The Ladies of Managua (44 page)

Mariana said that Mauricio wrote Mama that she was his one true love. I don't know what would have happened to me and Manuel, if our marriage would have survived Brigida, outlasted the Revolution. But I do know there was a time when I was his one true love, and he was mine. I think everyone deserves to feel that they were someone's. And I don't like to think that Papa may have lived and died without having that.

I know that's a narrow way to view the world. Love comes in so many forms. Mariana may have been Papa's one true love, or Rigobertito. Or even me. And he was loved in return, by all of us, even Mama. Mauricio coming back into her life doesn't take that away from Papa.

Still, I'm not ready to watch him return and romance my mother, this seventy-something Casanova. And they don't need me there. So I will let them have New Orleans. I will leave it to the lovers, Mariana and Allen, Mama and Mauricio. A couple figuring out their future, and another revisiting their past. Maybe I'm even a little jealous, not overly eager to be the odd woman out, the fifth wheel. Or perhaps the real reason I didn't accept their invitation was cowardice. It makes me a little nervous just thinking about it, all the expectations that are on this trip. The weight of half a century of memories.

Mama prays in the morning when she wakes up, at night when she goes to bed, when she's happy, when she's sad, when she loses her pen and wants help finding it. I prefer to save my supplications for moments of great importance. So I will pray that they all have an amazing time, that the city, and their feelings for each other, are as light-filled and sparkling as they remember. It's easy to wish for the best for others when you know you have a great love awaiting you, and mine is due in August. So I can pray with an open heart. I think my father would approve.

 

46

Mariana

MAY 22, 2009

I've created a monster. My Bela felt none of her vast wardrobe was worthy of New Orleans, and she asked me to pick up some things for her to wear in New York. It wasn't too much trouble; I know her taste, we spent half of my childhood together in a Loehmann's dressing room. And it's not like I was overburdened with choices; Manhattan isn't exactly overflowing with stores that carry “women's” sizes. But I persevered, and she loved everything I brought. Until she caught sight of herself in a picture I was texting to Mama, of us eating beignets at the Caf
é
du Monde, and hated how she looked—she actually accused me of picking out the blouse she was wearing in order to make her look fat. Which would be a heinous crime if it were true; as soon as my Bela heard back from Mauricio, agreeing to meet, she put herself on a strict diet of her own devising. She decided she would eat only grilled cheese or pasta de pollo sandwiches, with the crusts cut off for added caloric savings, but she allowed herself as many of those as she craved in a day. I tried to warn her that this hardly qualified as smart nutrition, but she didn't care, and I couldn't even rope Beth into supporting me. She's a nurse practitioner, but she thought the diet sounded like the work of a genius, since no one would want to eat more than one of those super-rich sandwiches in one sitting. And maybe my Bela knows what she's doing: she's lost sixteen pounds since I last saw her.

“Bela, por favor!” I huffed when accused. Since I look like I've swallowed a small watermelon myself these days, I'm sensitive to the plight of the Buddha-bellied. But I didn't tell her that. I just pointed out that of course I want her to look her best, and that if she didn't like her new clothes, she was not required to keep them, she was welcome to send them on to her housekeeper with my compliments. That suggestion quieted her right down. It wasn't very nice of me, I suppose, but God bless Allen, who saved the day by telling my Bela that she looked infinitely slimmer, and even more beautiful, than she had in Managua. That finally put a smile back on her face.

My Bela's always been high-strung, bless her heart, but I've never seen her so nervous as she's been since she joined us here yesterday. Rigobertito flew with her to Miami then New Orleans—he's on his way to New York for work, and he'll pick her up on his way back, too—and Allen and I met her at the airport. Her first words when she got off the plane were “I think I'm having a heart attack.”

She wasn't, of course. It was just the emotion of arriving back in the city that belonged to her youth. Once we'd collected her bags and stepped out into the haze, she reached in front of her as if shaking hands with the thick, moist air, and said, “This is what New Orleans feels like.”

