her husband beat her last night because she didn't get home in time to fix his meal.”

“That's the life most women live, Lori. They are always the poorest of the poor. They do two-thirds of the work in this world, but they own less than one percent of the assets.”

Up to that point, the foundation had distributed money on impulse, or yielding to the pressure of a just cause, but thanks to Lori we established priorities: education, the first step to independence in every sense; protection, because too many women are trapped in fear; and health, without which nothing else helps much. I added birth control, which for me has been essential. Had I not been able to decide something as basic as the number of children I would bring into the world, I couldn't have done any of the things I have. Fortunately, the pill was invented or I would have had a dozen little ones.

Lori threw herself into the work of the foundation, and in the process demonstrated that she had been born for the job. She is idealistic and organized, she notices the least detail, and she is a workaholic—no job is too big for her. She made me see that it was no good to distribute money by tossing it up in front of a fan; you had to evaluate the results and support programs for years, the only way that aid does any good. We also had to concentrate our efforts; we could not put patches on something in a remote place where no one supervised, or bite off more than we could chew; it was better to give more to fewer organizations. Within a year she changed the face of the foundation, and I was able to delegate everything to her. All she asks of me is to sign the checks. She has succeeded so admirably that not only has she multiplied the funds we give out, she has built up the capital as well, and now she manages more money than we had ever imagined. Everything goes to the mission we proposed: carrying out your plan, Paula.

I
N THE MIDDLE OF THAT YEAR
I had a spectacular dream, and I wrote it down to tell my mother; we always did that, even though there's nothing as boring as listening to other people's dreams. That's why psychiatrists cost you so much. Dreams are essential to our lives; they help us understand our reality, and bring into the light the things that are buried in the caverns of our souls. I was standing at the foot of a wind-eroded cliff, on a white sand beach with a dark sea and clear blue sky. Suddenly, at the top of the cliff, I saw two enormous warhorses, with riders. Beasts and men were arrayed like Asian warriors of old—Mongolia, China, Japan—with silk standards, ball fringe, plumes, and heraldic adornment: all the splendid paraphernalia of war gleaming in the sun. After an instant's hesitation at the edge of the precipice, the steeds reared, whinnied, and with the glory of centaurs, leaped into the void, forming in the sky a broad arc of cloth, plumes, and pennants. Their daring took my breath away. It was a ritual act, not suicide, a demonstration of bravery and skill. An instant before they touched ground, the horses bent their necks and landed on one shoulder, curled into a ball, and rolled over, raising a cloud of golden dust. And when the dust and the noise subsided, these stallions struggled to their feet in slow motion—the horsemen had not been unseated!—and galloped off down the beach toward the horizon. Days later, when I still had those images fresh in my memory, trying to make sense of them, I ran into a friend who writes books on dreams. She gave me her interpretation, which was not unlike what the shells of the
jogo de búzios
had said in Brazil: a long and dramatic fall had tested my courage, but I had risen and, like the steeds, had shaken off the dust and run on toward the future. In the dream, the mounts had known how to roll and the horsemen how to sit their horses. According to my friend, past trials had taught me how to fall and now I didn't have to fear because I could always land on my feet. “Remember those horses when you feel yourself weaken,” she said.

I remembered two days later, when a theater work based on my book
Paula
was premiered. On the way to the theater, we passed the Folsom Street fair in San Francisco. We had no idea that it was the day for the sadomasochists' carnival: blocks and blocks crowded with people in the most outrageous garb. “Freedom! Freedom to do what I want: fuck!” shouted a good man dressed in a monk's cassock open in the front to display a chastity belt. Tattoos, masks, revolutionary Russian hats, chains, whips, hair shirts of every nature. The women had black-or green-painted mouths and fingernails, stiletto-heeled boots, black plastic garter belts, in short, all the symbols of this picturesque culture. There were several monumentally fat women sweating in leather pants and jackets with swastikas and skull decals. Ladies and gentlemen wore rings or studs through their noses, lips, ears, and nipples. I didn't dare look any lower. A young woman with bared breasts was riding on the hood of a '60s car, her hands tied behind her back; another woman, dressed as a vampire, was lashing her chest and arms with a horsewhip. It wasn't a joke; she was badly bruised and her screams could be heard through the entire area. All this was taking place before the amused eyes of a pair of policemen and various tourists taking pictures. I wanted to intervene, but Willie grabbed my jacket, lifted me off the ground, and dragged me away, feet kicking in the air. A half block farther on we saw a fat-bellied giant carrying a dwarf wearing a leash and dog collar. The dwarf, like his master, wore combat boots and nothing else except a sheath of metal-studded black leather on his whacker, held precariously by a few invisible little ties threaded up the crack of his butt. The little guy barked at us but the giant greeted us very amiably, and offered us some candies in the shape of penises. Willie let go of me and stood gaping at the pair. “If I ever write a novel, that dwarf will be my protagonist,” he said, totally out of the blue.

