The Ladies of Managua (45 page)

 

47

Isabela

Mariana keeps saying I'm nervous. As if I didn't know. As if it would be possible not to be. She keeps reminding me of the phone calls Mauricio and I have exchanged over the past four months, of all the plans he made to come here. One of his daughters took vacation from her job at the bank to travel with him. Even though her mother lives in the city, she doesn't know they're here. Mauricio and his daughter are staying uptown, with an old friend of the girl's. Woman's, I suppose: Mauricio's daughter must be in her mid-fifties by now. He wouldn't have gone to such effort, Mariana says, involved so many people, if he weren't as eager to see me as I am to find him again after all these years. “Remember,” she's said two dozen times at least, “you're his one true love.”

She's just making things worse. Right now, I'm his one true love. After he sees me, I might be just an anecdote, an uplifting tale to tell his grandsons when some girl breaks their hearts. “Hijo, you're devastated now, but in fifty years, she'll just be another fat old lady like the rest of them. Trust me, I found out the hard way.”

What if it turns out not to have been worth the expense, the energy, the effort? Maybe we were better off with our phone calls, with just the dream of reuniting. What if the possibility of meeting turns out to have been so much richer than the reality?

“Prepare yourself for the worst, but hope for the best,” Ignacio used to say. He had his faults, but he was a wise man. A good husband. So, as cold-blooded as it may seem, I've been trying to do that, to imagine meeting Mauricio and realizing that whatever existed between us died a long, slow death, wasted away while we refused to acknowledge what was happening. We're both adults. We both grew up in nice families. We're both well educated. Neither of us is going to gasp in horror if we see the other and is disappointed. Suppose we meet and are polite and then part and try to enjoy the rest of the weekend with our respective families: we'll be no worse off than we were five months ago, before Mariana brought me Mauricio's letter.

Except that, if that happens, I will cease to be anyone's one true love. I will officially become just another silly old woman, talking about men who once admired her and how tiny her waist used to be, recalling old triumphs with a coquettish wave of her head even as too-bright lipstick is stuck to her discolored front teeth. The kind of woman who aggrandizes and mythologizes her past, and then when you see a photo of her in her prime, you realize that she was never really breathtaking, except in her own mind. That's not entirely fair, because photos don't capture the spark, the flair, that character and personality give to a vibrant young girl. But what if I'm misremembering that, too? Then I'll be the kind of old woman who lives in the past, where love existed, because the present is just too empty, as sterile as an operating room.

When I think about that, I close my eyes, hoping for a minute that I'll feel faint, that I'll stumble and Mariana will say, “Have a seat, Bela,” and decide that I'm not well enough to go uptown to Sacred Heart, that they have to get me back to Managua, and my doctors, as soon as possible.

But then there are moments when I forget to prepare myself for the worst, and the air wraps around me exactly as it did when I was a young girl with bare arms and gloved hands, and it's no longer nerves that I feel but excitement, that youthful sense that everything is about to happen, that your real life, the life you knew you were destined for, is about to start in the very next minute. How can your mind prepare for the worst when your body betrays you and is readying itself for the best?

I try to pray, to leave this in God's hands. But I'm not sure what to pray for. What's the best outcome? That I won't have to go and I can return to my quiet life in Managua, with my old
Tr
è
s Bien
ribbons and black-and-white photos? That Mauricio and I will feel the same way we did half a century ago? I'm not sure that's possible. And, really, wouldn't God's loyalty, under the circumstances, belong with Ignacio?

I'm already a silly old woman; I can't even pray rationally anymore. The best I can do is clear my mind and let Allen and Mariana lead me along like a child on the way to her terrifying first day of school.

*   *   *

“Maybe we should take a cab,” Mariana frets as we stand in the crush of people waiting for the streetcar on St. Charles. When I lived in New Orleans, there were streetcar lines on North Carrollton, Napoleon, South Claiborne, maybe more; it seemed like the whole city clattered with their sound. Now it appears that there's just this last rickety track and we're being jostled by tourists awaiting the car. And local people, too. There's a young black woman in a nurse's uniform; she must live in town. I hope she'll stay on until we get to Sacred Heart, in case I collapse.

