Tales from the Town of Widows (17 page)

In the afternoon Virgelina rubbed her grandmother’s eyes with warm water, but it didn’t help. The woman’s eyes were hermetically sealed. “I’ll go get Nurse Ramírez,” Virgelina said. The old woman replied that it wasn’t necessary, that it was a sign from heaven, a warning that God was still mad at her for something only she knew.

Later on that night, the following conversation took place in their kitchen.

“Thank you for dinner, mija. Your soups are much better than your mother’s, may her soul rest in peace.”

“Drink your coffee, Grandmother. The cup is right in front of you.”

“I can’t drink coffee this late anymore. Last night I was up until dawn hearing the cries of all those poor men.”

“What men, grandma?”

“Mariquita’s men. Haven’t you heard their poor wandering souls? May God have mercy on them.”

“May God have mercy on us. We’re still here, suffering.”

“My child, you’re too young to talk about suffering. When I was your age I was the happiest girl—”

“Yes, I know. A handsome man was courting you, but your father didn’t approve of him because he was a Liberal. Two years later you were forced to marry my grandfather, who, of course, was a Conservador, and who, of course, beat you day and night. You see? I’ve learned the whole thing by heart now. Instead, why don’t you tell me once and for all how Mother and Father died?”

“This kitchen is too cold. Where’s my blanket?”

“You have it wrapped around you. Let me look for some cinnamon to make you a hot tea. That’ll warm you up.”

“And my walking stick? Where’s my walking stick?”

“It’s in your hand.”

“Are you ready for your visitor, mija?”

“I am, but he won’t be coming until eight.”

“I just heard eight bells.”

“I counted seven.”

“It’s better to be ready ahead of time. Remember that he’s a busy man these days.”

“I know, Grandmother. Where did I put the cinnamon?”

“Are you wearing rouge on your cheeks?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you remember all the steps, mija? Tell me all the steps.”

“Not again, Grandmother. Instead you tell me how Mother and Father died. I don’t understand why it’s such a secret.”

“Did you clean the entire house like I told you?”

“Every corner.”

“What about the bedspreads?”

“All clean. And I burned eucalyptus leaves in the outhouse and
brought enough water in case he wants to wash. Oh, here it is: the cinnamon. It was mixed with the panela. Let me heat the water.”

“Did you remove the picture of Jesus on the cross from your bedroom?”

“No. Why should I do that? You said it would be a holy act.”

“It will be, but the Lord doesn’t need to witness it.”

“I’ll remove it, then, but before I do that, please tell me how Mother and Father died.”

I
T TOOK
V
IRGELINA
a great deal of perseverance to get her grandmother to tell her, in an exceptional moment of lucidity, the story she wanted to hear. The old woman had avoided talking about it for years, but today Virgelina would become a woman, and she was entitled to know the truth.

“Your father killed your mother,” Lucrecia said straightforwardly, as though that was both the beginning and the ending of the story.

Stunned, with her hands joined over her mouth, Virgelina fell into an old rocking chair she kept next to the stove.

Then, in a small but firm voice, Lucrecia gave her granddaughter the details: “One morning, some thirteen years ago, your father woke up and found his breakfast cold on the night table. Next to the cup of coffee there was a note from your mother saying, ‘My dear husband: these are the last eggs I cook for you. I’m leaving you for someone who’ll never beat me. All best, Nohemí.’ Your father went crazy.” Lucrecia said that the enraged man had gone from village to village looking for his wife and daughter—Nohemí had taken little Virgelina with her—until he found them near Girardot. And that he had brought them back to Mariquita on a rainy night in the middle of June. “The morning after,” Lucrecia went on, “I found a bundled-up little baby crying at my doorstep. It was you. I picked you up and rushed to Nohemí’s house, only a couple of blocks down. But it was too late.” When she arrived, she said, the house was in a terrible mess: broken glass everywhere, broken vases and chairs, broken everything. She had found Nohemí
in a puddle of blood in the kitchen, her throat slit, and in back of the house, Virgelina’s father hanging from a tree, with Nohemí’s note lying on the ground right below his dangling feet.

