Mother Tongue (12 page)

The girl opens her mouth to say something to her mother. But she has no words for what has happened, no words for evil. Besides, it’s beginning to snow, a spring snow. She presses her nose to the windowpane. Fat flakes splat on glass, stick
to rocks like moss. She imagines a wonderland as white as in fairy tales her mother reads to her each night. The girl is beginning to drift off, to forget. For many years she will not know that much of what she is doing is fighting sleep.

Twenty years later I still go by the name María. When I said to José Luis, it’s me, María, I remembered. And the ghost of the man with the minus sign smile fled. The demon could not bear it. He could not bear the sound of my true name.

I can hear you clacking away at the computer. It makes me feel old-fashioned, writing everything out by hand. But these years of getting up early to scribble in my notebook have made me a creature of habit. I know of no joy as great, while waiting for the caffeine to strike, as moving a pen across a page. It’s like watching a pointer skirting across a Ouija board; letter by letter, answers come. I’ll admit revenge may be the root of my joy. You see, before our neighbor moved away, he brought my mother a cigar box filled with pens and notebooks he said he didn’t need anymore. My mother gave them to me to practice my penmanship. She cleared a space on the kitchen table and set up a lamp. The man who tried to gut me like a fish had no idea what he had done by giving away those things. I swam and then I soared as I made up stories in notebooks
that were blank except for a few pages of mathematical formulas. I like to think I am above revenge, but just imagine how sweet it feels; I got in the last word. Is this revenge? Or is it, as Soledad would surely say, the spirit working in mysterious ways?

I
t’s just amazing. I can’t believe my mom and I are about to land in San Salvador. The plane is shaking like hell. We’ve run into interference, as the pilot keeps saying over and over, and I feel sicker than a dog. I know I shouldn’t try to read now, but Mom remembered this poem she had in her purse that she says my father left her. It’s by someone named Claribel Alegría. My father underlined parts of it: Return obsesses me / faces
fly by / through the open fissure. / Once more there’ll be peace / but of a different kind. / The rainbow glimmers / tugs at me / forcefully / not that inert peace / of lifeless eyes / it will be a rebellious / contagious peace / a peace that opens furrows / and aims at the stars.… Shit, I can’t read anymore, I guess I’m just too nervous, but I don’t dare say anything to Mom. It was my big idea to come here. After she told me all about my father, I said we have to try and find out if he’s dead or alive. Even though the peace accords were signed ages ago, the San Salvador archdiocese is still trying to figure what happened to everyone; they keep all the photographs of the dead and disappeared under lock and key. I read in the newspaper that Salvadoran church leaders and members of the World Council of Churches are going before the UN to demand the opening of the mass graves. It sounds like they won’t rest until everyone is accounted for. I don’t know what we’ll find in the archdiocese’s office. It scares me to think they might have a photograph of my father’s body. I’ve seen him in photographs,
alive and smiling, and I can’t imagine how it will feel to see him any other way. But mostly I’m worried for Mom.

Our flight was delayed—we didn’t arrive until 1
A.M
.—but Sister Margarita Bautista was there to meet us. She seemed so happy to see us. You’d have thought we were old friends. Mom says she knew Soledad, that they’d met when Soledad went on her first delegation to El Salvador. We were supposed to spend the night at Ciudad Grande, where she runs a literacy project, but it was too late to drive out there so we ended up at the Sheraton. I didn’t sleep at all and neither did Mom. We stayed up for the rest of the night and played cards and she reminisced about my father. She laughed a lot remembering how he tried to teach her to make pupusas—corn pockets stuffed with cheese—and how hers always came out hard, like cookies. Then, out of the blue, Mom started crying, saying she never wrote down the recipe. I didn’t know what to say, so I said, that’s neat that Dad liked to cook.
All of a sudden she stopped crying. I’d never, ever called my father “Dad.” But the word fit. It fit like a good pair of shoes. I think deep down inside I’ve always been angry at not having had a father. But after Mom told me I got my angry streak from the night he hit her, a part of me quit being angry. It never dawned on me that even though he went away, he left me parts of himself. Mom didn’t just make me from scratch.

