That night, after the children were asleep, she confronted her husband. She accused him of having an extra-marital affair, which the pills were somehow connected to. She lost her temper and screamed at him. This was most unusual.
Humiliated at being discovered and stung by her accusation of infidelity, Luis was speechless. He had not considered the effect of his clandestine behavior on his wife, had not thought of much else but his own wounds since his daughter’s death. He had never intended to hurt anyone but the doctor. Certainly not Rosa. If anything, he had assumed that her suffering, like his, would be ameliorated by revenge. Once the shock of her accusation passed, he vehemently denied having an affair. Lamely, he tried pretending the pills were for someone else. This only made matters worse, so that finally, he told his wife the truth. The pills were his. Then he told a lie.
“They’re an aphrodisiac.”
Rosa found this hard to believe.
“I want another child,” he said.
She frowned. “You’ve hardly touched me since the tragedy. It’s hard to make babies without touching.”
His mind had been full of other things, he wanted to say, but he was afraid to tell her what. So he said nothing.
“You blame me for her death,” said Rosa.
“No. I blame the doctor.” He hesitated. “Forgive me, but sometimes I also blame God.”
Rosa was not surprised. “I worry for you, Luis. In church I pray for your bitterness to end.”
“I pray also,” he said.
“For what do you pray?”
He looked down.
“I am your wife,” Rosa reminded him. “Please, show me your face.”
With an effort Luis lifted his head and met his wife’s eyes. They were dark and steady and inviting of trust. The eyes of a woman, he thought, the eyes of a mother. He wanted to be like her, worthy of trust. Like the women he had sat with in the doctor’s waiting room. New mothers, expectant mothers, women inextricably bound to life.
“I pray for another chance,” he said.
Rosa was touched, and her face softened. Then something came over her. Rarely the initiator in matters of sex for fear of offending her husband’s manhood, she cast fear aside and reached out and touched Luis’ cheek with her fingertips. She stroked his skin, the wings of his nose, his lips. He responded by kissing her palm, then embracing her. It was their first such contact in weeks, and the joy of it kept them glued together, until finally Luis freed an arm to turn off the light. He was anxious to put his wife’s mind at ease, eager to show his love further. Fleetingly, it crossed his mind that, hope beyond hope, they might even conceive.
High hopes, deep despair. When the time came, he could not harden enough to enter Rosa, much less plant the seed. It was the estrogen, but he did not know it. They tried one thing after another, they sweated and toiled, but consummation eluded them, and finally, they gave up. It was an embarrassment to both, an admission of troubles deeper than they imagined. It was a long time before they tried again.
In the months that followed other changes befell their relationship. As his breasts swelled, Luis took to dressing and undressing in private, so that Rosa would not see. Once or twice a week he took a pill he had gotten from the doctor to get rid of the excess water and feeling of bloatedness the hormones caused. On these days he was in and out of the bathroom so many times at work that his boss started to complain. Fearful for his job, Luis took to taking the pills at night, so that instead of missing time at work, he missed sleep. This made him more irritable and moody than ever. He became subject to fits of temper; once, to the fear and amazement of his wife and children, he actually broke down in tears. When he recounted this embarrassing episode to Admonson (who was, ironically, the only person in this time of distress he felt capable of confiding in), the doctor explained that it was probably the medicine at work. Women were often temperamental when their hormones were surging.
“Am I a woman now?” asked Luis, displaying a naiveté that worried Admonson.
“No,” he replied. “You’re a man on hormones. You’re far from being a woman.”
Luis wasn’t so sure. If he were a man, he would have killed this so-called doctor long ago.
“Am I a homosexual?” he asked.
Admonson regarded him. “What do you think you are?”
“I’m following orders.”
“Not mine,” Admonson was quick to reply.
Luis would not meet his eyes.
“I’m getting a funny feeling here,” Admonson said. “Like you’re not sure about the way things are going. You’re not happy. Maybe we should put things on hold for right now.”