When Lucrecia finished the telling, Virgelina wondered: Who was the man with whom her mother had fled? Had she been in love with him? What had become of him? She wanted to ask her grandmother, but the woman had slipped back out of lucidity and was shouting to the ceiling, “Lord, oh Lord. Forgive me for begetting a sinful daughter. Forgive me, for I didn’t bring the lost sheep to Your flock.” And then, with her sealed eyes toward Virgelina, she bitterly said, “Your mother’s behavior brought shame to my name. That’s why God’s sending misfortune unto me!”

E
L PADRE
R
AFAEL
knocked on their door with the first ring of the church bell, and by the time the eighth ring was heard, he and his altar boy were already sitting in the living room with Virgelina. The priest had his legs crossed and a delighted expression on his rosy face, like he’d just tasted candy. Hochiminh’s round face, on the other hand, was perfectly blank. He’d laid the enormous Bible on his lap and rested his plump arms on it. The Bible itself was much more likely to display a trace of a smile than he was. The light of a candle on the table illuminated Virgelina’s face, which was indeed smeared with rouge, making her fearful expression even more dramatic.

When asked, Hochiminh mumbled that he was neither hungry nor thirsty. He didn’t want coffee or cinnamon tea. He was fine. El padre said he’d take a “sip” of water. Just a “sip,” for he knew how arduous it was to carry it all the way from the river. He spoke condescendingly, addressing Virgelina’s breasts, smiling salaciously. The girl disappeared into the kitchen, where her grandmother sat unmoving and wrapped in her blanket like a poorly carved statue.

“He wants water,” Virgelina grumbled. She went about the kitchen,
looking for the vessel where they kept their drinking water. It was on top of the only table, before her eyes, but the girl was so agitated that she didn’t see it. “Where did you put the water?” she asked, in a tone that betrayed her foul temper. The old woman turned her head to the right and then to the left, but didn’t acknowledge the question. Virgelina rolled her eyes at the bundle of clothes her grandmother was, and kept looking for it, slamming pots and pans and banging skillets. She couldn’t find it. “Where’s the water?” she yelled. Lucrecia didn’t reply. Virgelina walked up to her, grabbed her by the shoulders and shouted the same question once again.

Lucrecia pushed her away, brandishing her walking cane as if it were a sword. “What? What’s happening?” she said in a small, broken voice. “Who’s there?”

“It’s me! Where’s the damn water vessel?”

“Who’s there? Say something,” repeated Lucrecia.

“Oh, dear Lord,” Virgelina groaned.

Evidently their Lord had decided, in the past few minutes and on top of everything else, to take away her grandmother’s hearing. Virgelina sat at the table, weeping, then she saw the vessel sitting in front of her. She reared up, poured water into a cup, spit in it, stirred it with her index finger and ran from the kitchen, stumbling along the dark hall that separated the rooms. When she was gone, Lucrecia opened her eyes wide and walked to the door and pressed her ear against it to better hear the conversation taking place in her living room.

“Thanks, my child,” said the priest, taking the cup with both hands. He quickly gulped down its contents. “Will your grandmother join us for the Bible reading?”

“She’s not feeling well.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do to assist her?”

“Nothing, unless you can perform miracles. Can you, Padre?” Virgelina said with remarkable harshness.

El padre chose to receive the girl’s reply silently. He asked Hochiminh to look up Genesis 1:28 in the Bible, and when the boy found
it, he moved the Bible onto his own lap, put on his reading spectacles and began to read by the flickering light of the candle:

“Then God blessed them, and God said unto them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply; and replenish the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.’” He crossed himself and, putting away his spectacles in a concealed pocket on the left side of his soutane, added, “Praise be to God!”

“Is that it? Can I go now?” Hochiminh asked. The priest assented, and both boy and Bible fled without so much as a wave.

In the few seconds that passed between the moment Hochiminh slammed the door and the moment the priest said, “Shall we, my child?” Virgelina, in her mind, debated whether or not her mother had been wrong to leave her husband. Until that afternoon, she’d only heard good things about her mother. People in the village raved about Nohemí’s innumerable great qualities but seldom mentioned her father. What a wife and mother, Nohemí! What a devoted Catholic, Nohemí! What a kind and generous soul, Nohemí! What a remarkable human being, Nohemí! They spoke so highly and sympathetically of Nohemí that Virgelina, who’d never seen a picture of her mother, imagined her as an angelic figure with long hair, rosy cheeks and a permanent smile. She had set up an altar to her mother in a corner of her bedroom, and she prayed to her every night. The altar had three levels, and it rested on piled-up boxes. On the top level she placed a small image of the Virgin Mary—who represented her mother—a rosary, and a white candle she only lit when she offered a sacrifice. On the middle level she kept a plastic bowl to hold the ladlesful of soup she offered up daily to her mother—she was very fond of soups, Nohemí!—and when she found them, yellow marigold flowers, the flower of the dead. On the bottom level Virgelina arranged a cup full of water and several little charms and trinkets she acquired at the market, in honor of her mother’s spirit.

