The Ladies of Managua (18 page)

*   *   *

I had wanted to marry in Merced because it matched my mood. Shortly after the North American adventurer William Walker declared himself president for life of Nicaragua, he burned Granada as punishment for the townspeople's opposition. Almost a hundred years later, Merced still had black marks left by the flames. The church, which had been restored a number of times since Walker's day, was just as grand as the other churches in town, but I felt it had more character. The others were painted the colors of the tropics, the bright blue of the sky or the ripe orange of a melon; Merced was white with black zigzags where the flames had licked it. It had scars, but it was still standing and it had a grace, an elegance all its own. I, too, had been through a crisis that almost destroyed me, and I'd survived. What better place to start the next phase of my life, trying to rise from the ashes of my past? But even though most Granadinos loved Merced for its historical significance, its stately architecture, and its massive bell tower, Mama said she wouldn't hear of me marrying in a church other than the one I'd grown up attending. Dolly teared up when I mentioned the idea. “Are you sure that's how you want to start out?” she said. “It's such a dark church inside. And Xalteva is so bright and happy.”

For her, anyway. But the opinion that decided the issue came from Do
ñ
a Milagro, Ignacio's mother. “If you're not going to marry in your church, then you'll marry in ours,” she said, sipping tea in the courtyard during a post-engagement wedding planning visit with me and Mama. Her family went to the catedral, which was right next to their house, and just a short walk from ours. I would have agreed to be married there except that afternoon, after Do
ñ
a Milagro went home, Madre knocked at my bedroom door. I told her to come in, but she stayed in the doorway; she knew how not to intrude, just to suggest. It's a quality I'm afraid I didn't inherit.

“Regarding the church,” she said. “Think about the message you're sending if you marry in the catedral rather than Xalteva. You'll be attending Mass at the catedral, in Ignacio's family pew, from now on. And you have the rest of your life to do Do
ñ
a Milagro's bidding. Maybe your wedding is a good time to show her that you're a person with her own opinions, and that when you do follow her lead it's out of good breeding and kindness, not inevitability.” And so I agreed to Xalteva; this marriage was as much about what my family wanted as it was about my own desires. More so. Years later, when Mariana showed me the photos she took from the bell tower of Merced—it's full of tourists climbing up to the top these days—I told her that I had wanted to get married there, but I had been talked out of it. “I was so easily swayed when I was young,” I said. “I had no backbone.”

“Don't beat yourself up, Bela,” Mariana said. “From what you've told me, sounds like you were suffering from a clinical depression before you got married. Today you'd get therapy or at least happy pills.”

Back then, I got a husband. Poor Ignacio. Set up to be my savior. And all everyone expected from me was that I be the mother of his children. It hardly seems like a fair bargain. I fulfilled my end of it, although he never did get a son. And since I'm the one who is still here, I suppose he kept up his end of it, too. I did survive, this long, anyway. Long enough to learn that one of the few advantages of getting older is that, if you live long enough, you start to lose the need to please everyone else all of the time.

*   *   *

We're rounding the Parque Central now, getting closer to the Funeraria Monte Santo, where Ignacio's coffin will be removed from the hearse and placed in one of the funeral carriages Granadinos use. It's one of the reasons he insisted on being buried here. He wanted to be laid to rest near his parents in the family plot, of course, but, also, ever since he was a boy he'd loved the ornate black carriages drawn by a pair of horses draped in white shawls, with solemn drivers in black suits holding their reins. Even as an adult, if he were sitting in a caf
é
and one passed by, he would stand out of respect for the dead. As girls, we were told always to look away from the funerary carriages, wishing death far from us, so I found his admiration rather macabre. But he'd shrug when I'd chide him and say, “They just look really sharp.” I think he always imagined it would be fun to ride in one. Now he'll get his chance, once we set off toward the burial, first passing my childhood home, then, closer to the catedral, his, then turning and clip-clopping past Merced and Xalteva and finally into the cemetery.