We booked at the Roosevelt Hotel because it's where my great-grandparents used to stay when they would visit my Bela and Gran-t
í
a Dolores on their way to Paris, and once, when my Bela was seventeen and sitting cross-legged on a bench waiting for her parents to come down to the lobby, the actor Robert Taylor passed by and told her she had beautiful ankles. Gran-t
í
a Dolores refused to speak to her for the rest of the day, she was so choked by jealousy.

That's one of my Bela's favorite stories, so I told it to Allen as we entered the lobby, and halfway through her whole blushing and giggling routine my Bela stopped walking and said, “Oh. Just look at my ankles now.”

It's been like that nonstop, like watching a tennis match played by Elation and Horror. One minute she's as blithe and delighted as only an eighteen-year-old in love can be and the next she's a scared old woman. The hotel thrilled her; the state of Canal Street, without Maison Blanche, without D. H. Holmes and its glorious clock, had her practically in tears. I'm beginning to think Mama knew what she was doing when she opted out of coming.

Except for the fact that the city is amazing. Allen and I spent all yesterday strolling the French Quarter and it was like walking through the past, my Bela's past, specifically. New Orleans is the perfect city for a pregnant woman; you wouldn't think so, with the heat and the bars, the dubious smells of the streets in the morning. But the food is so glorious. I told Allen that I wanted to name our baby Almond, in homage to the almond croissant at the Croissant d'Or.

I was joking, of course. The truth is, we already have a name picked out. I knew it as soon as I came across it, reading a guidebook to Cuba. Before we decided to meet in New Orleans, for reasons both practical, on my part, and political, on Mauricio's, we were looking into staging this big reunion in Cuba. Mauricio insisted he could never return to Cuba while Castro was alive; the island, apparently, isn't big enough for the two of them. But I was so eager to go; when I see pictures of Havana, there are parts of it I feel I recognize from paintings I have yet to start. And I fantasized that Allen and I might stay on after the long-lost-lovers' reunion, now that I'm feeling better, and travel around the country ourselves, a last trip, just the two of us. I was sure I could talk Mauricio into a temporary d
é
tente, but my doctors nixed the idea of a Cuban adventure: no unnecessary flying for me, given my history of subchorionic hemorrhages. So we drove down here, instead. Still, Mama promises we can all go to Cuba at some point, and she'll even introduce us to Castro, who, it turns out, is a bit of a butt-pincher, or at least was in his heyday. Or maybe that was Mama's heyday?

I have no desire to get my butt pinched by Castro—although it would make a pretty great anecdote at cocktail parties for decades to come. But, having read a few guidebooks before our plans changed, I'm more determined to get to Cuba than ever; I've vowed to go on a pilgrimage to the Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre. I'd seen Her before in Cuban art, a Madonna floating over three black boys in a boat; those are los tres Juanes, three slaves named Juan whom She saved when they were lost at sea. That miracle made Her so many things in the eyes of the Cubans—a protector of the underdog, a patron of children, an ally in times of great fear—and the faithful who come to Her church in Cobre leave ex-votos for Her in exchange for miracles already executed or not yet performed.

The guidebook I read said that there's a gold talisman of a guerrilla there, left by Lina, Fidel Castro's mother, when he and his brother returned safely from a covert mission. I'd never really thought of Fidel as having a mother, but the fact that this woman had wished so fervently for her children's safety that she felt the need to give her desire a physical form made me feel as if I knew her. So I did a little research, and it turns out she was decades younger than Castro's father, and was his maid and mistress; they didn't marry until Fidel was in junior high, and the Jesuits wouldn't let him into the good Catholic school if his parents weren't legitimately wed.

Even more fascinating, there were rumors that Lina's mother was a celebrated Santer
í
a priestess, that she came from a long line of strong, strange women. Maybe that's why I feel a sort of kinship to her. It's not the having-children-out-of-wedlock thing; when she did it, it actually carried some stigma, whereas with me, the only person who can manage to drum up any righteous indignation is my Bela. But even though my baby is not born yet, I know that if I ever felt she were in danger, I couldn't sit by just waiting and hoping that she'd be okay. I'd need to do something to work toward her safety, even if it was impractical, as spiritual, as praying to another mother, as mystical as re-creating my child in gold.

