The Ladies of Managua (14 page)

Mauricio laughed. “I'd kneel, but under the circumstances…” He nodded at Miss Birdie, who was beckoning to us from her seat, the plate in front of her empty.

Now, so many decades later, I can barely believe that I agreed, that I was able to keep it a secret. Not from everyone, of course; I needed to tell Connie I was meeting Mauricio, so she wouldn't be surprised when Betsy came to get me after curfew one night, and snuck me out through the laundry room. But Connie had no idea that we weren't going to the French Quarter to hear music, or to have a late supper, or even to rent a hotel room, but uptown to meet with Father Antony, the priest at Holy Name church at Loyola, who had been advising Mauricio since before he first applied to the university. “It's about time!” Connie said when I told her I was sneaking out to see Mauricio on a Wednesday night, that it was our last chance to be alone together before my parents arrived for the graduation festivities that weekend.

When I returned, Connie woke up briefly to ask, “Do you feel different?”

“So different,” I told her. And it was true: after speaking with the priest, I felt like an adult, someone capable of making her own decisions, shaping her future. It turned out that Father Antony wasn't that much older than Mauricio, maybe ten years. And he couldn't refuse when Mauricio told him that whether he liked it or not we were going to be married in the eyes of the law, and we'd like to be married in the eyes of the Church as well.

The priest focused his dark eyes on me and asked, “Is this what you want, too, my child?”

And I looked right back at him and said, “We have to go to Cuba to help Mauricio's family, Father. So we have to be together now. And we don't want to sin.”

Over fifty years later, it's still the moment I'm proudest of in my life. By letting him know we'd be leaving the country in each other's company, I made it impossible for him to turn us down. There was no way he could stop us from marrying legally, he could just deprive us of God's blessing. In which case, the real sin would be to turn us away.

Father Antony asked us some questions about my religious education and if we thought my parents would turn their backs on us once they heard we had eloped. I told them the truth, that I knew my family would come to love Mauricio as much as I did one day. Then he gave Mauricio instructions about witnesses and signatures, and we agreed that we would return to the church on Saturday at 4:00
P.M.
, after the graduation ceremony was over, but before dinner, when everyone else would be resting. My parents regularly took a siesta, especially while traveling. And the girls at school would be so busy packing and writing in each other's yearbooks, no one would notice if I were missing for an hour. It would be just a quick ceremony, not a full Mass; Cristian would be our witness. As soon as it was over he'd speed us back down to school, where I'd melt back into the chaos of the last few days of the year. That night at dinner, Mauricio would show up to take the extra place I'd called Arnaud's and arranged for, and if my parents weren't charmed by him—which I was sure they would be—and they started to issue warnings or threats, we'd tell them it was too late: we were already married. And so happy. And we hoped that, in time, they'd be happy for us, too.

I wanted to wear white on my wedding day, but that color was reserved for the graduating girls. So I settled for an eyelet dress with a white bodice and pale blue skirt, and a matching blue bolero jacket, an ensemble I had found at Maison Blanche when Madre was in town en route to Paris in the fall, and still hadn't had occasion to wear. The dress had puffy little white sleeves, so when I took the jacket off in church, it would be almost like wearing a white dress. And, best of all, it went with a blue hat that had a white birdcage veil. Since the headpiece matched the dress, no one would ever think of it as a bridal veil. Except for me and Mauricio. And Father Antony, if he thought about those things.

Madre and Padre had arrived the previous afternoon, and dinner that evening had been so fun, so full of the stories that made us
us:
about weekends at Abuelo's finca, when we would watch the sweet old horses he pretended belonged to each one of us have races, each cheering on “our” pet, or about our brother Teodoro, who was so intent on spending all his money on his girlfriend that he walked across the parque every morning to sit on the wide porch of the club and read
La Prensa
there, saving himself from actually having to buy the newspaper. I felt tears in my eyes at one point at the thought that I wouldn't be there to mock him with Dolly, to sit across from him and say, “Whenever you're done with that paper, caballero.” Or to be there for Ana Carolina's last few years at home before she, too, came to Sacred Heart. I missed them all already.