Do
ñ
a Milagro donated the house Ignacio grew up in to the church when she died—by then it was the seventies and none but the wealthiest families could afford to keep up such large properties. After Ignacio's brothers ran his father's cotton business into the ground, the de la Torres were no longer among them. Even though there's now a statue of the Virgen in the front courtyard and a religious bookstore in what was once a sitting room, when we pass Ignacio's home I can almost see him on his balcony. Before we left for Sacred Heart, I would sometimes spot a man up there. Ignacio is—was—eight years older than I am, so when I was thirteen he was a man, and I saw him through the eyes of a child. He would stand out on his balcony in an untucked shirt—back then you almost never saw a man less than perfectly put together unless he was a campesino—smoking and looking out over the city. Once I watched him throw a flower down to a woman passing on the street below. It was just one of the jasmine blossoms that twined around the columns of the balcony, it wasn't as if he had gone out and purchased lilies or roses. But still, it was such a cinematic gesture that Dolly and I giggled from our spot on the opposite corner. He noticed us and froze for one frightening instant until he erupted into laughter so loud and deep that I ran into the church to hide. Dolly came in to get me and dragged me home, not speaking to me, she was so mortified by my childish behavior.

The house I grew up in is a museum now, with a caf
é
full of gringos on the ground floor. When I was little, it echoed with the noise of my siblings and me running up the stairs two by two until our nannies or Madre stopped us and reminded us to act like ladies and a gentleman; then, after we'd gone to bed, with the sound of grown-up laughter as my parents and their friends sat in rocking chairs on the veranda discussing the events of the day. But when I see the house, I have to force myself to remember those happy times. My first instinct is to look away to fight the heavy sadness that threatens to choke me. I've suffered in my life: I was afraid when we fled to Honduras. I was hurt when Ignacio would go on business trips I knew had nothing to do with business. I'm sad now, and frightened at having to start life all over, alone. But I've never been as profoundly sorrowful as I was in that house after I returned from Sacred Heart.

I was happy only in my sleep; I went to bed speaking to Mauricio in my mind, composing letters I was too nervous to put down on paper, but when that got too frustrating I would concentrate instead on reliving one of our dates, trying to remember what I wore, what he said, what Miss Birdie ate. That way the hollow feeling in my stomach would disappear, and my headache would ease up, too, until I was blissfully unconscious. I'd sleep as long as I could in the mornings, but my family were early risers, as were most Granadinos, what with the sun coming up over the lake by five-thirty in the morning. By seven-thirty the maid couldn't wait any longer and she'd enter my room to start tidying up. I'd feel too embarrassed to lie around while she was working, so I'd dress myself, which was a kind of respite, too, if I focused hard enough on which blouse looked best with my skirt, and maybe used a new ribbon to update the trim on my hat.

But then there were still at least four hours to go before lunch, and no one else wanted to spend them wandering around the city with me. Before Dolly moved she would pull me into some wedding-related task, looking at fabrics for her dress or shoes or linens for the reception. But that only took up an hour or two and then I'd find myself sitting on our balcony, or in a shady corner of the courtyard, holding a book and trying to read but going over the same sentence again and again. The interesting books, even the ones that had been forbidden at school, were too complex for me to follow with my mind as muddled as it was. And the religious ones I had read too many times. I could scan the lines and turn the pages and even be mouthing the words to the prayers, but as much as I tried to fill my brain with saints and storylines, my thoughts would end up back in Father Antony's church, taunting me with the horrible image of what Mauricio's face must have looked like staring at my back as I walked away from him.

