Eccentric Neighborhood (13 page)

“After my divorce from Edward Milton I decided to remain single. I’ve been married three times, and I don’t regret it. I’ve had my share of adventure in life. I know what a penis is like—the long, the thick, and the prickly short of it. And I can assure you none of it matters, my dears, because fashion is the secret of happiness. Since Edward, I’ve decided to live only for style, and I get a great deal of pleasure from it. But I can still teach
you
girls how to catch a husband, if you’re interested.”

W
E’RE ALL DEAD, CHILDREN
of the dead, the first man said. No one dies, the second man answered.

—
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ
,
Málhamat al-Harafish

T
HE DOCTORS WERE SURE
Clarissa wouldn’t survive the first month of her life because of the rheumatic fever she developed when she was only a day old. Her heart murmur was so loud that the doctors could hear it without the aid of a stethoscope, simply by putting an ear to her little chest. She was placed in an incubator for a week, and when she didn’t get better, the doctors told Abuelo Alvaro and Abuela Valeria to take their daughter home with them. There was nothing they could do but wait for the end.

When they got back to the house Abuela told Abuelo to find a nursemaid for Clarissa, because she was too distraught to care for the child. Abuela was only seventeen and she was terrified that the baby might die in her arms. That was when Abuelo Alvaro brought Miña Besosa to the house.

Miña was part Taína Indian and part African, and she came from a very poor family. Her father, Triburcio Besosa, was a fisherman and her mother, Aralia, had died when she was very young. Miña had married Urbano, a black truckdriver who worked at the
central
Plata, when she was fifteen. When she came to Emajaguas she was already thirty-five and had had four children, who were among the healthiest in Camarones because of her abundant milk. One day Miña was washing Urbano’s dirty clothes in the Camarones River when Abuelo Alvaro rode by on his horse. Urbano was holding on to her so that the current wouldn’t sweep her away: Miña was about to give birth to her fifth child and so heavy that had she fallen, she would never have been able to make it back to shore.

When he saw Miña in the river, Abuelo Alvaro drew near, his horse playfully pawing the water. Miña’s wet clothes clung to her body. She looked as if she were carrying a giant eggplant on her belly and two smaller ones on her chest.

“Congratulations on the happy event,” Abuelo said to them, and pointed at Miña’s swollen abdomen with a good-natured laugh.

“Good morning,
patrón
,” Urbano answered. He had immediately recognized Don Alvaro Rivas de Santillana from the big house up at Emajaguas.

“My own wife has just given birth,” Abuelo said. “How would you like to come to the house to nurse the baby? Since it’s our firstborn, we’ll pay you well.” And he took a little bag of gold coins out of his pocket and jingled them above the horse’s head.

Miña put her hand to her belly and looked fearfully at Urbano without daring to answer. “Of course she will,
patrón
,” Urbano answered. “We’ll be only too glad to oblige.”

That night Miña cried herself to sleep. Just thinking that she would have to give the baby to her sister to take care of tore her heart. But Urbano was adamant. “Once you’re working at the Rivas de Santillanas’ house, we’ll be secure. I’ll come visit you every day, and we’ll be able to buy our own house with that money.”

Abuelo made some inquiries and found out Urbano was a responsible driver; moreover, he had never participated in any of the truckers’ strikes at the
central
, and he had six years of schooling, which meant he could read and write. Also, Triburcio, Miña’s father, had been to Emajaguas several times with the day’s catch hung on a pole over his shoulders. Abuelo remembered him well. He had bought fish from him several times. Miña would be the perfect wet nurse for the baby at Emajaguas.

Back then, Puerto Rican ladies didn’t breast-feed their children. They were supposed to be elegantly dressed at all times and to accompany their husbands to social events. All they did was rock the cradles and sing lullabies to their babies. Abuela Valeria was very proud of her breasts, which were alabaster white and just the right size, with nipples as delicate as rosebuds that Abuelo loved to caress at night. If she nursed the baby, her breasts would become swollen and dark, like those of mulatto women, and she certainly didn’t want that. So a few days after Clarissa was born, Abuela asked the midwife to give her a special brew made from
retama
leaves that dried up the milk in her breasts, and two weeks later she was back to normal. She got all dressed up and went out to a party in San Damián with Abuelo Alvaro and soon forgot all about her baby.