But today, after her grandmother’s confession, Nohemí’s image had swiftly deteriorated in Virgelina’s mind. How good could a wife have
been who abandoned her husband? Virgelina reflected. And how good a mother, who risked her daughter’s life by having an affair with God knows who?

“Shall we, my child?” the priest said, rising. He gracefully took the candleholder with two of his fingers and handed it to Virgelina, then motioned to her to go ahead, he’d follow.

As Virgelina entered her bedroom, closely followed by the priest, her head suddenly cleared. It occurred to her that both her mother and grandmother had had a free choice when they selected their paths. What they could’ve or should’ve done didn’t matter anymore, because back then, at that moment when they had to decide which path to take, in their own minds both women had made the right choices. She, Virgelina, had no right to condemn them.

Feeling empowered by her realization, Virgelina was able to see that she, too, had the right to make her own decisions. At this very moment several paths presented themselves before her: she could stay in the room with the priest, doing as her grandmother had told her to do, without complaining. She could run away like her mother, without looking back, hoping no one would ever find her. She could tell el padre the truth—that she was terrified—and politely ask him to leave. She could suffer “it” in silence until “it” was finished, then get the biggest knife from their kitchen, thrust it into el padre’s chest, draw his heart out and place it, all bloody, on the top level of her altar, next to the white candle. A sacrifice that big would certainly appease God’s fury against her grandmother; it might even prompt Him to give Lucrecia back her sight and hearing.

She closed the door with the tips of her fingers and turned around, ever so slowly, to face the eager priest.

V
IRGELINA LAID THE
candleholder on the night table. They stared at each other in the flickering light. Only the bed stood between them. From where he stood, the priest could see a small part of the girl’s lips and chin, and the outline of her small right breast. From where she
stood, Virgelina made out an inquisitive eye fixed on her right breast, a trembling nostril and half a mouth smiling lustfully at her.

“Come over here, my dear,” el padre said, patting the bed with the palm of his hand. “Come…”

The room was so still she heard the throbbing of her own heart. And then, almost in a whisper, the echo of her grandmother’s voice repeating the steps for Virgelina’s defloration began resounding in the girl’s mind.

Step one
:
Tell him you’re a virgin so that he’ll be gentle
.

“I’m a virgin, padre,” Virgelina blurted out.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I’m a virgin.”

He chuckled. “I wouldn’t expect anything different from you, dear.” He walked around the bed, eliminating the space that divided them, and stood confidently before her. One of his hands rested on her hip while the other searched up and down her back for a zipper. It found buttons, undid them, and after a couple of swift motions Virgelina’s dress fell to the floor. She jerked her body a little and wrapped her arms around her chest.

Step two
:
Kiss him on the lips
,
then put your tongue inside his mouth and move it in circles.

Without releasing her firm grasp from around her bosom, Virgelina pushed her lips together the way her grandmother had instructed her, closed her eyes and thrust her face outward, again and again, like a bird pecking at a piece of fruit, hoping that eventually her mouth would reach his. Recognizing what the girl was trying to accomplish, el padre took her head in his hands, and, standing on his toes, began to kiss her with great tenderness. Virgelina allowed el padre to go about his business, but she wouldn’t put her tongue inside his mouth. How could her grandmother think she’d do such a revolting thing? But el padre wanted to feel her tongue. And so their lips engaged in a violent fight: his twisting around, striving vigorously to push hers open; hers making strenuous efforts to resist. Virgelina had always thought that
kisses had flavors, and that when two people liked the flavors of each other’s kisses, they fell in love and kissed and kissed until one of them died or their lips dried out. Her first kiss, however, tasted like spittle and blood because el padre Rafael, frustrated with Virgelina’s reluctance, bit her lips fiercely.