The Sum of Our Days (7 page)

“Nothing, I just miss Paula.”

“And why is Nicole crying?” she persisted.

“Oh, because she doesn't know any better,” was the only answer I could think of.

Just as Alejandro had done before her, Andrea got it into her head that Paula was the only valid reason for crying. Since she could use only one eye at a time, she had no depth perception, everything was flat, and she gave herself some fearful bumps and bangs. She would get up off the floor streaming blood from her nose, with her eyeglasses all askew, and explain between sobs that she “missed” her Aunt Paula.

W
HEN
I
FINISHED WRITING
Paula
, I realized that I had traveled a tortuous road and reached the end cleansed and naked. Those pages contained your luminous life and the trajectory of our family. The terrible confusion of that year of torment had dissipated. It had become clear that my loss was not exceptional but that of millions of mothers: the most ancient and most common suffering of humankind. I sent off the manuscript to people I'd mentioned in it; I felt that they should have the right to revise what I'd written about them. There weren't many because I'd left out several people who were close to you but that weren't essential to the main story. After they'd read it, everyone wrote me immediately, moved and enthusiastic, except for my best friend in Venezuela, Ildemaro, who adored you and thought that you would not enjoy seeing yourself exposed in that way. I'd had that same doubt, because it is one thing to write as catharsis, to honor a daughter you have lost, but quite a different thing to share your grief publicly. “You may be called an exhibitionist, or accused of using your tragedy to make money, you know how unkind people can be,” my mother warned me; she was worried although she was convinced that the book should be published. To avoid any suspicion of the kind, I decided I would not touch a penny of the income from the book, if there was any; I would find an altruistic use for it, something that you would have approved of.

Ernesto was living in New Jersey, where he was working in the same multinational company that had employed him in Spain. When we brought you to our home, he asked for a transfer in order to be near you, but there was no position available in California and he had to accept the one he was offered in New Jersey—at least it was closer than Madrid. When he received the manuscript of the book, he called me, crying. It had been a full year since he'd been widowed but he still couldn't mention your name without breaking up. He encouraged me, using the charitable argument that you would like for the memoir to be published since it could console others who had losses and sorrow, but he added that he nearly hadn't recognized you in those pages. I had narrated the story from my narrow point of view. As your mother, there were areas of your personality and life that I knew nothing about. Where was Paula the impulsive lover, the finicky and bossy wife, the unconditional friend, the caustic critic? “I'm going to do something that Paula would kill me for if she knew,” he told me, and three days later the mail brought me a large box containing the passionate love letters you two had exchanged for more than a year before you were married. It was an extraordinary gift that allowed me to know you better. With Ernesto's permission, I was able to include in the book actual lines you had written.

While I was polishing the final version of the book, Celia took complete charge of the office, wearing her blouse half buttoned so she could nurse Nicole at any minute. I don't know how she did it; she had three children, she was worn out, and she was carrying a profound sorrow. Her grandmother had died in Venezuela and she hadn't been able to tell her good-bye because her visa would not allow her to leave and then reenter the country. That grandmother, who treated everyone brusquely—except for Celia—had looked after her for three years when her parents were in the United States to work on doctorates in geology. When they returned, Celia didn't know who those people were that she suddenly had to call Mamá and Papá. The pole star of her childhood had been her grandmother; she'd always slept with her, she told her her secrets, and only with her did she feel safe. A brother and sister were born after their return. Celia continued to be very close to her grandmother, who lived in an addition her parents built to their house. Celia's childhood in a strictly Catholic family could not have been easy given her rebellious and defiant character, but she submitted, and as an adolescent she had lived in an Opus Dei residence where the penances included self-flagellation and hair shirts with metal barbs. Celia says she didn't go to those extremes but she had to accept other rules meant to subdue the flesh: blind obedience, avoiding any contact with the opposite sex, fasting, sleeping on a board, spending hours on her knees, and other mortifications that were more frequent and more severe for women, since it is they who since the time of Eve have embodied sin and temptation.

