Try to Remember

by Iris Gomez

  By the time she and Walter returned hours later, I’d bathed, dressed, and fed Solita and Luna. I’d even helped them draw pictures they were allowed to tape right onto their walls. Walter greeted me with a brief nod as Lara pulled the girls into her arms and checked their foreheads for fever. “Are you better, my little stars?”

  When Walter saw the Modernism book on the coffee table, he glanced at me. “Were you reading this?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, I’ll put it back,” I answered apologetically.

  “No, leave it. Please.”

  “I didn’t really understand it,” I admitted.

  Lara stood with Solita in her arms to see the book. “Oh, maybe the words,” she said dismissively. “The ideas are simple.”

  Walter looked askance at her.

  “You know what I find so interesting?” Lara put Solita down with a kiss. Her gray eyes twinkled as she looked from Walter to me. “Darío was from Central America. And Modernism, of course, united the continent just as European colonialism had broken it into parts. He was a bridge, like his country.” She touched her fingertips together to make the bridge.

  “That’s too much,” Walter argued. “Bolivarian nonsense.”

  Even though I knew who Simón Bolívar was, I wasn’t quite sure what Walter meant. But Lara hadn’t finished her point. She held up a hand. “What happens,” she continued, looking toward me but aiming her remarks at him, “is that Walter is not a true modernist. Isn’t that interesting? Given my being the European and all.”

  Walter studied her without any expression, then turned to me. “Would you like me to drive you home, Gabriela?”

  “That’s okay,” I replied. “I can walk.”

  The girls protested my leaving, but I gave them double cheek kisses as their mother had done. I slipped the money Lara had given me for babysitting into my pocket.

  “We’ll see you again, yes?” Lara asked.

  “Sure,” I replied. “Bye, Walter.”

  He lifted his hand in reply.

  With disappointment, I declined Lara’s next babysitting request, as I had a stored up jumble of petroleum letters to complete before our family outing. With Pablo’s aid, I finished the typing quickly, avoiding deviations I no longer dared attempt.

  Afterward, we headed to Tío Victor’s for the twins’ Confirmation party.

  Once there, I couldn’t help but notice how the fathers, including my own, got to decide so much about family life. Even small things, such as which room the fathers would play cards in, were determined in the same unquestioned way as the big ones, like which country we lived in and who was allowed to work outside the home. In my cousin’s bedroom, I asked Raquel if she thought Latino families were more sexist than others.

  “Well, definitely that stuff about girls not being allowed to leave home for live-away colleges,” she said. “I had to talk my parents into that one.”

  Such talk would never fly at my house, I knew. “But Raquel, do you think your mother and father are equal?” I probed.

  “Mami says she can get Papi to do anything she wants,” Raquel replied, smiling at her mother’s puffing.

  “Your father’s nice,” I acknowledged, then persisted, “How about Tío Lucho and Tía Elena?”

  Raquel laughed so hard that her headband slipped across her eyes. “I vote for Tía Elena!”

  I laughed too. True, our aunt bossed Tío Lucho around. But then again, he got to call the shots on other things such as their trailer park residence and Marisol’s braces. From the bed, I untucked one foot from under me and swung it out to compare its shiny patent leather toe with the worn one of the other shoe. Shiny or worn, the two shoes were equally ugly.

  Raquel watched me through the mirror as she readjusted her headband. “You can’t really compare your mother and father to other parents, Gabi. You have to wait for your father to get better.”

  I examined my ugly shoes. “Yeah, but how?”

  Her brow furrowed. “I don’t know. Maybe my parents will come up with something.” She came over and put an arm across my shoulder. “Don’t worry, Gabi.”

  The following day I realized Raquel must have known something was up because I stumbled upon my mother oddly grinding a pill with the majadero we used for garlic and spices. “What’s that, Mami?” I asked.

  “It’s for your father,” she replied nonchalantly, pressing the pestle downward. “A sleeping pill. Don’t say anything to your brothers,” she cautioned.

  Aha! Now I knew why there hadn’t been any blow-ups. “Where did they come from?” I asked, lifting the small brown envelope.

  “Dr. Sanabria. Your Tía Rita gets them. I’m just giving your father half a pill to relax.”

  On the envelope, “Dalmane” was scribbled above the signature of that Cuban doctor who’d gotten me out of Phys. Ed.—if in fact he was a doctor. “Is that okay, Mami, for Papi to take Tía Rita’s pills?”