“On hold?”
“Stop the medicine. Re-think what we’re doing here.”
“I’m doing what I’m supposed to,” replied Luis.
“You said you’re following orders. Whose?”
Luis scolded himself for saying too much. This doctor was cagey. He made you think you could trust him, made you almost like him, then he turned the tables, killing your baby, betraying your trust. A person had to be careful.
“My orders,” said Luis. “Mine. I’m doing this for myself.”
“That’s the way it has to be. It has to come from you. From inside. It has to be what you want. What you truly think you are.”
Admonson was winging it. By rights he shouldn’t have taken the case at all, but curiosity had pushed his hand and now vanity kept him from letting go. He had done some reading and talked to a few colleagues. As long as the treatment was merely a matter of prescribing hormones, it was reversible and relatively safe. He hadn’t decided what he would do once they tackled the issue of surgery. As a physician and gynecologist, he was as well-acquainted as anyone with the subtleties of the female form, but he had absolutely no experience at all in moulding that form from one of the opposite sex. The knowledge of what he would have to cut was actually rather unsettling. He asked Luis if he had given any thought to the matter.
Crafty, thought Luis. Trying to scare me off. He sensed the doctor’s trepidation, which made him glad.
“Sometimes I feel like I’m burning up,” he said, thinking the news of this might worry the doctor further. “Like there’s a fire in my skin. A fever.”
“Hot flashes,” said Admonson.
Luis frowned.
“The hormones,” he explained. “I did warn you.”
“I don’t like it.”
“What’s to like? No one said it was easy becoming a woman. Maybe if you grew your hair long. Learned to use a little make-up. A little lipstick.” He reached for a framed photograph that sat on the corner of his desk and held it out to Luis. “My wife. She spends half an hour every morning at the mirror. And again in the evening, if we’re going out. It’s work being a woman. It takes commitment.” He paused, and his lips edged up in a grin. “But then if you’re lucky, you get a man like me.”
Luis felt simultaneously humiliated and confused. For want of a reply he looked at the photograph of Admonson’s wife, a delicately-boned, elegant-looking woman in her forties. She seemed strong-willed to him, and he wondered how she did it, especially how she stood up to her husband. And conversely, what appealed to her, what she found attractive in him.
“I have no wish to get a man,” he said quietly.
Admonson pondered this, shrugged. “No. Of course not. You’re married.” He took back the picture. “My wife and I have been together twenty-two years. She’s a real trooper. A diamond in the rough. Don’t know what I’d do without her.” He glanced at Luis. “You haven’t spoken of your own wife lately. What does she make of all this?”
Luis stiffened. The thought of Rosa made him defensive. “There are no arguments in our family. Whatever I am, I am still the head of the house.”
“It’s a man’s world,” agreed Admonson. “Are you sure you want to give it up?”
Luis had never considered it. True, his thirst for revenge had been hottest early on, before he had begun his treatments. He h
ad changed, was changing, but whatever he ultimately became, he expected to be able to call back his former self on demand.
“I give up nothing,” he said.
“Ah. A feminist.”
Luis frowned. “Women are the salt of the earth. The ones who give comfort and love. I don’t understand you. How can a doctor of women not like women?”
“I have great respect for women,” replied Admonson. “I’m not sure I could ever get through labor as they do. Or let children cling like little monkeys to my breast. Or suffer mood swings every month when I’m about to menstruate. Not to mention holding down a job.” He shook his head at the marvel of it all. “Women are amazing creations. They deserve all the credit in the world. They wake me at night with their phone calls, they get me going in the morning, I’m with them all day. My life revolves around women. How can I not like them?”
Luis churned inside. He was no match for this doctor, who parried and twisted everything he said. Revenge, it was clear, would not come in the form of words. He stood up.
“I’ll take my shot now.”
