Slash and Burn

  She’s promised to do her very best to hold on until she finds whatever it is she’s looking for, but she asks her to hurry: she doesn’t think she’ll last long. She can feel the thing eating her away from inside moving faster and faster. Sometimes she thinks she can make out its shape because, now and again, its legs feel like those of an advancing crab. She can’t name it or ask it to leave: it would make no sense. By naming it, she’d give it life. If it were alive and could hear her, it would look for another body to inhabit. And if it left, another would come to fill the hollow it had cleared, and it might not be as gentle or quiet as this one, which hardly bothered her as it worked away, burrowing into the core of her life.

  She doesn’t mean to pressure her. She just wants her daughter to be ready, as a last resort, to put any old thing in her arms. She won’t say so, but she doesn’t think the object itself matters; after all, she’d never placed her vows to the girl in any one thing. She didn’t know if this was because the war underway hadn’t given her the chance, or because her daughter—then a first-time mother—hadn’t sensed what might happen, or because their destiny had always been to part ways, and it’d worked on them without their knowledge.

  In her shoes, she’d have chosen an object that represented this. Or maybe one that meant distance. But she couldn’t meddle in her decision. It wasn’t hers to make. All she could do was watch her daughter as she searched the house and ruled out one object after another and then, finally, let her leave for a few days to search someplace else.

  Where?

  The mountains.

  She hadn’t gone back there since the day they’d been ordered to come down. She didn’t know how to go back.

  Alone. There was no other way.

  The eldest daughter she’d raised offered to look after her littlest sister and grandma for the duration of her journey. They’d both help with the baby. She could leave without a worry.

  Could she also look after the land?

  What did she mean?

  Not leave it, no matter what. Not let anyone into the house.

  Of course.

  She had to swear.

  She’d swear as many times as she liked.

  What should she do if Grandma died while she was away?

  Wait for her to come back.

  And if it took her too long?

  It wouldn’t.

  How did she know?

  Because bodies that had been the same for a while carried on being the same body once they were apart.

  Had her daughter taught her that?

  No, she had. Otherwise, how would she have been able to keep her safe whenever men were trailing her and there seemed to be no way out?

  She couldn’t explain it. She’d feel her screaming in her head, then go out to fetch her.

  It’d be the same with her mother.

  How would she look after the place?

  She’d shoot. She’d taught her to. Remember? And she wasn’t scared anymore. She could do it any day. Her mother could relax: no one was going to take anything from there.

  In the past, she wouldn’t have believed her. She’d have thought it was all just a ploy to make her do something she wanted to do but wouldn’t because she couldn’t leave her and her sisters on their own. She’d always been a generous girl who trembled when saying selfless things. But there wasn’t a drop of hesitation in her eyes this time. Not one of her words faltered. If the war were to break out again right then, the women in that house would be safe with her, so she sets off toward the mountain, to the place where she believes her journey had to begin: the burned-down house her father had vowed to return to.

  She walks along the same trail as the night she hid for the first time. She follows the route along which her aunt had saved her from the life she would lead and where, many years later, everything still carries the shaken silence of the fleeing.

  Nothing there speaks to her of the daughter she hadn’t known she’d bear. It speaks to her of a past that’s hers alone, and that she feels she’ll also have to bury on the day she lays her mother and girl to rest. She grabs a stone that resembles the feeling of back then and continues her journey down the paths she once walked to reach her father. She asks herself where the many people scattered on the wind that night had ended up. She can do that now: those kinds of questions had been forbidden in her camp, as had anything that might have opened up a crack which defeat could slip through, or through which the death they’d barely escaped could seize them. She understands now that it was a way of keeping them alive. She wonders what the civilians had denied themselves in order to survive. Maybe this was why they refused to acknowledge their existence. Maybe her daughter was using the same survival tactic. Maybe she was more of a civilian than her littlest and most defenseless daughter. Maybe some of that night’s fear and fleeing had been passed on to the part of her that once gave her life. Maybe all her own fears had left with her. Maybe a stone was a good symbol for her daughter. Maybe she had to continue searching in the place where she’d found her dad, which was like a nest that she recalled being larger. Maybe it’d been changed by the rains and the passage of people. It didn’t seem, then, like a place from which a war could be won. Had her father known? He must have, if he’d been the same age as she was now.

  She wonders if he ever doubted what had to be done. She wonders if he’d ever have retraced his steps and tried to wipe away his prints. Would he have called her a coward for doing so? He could call her whatever he liked. Nothing, now, could change what she’d done. She’d take nothing from that place. Not a stone, not a root. That nest had turned her from another bird’s egg into a daughter of that war. She could hold nothing against it. It had nourished her, made her no longer someone who fled. She hopes her distant daughter inherited some of that part of her, then moves on to the next stage of her journey: the camp she and the girl’s father had been in together.

