by Peter Troy
His face softens a bit and he looks around again.
“Well, we do accept donations for the buildin’ o’ the steeple an’such,” he says. “Even been a coupla white folks kind enough ta help us.”
So this is how it must appear, she thinks.
“Well, call it what you will, but know that the Ladies have collected this for the work you do, not the steeple.”
She walks forward toward him, arm outstretched with the satchel in her hand. He nods and hesitates just a second before taking it from her and placing it quickly into his inside pocket, not even looking at it for more than a second.
“I understan’, and thank you Miss Marcella,” he says, smiling just a little for the first time since she walked in. “An’ wonchu please be kind enough to thank the Ladies for us. Eight hunnerd dollars.”
He shakes his head at the thought of it and touches his coat where the satchel is hidden inside.
“Well, it’s actually a bit more than that,” she says, smiling. How to tell a preacher this?
“More than eight hunnerd?” he asks, looking astonished again.
“As you are a man of God, Reverend, I suppose I shouldn’t tell you about the good fortune that befell me and … well … let’s just say there are a few more donations included in that pouch. There’s nearly two thousand three hundred dollars there, Reverend, and I’ll just leave it at that.”
He’s nervous again now. I shouldn’t have mentioned anything. Would it be better or worse if I told him that I won it from four men who owned five hundred slaves between them?
And for a moment she worries that all will be lost at this final, crucial moment.
“Two thousan’ three hunnerd dollars kin do a might bitta good, Miss Marcella,” he says, looking as if he’s considering how many runaways he’ll now be able to set on their way with a real chance of making it all the way to the North, to Canada even.
“The Lawd surely works in mysterious ways,” he says, and smiles.
And for Marcella it is a victory greater than even the triumph of the previous night, a crowning moment in her life to date.
“Yes Reverend, He surely does,” she answers. If only you knew.
NEW YORK
SEPTEMBER 1, 1860
It’s the same pearl-handled brush she’s used nearly every morning for the last eight years, but it is always on this day that it has far greater meaning, and the memories run thicker than the long black hair it professes to tame. Eight years ago, on this very morning, her Abuela gave her the brush wrapped in lace and tied with a red silk ribbon. She’d come into Marcella’s room in the faint suggestion of the dawn, waking her by brushing her hand across her cheek, and Marcella could tell right away that the letter had come, and this was to be the end of their time together. Every first of September since that one, she’s awoken as if by instinct at the same inviting hour, to think back—each year with fewer tears than the one before—and replay those cherished moments in her mind. And now, running her fingers over the brush rather than bringing it to her hair, her thoughts drift, though at the safe distance she’s always placed between herself and her truest feelings, imagining the story as if it had happened to another person altogether …
Querida … Querida …
You woke to the familiar voice and the wrinkled dryness of Abuela’s hand on your face, and then the look, the half-hearted smile masquerading tears, made you start to cry as well.
Querida—I bring you something …
And then the gifts, the brooch and hair ribbons and the brush that had been given to Abuela by her Mama.
You think of me when you are to use these and also every morning when you … cuando tú cepillas …?
Brush.
Sí, When you brush your beautiful hair—you think of me.
You looked at Abuela and knew this was the end.
A letter from Papa? you asked.
And another smile from Abuela to hide a tear.
Sí. It come when you sleep—tu Mama receive it at the party. Señor Higuera give it to her and it say that you Papa … compra … that he buy a house for all of you in New York. So you go now to live there—with you Papa—all of you together again.
Abuela tried her best to make the news sound as if it had been something truly anticipated. But you had only dreaded it, you dreaded every letter from Papa, sent to Señor Higuera with a fake name for fear that he would be found out and somehow brought back in shame.
When are we to leave? you asked, angry at Abuela that she would not save you from this fate.
Tomorrow … Querida—is good for you to—
Why I cannot live here with you?
Abuela shook her head, the way she always did when she felt powerless to act … when she felt the limits of being a woman.
I am sorry for the Papa mi hijo become … I am sorry for the things he do—pero, he is you Papa. And you … tú perteneces …?
You would not translate, shaking your head.
Tú perteneces con tu Papa. Toda la familia pertenece juntos.
I belong with YOU. You are my family too, you said.
No soy tu Papa … y tu Mama? Pilar? Tus hermanos?
I want to live with you … I—
Ah, Querida—I know it is difficult … I know what it is to … esperar …?
To wish.
Sí … I know what it is to wish … all my life to wish I am borned a man—from when I am una niña. When I am a little girl I wish this. All of life I wish this. Desde …?
Until.
Sí, sí … until I am una vieja … until you Abuelo is no more with me.
And you understood a little better then. It was the men who ruined things.
I have these for you, Querida, Abuela said.
And as if it was a consolation, she handed you the three notebooks of blank paper bound in leather.
