The Ladies of Managua (21 page)

I met Cristian Hidalgo at Mt. Sinai when Abuelo was there for tests the last time,
I scrawl across the sealed flap.
A couple weeks later, this came to my gallery by DHL.
I'm not sure my Bela will know what DHL is.
There was a note saying I could deliver it or not, as I saw fit, and thanking me for my help. I decided to wait for the right time. I hope that's now, and that I'm not making things worse. I don't know what's inside—damn sealed envelope!—but I hope the contents will make you happier than they will sad. Either way, it didn't seem right to keep it from you any longer.

Before signing my name, I add,
Be kind to yourself and don't worry about me for a little while. I love you always, your Maria.
And then, because I know that at this moment what matters is not independence but kindness, I add the
na,
signing not with the name I use for myself but with the name she calls me, the name that belongs to her and to Nicaragua, and, I suppose, to Madre, too.

I leave the envelope sticking out of her purse so that she'll notice it, with my ugly handwriting sprawling across the back. And then I get out of the backseat using the door that opens to the street, not the cemetery, narrowly missing being mowed down by a speeding (and now, swearing) motorcyclist. I run across the highway so I'll be less noticeable to any early birds eager to exit the funeral as fast as possible. And then I see further proof that God or Abuelo or luck is with me, because an empty caponera passes and I'm able to flag him down and hop in, and although the autorickshaws drive far slower than regular taxis, it's perfect because no one would ever expect me to be riding in this contraption.

As we chug toward town and the cemetery begins to recede behind us, I start to feel guilty about abandoning my surprisingly stoic Bela and an obviously heartbroken Madre when they most need me. I should have at least left a note for Madre, too, and thought up some sort of explanation for both of them. I'm tempted to turn back. But I can't stick around; I have to figure out this situation, and my future, on my own, without Allen's voice-of-God exhortations, without my Bela's chatter or Madre's pursed lips as she struggles not to be the kind of mother who tells her daughter what to do, even though she always has an opinion about everything. There is no other way—at least, that's what I want to believe, so I'll feel less horrible for running off. In an effort to convince myself I'm doing the right thing, I twist at the waist and peer out the dirty, plastic-covered back window, trying to pick out Allen's salt-and-pepper head rising above the crowd.

When I spot him, or at least some tall, middle-aged man with good posture I assume is him, the whirring fan in my guts gets worse. So I force myself to remember that, although he knew full well how serious this situation is, how unfathomable, every time I'd wanted to talk, he was too engrossed in a painting to stop and concentrate. And now, when I want some space to work through my alternatives, my thoughts, to formulate some sort of plan or survival strategy, he shows up, demanding to be heard. Hijacking my grandfather's funeral. Invading Granada, and my psyche, as sure as if he were some nineteenth-century megalomaniac in a conquistador's hat. And with that image, I've done it. I've worked myself up into such a flurry of righteous indignation that a calm settles over me, and I feel like the lake after a downpour.

 

23

Isabela

They pass in front of me, shaking my hand, a blur of black and gray, circles of perspiration just beginning to show under their arms. Do people perspire more these days, or is it me, has my eye become more critical than it used to be, seeking out the flaw instead of the beauty in each person? They are trying to be kind, I know. It's stamped all over their puppyish faces—smiling lips, sad eyes. At least they have the respect to remove their sunglasses before coming over to offer their condolences. But it might be better if they kept them on, because in their eyes I can see what has them all looking a bit ashamed, along with bereft. It's relief. Relief that it isn't their husband or father or grandfather who has brought us here. Relief that they aren't the ones in the coffin, now drowning in flowers.

I know because I've felt it, too, at every funeral I've attended, and there are more and more each year. I've even tried to bargain away the lives of those I love, just not quite as much as I love Ignacio, to offer them up as sacrificial lambs. At my age, you know death is going to be a frequent visitor and you start to hope, pray, and even make divine bargains to ensure that, when he comes to knock on your door, he'll get confused and end up stopping by your neighbor's instead.