  She spends the night there, searching for something that resembles her daughter. The trees which the foreign doctor who treated the camp women had planted over the corpses of the unborn children are now a forest. He once said that if God existed, he’d never forgive him for what he’d done. At the time, she wanted to think that his helping her carry and give birth to her own child in hiding might weigh in his favor. Now, standing before that forest, she thinks there was nothing he could have done to keep those children from being lost. Not even hers, which had lived, had been saved. She feels like she’s come here just so she can say as much to the doctor, whose body now feeds one of the trees in that forest.

  None of these leaves can symbolize her girl. Nor can anything left in the camp represent her. She doesn’t think she’s a product of these surroundings. If anything, she must come from the trees she and the girl’s father hid among and on which they never drew hearts nor inscribed their names.

  They’re like her relationship with him. She doesn’t want them to stand for her daughter, nor hasten her mother’s decomposition. She cuts a branch and buries it where she stands. That it means nothing to anyone else doesn’t matter. And it doesn’t matter that, as soon as she’s done, it won’t mean much to her either. All of a sudden, she feels like she understands what the eldest of the daughters she raised is doing. She would’ve liked to have done likewise at her age. She wonders who the girl had taken after and fears it was her father. She thinks she’s better able to understand her reasoning now. She hopes that, unlike him, she’ll break her silence and speak to her partner. She’ll mention this to her once she’s back. She also thinks she should teach her this route in case she ever needs it, and so she’ll know where her mother once walked. She decides that, once the girl has buried her grandmother and grieved for her like a mother, she’ll also take her to the land where she had once been a mother to her.

  The place they lived while taking shelter on the city’s outskirts, and where she learned to cook so she could feed her, is now a factory. Though not the prettiest place in the world, it’ll put a picture to the few stories h
er grandmother is sharing with her now. Later, she will tell the girl some of the stories she’s long kept hidden, so that she won’t have to go through what she and her mother did and only learn of them when she’s at death’s door. She’ll also tell the other girls, if they return. She knows they might not: this is what the place they were conceived in is for. The littlest might leave at any moment. Her father might summon her. His family might woo her. She might go to a place where she couldn’t follow. But the first girl she raised is different. A little more like her, and like her dad back when they were at war, and like the time in which she was born. Maybe she should’ve given her the name she’d given to her firstborn and which someone had taken away. Maybe she had to look somewhere else for the object that represented her, in the place she’d never wanted to return to: the farm named after a horse at the hour when the sea rose and stole away everything she had wanted to hold on to. Any one of the stones there would be the shape of what she felt for her daughter.

  In a blanket, she gathered the ones she thought might weigh the same as a baby girl, wrapped them up like one so she could work out how large a shape her mother would be able to cradle in her grave, then set off on her journey home.

  She’ll be ready to say goodbye once she’s walked back with the girl through all the places she’s just visited, sung her lullabies and said everything she wanted to say to her, this girl who has her body and face and who she’s searched for on the other side of the world.

  It will take her a few days to get home.

  38

  It will be a simple burial. The woman will be dressed in the clothes she was wearing when she dropped dead and on her grave will lie whatever flowers they managed to pick from the roadside on the way to the cemetery she’d chosen. There will be no crosses, no songs or sermons. Her mother hadn’t wanted all that, or for anyone to sit with her body through the night—not only so her daughter wouldn’t have any extra costs to cover, but so Death wouldn’t think it was special or that his visit mattered to them.

  The priest arrives, uninvited, and waits for them at the entrance to the burial ground. He offers his condolences to the daughter and tells her that, though he understands people are entitled to their own decisions, she mustn’t let her mother return to dust without receiving a blessing. He understands the woman was angry with the Church, and they aren’t asking for her forgiveness, he just doesn’t want her to let her mother take it out on God. The daughter will say what her mother told her she should say if the man turned up at her funeral: that they all got even with whoever they could. He’ll respond that her mother hadn’t been herself in her final days, that maybe she’d spoken that way out of illness, or pain.

  Did he think so?

  Yes.

  Then why didn’t he take pity, and leave her alone?

  He wanted to tend to her soul.

  She thought her mother could tend to it herself.

  He didn’t agree.

  Why not? She’d done it all that time. She was doing it right then.

  He decided to speak with one of the other daughters of the deceased. It seemed to him that her sister’s time in the mountains had made her forget the power of the Church. She, on the other hand, might better grasp what he was trying to say. She was a sensible woman.

  She also refused. Although she believed in God and the Church, she also believed in her mother’s wishes. She wouldn’t take advantage of her condition.

  Could he talk to another sister?

  He could talk to whoever he liked: the answer would be the same.

  What about her father? Could he pray for him?

  Did this seem like an appropriate time to be pestering them? They wanted to bury their own.

  Did she think there’d be another chance to do what he was asking?

  Would he please leave them alone? They’d handle things directly with God.

  Before leaving, he asks about the bundle in the arms of the deceased. They tell him what the girl’s mother had agreed with her own mother: that it was the late woman’s wish. A symbol. The man thinks it must represent one of the many times she’d had to flee for her life with what little she had. He’s ashamed of those who’d tried to get even with her, unable to get to those they were after.