Tú escribe—you write in these—always—all the time you wish that too—write to me in these and you can … it is like we are here. Saberando que yo comprendo—I understand what you think. Ahhh, Querida … I understand …
And now she opens the drawer of her dressing table, taking out the jewelry box and lifting out the shelf to reveal the small key hidden beneath it, using the key to unlock the lower drawer, where the notebooks are kept. There are the three of them from Abuela, filled a long time ago, at the bottom of a pile of ten—better than one per year—and they produce the usual proud smile whenever she sees them all together like this, like it was something of an accomplishment to have endured this long, pouring her thoughts and whatever emotions she allowed herself to feel into these books, every entry in them addressed to Abuela. She takes the three, forgoing the other, more recent histories of her life, and places them beside the brush on her dressing table. And there is barely enough light to read through them in the silence of the house while even the servants are still asleep, as she carries out this ritual of every first of September morning.
The first pages tell of the journey over, of the complaints of her brothers for having to travel in the second-class cabins, of the massive plumes of smoke and steam the ship’s engines produced and the way they willowed off into the infinite sea sky. And when she was gone just a few days, the entries became less about life on the ship or sharing a room with Pilar and Mama, and were instead filled with the details of the previous year, as if Marcella knew that it was a time in her life she must record now, lest it drift off like so many plumes of smoke and steam.
She began that portion of the story on 9 September 1852, starting not with the first days at Abuela’s estate, but with the events leading up to it. Marcella wrote it as she did all the ones previous, as if speaking to Abuela, only telling her what she already knew all too well about Papa’s asuntos de amor, copying the sweetened phrase the servants used when describing his philandering ways. Marcella had overheard the conversations for years, even before she understood what any of them meant, even before she understood the inherent sadness in Mama’s boast to Tía Teresa that
Papa never carried on an affair with more than one woman at a time, and didn’t have the first of them until they were married nearly five years! But writing those entries to Abuela then, it was clear that Marcella had come to understand all of it, understanding why Mama felt no other recourse than accepting Papa’s hollow apologies, understanding why Papa’s asunto de amor with la esposa of the Minister of Finance was another matter altogether, understanding why Papa’s business dealings were legal when he was just another rich and powerful and philandering man, but were not so legal when he was carrying on with the esposa of the Minister of Finance.
And examining those pages now, thinking of Papa eight impenitent years later, she is stirred to the sort of emotion she generally seeks to contain, lest her true feelings be discovered too soon. So she flips past them, past the days when Papa fled to America, to the early weeks at Abuela’s when she felt more alone than ever before or since and convinced herself she would have it no other way. She would rise with the sun and walk outside to watch the field laborers start their irrigation work in the vineyards. Then she would follow around Lela, a chambermaid who had lived in Florida for the first fifteen years of her life. Lela was bitter and surly but tolerated having Marcella for a shadow since she would ask her the English word for everything they saw and then repeat it over and over, giving Lela the chance to laugh at her mispronunciations.
Then after the midday meal and the siesta, Marcella was forced to join Pilar and her brothers and Mama in the grand parlor so they could practice their English in anticipation of being summoned to America by Papa. For the first few weeks, such gatherings were led by Abuela, who had lived in Florida for three years after she and Abuelo were first married. But by the third month Marcella had become more proficient in English than even Abuela, and by the fourth she became the teacher. It was around that time that Abuela began to take special notice of Marcella. Each afternoon Abuela summoned her to her room, and they spoke fractured English back and forth. Marcella, as always, was full of questions, and she began to understand that Abuela was far more than the vieja she had always seen her as. She began to see that her grandmother was perhaps the happiest woman she knew, and it seemed a remarkable contradiction to her, given what she had known of the world thus far, given that Abuelo had died just a year before.
Reading through the recollection of these happy hours, recorded when they were still fresh in her mind, Marcella is able to drift back again, to one afternoon in particular, just weeks before the fateful letter from Papa arrived …
Why are you such happy? you asked her.
I am happy to be with you, Querida, Abuela answered.
And you could tell that she had not understood the question.
No … not now, this moment—always it seem … with Abuelo not here … anymore, you said.
And she took on a more serious look then, making you worry that you had said something wrong and hurt her, that you had ruined the moment or even your relationship altogether. But then Abuela smiled.
It is because I live for me … solamente for me … because you Abuelo no can say to me what I do or where I go, she said.
And you worried then that Abuelo had been a man like your papa.
You have love Abuelo? you asked.
Sí … sí … she answered, with no more emotion than if she were discussing a hair ribbon. But a woman … she can be happy … she can only be … completamente …?
Completely.
And Abuela smiled and rolled her head the way she did when a translation was so simple and she had just forgotten it.
Sí, sí, sí … completely … a woman can only be completely happy when she have no papa and no esposo—nobody to tell her what she can do and what she cannot do.
And she added nothing more, as if that said everything on the matter.
The memory ends there amidst stirring from next door. Pilar is awake, and Marcella shakes her head and rolls her eyes just to herself, knowing that this is as far as she will read this morning. It is perhaps better, she thinks for a moment, since she will revisit these books again in March, stirring up the memories on the anniversary of Abuela’s death that had once so devastated her just six months after she had given her the brush and the brooch and the notebooks now filled with her part of the conversations they never had the chance to say out loud. She closes the book and locks it away with the rest of them until that sad day, bracing for the onslaught, and the duties of an older sister—soon to be free of all of this—and perhaps … completely happy … one day soon.
