by Alisa Valdes
“Ah, yes. Good old Dr. King. Americans never tire of talking to me about him. Did you know he was not the first man to say this?”
“Oh?”
“José Marti, the great Cuban poet, said it first, a century before.”
“Really?” I should know something like that, shouldn’t I? Why didn’t I ever learn about this Martí person in college?
“Yes, really.”
He sips his wine and takes a few bites of his meal. He looks distracted, and seems slightly tense.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I can’t help the way my parents are.”
“Not a problem. It just always amazes me,” he says, “how obsessed Americans are with race. It has been an adjustment for me. Of course, growing up in Nigeria, my parents never had that sort of indoctrination. They had larger problems, problems of institutional corruption and poverty and violence. Issues of caste and rank and an almost complete lack of access to education and other resources. We had a large, bloody civil war in the late sixties, Rebecca, and it led to problems larger than any most people in America can begin to comprehend.”
“Of course.” I know nothing of a Nigerian civil war, but don’t say so.
He continues, “So they didn’t raise us with a racial identity, not in the way Americans think of it. We have our own ethnic identities—mine is Yoruba—that appear irrelevant to most Americans but that mean everything to us. To you, we’re all ‘black.’ It’s dehumanizing, actually. It’s always shocking for me when people here bring up race. I don’t perceive race as you do here. It’s a foreign paradigm, completely.”
I catch myself straightening out the silverware.
Andre’s watching me. “In fact, I am generally disturbed by the attitude I have found among many American ‘blacks’ with regards to race and the way they blame it for everything that’s wrong with them. I can’t understand that at all.”
This I relate to. “I know! I know exactly what you mean. Hispanics do it too. All the time. You should hear my friend Amber. Amber thinks she’s a victim of genocide. I try to explain to her that the true victims of genocide are all dead. You can’t be a living victim of genocide.”
“The culture of blame, America.”
“There’s a lot of anger out there.”
“Yes, there is, but it’s directed the wrong way, as far as I see it. I speak at schools, and I see some of these young American blacks skipping school or not studying hard, or dressing improperly, and then blaming ‘the system’ for their problems. They want to know how I got where I am and how I fought all the prejudice. I tell them the bloody truth, that I didn’t run into any prejudice. I worked hard, I was good at what I do, and that was all there was to it. American blacks don’t want to hear that. Neither, frankly, do whites, who seem amazed by me for the same reasons.”
“Same with Hispanics. Not all of them, but plenty of them. Enough of them.”
Andre shakes his head. “In Nigeria, public school was never even an option. It simply did not exist. These kids don’t know how good they have it here. That is one of the many reasons my parents left Africa. The blacks here try to get me to join them in their crusades, as if I have the same life experiences they do, and I simply have no interest in it. They call themselves African-American, and they don’t know anything about Africa. I ask them sometimes to name just two rivers on the entire continent, and they can’t. This is a wonderful country, and if people work hard, they succeed. It’s that simple. Look at us.”
“I know, look at us.”
He stares at me and smiles. “I enjoy looking at you. Absolutely.”
The blush, again. “You’re pretty easy on the eyes, too, Andre.”
He leans across the table and kisses me. It is a small, soft, elegant kiss on the lips. “Your husband is crazy.”
“Ex-husband.” Soon to be. In my heart, already an ex.
“Ah, I like the sound of that. You know, I could look at you forever, Rebecca,” he says. I pull back, ashamed. I’m not sure why, but I worry that people are staring at us. I worry that people might not know I am already divorced, or that they will care that we have different skin tones.
“How about an after? That’s ‘dessert’ to you,” he asks, exhibiting his good manners once more by changing the subject in the face of my discomfort.
“I don’t eat desserts.”
“Yes, I know. That’s why you are so thin, isn’t it? But one won’t kill you. Just one.”