Among the thousands of available young men in the university, Celia fell in love with Nico, who was precisely the opposite of what her parents had wanted in a son-in-law: he was Chilean, an immigrant, and an agnostic. Nico had been educated in a Jesuit school, but the day after he took his first communion he announced he did not plan to set foot in a church again. I met with the principal to explain that I would have to withdraw my son from the school, but the priest burst out laughing. “That won't be necessary, señora, we don't force anyone to go to mass. Your little guy is only nine years old, after all, and he may change his mind, don't you agree?” I had to admit that I didn't think so, because I know my son very well: he isn't one to make hasty resolutions. Nico completed his education at San Ignacio and fulfilled his word never to enter a church—with a few exceptions such as his religious wedding to Celia, and a few cathedrals he has visited as a tourist.

Celia had not been able to be with her grandmother as she died or weep at her death, for the truth is, Paula, you left no room for other mourning. Nico and I hadn't realized the magnitude of Celia's grief, partly because we didn't know the whole story of that period of her childhood and partly because Celia, taking pride in her fortitude, hid her pain. She buried that memory to cry over later, in the meantime performing the thousand tasks of maternity and matrimony, her job, learning English, and surviving in the new land she had chosen. During the few years we had shared, I had learned to love Celia, despite our differences, and after you were gone I clung to her as if she were another daughter. I was worried about the way she looked; her color was bad and she had no appetite, and she was suffering attacks of nausea as bad as the ones in the worst months of her pregnancy. Cheri Forrester, the family physician who had attended you, though you can't know that, said that Celia was physically worn down from having the three children in such close succession but that there was no physical cause for her vomiting, and that surely it was emotional; perhaps she was afraid that the porphyria would be repeated in one of their children. “If she doesn't improve, I'll have to keep her for a while in a clinic,” she warned us. Celia kept quietly vomiting behind our backs.

L
ET ME GO BACK FIVE YEARS
and remind you how your sister-in-law appeared in our lives. In 1988 I was living with Willie in California, you were studying in Virginia, and Nico, alone in Caracas, was finishing his last year at the university. He had announced during a telephone call that he was in love with one of his classmates and wanted to bring her to meet us, his feelings for her were serious. I asked straight out whether he wanted me to ready one room or two, and he answered, rather ironically, that from the point of view of the Opus Dei sleeping with a boyfriend would be unpardonable. Celia's parents were outraged by the sin of their traveling together without being married, even though she was twenty-five years old, and worse, that she was going to the home of a divorced Chilean atheist, Communist, and author of books banned by the church: me. That's all we need, I thought. Two rooms, for the present. Two of Willie's sons were living with us and my mother decided to come from Chile at just that time, so I improvised an army recruit's sleeping bag for Nico in the kitchen. My mother and I went to the airport to pick them up. We saw your brother, looking like the same clumsy adolescent, in the company of a person striding along with strong steps and carrying a bundle on her back that from a distance looked like a weapon, but turned out to be a guitar case. I suppose it was to annoy her mother, who had been a queen in some Caribbean beauty contest, that Celia walked like John Wayne, dressed in shapeless olive drab pants, mountain climbing boots, and a baseball cap pulled down over one eye. You had to look twice to discover how pretty she was; she had fine features, expressive eyes, elegant hands, broad hips, and an intensity in her gaze that was difficult to look away from. The young woman my son had fallen for came toward us defiantly, as if saying, “If you like me, fine, and if not, well, fuck you.” She seemed so different from Nico that I was sure she was pregnant and they were planning a hasty wedding, but that turned out not to be true. It may have been that Celia just needed to get away from her surroundings for a while, and that feeling as if she were in a straitjacket, she had grabbed onto my son with the desperation of a person drowning.

When we got to the house, your brother announced that the sleeping bag in the kitchen would not be necessary because things had changed between them, so I put them in the same room. My mother took me by one arm and dragged me into the bathroom.