• • •
THE ARROYO WOMEN, LIKE ALL women of any stature and breeding, were meant to be little more than functionaries in their own homes and ornaments outside them. Marcella’s Mama had certainly fulfilled her part of that requirement, serving as loyal wife, competent hostess of even the most unendurable business-inspired dinner parties, and silent companion at all manner of social occasions. She had endeavored to make sure that Marcella and Pilar learned proper social behavior and were educated just enough to interest a young man—but not so much that they would scare him off. It was only in this matter that she could be found lacking, having long ago lost control of the reins when it came to Marcella and eventually shifting her focus to the still salvageable Pilar. By now she governed Marcella, if at all, only through a sense of guilt and pity inspired by a moment of great emotion more than a year earlier when she had confessed to Marcella how much she envied her. And Marcella, seeing a woman long ago defeated and made entirely subjugate, generally allowed herself to be guided by her Mama’s appeals, except when they stood too directly in her way.
“I don’t see why I cannot go with you,” Pilar pleads as she watches Marcella get ready to leave late that afternoon. “You know that Papa’s business friends will all be drunk by then and I will be forced to stay and listen to all their bored talk.”
“Boring talk,” Marcella corrects, and laughs just a little at the thought of what her sister will have to endure for hours more than she will.
“Boring!” Pilar exclaims. “Marcella, how can you not take me with you to the recital? All those musicians which I never get a chance to meet when Papa is inviting all these boring businessmen to our house! I—”
“Whom,” Marcella interrupts.
“What?”
“All those musicians whom I never get a chance to meet.”
“O shut up!” Pilar protests, and throws a silk pillow from the couch at Marcella. “And I am sixteen now anyway, and Papa lets me go to the balls and concerts without you!”
“Well then you don’t need me.”
“That’s not … ooohhh … Marcella!”
“Pilar!”
“You are the worst older sister a person can ever have.”
“Could.”
Pilar throws another pillow—the last one within reach—and seems genuinely upset now. She is an admiring younger sister, filled with all the foolishness of most girls who have just turned sixteen, Marcella has often reminded herself. And the distance between them in maturity and seriousness of purpose is not so much due to any deficit in Pilar as it is to the surplus of these qualities in Marcella. She had long ago decided not to hold Pilar’s childish infatuations against her, realizing that she must be even more disappointing to have as an older sister than Pilar is to have as a younger one. Two months shy of her twentieth birthday, Marcella has never shown any interest in the young men Papa brings to the house with regularity. The American men do not generally follow the custom of arranged marriages, and Marcella never lets one get close enough to ever consider a proposal, so it has become understood that Papa will have to intervene within the next few years and find a European man whom she will be forced to marry. She has let the family believe this is what will happen, and has even laughingly discussed it with Mrs. Carlisle and Catherine, all the while knowing she will be her own woman soon enough. Still, Marcella has as tender a sentiment for Pilar as she does for anyone, and can play and laugh with her, sometimes at her, even if she
has never been able to show her the error of the path her sister seems destined to follow.
“Are you coming downstairs?” Pilar asks, giving up on her sister sharing any more details of the evening with her.
And Marcella summons the will within her, rolling her eyes to elicit a laugh from Pilar, then stands up with noticeable reluctance.
“I suppose I must make an appearance,” she answers, and the two of them walk down the hallway together, the previous moments soon forgotten.
Papa had bought the house when it was just eight rooms and when Sixty-Third Street was the virtual frontier of the city—a “neighborhood” of unpaved roads and grazing fields. Even Mama had been unable to contain her disappointment at first sight of it since it was less than half the size of their house in Madrid and had barely enough room for the six of them, let alone any servants. But Papa had quickly reassured all of them that it was only a temporary circumstance. He reminded them of the stench that billowed from the overcrowded slums downtown, told them that practically every boat that arrived carrying passengers—the refuse of Europe, he called them—only served to pack the slums tighter. And he predicted that the wealthy uptown families, those in the fashionable districts from Tenth to Fortieth Street, would soon be pushed farther north by the onslaught.
From the very beginning, he had insisted that they host a dinner party a week—limited to four or six invited guests by their early lack of space—just to show influential people what was awaiting them uptown once they grew tired of trying to hold back the waves of immigrants. And by now, just eight years after he made such a bold prediction, it has already come true in part, with the most fashionable areas of town extending north of the depots and slaughterhouses and breweries of midtown, reaching well into the Fifties blocks, with Sixty-Third Street seeming like a place to get in on quickly before it is too late. Their house has grown along with Papa’s business interests, now boasting sixteen rooms and staffed by a half-dozen servants. And the dinner parties, though far less frequent than before, are now two or three times as large, with her brothers, as men of the business world now, inviting their own associates to go along with Papa’s.