He summons the waiter with a subtly raised hand, and asks for suggestions. “What’s the best dessert here tonight?” he asks. The waiter recommends the warm chocolate cake. “All right,” Andre says. “We’ll take one of those, and one of something else delicious. You choose. That, and two coffees. You do drink coffee, don’t you, Rebecca?”
“No, actually. I don’t. I’ll have herbal tea.”
The waiter nods once, and disappears. “I’m sorry for ordering for you,” Andre says. “I should have asked first. When I first moved to the States, people thought I was crazy for ordering tea instead of coffee. I’ve gotten used to coffee. I’m delighted you want tea, I assure you. I’ll never order for you again.”
“That’s okay,” I say. “It’s nice to have someone else take charge.”
The waiter returns with the chocolate cake and a slice of blueberry cheesecake. I allow myself a bite of each. They taste so delicious I almost want to cry. Andre pours another glass of wine for each of us and raises his glass in another toast.
“To this weekend,” he says with a wink.
“To this weekend,” I parrot. Then, realizing I don’t know what he’s referring to, I ask, “What’s happening this weekend?”
“We’re going to Maine.”
“Who is?”
“We are, you and I.”
“We are?”
“I thought you knew.” He smiles impishly, and the dimples appear.
“No one told me,” I say. I am acting sillier than I generally find acceptable, thanks to the alcohol.
He puts one warm, soft hand over mine. “I just told you,” he says. “So what do you say? Me and you and a bed and breakfast I know of in Freeport? There’s great shopping in Freeport. My treat. If it was earlier in the year, we could even do a little skiing, but the hiking is nice in the spring.”
I take another bite of the cheesecake, thicker and sweeter than anything I can remember. I forget to swallow before speaking. “I have never skied.”
Andre looks surprised. “You grew up in the Rocky Mountains, and you have never skied? That’s shameful.”
“You know Albuquerque is in the mountains?”
“Of course.”
I laugh out loud. “Andre, you wouldn’t believe how many people don’t know that. You wouldn’t believe how many people around here don’t even know New Mexico is a state, much less that its largest city is more than five thousand feet above sea level. Everyone thinks I’m from a hot desert.”
“I know more about you than you think. So let’s go skiing. We can go to South America. My treat. Skiing is one of my passions. Cross-country? It’s not dangerous.”
“I don’t know.”
“Then shopping, for now. You do know how to shop?”
“That I can do.”
“I’ll pick you up Friday after work. Does that sound right?”
“What if I don’t want to hike?”
“Then we’ll stay inside, or take long non-hike walks in the woods and talk about your magazine.”
“Oooh. That I can definitely do.”
“It’s a date then?”
My mother would absolutely die if she knew what I was about to do. I am a married woman in the eyes of my mother’s God, a Catholic woman, a Spanish woman from a long line of European royalty. And I’m about to agree to a weekend away with an African Brit who is not my husband. I might even wear the new red lingerie.
“Yes, Andre. I’d like that very much.”
I’m not sure why it feels so right, but it does.
I don’t usually solicit donations in this column, but I just got a terrible phone call. The homeless shelter Trinity House in Roxbury has run out of formula because so many babies were born this spring, and unless they can get more donations of the stuff, babies will go hungry. It appears this is the most fertile spring in Boston’s history, thanks to a colder than normal early fall last year. So I’m begging: Forgo the Starbucks today and buy a bottle of Similac.
—from “My Life,” by Lauren Fernández
sara
IWAKE UP. The walls are baby blue, the curtains the pink and gray check of a cheap hotel. I hear beeping, smell antiseptic and brown gravy. I turn toward the white shadow at my side, and see a woman adjusting the levels on two IV bags. She sees my open eyes and smiles.
“You’re up,” she says. She sounds surprised.
Up? I try to repeat the word, but my mouth is dry, my throat filled with pain and plastic tubes. She senses the question in my expression. “You’ve been asleep for more than two weeks, on and off,” she says. “You’re in the hospital, Sara.”