And did her son thank Lina for her intercessions on his behalf? How could he when he banned religious holidays after coming to power? At the same time, he can't have been surprised by her actions. After all, she named him “faithful.” I wonder if Fidel was embarrassed by his name, by her devotion, by the little gold guerrilla. I know that I am destined to embarrass my daughter with the force of my love, too, fated to do it wrong, to be judged by her just as I watched my own mother all these years and found her wanting.

When I read about the shrine Lina visited, I knew it contained my daughter's name. We will call her Caridad, after the Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre. Allen agrees it's perfect for our baby. Not that he had much of a choice. How could he not agree when I pointed out that it follows family tradition of naming baby girls for the Virgin Mary? My mother named me Mariana, which means “of the Virgen,” but when I was in sixth grade I decided the name sounded too elegant for me; I wanted to be just another Maria like the three others in my class. Now I like to think that, as my belly expands and my feet outgrow my shoes, maybe I'm growing into the name, maybe I'll return to being Mariana. And soon there will be another generation named for the original Maria.

Allen said he feels like Caridad has a touch of the revolutionary in it, too, the warrior princess. And I would like it if my daughter took that from Mama: her strength. Her fearlessness.

Or maybe I'm just hedging my bets, hoping that my daughter will live up to her name, which means “charity” in English, and show a little charity when she thinks of her mother. We could all use a little more
caridad.
Although, when she's in sixth grade, if she wants everyone to call her Carrie, I'll have to be fine with that, too.

It's a high-risk, high-reward situation, motherhood. That's part of why I felt I had to be here this weekend, with my swollen belly and ringless finger. Because my Bela is putting herself in a similarly high stakes position by looking straight at the most precious part of her past and knowing that it might be found wanting in the harsh, low-energy light of the present. Allen is downstairs in the bar with her now; they're each having a Bloody Mary for courage before we get on the streetcar and take it up St. Charles to Sacred Heart, where she and Mauricio agreed to meet. I suggested that she carry a copy of the
Elements of Style
so that he'll recognize her, but she told me I was being ridiculous. And that I didn't even have the title right: apparently, in her day, it was
The Elements of Practice and Composition.

I wish she had let me find the book for her. I wish I had some lucky charm I could give her to ensure that this meeting will go as well as I hope, to guarantee that her life will be full of so much happiness that there's never any room for pain or disappointment. It's the same feeling I have when I imagine Caridad being born, coming outside of my body and into the world, where I can no longer surround and protect her.

I know this is the wrong wish, not one worth incarnating in gold. Because love, I'm learning, is laced with pain. The joy and the sadness are too intertwined to be separated. If Caridad never felt sorrow or fear, she could never love anyone as deeply as I do her great-grandmother, as complexly as I do her grandmother, as profoundly as I do her, already.

It's time to go and I'm so nervous that I've gotten Caridad overexcited: she's swirling and kicking and shimmying like a modern dance impresario. Allen and I are going to drop my Bela off with our best wishes and Allen's cell phone, and then stroll around the neighborhood, maybe stopping for a pastry at an Italian place a block away from the school that the concierge recommended. And then we'll wait for my Bela's call. We haven't made any plans for the evening. This is one of those moments where you can't plan what comes next: you just have to wait and see what happens and hope for the best. You have to have faith.

Last night, while Allen was in the shower, my Bela showed me some of her souvenirs of her years in New Orleans, a lifetime ago. She had a sky-blue
Tr
è
s Bien
ribbon from Sacred Heart, a black-and-white photo of herself and my t
í
a Dolores in gloves and hats posed under the raised hoof of Andrew Jackson's horse in Jackson Square, and a tiny little spoon she stole from the Court of the Two Sisters, where Mauricio took her for tea on her seventeenth birthday. On my way downstairs, I'll use the extra key to slip into my Bela's room and borrow the spoon from her bedside table, where she put it away last night. I want this piece of my Bela, and her past, with me. While Allen and I share our pastry, I can rub the cold metal between my fingers and feel it warming to my touch. Maybe it will bring us all luck.