“One of the things Bela wanted to do was take a streetcar, babe,” Allen says. “It's part of the sentimental journey, right, Bela?” Now Allen has started singing, and I don't want people to think he's a panhandler; he could be, with his wrinkled trousers and paint-stained hands. These two are supposed to be here to support me, but in the end he's a gringo pretending to be a human saxophone, and she's a pregnant woman who's wound up to the point of hysteria.

“We'll be fine, Mariana; half of these people are men and, you'll see, a gentleman always gives up his seat for a lady.”

I'm right, of course. As soon as we board, a man who seems to belong to the nurse clears a path for me and Mariana to walk straight to one of the wooden seats, which look just like I remember. It was the same when I was a student: all the gentlemen would stand to let the pretty girls take a seat.

“Can I sit next to the window, Bela?” Mariana asks. “I might make some quick sketches.”

I nod and she slides past me. I would have liked to have felt the breeze coming in through the window, but it's better this way; I had my hair set this morning in the hotel salon, which cost six times what it does in Managua, and I don't want the wind to ruin it. And Allen is standing in the aisle, at the edge of my seat, so I can tap him if he starts singing again; Mariana never controls him, she just grins, and, if she sees me glaring, shrugs as if Allen's behavior is not her affair. Whose affair is it, then? Mine? I didn't make him the father of her child.

It's helping, thinking about the present, about Allen and Mariana and the baby. The baby's a girl, and I think they want to name her for me, although I'll have to tell Mariana not to, it might seem like a slight to Ninexin. I have to make an effort to keep my mind in the here and now because after we pass a few office buildings, St. Charles looks so much like it did when I was a girl. The cars are different. When I was young, cars looked like shoes or boats; now they look like large, shiny insects or prettied-up tanks. But the massive trees are there, branches swaying. And I feel the past grow so large inside me that I think I can't contain it, I might burst right here on this streetcar and the poor young nurse will be of no help at all; they're not trained to heal the past.

So I stop looking out the window and focus on Mariana's hands: one is holding her little book and the other a pencil, which is moving furiously as images take shape under it. An ornate church steeple manifests in a matter of seconds. Then she flips the page and it's gone. A porch filled with hanging flowers appears, then it, too, is brushed away.

“So fast!” I say.

“They're just sketches, Bela. Things I might go back to later, if I decide I really want to draw them.”

She sketches a mother pushing a stroller, a young woman in practically no clothes being dragged by four large dogs. Now she's drawing a hunched old man, crouching over a park bench, and Allen taps my shoulder and says, “It's go time, Bela,” as the streetcar shudders to a stop.

But it's impossible. The image on her paper can have nothing to do with the Mauricio I know, so I refuse to look out the window. Allen is dragging me up from my seat, thinking he's being helpful, but I stop still, I refuse to move. They think I've simply stopped in order to let Mariana pass in front of me. She's the first one to step out of the back door of the streetcar and then Allen is gently pushing me forward. As Mariana descends, I catch sight of him: white hair flopping down to reveal a patch of scalp. He's slumped over, doubled almost in half, and I know this is all a mistake, I should never have come, I should never have seen him in such a weakened state, I should have remembered him as he was in his youth and in his letter and on the phone, strong and bold. The tall, skinny woman sitting next to him taps him, and he gives his pants a final tug and straightens up. And suddenly, it really is him. Mauricio. Just as I remembered. He now has the mustache I once recommended, a white one, and his hair is white, too, but his eyes are exactly the same, and as he stands up and pulls on a navy jacket that had been folded in his lap, I can see him becoming himself, as if his soul is settling back into his body.

“You should have warned me!” he says to his daughter in Spanish as Allen pushes me off the streetcar.

“I told you to stop fussing, you just didn't hear me.” She turns to Allen and says, in English, “Apparently, I haven't ironed the creases in my father's pants to his liking.”