I’m hooked up to beeping crazy machines left and right. I vaguely remember waking up here before, am disappointed it wasn’t a bad dream. The tubes in my nose and throat make it impossible to talk. I just blink and blink and try to feel my feet and arms and hands and legs and everything. I can’t. I can’t feel any of it. The nurse says she’s going to let “everyone” know I’m “up” and she leaves. Then they all come to touch my face with their hands. They smile at me and take their seats.
I look around the room as much as I can without moving my head, which is held in place with a brace of some sort. Two of my brothers are here, and a few of the sucias. Rebecca is here, Lauren is here, Usnavys is here. They look tired, like they haven’t slept. Amber is not here, though Rebecca soon tells me the huge bouquet of flowers at the foot of the bed comes from her. It does not look cheap. I wonder where that girl got that kind of money. Everyone is here except the people I want the most: My children, and Elizabeth. Where are they?
The people here must all think I’m going to die. I, for one, am surprised I didn’t. Did my baby survive? I wonder. I start to blink, harder and harder, trying to get them to understand the question in my brain. I think they do. That’s when the stranger in the blue-jean overalls and the purple turtleneck leans over the bed with that look of pity and understanding in her blue eyes. She wears long, dangly feather earrings.
“Sara, my name is Allison,” she says. “I’m a case worker for the state, and a licensed counselor with the Boston police’s domestic violence unit. Your doctor asked that I be here to help you through your recovery.”
My eyes dart from sucia to sucia and they all avoid eye contact with me. Usnavys cries. Lauren looks out the window at the rain, or snow, I can’t tell which. Rebecca flips through a magazine. I conjure all the strength I can to gurgle up a word. “Baby.”
Allison’s eyebrows express sympathy and I want to scream. “I’m sorry, Sara. You lost the baby.”
No. This can’t be happening. It can’t. My throat tightens around the tubes and I begin to cry. The act of crying feels like swallowing crumbs of glass.
Allison strokes my hair, and I see Lauren put her hands over her own mouth as if to stop herself from saying something.
“The good news is, you’re going to make it through this,” Allison says. “You’re very lucky to be alive, Sara. Your husband might have killed you, I want to be very clear about that.”
“No,” I say. “You have that part wrong. It was an accident. I fell.” My voice is a croak.
Usnavys rolls her eyes at Rebecca, who rolls her eyes back before looking down at her feet. “There she goes again,” Usnavys whispers. I don’t hear her, but I can read her lips.
“There were witnesses, Sara, including your own children. This was no accident.”
“We fought. But then we made up. I slipped on the ice. He’d never push me. I knew everyone would overreact to him. You don’t know him like I do.”
Allison, whoever she is, looks into my eyes and smiles benevolently. I want to slug her. Why is she here? “You have a broken rib, a broken jaw, a fractured skull, and a broken foot,” she says. “And with the blood you lost in the miscarriage, there was some question of whether you’d pull through at all.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Roberto did this to me? Is it possible it went this far? I work to get another word out. “Boys.”
“Your boys are safe,” she says. “Your mother flew up from Miami and they’re staying with her at Rebecca’s right now. Your husband is still in the house and he refuses to let the boys in because they were the ones to call the police. Your father will be coming in this week.”
The boys are fine, I repeat to myself. Thank God, I think. The boys are fine. But why aren’t they home with Roberto? Why is he alone in the house? They don’t understand. It wasn’t his fault. Was it? Oh, God. It was. I remember now. He kicked me. I was flat on the ground and the son of a bitch kicked me. Why would he do something like that?
“I tell you all of this because I want you to be clear in your mind about the seriousness of what has happened to you,” Allison says. “Your friends here all told me they had no idea you were being battered, and I know from experience that this kind of injury does not just happen overnight. This has been happening to you for a long time, Sara, and I want you to know that you can’t go back, that you have to move on. He’s not going to change. They never change. The recovery rates for batterers are very, very low.”