Six months ago, when we needed a new rocking chair, I asked Don Pedro to drive me through Los Pueblos Blancos, and, when I found the perfect rocker in Masatepe early, and at a good price, I had him load it in the trunk and continue on to Diriomo, where my girlfriends and I used to go when we were younger to have the brujas read our fortunes. There was so much still unknown back then: would we get pregnant again, would our husbands ever stray for good, and, later, would our children marry happily, would they return from the front? While our children fought to change the future, we suffered worrying whether they would even have one. Padre Juan Cristobal said it was a sin to seek out divination, but even when we went seeking relief for serious concerns, the ladies treated it like harmless fun. I couldn't just listen to their fortunes and not take part myself, like a voyeur, could I? Sins are sins, but no priest will ever convince me that Jesus wants us to be rude.

And besides, the brujas had rosaries in their pockets, and statues of the Virgen in their windows. “Who was it who gave me my gift, if not God?” one demanded when I mentioned that my priest had warned me not to have my fortune told. That bruja explained that they had their own code to protect their God-given gift; it's what keeps them brutally honest, instead of just continuing to collect money from ladies to whom they feed nothing but happy stories, telling them what they want to hear. The brujas feel it's a sin to hide what they've been shown. One even told me, when the girls were teenagers, that Ninexin would marry for love, but it would end in blood. That terrified me. Later, when she assured me that Ninexin would live a long life, I relaxed. I didn't mind losing Manuel. Better that my daughter should be a widow than that I should have to live without her; I wasn't sure that I could.

Last summer, after I bought the chair, part of me said I shouldn't go to Diriomo, but I wanted to know what was going on with my Mariana. She was so busy at her new job, she couldn't always talk to me when I called, and last year, when she was at home for Christmas, she'd mentioned there was a new man, an older man, but didn't offer any more details. I knew I would never hear the full story until she was standing in front of me again and I could glean information in her eyes that her voice wouldn't reveal.

I wasn't sure if the yearning to understand Mariana was enough to warrant even a small sin; it wasn't serious worry that would be driving me to see the bruja, just petty curiosity. So I thought I'd wait twenty minutes and see if I still had the craving for divination; it's what Celia tells me she does with sweets. Thinking of sweets gave me an idea. I told Don Pedro that I wanted to buy cajetas, so he took me to a candy shop. Diriomo is also famous for its cajetas, for dulces and divination, as Mariana likes to say. But then my mind was made up for me, because sure enough there was a bruja in the shop, biting into a bright pink cajeta. Who knows, maybe God had sent her there? In any case, when she invited me to have my palm read while the muchachita packed up my sweets, I agreed. Everybody has to earn their pennies somehow, I told the voice of Padre Juan Cristobal echoing in my head. Besides, the requisite twenty minutes had passed and still I wondered, would I live to see my Mariana as a bride?

The bruja saw Mariana right away, and assured me that I'd one day bounce great-grandchildren on my knee. But then she leaned forward, out of the ray of sunlight coming in through the window, and her face darkened, or maybe the whole shop did. “I am sorry to say this, se
ñ
ora,” she told me. “But you will soon suffer the loss of a family member, a man a bit older than yourself.” I grabbed my hand away and threw a few córdobas across the table at the dirty, skinny woman. But not before praying, before I could stop myself, “Dios mío, let it be Francisco.” Francisco, whom I've known since I was a girl of nineteen. Francisco, who has always been so kind, even lending us money that first year in Miami when we couldn't access our bank accounts here. Despite all of that, in my heart, I tried to lead death to Dolly's husband so I could spare my own. I hadn't exactly dreamed of spending my life with Ignacio, but I did live it with him. He was a part of me, of my everyday. For so many years I resented Ignacio for being just my reality, while Mauricio was my fantasy. But when the bruja forecast a death in our home, I saw that losing Ignacio would mean losing a large part—maybe the largest part—of my reality. And the older you get, the closer to the inevitable loss of everyday life, of the smells and shouts of the market, the rumble of hunger in your belly when it's still too early for lunch, the petty remarks of your sister or husband, the less irritating all those things seem. They become almost precious in your mind. Not almost. They become quite valuable. Because even mundane reality is irreplaceable once it's gone.