I’m scared shitless. Sister Margarita is supposed to be here any second to take us to the archdiocese office. Mom’s touching up her lipstick. She always does that when she’s nervous. Now she’s complaining about the lone wrinkle between her eyebrows. She’s paranoid about turning forty. Maybe all this is just midlife crisis. But then Mom’s always been old for her age. From what she told me, it sounds like she felt too many things at too young an age. On the one hand, if I spot a gray hair she makes me pluck it. On the other hand, she says she can’t wait to become the age she has always been inside—fifty. She says she might join the Peace Corps when
that day comes. I can’t figure Mom—oh my God, Sister Margarita is here.

The archdiocese office is not at all what I expected. It was rebuilt with cinder blocks after it was blown up—that was the same bomb that took out part of a cathedral wall and killed Archbishop José Grande, who Mom says was very famous for the stands he took on behalf of human rights. There’s nothing on the walls but a cross and a picture of Jesus risen from the dead, which seems to have bullet holes in it. Sister Margarita has gone back to the safe with the sister who works here. It’s crazy. They still have to keep all the documents in a safe—all these years after the signing of the peace accords. Mom is holding on to her shawl like it’s about to fly away. I wish I could make her feel better. At least we’re not alone. There are two other mothers here, both with children. Their heads are covered with scarves. I’ve never seen such faces. Tree bark faces, dark and lined, old before their time but strong. What’s weird is that if you take away the
lines, they look like me—the cheekbones, the Indian eyes. For all I know they could be relatives. I think Mom is thinking the same thing. One of the children fell as he walked toward us and Mom jumped out of her chair and picked him up, then pulled some tissue from her purse to wipe the kid’s face as he sobbed. Now the Salvadoran ladies are talking to Mom. I wish I could understand what they were saying. Mom’s going to faint when she hears I signed up for a Spanish class next semester.

For two hours we’ve been searching through albums and albums of photographs. I don’t know why we’re not running out of the room crying. You just have to go numb sometimes. You have to look at the bodies as if you were watching television. But it’s not that easy because I have to search those faces for the face of my father. For my face. A couple of times Mom got up and left the room. I’ve never seen her look so old. In two hours she’s taken on some of the features of the other women here. Her face isn’t sagging like a
North American face. It’s growing thinner and tighter, as if to make room for—for all the dead. It’s like they take up so much space—their faces, their memories, the things they could never say. When we started going through the albums I wanted to run, to get the hell out of here. But curiosity is my strongest emotion, stronger even than fear. I want to find my father, my dad.

Mom, look, Mom, Mom, don’t cry, it’s okay, it’s him! It’s Dad. No, he’s not dead. There’s a question mark below the photo. See, there’s his birthday but no death day. He’s like he was in your pictures. Maybe he never even came back here. But look Ma, look at his name. It’s José Luis Alegría. José Luis. It’s not a made-up name after all! What do you mean, you knew it all along? It’s okay, Mom, go ahead and cry. Don’t worry about me, I’ll cry later. What do you mean, you’re crying with happiness? Yeah, you’re right, he wasn’t a stranger. See, Mom, he told you his real name because he loved you and he wanted to give you something real. I know
because it sounds like something I would do. Me and Dad are funny that way, we’re stubborn. Ma, you never gave me a real middle name. I’ve got one now. Alegría. Happiness.

The nuns are stroking Mom’s back and the two other ladies who were flipping through the books are holding her hands. And all I can think about is my middle name. I should be crying. But why? Dad was always disappeared to me. But now he’s come back and given me another name. And I have a strange feeling he’s alive. For twenty years Mom has believed the worst. She’s funny that way, we’re really different. I’m convinced he’s—Jesus, there’s the archbishop. Sister Margarita is introducing him to Mom. It’s José Grande’s replacement. You’d never guess he’s an archbishop because he’s wearing cotton pants and a simple shirt and torn up sandals. Last year Mom sent me an article about a speech he gave at Harvard, something about how there will be no peace until all of El Salvador’s dead are named and honored, and all the killers brought to justice.
Now he’s handing something to Mom—it’s a poster. A poster of a dark lady wearing a white scarf and holding a crown of thorns. Behind her is what looks like a human figure outlined in chalk on pavement. At the bottom of the poster are the words, madre de los desaparecidos, Mother of the Disappeared. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s Mary the mother of Jesus.