“There's nothing to cry about, silly girl.” Madre leaned over and patted me on the shoulder. “I know you'll miss your sister, but it's just for one year!”

Padre added, “We'll make sure Dolly doesn't get married and move away while you're still in New Orleans,” and Dolly blushed, then reached for the breadbasket so that the movement would keep us all from noticing. Keep our parents from seeing that she was blushing, rather; I knew her too well for her to be able to hide such a thing from me.

*   *   *

The morning of the graduation, I watched as the senior girls lined up in the courtyard while we all clapped for them from the porch, then I ran upstairs to Dolly's room to leave a graduation present on her bed—a heavy silver frame with a photo Mauricio had taken of her and me in Cristian's car, laughing, her leaning back so hard her hat had almost fallen off. Along with it was a note that said,
I'm sorry if I disappointed you. I will miss you whenever I'm not with you, and I will always love you. Your sister.

She wouldn't realize what I meant until after dinner, but no matter. I couldn't just leave a present without a note.

*   *   *

During the graduation ceremony, the mistress general talked on, as she liked to do, about honor and how they had tried to inculcate us with it, and, in turn, all they asked was that we act in a way that would further burnish the name of Sacred Heart. I felt a little guilty as she spoke, knowing what I was about to do, but then I told myself that I was acting honorably: getting married in the Catholic Church was exactly what a good Sacred Heart girl should do. I bet some of the North American girls would have just run off to Cuba first and asked questions about marriage certificates later.

The ceremony was lovely; Dolly was even lovelier. When our parents went back to their hotel to rest, I gave her a hug and told her how proud I was of her, how I couldn't have come here, to school in a foreign country, in a foreign language, without her.

“Some of the seniors are going to the Walgreens counter for malteds,” she said. “The mistress general said we've proven how responsible we are, we don't even need a chaperone! Come on, it'll be fun.”

“I still have so much packing,” I told her. “And you know Connie always spends the last day of school sitting on my bed, watching me pack, talking about the trouble she plans to get in over the summer.”

I actually congratulated myself, watching Dolly leave. It had been the perfect thing to say. And when I got back to the room and Connie wasn't there, I was sure it was another good omen. I picked up the notebook on her bedside table and wrote,
Out with my family; join us for dinner tonight at Arnaud's at 8?

Giving her a place to meet me later would keep her from wondering where I was now. Plus, it might be good to have a buffer. My parents would never speak in anger in front of a well-bred young lady like Connie. I congratulated myself again. And then I picked up my rosary and walked downstairs, humming, until I reached the laundry room door. There I knocked five times quickly and, when I heard Betsy's two knocks back, slipped into the room and out the back door where Cristian Hidalgo's navy car stood waiting. I'd never seen anything more beautiful.

Until we got to Holy Name and there was Mauricio waiting for me. I couldn't believe that I would get to sit across from this person every day at breakfast, and again at dinner. And even more incredible, that he wanted to see me every day, too.

“Shall we begin?” Father Antony asked. Everyone there looked at me—Mauricio, Cristian, Father Antony, and an old woman dressed in black who was sitting in a pew near the front; I didn't know if she was just one of those old women who seem to grow out of the pews in Catholic churches like fruit on a branch, or if Father Antony had asked her there as a second witness, but seeing her made me miss my own abuela, and, at the same time, made me wish I had taken someone into my confidence and asked a friend to stand up with me, to act as my maid of honor. But Dolly would have seen attending as betraying our parents, and Connie couldn't have kept the secret longer than it took for her to comprehend the request. I had asked Betsy to come, assuming that this priest wouldn't mind a Negro girl in his church. At home the morenitos and the chelitos worshiped together; it must have been the same in this city, too. But she had to work that afternoon, laundering the tablecloths from the graduation reception.

