The Ladies of Managua (19 page)

Whatever the reason, it doesn't happen very often. But once every few weeks I see or hear something that makes me feel almost giddy, the way I used to at the end of our long visits with Abuela Milagro, when Papa would return to collect us. He always made some excuse as to why he couldn't sit with us drinking ice water in glasses wrapped in cloth napkins and staring at our shoes; he had to go discuss an important matter with his brother-in-law, T
í
o Teo, who would be reading his newspaper at the club, or to make an urgent deposit at the bank. As soon as Papa strolled in, back from his errand, Abuela Milagro's quizzes—of course we could say the Lord's Prayer in Spanish, very good, but now could we say it in French?—came to an end. Then we would walk in a straight line, with Abuela Milagro leaning on Papa's arm, over to the social club, to enjoy our guapote in peace, Abuela Milagro always said, without having to watch all the pobrecitos splashing away in the lake.

The flickering of freedom I felt when Papa showed up and ended those airless encounters thrilled but also worried me; I always teetered on the verge of bursting out into uncontrollable giggles. If I felt these brief moments of almost hysterical joy even as a child, that means that the tendency has always been in me, I suppose. But, after so many years of being a self-contained, serious adult, I like to think that the fact that they're coming back shows a kind of progress, too. Maybe I'm rediscovering the thing I loved about Manuel, only in myself. And if that's true, that has to mean that, on some level, I've forgiven him. And that, if he still exists in some form, a soul, or just echoes of electricity left behind by the firing synapses of his youth, he's forgiven me, too.

*   *   *

Mariana also must have forgiven me for whatever her most recent grievance was, because, now, as we arrive at the Funeraria Monte Santo, she's putting her hand on my shoulder and pointing at the shingle they have hanging in front of their door, a naive drawing, almost a cartoon, of a smiling man in a black suit rising up out of his ornate coffin, his arms upraised as if he's praising Jesus or the American football player who just scored the winning touchdown.

“I love that sign,” she says. “The corpse is just so happy with the customer service here that he's jumping out of his coffin!”

I've seen this image hundreds of times since I was a little girl, but I never noticed how simultaneously glorious and ludicrous it is. I've always just been impressed that this small family business keeps thriving; customers are dying to get in, ha ha. It's the artist in Mariana that noticed it.

And then it happens. I do start giggling uncontrollably, my shoulders shaking with laughter. Heads turn to look at me in confusion, even Mama snaps out of her reverie to glare at me, at this outrageous display, violent laughter on the morning of my father's funeral. But there we are, Mariana and I laughing as the horses stamp their feet, waiting for the transfer of the coffin from the hearse to the carriage. The sound of their hooves on the pavement reminds me of walking across the Parque Central with my papa as a little girl, the one time I slipped out of an audience with Abuela Milagro. That hot afternoon my socks were especially itchy around my ankles and, as he turned to leave, I couldn't help myself from rising out of my seat, too. And Papa saved me, saying that he'd noticed the quarter-inch heel on my white patent leather shoe was loose, and he was just going to bring me to the cobbler to fix it, so I didn't slip and fall and dirty my pretty dress. It was an excuse Mama and Abuela Milagro couldn't find fault with. And so, without so much as a backward glance at Celia, still a prisoner in her chair, I skipped off, holding my father's hand. We didn't go anywhere near the cobbler, just petted the horses and ate some vigorón from one of the kiosks in the park, and bought leche de burra candy in paper bags from a boy about my age. Feeling a little guilty, I chose an extra-large packet for Celia to eat on the way home.

Now I am no longer shaking with laughter, but crying into Mariana's shoulder, because I will never again walk through the Parque Central holding my papa's hand. And the sound of the horses' hooves on the cobblestones have brought him back through some unknowable alchemy, and he isn't the corpse in the coffin, but I can feel him all around me, in the clouds above and the grass below and the smell of some nearby bonfire. He is everywhere, surrounding me the way that, if I tried very hard, I felt God was everywhere when I was a little girl listening to old Padre Juan Cristobal mutter indistinctly from his pulpit when we'd visit Granada. By the time I was old enough to pay attention to his sermons, the priest wore false teeth and was hard to understand. But on certain occasions, when the light streamed through the stained glass window, staining his bald spot blue, his voice would deepen and his words turned into a song even though they didn't rhyme, and on those occasions I could see the priest my mother remembered with so much reverence, and I could feel the God he spoke of, tangible in the very air I was breathing.