Nobody knows about the bruja's prediction; I couldn't even bring myself to tell the new young priest in confession, I know he recognizes my voice, and they're so soggy, priests today, what Mariana would call wishy-washy, always saying things like, “It's human nature to have such thoughts, just try to act with loving-kindness.” I know a sin when I commit one, whether I meant to or not; just give me the right penance and let me be done with it.

When I heard the housekeeper screaming that Ignacio had died, the sharp stab of pain I felt seemed like a just punishment for my eagerness to dispatch with Francisco, to send grief to ring Dolly's doorbell instead of my own. But when I saw Ignacio's face, finally at rest, I realized that it was simply his time. Ignacio's death had very little to do with me. Thinking that I caused it only inflated the importance of any role I actually had in his death. And in his life.

*   *   *

As they lean over to hug me, wishing me farewell, the mourners avert their eyes. But I don't begrudge them their relief; in fact I pity them their shame over it. I wish I had the power to absolve them, to place my hand on their heads and offer a blessing. I want this part of the day to be over.

And just when I'm thinking it's not possible to feel any more exhausted and empty, I see her. Flor. She was Ignacio's girlfriend, his last real girlfriend before me. He always had lots of women hovering around him; he was handsome and well-born and had a way about him that always made him seem significant, like a man, even when he had barely grown out of being a boy. Maybe it's because he was so young when his father died, and his brothers were already grown and married, leaving him the only man in Do
ñ
a Milagro's home. His mother knew he went dancing with lots of girls, and probably suspected he did more with them than that. I'm sure it bothered her. Still, it wasn't the idea of her son having many girls that made her decide he needed to marry, but the fear that he'd end up with the wrong one. Flor.

Years after we were married, when the girls and I had come to stay in Granada because we were having some work done at the house, as my mother-in-law and I waited at the train station for Ignacio to join us for the weekend, she turned to me and said, “It was this place.”

“Pardon, Madre?”

“It was this place that made me decide I needed to find the right wife for my Ignacio,” she said, and although she was talking about me, she didn't seem to be talking to me; she looked straight ahead at the tracks. “Remember how it used to be a park, with a big cement circle that the young people used as a roller-skating rink?” she said. “I was bringing a donation to the nuns one afternoon and I finished my visit with the sisters early, so I thought I'd pick up some vigorón to bring back to Ignacio for a snack. And when I came to the vigorón stand in the park, I saw her: Flor Zaragoza, skating away as bold as you please, dropping to the ground with one knee up and her leg outstretched in front of her.”

“Shoot the duck.” I thought if I spoke she might stop talking, and part of me wanted that, I could tell I wouldn't like where this was going. But the curious, and also the self-righteous, part of me wanted to hear the story unfurl, to have one more piece of proof that I was more moral than Ignacio, that I was the wronged party in our marriage. “The girls roller-skate on the patio sometimes. I think that move is called shoot the duck.”

“Well, it couldn't be more vulgar; really, you must make them stop it, Isabela. No granddaughter of mine is meant to roll around on little wheels, flashing her undergarments to passersby. It encourages immoral behavior! Both in the girl roller-skating, and in the men watching.” My mother-in-law had been looking at me when she admonished me not to let the girls skate, but now she turned back to the station, where the train had yet to arrive. “The last time Flor dropped down like that, Ignacio skated over, grabbed her hands, and lifted her up to standing. She giggled and fell into his arms. In front of everyone! And that's when I saw how stupid I'd been; Ignacio must have been walking out with her for who knows how long, and everyone in town seemed to be aware of it but me. Her parents were nice enough, and one of her sisters has a beautiful voice, but the Zaragozas are common shopkeepers. And Flor was wild. Ignacio had that side to him, too. He needed to settle down, and with a girl who would bring out his steadier qualities, the aspect he gets from me, not from his father.”