“If your son chose this girl, there's a good reason; your role is to love her and keep your mouth shut.”

“But she smokes a pipe, Mamá!”

“It would be worse if she smoked opium.”

It was easy for me to love Celia, even though I was a little shocked by her bold frankness and brusque ways—we Chileans tiptoe around a subject as if we were walking on eggs—and in less than half an hour she had expounded her ideas on inferior races, leftists, atheists, artists, and homosexuals, all of whom were depraved. She asked me please to let her know when anyone in any of those categories was coming to visit, she would prefer not to be present. That night, however, Celia kept us laughing with off-color jokes we hadn't heard since the easy-going days in Venezuela, where happily the concept of “politically correct” does not exist and you can make jokes on any subject you choose, and then took her guitar from its case and sang to us in an engaging voice the best songs in her repertoire. We were captivated.

S
HORTLY AFTER
, Celia and Nico were married in Caracas, in a long, drawn-out ceremony during which you threw up in the bathroom—I think out of jealousy because you were losing exclusive rights to your brother—and from which my family took early leave as it seemed that we didn't fit in. We knew almost no one there and Nico had warned us that his bride's relatives did not feel kindly toward us. We were political refugees and had escaped Pinochet's dictatorship, and therefore we were probably Communists with no social standing, or money, and we didn't belong to the Opus Dei. We weren't even practicing Catholics. The newlyweds moved into the house I had bought when I was still living in Caracas, though it was too big for them, and Alejandro, your first nephew, was born a year later. I shot out of San Francisco, flew hour after hour—counting the minutes and shivering with anticipation—and in Caracas took into my arms a newborn smelling of mother's milk and talcum powder while out of the corner of my eye I studied my daughter-in-law and my son with growing admiration. They were two little kids playing with dolls. Your brother, who only a short time before had been an irresponsible boy who risked his life climbing mountains and swimming with sharks in the open sea, now was changing diapers, warming bottles, and cooking pancakes for breakfast, side by side with his wife.

The one worry in the lives of this couple was that the criminal element in Caracas had targeted their house. They had stolen things countless times; they had taken three cars right out of the garage, and now alarms, bars on the windows, and electrically wired grilles that would roast a careless cat that brushed them with a whisker had no effect. Every time they came home, Celia stayed in the car, holding the baby and with the motor running, while Nico, pistol in hand, got out and, the way you see in films, checked the house from top to bottom to be sure that some cold-blooded intruder wasn't hiding somewhere. They lived in fear, which worked out well for me since it made it easier to convince them to move to California, where they would be safe and could count on our help. Willie and I fixed up a wonderful little bohemian garret with a tower overlooking the panorama of San Francisco Bay. It was on a third floor and there was no elevator, but they were young and strong and they could fly up and down the stairs with baby paraphernalia, shopping bags, and the garbage. I waited for them with all the nervous anticipation of a bride-to-be, prepared to squeeze the last drop out of my new status as a grandmother. More than once I wound the little music boxes and the mobiles hanging from the ceiling of Alejandro's room and sang in whispers the nursery songs I had learned when you and your brother were little. The wait seemed eternal, but time inevitably passes and finally they arrived.

At first my friendship with Celia stumbled along in fits and starts. Mother- and daughter-in-law came from widely divergent ideologies, but if we had any idea of bickering over differences, life eliminated what might have been bad blood with a few knocks to the head. Soon we forgot any germ of discord and concentrated on the demands of raising a child—and then two more—while adapting to a new language and our situation as immigrants. Although we didn't know it then, a year later we would have our most brutal test: caring for you, Paula. There would be no time for foolishness. Celia very quickly cut the strings that bound her to her fanatic Catholicism and began to question other precepts that had been hammered into her head in her youth. As soon as she realized that in the United States she was not considered white, the racism faded away, and her friendship with Tabra had swept away her prejudices against artists and persons with leftist leanings. Of homosexuals, however, best not to speak. She hadn't as yet met Sabrina's mothers.