When Miña arrived, Clarissa was lying in her crib, wrapped in her crocheted blanket and looking like a little wax doll. Miña was well endowed with fat; she was practically bursting out of her starched white uniform. “Poor little thing,” Miña said as she picked the baby up. “She has a tiny warbler trapped in her chest, and she’s so cold she can hardly breathe. But all she needs is a little warmth, and she’ll come around.” And she began to rub the baby down with camphor oil every two or three hours between feedings. She plastered Clarissa’s chest and abdomen with pepper leaves; then she wrapped her up in long strips of gauze until the baby looked like a warm little
pastel de arroz
. Miña carried her around propped on her chest for three months, and Clarissa’s
soplo
began to get better—her face turned a delicate pink. By that time she had gotten so used to Miña that no one else in the house could pick her up or she would cry her head off.

Abuela Valeria began to worry that Clarissa might never learn who her real mother was. Months went by and things remained the same. The baby would get red as a pepper the minute Abuela took her out of the crib and wouldn’t stop howling until Abuela put her down. Finally, when the baby was a year old, Abuela told Miña to go back home. Clarissa howled all day in her crib but no one came to lift her. Abuela sat next to her for hours singing songs, but Clarissa didn’t stop. It was terrible to think that the baby would grow up not loving her own mother.

Valeria realized she had made a mistake, letting Miña take over. She was going to do everything for her babies herself from then on, she said. She would change Clarissa’s diapers, bathe her, feed her mashed potatoes from her little china plate and milk from a bottle. The time of snuggling into Miña’s warm breast was over. But Clarissa wouldn’t let Valeria get near her. She sat in her crib trembling with hunger and cold. But if she saw her mother approach with a spoon of porridge, she would flail her little hands in front of her and the food would go flying into Valeria’s face. For two days Clarissa didn’t eat anything or have a drop to drink. Everyone thought she was going to die.

“I can’t stand hearing her cry like that,” Abuelo Alvaro told Abuela Valeria on the second night as they lay in bed and he held her in his arms. “It’s tearing my heart to pieces.” Clarissa had been crying now for thirty-six hours without letting up. Her wail had become a whimper, like that of a kitten lost in the woods. Every once in a while Abuelo would heave a great sigh, his chest rising and falling like a mountain under the white linen sheets. “It’s nothing,” Abuela reassured him. “Today all the manuals say it’s healthier to let babies cry than to pick them up. They get used to hardship and suffer less later on in life. Also, their lungs become stronger. Once I read in the papers that the mother of Adelina Patti, the coloratura soprano, never picked her up; she let her cry all the time when she was a child.”

When the third day had gone by and Clarissa hardly had the strength to cry anymore, Abuela took her out of the crib and sat her on the floor. She put a bowl of milk, a plate of porridge, and a banana next to her and closed the door to the room. When Clarissa saw she was alone, she ate all the porridge with her little hands and licked the milk plate clean, but if anyone opened the door she began to howl again. When she was finished, she relieved herself on the floor like a small animal, and the maid had to come in and clean it up. This went on for a couple of weeks, with Abuela Valeria refusing to let anyone go into the baby’s room, until Abuelo Alvaro couldn’t take it any longer. He went in, picked Clarissa up, wrapped her in her little blanket, and sat her on his shoulder. But Clarissa went on crying. Then he took her out on the veranda to look at the sailboats going in and out of the Guayamés bay.

“Look how beautiful they are,” he told her. “They look like swallows skimming the sky, free as the wind. One day you’ll be like them and be able to do as you wish. If you give me a big smile and stop crying, I promise Mother will let Miña come back to work at the house.” Clarissa, of course, couldn’t understand a word he was saying, but his soothing tone calmed her down and she began to laugh.

Miña came back a week later, but instead of nursing and caring for Clarissa, she was put in charge of the housecleaning and the laundering. She was told never to get close to the little girl or she would lose her job, so when she walked by Clarissa’s side, she always made a point of looking the other way, pretending there was nobody there.

After a while Clarissa began to ignore Miña as well and to act as if nothing had happened between them. She let everybody pick her up, feed her, and change her diapers, and her life returned to normal. Every once in a while, however, Clarissa would rub against Miña’s legs when Miña came in to clean the bedroom or would lean against her as if by accident when Miña fed her. But Miña still ignored her.