In New Orleans I had admired a local author, Frances Parkinson Keyes, had even passed by her grand yellow house in the French Quarter. Miss Birdie told us it had been owned by the Confederate general Beauregard and I made myself look impressed although I had no idea who he was; it was hard enough to remember the American generals who had won their wars. But back home in Granada, I would start reading
Crescent Carnival
or
Dinner at Antoine's
and the sounds and smells of the city I loved would overtake me; I wouldn't realize I was crying until my tears stained the flimsy pages. This display of emotion disturbed whoever found me weeping into the book, and exhausted me so that I'd have to return to my room, get under the covers of my freshly made bed, and stay there until it was time to go down to the table again. Ana Carolina would sometimes come in and do dances or sing songs for me, but I often couldn't stop crying and this scared her so much that she would start sobbing, too. Dolly finally took the books away, promising she'd save them for me in case I ever felt I could read them without hurting. I wonder if she still has them? Maybe in the end she gave them to Ana Carolina, who was always so curious about them, and the books are moldering in her grand apartment in Panama City, where she moved with her husband decades ago. Because even little Ana Carolina is a great-grandmother now, although the days of her childhood remain so vivid in my mind.

The afternoons were better, because I could always talk someone into going with me to the cinema, whether it was Dolly or Ana Carolina, who managed to cheer up from our crying sessions with a swiftness that can belong only to a ten-year-old. But Granada had just one cinema, and it showed only one movie at a time, usually a Hollywood film that had been a big hit in the States months prior. And even though I was no longer at Sacred Heart, I was still a Sacred Heart girl; I was mindful of needing to behave appropriately enough not to dishonor the school, or expose my younger sister to immoral behavior. When the cinema had opened a few years before, Padre Juan Cristobal gave us a phone number we could call to find out if the movie being shown had been approved by the Legion of Decency or if it was on the list of condemned, immoral films, which would make watching it a mortal sin.

It was important to call only during daytime hours, but not during the siesta, because the number belonged to one of the few homes in town that had reliable phone service, and calls were answered, Padre Juan Cristobal told us, by a noble lady who had volunteered to provide this service for the Church. Dutifully, I called at 11:00
A.M.
each week when the new movie was announced. I thought I recognized the voice, but I couldn't be sure. Until one day, the voice on the other end said to me, “Isabela—this is Isabela Enriquez, isn't it?”

Shocked that this Church-approved voice knew my name, I nodded, bobbing my head respectfully although I was alone in the room with no one to see me.

“Can you hear me, girl? Is this Isabela?” the voice said again.

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Well, Isabela, you're the only girl in town who uses this number,” Do
ñ
a Milagro said. “I think you're the one for my Ignacio Sebastian.”

That week, the film was
Salome
. And when I arrived at the cinema with Ana Carolina, Ignacio was standing there with a look of resignation on his face, and three tickets in his hand.

 

21

Ninexin

We used to come to Granada every other weekend when I was little, to visit Abuela Milagro before she passed. Abuela Milagro was the first—and maybe the only—person whom I both admired and feared. Partly because she made Mama so anxious; in the car on the way to Granada, Mama would endlessly straighten our dresses so that the smocking on our chests lay in straight, geometric patterns, and make sure that our lace-edged socks were folded properly. But it was also Abuela Milagro herself, the way she sat, that intimidated me. I remember reading a biography of a politician on the beach in Key Biscayne during a visit to see Mariana in Miami, in which some diplomat was described as having “erect carriage.” My English wasn't as good then as it is now, and I can't recall who was being described or even who the subject of the biography was, but right away an image of Abuela Milagro popped into my head and I had to put the book down and dive into the ocean to celebrate, both my triumph in understanding what the author meant, and also my glee that there was a phrase that so perfectly described this characteristic. It was like learning the word “watermelon” for sandía; the name explains just what it is, a melon, but one so juicy and light that when you take a bite it's as if your mouth fills with the most refreshing water. So descriptive, this name. So perfect.

I sound like a crazy person. But the older I get, the more I find myself having these moments where an apt phrase or a smooth pillow or an unexpected sight causes me to feel joy that even I know is wildly out of proportion to the catalyst itself. Maybe it's that part of my nervous system coming alive again after having felt so little joy for so long. Or maybe I'm going crazy with middle age. Mama says she became unhinged herself for a few years before and after undergoing the change, but with her it was crying spells and headaches, and T
í
a Dolores says that Mama has always been depression-prone, ever since they were teenagers and returned from New Orleans.