My baby. I remember the fall down the stairs, and Vilma, brave Vilma. The knife. I try to say her name, to ask about her. Allison nods.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “Wilma is not well.”
“Vilma,” I correct her, but my tongue doesn’t work right.
“Your husband beat Wilma as well, and the stress of it gave her a massive heart attack. She’s in intensive care.”
Oh, my God.
“Your son Jonah dialed 911. He saved your life. Your husband was arrested for battery, but he’s out on bail.”
Lauren finally speaks. “That idiot said your son betrayed him by calling the police.”
“Not now,” Usnavys says. “Por el amor de Dios, mujer, cállate la boca.”
Is that an engagement ring on Usnavys’s finger? I don’t believe it.
“Who, the ring?” I ask Usnavys, croaking, momentarily distracted.
“We’ll talk about that later,” she tells me in Spanish.
“Juan,” Lauren blurts, in English. “She finally came to her senses.”
Allison, who probably doesn’t understand Spanish, smiles. “Your mother asked your dad to come. The state has removed the boys from Roberto’s custody and he is not to go near them.”
Lauren comes to the bedside, crying. “I’ll kill the bastard,” she says. “I swear I will, Sara. My brother knows people in New Orleans. I could arrange it. I’m not joking.” Rebecca comes and leads Lauren away, saying, “Come on, sweetie. Let’s let Sara rest right now.”
“We need to know if you’ll be willing to press charges,” Allison says. I think of poor Vilma, of how this poorly dressed social worker botched her name, of how much I love her. Of how Vilma called me Sarita again. How she is like a mother to me. There has to be a limit, a point at which you don’t forgive someone, no matter how much you love them, how long you’ve known them. This, I think, is that point. I will press charges. If not for me, for Sethy and Jonah, for Vilma.
I feel sick, and the room is growing dim. I’m so tired. I close my eyes and go to sleep.
WHEN I WAKE again, I am alone. It is night, and the tubes are gone from my nose and throat. The head brace is gone, too. How long have I been asleep? I wonder. I am able to lift my head a little, and see I’m not alone, that my father sits near the window in the dark. I grunt to get his attention. He comes over and stands next to the bed. He wears the classic Dad outfit: khaki pants, a Ralph Lau
ren polo shirt, and brown tassel loafers. I look at the marker board on the wall opposite my bed and see that it is three days since I last woke up. Three days. I’m still tired, all the way through my bones I’m tired.
“Ay, Dios, Sarita,” he says. His eyes are red from crying. Then, in Spanish he says, “Why didn’t you tell us? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’m sorry, Daddy,” I say. My voice is hoarse and my throat hurts.
“No, I’m sorry. It’s our fault, your mom and me, for hitting each other. You thought it was normal.”
He’s crying.
“No,” I say. “I’m sorry. It’s my fault.”
“You? Sorry? For what? He’s the bastard that almost killed you. He’s the bastard that killed my granddaughter.”
Granddaughter.
“It was a girl?” I ask. My father nods. “They could tell?”
“They could tell.”
I begin to sob. The convulsions hurt my ribs so much I almost pass out. “No,” I cry. “No, Daddy. Please. No. Dear God.”
“Hush now,” he says. He stands beside me and strokes my hair, something he hasn’t done since I was a very, very little girl. He clicks his tongue to comfort me. “You just rest now. You’ll never have to see that man again.”
“Find that social worker,” I say. “I want to tell her I’ll press charges.”
He looks confused for a moment, then says, “Oh, you don’t know, do you?”
“Know what?”
“They can’t find Roberto, mi vida.”
“What? Why not?”
Dad sighs. “He killed Vilma, Sarita, she passed away yesterday. When the police went to pick Roberto up, he didn’t answer the door. They broke down the door and he was gone. He took his clothes, some paperwork. They found his car parked at the airport, with the keys on the seat.”
“What?”
“He ran away, el cobarde.”
“No!” I cry. He stares at me, bewildered.