The play
Paula
began with the actors in a circle, holding hands, summoning your spirit, daughter. It was so moving that not even Willie could contain his sobs when at the end they read the letter you had written, “To be opened when I die.” A slim girl, ethereal and graceful, played the leading role, dressed in a white shirt. Sometimes she lay on a cot in a coma; other times her spirit danced among the actors. She didn't speak until the end, to ask her mother to help her die. Four actresses represented different moments of my life, from child to grandmother, and passed from hand to hand a red silk shawl that symbolized the narrator. One actor played Ernesto and Willie; another was Tío Ramón, and he drew laughs from the audience when he declared his love for my mother, or explained to Paula how he was a direct descendent of Jesus Christ—just go look up the tomb of Jesús Huidobro in the Catholic cemetery in Santiago. We left the theater in silence, feeling that you were floating among the living. Did you ever imagine, Paula, that you would touch so many people?

The next day we went to the forest of your ashes to greet you and Jennifer. Summer had ended, the ground was carpeted with crunching leaves, some trees had dressed in the colors of fortune, from dark copper to shining gold, and in the air was the promise of the first rain. We sat on a redwood tree trunk in a chapel formed by the high treetops. A couple of squirrels were playing with an acorn at our feet, giving us sideways glances, not at all afraid. I could see you, whole, before your illness wrought its devastation: at three, singing and dancing in Geneva, at fifteen, receiving a diploma, at twenty-six, dressed as a bride. I sat thinking about my dream and the horses that fell and rose again. I have fallen and risen many times in my life, but no fall was as hard as the one of your death.

T
WO YEARS AFTER THE FIRST NIGHT
they spent together, in January of 1999, Nico and Lori were married. Up till then she had resisted because she couldn't see why it was necessary; he, however, thought that the children had been through a lot and would feel more secure if he and Lori were husband and wife. The children had seen Celia and Sally always together and didn't question their love, but I think they were afraid that if we were careless Lori would get away. Nico was right; the children were happier about the decision than anyone. “Now Lori will be with us more,” said Andrea. They say that it takes eight years to adapt to the role of stepmother, and that the most difficult of all is the task of the childless woman who comes into the life of a man who is a father. It wasn't easy for Lori to change her life and accept the children; she felt invaded. Nevertheless, she took over all the thankless tasks, from washing clothes to buying shoes for Andrea, who wore only green plastic sandals—and not just any sandals, they had to be from Taiwan. Lori killed herself working to be the perfect mother, never overlooking a single detail, but she really didn't need to take such pains, since the children loved her for the same reasons the rest of us did: her laugh, her unconditional affection, her friendly jokes, her tempestuous hair, her boundless goodness, her way of being there in good and bad times.

The wedding was a joyful ceremony in San Francisco, which culminated with a group class in swing, the first time Willie and I had danced together since the humiliating experience with the Scandinavian instructor. Willie, in his dinner jacket, looked like Paul Newman in one of his films, though I don't remember which one. Ernesto and Giulia came from New Jersey, Abuela Hilda and my parents from Chile, but Jason couldn't get away from work. He was still single, though he was not wanting for women to keep him company for one night. According to him, he was looking for someone as reliable as Willie.

We met Lori's friends, who came from the four points of the compass. Over time, several of them became Willie's and my best friends, despite the difference in ages. Later, when we received our photos of the party, I realized that they all looked like magazine models; I have never seen a group of such beautiful people. Most were talented, unpretentious artists: designers, graphic artists, caricaturists, photographers, filmmakers. Willie and I immediately were friends with Lori's parents, who did not see in me any incarnation of Satan, as Celia's parents had, even though in my brief words at the reception I made the bad mistake of alluding to carnal love among our children. Nico still hasn't forgiven me. The Barras, uncomplicated, loving people, are of Italian origin and have lived for more than fifty years in the same house in Brooklyn where they brought up four children a block away from the old mansions of the mafiosi, which can be distinguished from others in the neighborhood by the marble fountains, Greek columns, and statues of angels. Lori's mother, Lucille, is slowly losing her eyesight, but she makes light of it, not so much because of pride as not to be a bother. In her house, which she knows by memory, she moves with assurance, and in her kitchen she is invincible; she continues to prepare by touch the complicated recipes handed down from generation to generation. Her husband, Tom, a storybook grandfather, embraced me with genuine affection.

“I've prayed a long time that Lori and Nico would get married,” he confessed.

“So they wouldn't go on living in mortal sin?” I asked as a joke, knowing that he is a practicing Catholic.

“Yes, but more than anything because of the children,” he answered, absolutely serious.

Tom had owned a neighborhood pharmacy before he retired. That had prepared him for stress and fright, since he'd been assaulted on several occasions. Although he's no longer young, he still shovels snow in the winter and climbs a folding ladder to paint ceilings in the summertime. He has steadfastly battled the rather peculiar renters who through the years have occupied a small apartment on the first floor of their house, such as the weightlifter who threatened him with a hammer, the paranoid man who stacked newspapers from floor to ceiling and left barely an ant corridor from the door to the bathroom and from there to the bed, or the third renter who exploded—I can't think of another word to describe what happened—and left the walls covered with excrement, blood, and organs, which Tom, of course, had to clean up. No one could explain what had happened because no trace of explosives was found; my theory is that it must have been something like the phenomenon of spontaneous combustion. Despite these and other macabre experiences, Lucille and Tom have maintained their trust in humanity.