Pacifica
Page 25
So our correspondence began and has continued. She has been immeasurably helpful at least, in seeing Millie into medical school, once I wrote to her about it, recommending teachers who could assist.
Emilio jostles with the other children, demanding and insistent. I see this in him, the need to be in control, to be leader. It was in his father, this clear ability to command.
When he was born I could not understand what I felt. It was joy, relief to hear his strong cry, to learn that I had a son, to see and feel him next to me warm and smelling of salt and fresh linen. I remember nothing but this, and his eyes, the color of them not apparent yet, only a dark blue like the sea at dusk.
I determined to love him. I could not have any other feeling, even if I were convinced somehow that his father was that man shot dead by firing squad. And for the first several months as I nursed him and held him as he cried, I tried not to think about it. And then, one morning in the garden as he sat in his bassinet on the grass beside me, I saw him laugh at an oriel flying past, and I knew the truth of him.
I had not looked at my Mexico sketches since the moving picture days. Leaving Emilio with Maria, I ran to my room and dug my portfolio out of the bureau.
I rifled through the sketches of women of the camp, soldiers, mules, Paloma’s hacienda. Milo, Mr. Lowe. Octavio Beltran. All of them. And I found it and marveled, my heart singing with fevered joy.
Jesus Robles, sitting in my sick room at the de Castro hacienda, arm draped over a chair, a cigarette in his hand. It was the slant of his eyes that arrowed through me. Emilio had that same slant, a very slight downward draw at his temples. I did not see that on Francisco’s face, a face I knew too well from nightmare.
Emilio leads the other children in following a toy sailboat caught in a gust of wind. Sliding my hand into my pocket book, I take out the little oval frame of walnut, and look once more into Jesus’s eyes.
My prints of Mexico made me a lot of money, so I paid for this reproduction, made by one of the paper’s photographers. I carry it everywhere, and have shown it to Emilio, telling him this is his father. He is too little to understand and doesn’t take any interest. He would much rather play with his toy soldiers.
Ondine, I tell myself, your journey is really only just beginning. I don’t know where it will take me next, but I do know one thing:
Leaving is the same as arriving.
Copyright & Credits
Pacifica
Jill Zeller
Book View Café edition: January 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-61138-573-1
Copyright © 2016 Jill Zeller
Production Team:
Cover Design: Jill Zeller
Copyeditor: Sara Stamey
Proofreader: Phyllis Irene Radford
Formatter: Vonda N. McIntyre
This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Digital edition: 20151222vnm
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About the Author
The author of numerous short stories and novels, Jill Zeller lives near Seattle, Washington, with her patient husband, self-centered tuxedo cat, and princess Bernadette Delilah, English Mastiff. Her works explore the boundaries of reality. Some may call it fantasy but there are rarely swords and never elves.
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