  Once he leaves, the sisters will cry for their mother and father. The eldest daughter she raised grieves for her grandmother as if she’d been born of her. The daughter at university and the littlest one cry to see their sister and mother suffering. Their aunts’ husbands and sons remain solemn. They comfort the mother’s sisters. The brother who’s still away and can’t leave the country he moved to will call that night to ask how everything went and whether they needed anything. He’ll swear to visit her grave once he sorts out his immigration status. He will salute her like a compañero fallen in battle, which is what he understands his sister did. Then he’ll make an offering of his uniform, which is what he understands his sister did by wrapping in a bundle and placing in her mother’s arms the suit she’d worn in combat and hadn’t turned in on the day of the disarmament. He will ask the woman he’d left his own uniform with not to throw it away or, if she can’t or won’t keep it any longer, to send it to his current address.

  When she does, he will find that it no longer fits him. His body will disabuse him of the notion that no part of him has changed and that he could go back to being the same person as before if he wished to, or if he returned to the place he was from. He’ll exercise a little and change the way he eats for a while to get back to the weight he’d once been. But then, even though the clothing fits, he’ll no longer feel comfortable in it. The texture of the fabric and the cut of the pants don’t suit him. Because of his age, he can no longer move as he used to when he wore it every day.

  The day he returns, he will leave the uniform in a closet in his house. He’ll say it’s not recommended to travel with things like that in your luggage, to avoid any trouble at the airport—even though the clothes mean nothing in that time and place. He’ll stand at her grave and speak to her as a son rather than a combatant. He’ll also apologize for taking so long to come and will plant at her grave something that had belonged to the brother who’d gone to live with him and died a long way from everyone.

  The daughter who’s in the country where the firstborn was taken will also call to ask how her mother and older sister are doing. She’ll ask if Grandma left her any word before dying.

  She’d asked her to be a good girl.

  She laughs. She’d have liked her to tell her to come home.

  Would she have come?

  Not until she’s done with university.

  She thinks that might be sooner than they’d thought. The counselor had told her that if she carried on like she was, she could reapply for aid in a year.

  Did she want to?

  Did she want to come home?

  Sometimes.

  Sometimes she felt she could understand the firstborn’s reasons. But she didn’t say so, because she knew the freshly buried woman would have disagreed. She’d have said she could never understand the fear at the core of a person who’s been passed from hand to hand—she’d never had to leave anywhere against her will or be cradled in the arms of strangers. They couldn’t know for certain what the nuns who’d taken her in or the people who’d given her to them had done, but they could gather, from the girl’s rejection of them, that it hadn’t been pleasant.

  It was different for her. What she felt was more like awe.

  Should she feel guilty for believing a different life was possible where she was now?

  The grandmother wouldn’t have answered that. She wouldn’t have seen any sense in it. She’d have looked at her with indignation and started on some chore, indicating that that the conversation was over and she was just getting in the way.

  Her mother, however, would ask her to explain how she thought her other daughter felt. Then she’d be faced with the trouble of not knowing how to put it into words, unable to draw the connections for her
the way she has in her own head, of hearing herself say something that didn’t make much sense out loud, and seeing her grandma’s face move like that of someone who’s been right all along.

  Instead, she asked to talk to her. Could she?

  She’d go and fetch her immediately. She was with the ex-compañera-in-battle, the one her sister lived with in the city, and with the friend who’d introduced them.

  Were they friends?

  Maybe.

  During war, friendship meant sharing personal things, revealing your given names and sleeping side by side every so often. Although they’d done none of that then, they had come to join her at the funeral and had made themselves available to her for whatever she might need. She’d taken them up on their offer and asked them to look after her house while she took her mother’s body, her father’s ring, and the stones wrapped in her uniform from the war which symbolized her daughter all the way to the farm named after a horse, where the recently deceased had wanted to be buried. Her ex-compañera’s friend told her she could count on them, that she could leave with an easy heart and take however long she needed. She was cooking something for them by way of thanks because, had it not been for them, she’d have had to do it in the backyard, without any help from the neighbors. Not because they wouldn’t have offered, but because she wouldn’t have let them.

  They were speaking nearly in whispers when she came to say her sister was on the phone. Her mother immediately paled. She asked if everything was all right. Had something happened?

  Grandma had died. Her sister was far away.

  Anything else?

  She feared her firstborn might have died. Ever since she’d picked up those stones and walked with them, she’d felt that, the moment she buried them, the body of the woman with her girl’s face might expire, no matter where she was. She couldn’t stop picturing the phone ringing with the news that something had happened, that a car had run her over at the very same moment, or she’d committed suicide, and they were letting her know out of courtesy or—in the best of cases—because the daughter had asked them to. Perhaps it would be an end-of-life apology, a bridge laid out at the last minute across which she could reach her when her time came.