It is a day for miracles because, through my tears, I realize that Mariana is crying, too, and we're holding on to each other as the employees of Funeraria Monte Santo walk around us, going about their business. I want to stop and thank them for their kindness to us, and to my father on his last day. Only moments ago Mariana was laughing about the sign with the dark humor I always admire in her because I know it will help her withstand whatever heavy moments await her, that she has the power to lighten them herself, and doesn't need anyone to do it for her. And even though I know she'll be all right, it still hurts me to see her in pain. Hearing her cry this hard reminds me of all the times I left Miami when she was a little girl, when I'd tell her, so that I could hear it myself, too, that she'd be fine, that I'd be back soon, that once they dropped me off at the airport, Abuelo would take her to Swenson's for ice cream and that her abuela had so many fun excursions planned for her next week. Now I tell her what I think so often but seldom let myself say anymore, that I love her. And Mariana makes a strange sobbing, choking sound that I think is her crying and laughing at the same time.

I was laughing a moment ago, too. But the sound of the horses' hooves brought him back, and therefore took him away again, reminding me that I'm preparing to bury my father, I'm not just strolling in front of Funeraria Monte Santo on another sunlit Granada day. And it feels like losing him one more time.

Once when I was visiting Mariana in Miami, I read a science paper she wrote about the connection between smell and memory. I know I said I always respected her boundaries, her privacy, and it's true, I have never so much as opened a desk drawer of hers to find a pen, as I didn't want to come across a diary or a folded letter and be tempted to read it like so many mothers do, like I know my own mother did. But she had left the paper on the hall table, and the red
A
on the front was as bright as a neon sign. The pages described how the same area of the brain that regulates our sense of smell controls our memory. Supplementing the scientific studies she cited, Mariana drew on the writing of artists and authors, as well as the words of some people she'd interviewed, including one man who had lost his sense of smell in a car accident, to demonstrate the connection.

I'm sure Mariana's right about the link between scents and memory. She got an
A
on her paper, after all, raising her overall average in that class to a
B
+
and keeping her on the high honor roll. (She thinks I never noticed that kind of thing, but I am her mother. A mother remembers, even if she's not the type to crow about her child's brilliance.)

Smells have always left me unaffected, except when I was pregnant, and our latrines and the local cheeses, and the smells of the cows and the coffee beans in Matagalpa, had me retching in embarrassed disgust. What brings the past back so sharply for me, what makes it more real than the present, is sound. Like today, when I heard the horses on the pavement, I could hear the voice of my father in his prime, sing-songing, “paca paca, paca paca,” our baby-talk name for a horse, the sound they made trotting by. And last night, when I heard the crash of the tray above the brittle chitchat of the calling hours, I suddenly saw Manuel's surprised eyes, which reacted before the smile had a chance to fade from his face, as the bullet pierced his stomach and I stood across the hall, watching while he died.

 

22

Maria

I've never been to the graveyard in Granada before; I've never had occasion to come. And now I wonder why I never thought to take a horse and carriage out to see it. It's just as beautiful as the cemeteries I've toured in New Orleans and Paris, albeit a little shabbier. There are angels everywhere, tall marble ones with outstretched wings rising from gravestones, and little plaster ones sitting cross-legged at the foot of a mausoleum. And all over there are practical signs of people's devotion: flowers left for loved ones, or here and there a bottle of Flor de Ca
ñ
a placed inside a glass-fronted grave marker. I want to return alone, to take pictures and to bring Abuelo his Halls Mentho-Lyptus cough drops, scatter them on his grave. If the scent of his beloved fumey candies can't get through to him, nothing can.