  “Oh, they’re not hers. She just bought them for us.” Mami stirred the ground pill into an orange juice and raw egg tonic that my father had taken to drinking—it was yet another fantasy of making himself stronger that he’d heard about on The Jack LaLane Show.

  “Will the pills do anything besides make Papi sleepy?” I asked with concern, wondering about the legality.

  “It’s only a calmante. Your aunt swears by them. She takes them now and then.”

  As I took my father his glass of calm I felt a bit uneasy. For one thing, I’d read Valley of the Dolls, which introduced me to downers and uppers and the fact that people overdosed on such drugs. But if Tía Rita, Tío Victor, and that could-be-a-doctor in Little Havana all believed it would prevent another vicious attack like the Manolo- bashing, then who was I to doubt that Dalmane was a force of good in the world? Besides, as Pablo had shrewdly observed about pot: Who would ever find out? And even if the pills were illegal, maybe such law-breaking was morally justified because it kept my father from hurting people.

  Later that week, after phone calls were traded among my mother, my uncle, Miss Lucy Prado, and our ever popular family lawyer El Chino, it was decided that Mami would attend her interview alone. Though relieved to hear that my father was out of the picture, as calmed as he was by the calmante, I was bothered that all the capable men had left my mother alone with this responsibility. “Why isn’t Tío or somebody going with you?” I probed as I watched her repair a run on her nylons with pink nail polish.

  “The lawyer doesn’t recommend it,” she said tersely.

  “Why not?”

  She blew on the polish to dry and avoided answering.

  Finally, I suggested, “I better come, Mami.”

  “No, they speak Spanish,” she said, adjusting her stocking to be sure it didn’t run.

  “But somebody should be with you.”

  “Well you aren’t permitted!” she blurted angrily. Then, adjusting her tone of voice to an ordinary level, she added, “No children.”

  I opened my mouth to demand further explanation, but I noticed—like the bright fuchsia threads that flashed above her knee when her skirt moved—the trace of vergüenza in her face. I knew that my father’s behavior had often shamed Mami, despite her denials, but couldn’t she dissemble as much as she needed to without him present? This particular shame, though, seemed oddly and sadly all her own.

  She wasn’t terribly forthcoming after her interview either. “Nada, nada,” she said, dismissing it. “That Cuban woman, who as a matter of fact isn’t old enough to be a mother, wanted to lecture me about how differently things are done here and how everyone can improve. Hmph! As if Americans didn’t punish their children!”

  “What punishment was she talking about?” I inquired uneasily.

  “None!” my mother shot back.

  Well, I decided, whatever had happened, there was no point in fighting her over it. My uncle and El Chino had left me out, so they were in charge of this one.

  My own charges—Lara’s peppy girls and my tenuously calmed peligro of a father�
��were more than enough to keep me busy.

  By the end of July, the already humid temperatures had risen high into the 90s. Walter installed an air-conditioner in Luna and Solita’s bedroom, and I gratefully took to napping with the girls there. Solita liked falling asleep in my arms.

  “You’re spoiling her,” Lara told me a few appointments later when she found us like that. She helped me loosen the child’s grip on my neck, and we slid Solita onto her pillow.

  “Her skin is so soft,” I whispered.

  “Mmm,” Lara whispered back. “Our world hasn’t toughened her up yet.” She touched my cheek lightly, as if it were soft too. Then, as was our new custom whenever Lara returned home from her own research without Walter, who spent increasingly longer stretches at the university, she and I took our coffees outside. We sat at the plastic table underneath a large umbrella, and Lara inquired about what I was reading. She’d read practically every novel I checked out of the library, but this time she wanted to know what I read in Spanish.

  “Nothing, really,” I responded. “I got tired of those fotonovelas.”

  Lara stared at me in amazement. “But Gabi, there is an abundance of good literature published in the Spanish language. You don’t have to read comic books.”

  “They only have English books at the Chekika branch,” I informed her.

  “Oh, that’s absurd. We have so many books here!” And with that, she went rummaging for novels by Spanish and Latin American women writers. “Here,” she said, returning with a pile, “a community of heroines.”

  Almost immediately I became absorbed in the Spanish-language novels she plied me with. My father’s calmante had slowed down the production of illogical documents, so, in the timelessness of summer, I stayed up reading until three or four in the morning.

  Lydia rarely called. The hollow created by her absence and Olguita’s made me grateful for the friendship I was developing with Lara, if you could call it that, what with her being an adult. But I admired the way Lara lived so confidently inside her thoughts, unlike me, always doubting my own.