“Of course.” Admonson, ever the gentleman, left his chair and extended his hand. “It’s been good chatting. And don’t worry. We’ll take this thing one step at a time. I’ll see you in a month.”
That night Luis had a dream. A nightmare rather, against which he fought and flailed, twisting the sheets, throwing off the pillow, straining the plastic buttons on his pajama top until, stretched to the breaking point, they popped off. When he woke, drenched in sweat, the light in the bedroom was on, because Rosa, hearing him cry out, had feared that something was wrong. Upon seeing his naked torso, with the rounded breasts and pink nipples of a young woman, she knew that she was right. Something was dreadfully wrong. Her husband had passed beyond help, at least beyond hers. She muttered a prayer, crossed herself and spent the remainder of the night on the living room sofa. The following morning, children in tow, she moved out.
Luis was grief-stricken and full of remorse. He vowed to stop the treatments, but somehow, each time he tried, he failed. On three separate occasions he made a point of tossing the bottle of pills in the garbage only to find them back in his sock, or in his hand, a fresh tablet on his tongue, or tumbling down his throat to his stomach to work its magic. He called to cancel his monthly doctor’s appointment, but when the receptionist came on, he froze. He called again at a later time and did manage to cancel, but when the day came, he went anyway. He was in the grip of something he couldn’t control, and he suspected his daughter’s hand in it, even though it had been months since she had bothered to visit. He wondered where it was all leading. More than anything, he prayed that it would soon end.
Three days after leaving, Rosa returned to the apartment to pick up some clothes, expecting her husband to be at work. But, bereft at his family’s departure, Luis had called in sick. The meeting between them was awkward in the extreme. Rosa tried to get in and out without talking, but, driven to the brink by her husband’s relentless apologies and entreaties to return, she lost control, bursting out in a torrent of questions, none of which he was able to answer to her satisfaction. Was he sick? she asked. No, he replied, not sick. Crazy? No, not crazy either. He was afraid to tell her about Maria Elena, not because she wouldn’t believe the child might visit but because she wouldn’t believe she would be so cruel and ruthless as to orchestrate her own revenge. Rosa would assume he was either lying or possessed, so he said nothing.
Given so little to work with, Rosa had little choice. If Luis wasn’t willing to trust her, she couldn’t very well trust him. She needed to look out for herself and the children, and thus stood firm in her decision to separate. It was her duty as a mother.
Luis was heartbroken, though he couldn’t honestly blame her. He shared his wife’s belief in motherhood as a sacred trust, and he made her promise to keep herself and the children safe. For his part he promised that all the trouble would soon be over. This made Rosa cry, and Luis hugged her. I love you, he murmured.
She squeezed him. I love you too.
He insisted she and the children have the apartment. He would find something else, a room somewhere, a studio. When the dust settled a little, they would talk again.
He took a room in a cheap hotel and a week later moved to a flat occupied by a practical-minded widow from Guadalajara who shared a bedroom with her mother and disabled daughter and rented out two others to make ends meet. Luis got a clean room with a bureau, a wooden armchair, a throw rug and a window overlooking an alley. Across the hall from him was the other boarder, a laconic Salvadorean gentleman in his sixties, who drank rum and preferred to do so alone. Relationships in the household were cordial but circumscribed. Luis left early for work, returned late and kept to himself. He sent the bulk of his paycheck to Rosa. What little he had left went to the doctor, the medication and the occasional thrift-store shirt or sweater to accommodate his shifting new shape. For fear of running into Rosa and the children he stopped going to church, although he continued to pray, sometimes feverishly, in his room. He had not seen Maria Elena for months and worried that she had forsaken him. He longed for her reassurance and sense of purpose. He needed her wits and determination. He prayed for her return, and at the same time he prayed for Rosa, whom he missed dearly, and for the children, whom he loved beyond measure. And he prayed for himself, because, of everyone, he needed it most.