I smiled at the funny old woman all in black, then nodded at Mauricio and the priest, and looped my arm through Cristian Hidalgo's, who had just been elected, by me, to walk me down the aisle. We started the slow procession, and then I stopped.

“Isa?” Mauricio said. “Are you okay?”

“There's no music! I always imagined that I would walk down the aisle to music.” I laughed, because I knew it was silly. I'd always envisioned myself walking down the aisle on my father's arm, not Cristian Hidalgo's, and assumed that I'd be wearing a custom-made gown, not a cotton sundress. But somehow it was the music that stopped me. “‘Ave Maria,'” I clarified.

“Wait!” Father Antony said. “Stay here!” He ran out of the side door of the church; it looked like he was heading behind it, toward Loyola's school buildings. In a few minutes we heard a large crash.

“Maybe we should get this show on the road?” Cristian started toward the door Father Antony had disappeared through, but Mauricio put a hand on his shoulder. “Isa's missing enough other things today. We have a couple of minutes for him to find music.”

It wasn't very long before the priest came rushing through the door with a little boy following. At first I thought the boy was going to sing, but then I saw he was holding a record player. Father Antony had him sit cross-legged in the nave, near the only electrical outlet I could see in the church. He placed the record player on the boy's lap, took the album he was carrying out of its sleeve, and put it on the turntable. The boy's eyes followed Father Antony's hand as he slowly lifted the needle and lowered it onto the shiny black surface. There was scratching and static and then a woman's voice filled the church, filled it with a sound that added up the love of God and the love a mother has for her child and the love I had for Mauricio, a sound so big that I could hear each word echo, so big that they must have been able to hear it out on the street.

Now Father Antony was back in front of the altar and he and Mauricio were staring at me. Father Antony looked as if he were holding his breath, wondering was this the right “Ave Maria,” or did we have a different version in Nicaragua? But Mauricio was smiling as widely as I was. Hearing the woman singing behind the scratches and the echoes, he must have felt as I did: that now, everything was perfect.

Cristian walked as if he were born to escort a bride down the aisle; his carriage erect, his face pleasant but impassive, as if hundreds of people were watching him instead of just Mauricio, Father Antony, the old widow, and the little boy in the short pants who was really looking more at the record player anyway.

The singer on the record repeated each verse one more time than I was used to, but this was perfect, too. Given Cristian's stately pace, and the way I wanted to absorb every sight and sound of this moment as I walked away from one life and toward another, her version seemed perfectly timed to get me down the aisle. I am sure she would have stopped holding that final, glorious note the moment I stepped into my place next to Mauricio.

But I'll never know. Because before I reached the end, the front doors of the church burst open and there stood my father, Dolly, Connie, and Betsy.

The widow crossed herself but the rest of us near the altar remained still, absorbing the impact of the slamming doors, and stared at the small clump of people massed around my father, who stood in the middle, radiating quiet anger.

“Madre?” I asked, realizing she was missing.

“I wanted to spare her this,” my father said in Spanish.

“Se
ñ
or Enriquez.” Mauricio stepped forward. “It's unfortunate that we meet under these circumstances, but I assure you that–”

“Your assurances mean nothing,” my father said in a low, controlled voice. “As for this meeting it will be our first and last, so don't waste your regret.”

“Nevertheless,” Mauricio continued. “Isa and I are in love and—”

“And she is not a citizen of this country and, if I'm not mistaken, you are not either. I have friends in our government and in yours who could make life very difficult for you, and perhaps your family, should you choose to defy me and attempt to continue with this childish scheme.”

“Then I suppose it's my turn to say that your words mean nothing to me,” Mauricio said, matching Papa's commanding tone with a haughty confidence I had never heard before; for the first time, his voice was entirely without warmth or humor. It softened a bit when he said, “Perhaps we should ask Isa what she thinks.”

They all turned toward me. I searched for a sympathetic face to guide me but Mauricio's was so hopeful that it hurt; the force of his determination, willing me what to say, threatened to smother me. Dolly and Padre looked angry, Connie pained, and Betsy, she just looked afraid.