Allen looks at the pants in question and says, “I'd hire you,” and the woman laughs and puts out her hand. “Paloma. Pleased to meet you.”

“Allen.” He shakes her hand. “I'm Maria's husband.”

Mariana is laughing at that white lie but she doesn't contradict him, and I'm so grateful to them both. Until, Dios mio, I notice that she's also crying, although I can't imagine why. “I'm sorry.” Mariana hugs Paloma and even poor, startled Mauricio. “It's just so beautiful, the school, like in my Bela's pictures.” She wipes her face and adds, “It's the hormones. I cry all the time.”

“I remember,” says Paloma. “Crying and peeing.”

“Hija!” Mauricio whispers, but Paloma is unconcerned. She appears to have a lot in common with Ninexin.

“Don't worry, Papa. We'll stop embarrassing you and take ourselves around the corner for coffee. Sit on the porch so you don't get too hot; the lady in the office said it was fine. School doesn't get out until three; we'll be back long before then.”

Everyone says hello and good-bye but I can't hear them, I can just see their lips moving. I make myself say something, too, and it must be the right kind of thing people say in situations like this, because Paloma is kissing me on the cheek, and Mariana is hugging me as close as her belly allows, and Allen winks and, from the looks of it, starts singing again as he follows Paloma down the street, holding Mariana's hand.

A girl in a uniform comes running out of the gate—if I had ever run like that a nun would have stuck her head out of a window to admonish me—and Mauricio grabs it and holds it open, offering me his other arm. I take it and neither of us speaks as we walk across this courtyard, which we crossed together so many times, so long ago. It looks so much the same, with the fountain in the middle and the brick building stretching out around it on three sides. Mauricio helps me up the small steps to the porch and then follows, so we're both standing there, under the sky-blue ceiling. There's a bench right behind us, but I'm not ready to sit down yet. I lean against a white pillar to look at the courtyard and breathe it in, to let it match up with the courtyard I remember, and settle into my mind and body so that I'll believe that we're really here, together.

Something is missing. Not in the real courtyard, but in Mariana's painting of it, of our meeting. Here, there's a fountain in the middle, and her painting needs it, she should add it in. In real life I was worried that my book was going to fall into the fountain, but on her canvas, there's just blank space with the letters of the title floating across it.

“The Elements of Practice and Composition,”
I say.

“Isa?” Mauricio is standing behind me, so I turn toward him to explain.

“The book? The one I dropped when I met you. Mariana said I should carry a copy of it today, so that you'd recognize me.”

“Recognize you?” He puts one hand on my shoulder and brings the other to settle on my cheek. “But, Isa, you're exactly the same as you always were.”

 

Acknowledgments

They say you don't just marry the man, you marry his whole family. Sometimes you get an entire country in the bargain. If I had never met Emilio, I might never have gone to Nicaragua. And I almost certainly wouldn't have an entire flock of Nicaraguan relatives who were instrumental in the writing of this book. I won't name all of the Oyangurens and Baltodanos who shared their homes, time, and stories with me, for lack of space. But I am grateful to all of them, and would especially like to mention Mamina, Emilio's grandmother, who was educated in New Orleans back in what for most people would have been called their glory days. The beauty of Mamina is that every day continues to be one of her glory days; her exuberant perspective and the amount of change she has seen in her life inspired the character of Isabela.

My mother-in-law, Carmen, could not be more different from Ninexin, which is probably a good thing; neither a guerrilla fighter nor the mother of daughters, she was nonetheless instrumental in the writing of the book, chatting with me for hours and exposing me to locales ranging from the Huembes market in Managua, to the house of the pastelito seller in Granada, to the private homes of many of her friends.

Jos
é
Oyanguren and Maria Isabel Rivas were among my earliest readers and fact-checkers, and invaluable resources for everything from Catholic ritual to Nicaraguan naming conventions to national history.

And my deepest thanks to Emilio, who traveled with me to Ometepe and Solentiname, lived with me in Granada and Managua, and never complained about my poor conjugation of Spanish verbs or pampered need for hot water in the shower. I look forward to many more journeys together.