As the anniversary of Maria Elena’s death approached, he started to unravel. The rage and sorrow and despair he had kept inside seemed all to bubble up at once. He missed work. He holed up in his room. When the date came for his monthly visit to the doctor, it was all he could do to struggle into some clothes and get out the door.
Admonson seemed pleased to see him. He asked if there was anything new to report.
“I’m being poisoned,” said Luis.
Admonson became instantly alert. “What do you mean?”
“I’m suffering. She has left me. She must think I am worthless. Beneath contempt. Yet I do this for her.”
“For whom?”
“My daughter. My beloved Maria Elena.” He fingered the wooden cross he had taken to wearing around his neck.
Admonson did not conceal his alarm. “What daughter? What poison?”
Luis felt close to bursting. There was a letter opener on the doctor’s desk. He could kill him now. Kill him, then kill himself. Be done with it.
A voice suggested he hold off a minute.
Luis almost wept with relief. It was Maria Elena, and though he couldn’t see her, he knew she was close by. Leave the doctor, she said. Leave him now and come to me. The time has arrived. Stand. Remove yourself from this place. Come to me.
Luis trembled with joy. Without another word he fled the doctor’s office, fled the waiting room full of mothers and infants, fled the medical building and headed for the streets. All that day and all the next the voice followed him. It called to him in the wind off the hills and the steam rising from sidewalk grates, in the electric buzz of trolley wires and the squeal of car brakes. It sang to him in the hiss of his shower and the flush of his toilet, in the fog and rain and mist. He listened in rapture, he who had been so forlorn. He begged to see her face.
But Maria Elena chose not to show herself. Instead, she kept repeating the same half-dozen words over and over, until Luis grabbed his ears and cried for her to stop. She did not, and this made him angry. He scolded her, father to child, occasioning his landlady, who happened to be nearby, to ask who he was talking to.
“Maria Elena,” he replied.
She cocked an eye.
“My dead daughter,” he explained.
The woman crossed herself and went away, but the next day, with apologies for the inconvenience, gave Luis his notice. Two days later he was out on the street and driven to distraction by his daughter’s relentless chatter. Her words had ceased being words, and the drone had become impossible to bear. In desperation he made his way to his old apartment, arriving at the doorst
ep just as Rosa was on the way out. She was dressed in black.
“I was wondering if you’d come,” she said.
“Forgive me. I’m half crazy. I could think of nowhere else.”
“Do you need a ride?”
“I need help.”
This she could believe, and though her husband’s urgent manner and disheveled appearance made her wary, she was not dead in the heart. She took his arm. “Come. We’ll go together.”
It was the anniversary of their daughter’s death, and Rosa drove to the cemetery, where they were joined by other members of the family, including their two sons, who came with an aunt. Luis wept to see them again, wept to see Rosa, wept anew when the prayer for Maria Elena was given. The girl stopped chattering long enough for him to hear it. The force of her silence was overwhelming. He felt weak with relief.
When the prayer ended, she appeared to him for the last time. She came as a mature woman and seemed content, almost happy. Luis could not understand why. Apart from a year of waiting, he had done nothing to avenge her death. At best, he had only marginally insinuated himself into the doctor’s life, and to what effect? The doctor was not suffering. Far from it. He seemed to have the upper hand at every turn.
It was August, and a fog-driven wind cut through Luis’ clothing. He hugged himself and blew into his hands, but the chill, like a tide, crept inward. Like something from the grave, it made him tremble. His relief turned into a feeling of dread. Suddenly, he was cold. And frightened. He thought his time had come to die.
Maria Elena hovered a foot or two above the grave. Her feet were planted in air, her legs slightly spread, her arms akimbo. Her expression was resolute, but there was a certain playfulness in her eyes.
The wind picked up, tossing Luis’ hair across his forehead. He heard laughter, then noticed that a bird now perched on Maria Elena’s outstretched finger. A sparrow. In its beak it held a seed.
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