When she was four years old Clarissa tried to get Miña’s attention by other means. Miña loved parrots. “When they look at you with their golden pupils opening and closing their tiny kaleidoscopes,” Miña said, “they are sharing an ancient wisdom with you. They always detect the thing behind the thing.” But Miña wasn’t able to afford a parrot.

From the terrace at Emajaguas one could often see parrots fly by in flocks, migrating from Santo Domingo to Puerto Rico on their way to the continent. Whenever she came out onto the terrace Miña would scan the trees for wings fluttering like pointed emeralds among the leaves. She would make cooing sounds but could never attract them. One day she bought a cage and sat for hours under the tamarind tree, a hopeful smile on her face. She made a wide circle of walnuts on the ground around her and kept a net tied to a long pole by her side, but the screeching parrots flew over her head and none came down.

When Clarissa saw Miña’s disappointment, she ran to her room with her crayons. She came out an hour later, having drawn a beautiful green parrot in a cage just like Miña’s, and gave it to her. When Abuelo Alvaro saw Clarissa’s drawing, he went into town, bought a parrot, and gave it to Miña as a present. Miña hung the cage from a bronze hook in the kitchen and named the parrot Felicia, short for
felicidad
, and she loved her more than anything else in the world. Miña talked to her for hours, and Felicia always listened attentively, her head cocked to one side.

Abuelo Alvaro was sure Clarissa was cured. He filled her bathtub with toy boats and often took her to the seashore, all snuggled up in sweaters so she wouldn’t feel the wind. He told her stories at night to put her to sleep, and when she grew up she always sat at his right hand at the dinner table. But what had happened with Miña had made a deep impression on Clarissa, and from then on she had a difficult time letting people touch her. It was as if a splinter of ice had remained buried deep in her heart. Love was the hardest thing in the world for Clarissa, because in spite of everything Miña had done to warm her, she always felt cold.

All that, of course, was many years later. But when Mother became a fat, happy baby thanks to Miña, everybody thought it was a miracle. That was why she was baptized Milagros soon after she was born. But when she grew older Abuelo Alvaro changed her name to Clarissa because she was so bright. By age two she could already speak clearly and when she was three she could read effortlessly. She was especially good with numbers, and by the time she was ten she was keeping a little notebook with a tally of every cent that was spent at the house, helping Abuela Valeria manage the family budget.

Abuelo Alvaro called her his little diamond because she always saw things in such a clear light. There was even talk of taking her to the United States to be evaluated at an institute for gifted children, but then Abuela got pregnant with Tía Dido. By the time Clarissa turned twelve, however, her development had slowed to normal, but she was always a little smarter than her sisters and brother.

Abuela Valeria named her daughters after the mythical characters in the works she loved. Every time a girl was born, Miña suggested a good, solid Spanish name to Abuela Valeria—for example, Juana, María, or Margarita—but Valeria had very definite ideas about what her daughters should be called. She named Siglinda after Wotan’s daughter in
Die Walküre
, Dido after the queen of Carthage in the
Aeneid
, Artemisa after the Greek goddess of the chase, Lakhmé after the exotic Indian princess in Pierre Loti’s poem
Le Mariage de Loti
, and Clarissa after Clarissa Harlowe, Richardson’s sophisticated English heroine. Sons were important; one couldn’t name them after fanciful characters out of literature or opera. Alejandro, therefore, was named in honor of Alexander the Great.

Clarissa was petite—barely five foot one—and she worried about not finding a beau. Abuelo Alvaro always reminded her that the best perfume came in small bottles. She was quick-tempered and proud. When she finally married Father she tacked his last name onto hers like the tail of a kite: Clarissa Rivas de Santillana de Vernet. This made her name so long she could hardly get it in at the bottom of her letters and checks, and it took her forever to sign them. She had been taught the Palmer method by the nuns of the Sacred Heart, and her penmanship, like everything else about her, was perfect. After the curlicued capital C of Clarissa came the elegantly flowing Rivas de Santillana, all the letters equally rounded at the bottom and pointed at the top, leaning slightly to the right as if swayed by the breeze that blew over her family’s cane fields.