Right now, though, I wish I were anywhere but here. The sun is too bright and the air too smoky with the odor of someone burning trash nearby, my eyes are watering and my stomach feels both hollow and agitated, as if a fan had turned on somewhere deep in my intestines. But beyond that, the day seems unreal and I feel as if I might be invisible, as if, if I didn't hold on to Madre's arm or my Bela's shoulder, I could rise up and float away. Everything made sense last night, during the calling hours. I was sad Abuelo was gone, but he had lived his life, updated his will, given away much of his minimalist's stash of possessions. His death wasn't a surprise to any of us, least of all him. But somehow, I'm shocked to be here, burying my grandfather in this baroque cemetery.

Partly it's the loss of Abuelo sinking in, I guess. Although I've missed having a father almost every day since I was old enough to notice that most people had one, Papi died when I was less than a year old. Abuelo is the first loved one I actually remember losing. Maybe other people, who've suffered more losses than I, know this, know that no matter how you've prepared, how many doctor's visits you've attended during which a lowered voice tells you it's time to get his affairs in order, it's always a surprise when you realize the deceased is really, truly gone, that he won't be coming back.

From the middle of the cemetery you can see the volcano Mombacho, majestic but somehow a bit coy, with its top usually hidden by a cloud, leaving a little something to the imagination. It hasn't acted up in over four hundred years; to me there's something reassuring about the sight of that massive, volatile mountain, which has the power to bury us all, just sitting there, lazily, with its head quite literally in the clouds. I used to feel that the volcano was watching over Granada.

But the volcano hasn't protected the town from invasion, destruction, civil war. When William Walker torched the place, he left behind a lance inscribed with the words, H
ERE WAS
G
RANADA.
I carry an image of Walker in my mind, ever since last year, a few days after Christmas, when we all drove up here for the day to have lunch at La Gran Francia, because Abuelo was in a nostalgic mood. Everyone bickering in the car was making my brain hurt—first the air-conditioning was too cold, now it wasn't strong enough—so as soon as we arrived I said I needed to hit up an ATM and fled, leaving them looking over their heavy, embossed menus. I was wandering around, decompressing, when I saw a placard that said, E
NJOY THE SILENCE!
—an ad for Caf
é
Sonrisa, which, the sign explained, was run entirely by deaf-mutes. After an hour-long drive with my family, silence was a major selling point. So I veered right, passing a workshop of guys making hammocks, and walked into the caf
é
. There on the wall was a mural showing the history of Granada, from the Nicarao Indians to Walker, to present-day smiling schoolchildren. I didn't think it was quite an accurate representation; in the mural, Walker was wearing a Spanish conquistador's hat, although he was a mid-nineteenth-century American filibusterer. But there was no mistaking him, because H
ERE WAS
G
RANADA
was emblazoned above his head, in English, just as he would have written it.

By the time I had finished my jugo de sand
í
a, the wall painting seemed both absurd and amusing, and I felt I could face Madre and my Bela and Abuelo again. After lunch, Madre took my Bela to her favorite panaderia to buy pastelitos to bring back to Managua, and I volunteered to go with Abuelo to visit his childhood home. “I just need to run to the market to get a little dress for Olivia first,” I told him. “Beth loved the one I brought last time. Why don't you sit here and have another lemonade and then we'll walk over to the house together?”

Abuelo surprised me by saying he knew the shop with the best embroidered children's clothes in town and that he'd take me. “But it's so hot,” I protested.

“It's right on the Calzada, just behind my home, ni
ñ
a,” he said. “Besides, I want to send something to Beth, too; she's such a nice girl, such a fine lady.”

Abuelo's highest compliment was to call someone a “fine lady,” and he meant something different by it than did the writers of the social pages in my Bela's
Vanidades
; it wasn't crowned heads, but a certain inner calm that he admired. His mother was a fine lady, he said, and Don Pedro's wife. So I gave Abuelo my arm, or he gave me his, and we strolled to the pedestrian street where we ducked into a dark shop I'd never noticed before called Bordados Tres Hermanas; “Three Sisters' Embroidery.”