  On my last babysitting Saturday before high school began, we sat outside again with our coffees, and Lara asked casually, “Tell me how your family is, Gabi. Is Evi still working hard?”

  I nodded. “She’ll be starting full-time when we go back to school.”

  “Wonderful. I’m sure she’ll be glad for the extra income. And your father?”

  “He’s fine.” I sipped my coffee slowly so that I wouldn’t get too sweaty. I got the impression Lara understood more than whatever Mami had shared—or that Camila had, if even she knew the whole of it. I wished I could be more open, since Lara was kind and didn’t seem like a blabbermouth. But if she let out anything I’d revealed, how ashamed my mother would feel!

  “Poor man.” Lara put her feet up on another chair. She was wearing socks and brown loafers with her skirt. She wasn’t exactly what people in Miami would call a snappy dresser, but she seemed comfortable in whatever she wore. “And you, Gabi?” she asked, “Did you finish Nada?”

  “Oh, it was great! I left it on your coffee table. What a family that girl had,” I exclaimed enthusiastically.

  “Mmm. I thought you’d like Andrea.” Lara’s gray eyes drifted over me. “So fatalistic as young women can be.”

  I asked Lara if she thought love had to be fatal.

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” she replied. “Maybe some kinds of love.” Then she told me about the Greek classification system. There were four kinds, she explained. First, there was eros, passionate love. Next came philos, friendship, and then storge, the familial form. Last, but not least, there was agape, divine or selfless love.

  “But great love,” she concluded, with a look so soulful that I didn’t know who it was meant for, “contains all four.”

  [ SIXTEEN ]

  THE DALMANE TAMED MY FATHER’S MOODS, but his writing seemed more incoherent than ever. At least when he used to compose job letters, the structure anchored his free floating associations, probably because having to address someone forced him to try to communicate. But since the advent of his “thesis,” nothing structured his writing. I couldn’t tell why one page followed another, though he became distraught if he dropped a page and disturbed the mysterious sequencing. He’d started using index cards too—mine, of course—which unfortunately reminded me of my exhibit failure. But at least that inspired me to vow fervently never to fantasize beyond what I had the power to control.

  High school became my only antidote to evenings at home with a drugged, deluded father. Unfortunately, because of the desegregation lawsuit, my Alina gang from the other side of Flagler had been redistricted to Tamiami High, which left just Lydia and me at Royal Palm High. Here, students were divided almost evenly between Latino and Jewish, and the school was so big that Lydia too quickly disappeared into the masses flooding stairwells. At the end of orientation week, I eagerly signed myself up for a part-time work program, the AfterCorps, that ran three days a week. Since it was at school, Mami agreed that we could sneak it over on my father.

  In ACs I was pleased to find quiet Claudio Sotomayor, whom I remembered from eighth grade Spanish class. He still had that tiny black stain in his eye, as if the pupil had smeared, but other than that, he’d actually gotten cute. He was taller, his black hair curlier, and he had a lazy smile like Pablo’s. When the rest of us bickered over plum assignments—like wrapping dittos around the spirit duplicator and cranking its lever until whiffs of fresh purple ink filled our lungs—Claudio politely accepted whatever tasks were left.

  In that uncomplicated environment, I could almost trust in a world beyond the fears and pressures I was used to at home. Gladly, I accepted extra jobs offered on off days, while willingly signing my weekly AC paycheck over to my grateful mother.

  Sadness, however, soon came calling.

  One morning, sobs woke me from sleep, and I sat upright—only to realize that the crying was coming from outside. I peered out my window and saw Mami comforting her friend Camila. The sun was shining on them and the dewy grass under their chancletas shone too, but the two women in their faded housecoats and bare faces looked like rag-tag survivors from some tragic fire. I dove tiredly back under the covers until the clanging of the café con leche pot and coffee aroma lured me into the kitchen. The back door was open. I poured myself a cup and went outside, where Mami sat drinking her own coffee in a chair under the mango tree.

  Grabbing the other lawn chair, I wiped dew off with one hand. “Did something happen to Hernán?” I asked, sitting and squinting at Mami in the sunlight.

  She lifted a hand wearily. “He’s back in the clinic. It’s terrible.”

  “Poor Camila,” I said with sympathy. “What’s she going to do?”

  “Do?” Mami frowned, shaking her head. “A todo se hace uno.”

  I reflected for a moment on the import of that proverb. “Just because you can’t do anything about leukemia,” I offered finally, “that doesn’t mean you have no power at all.”

  With a melancholic look in her eyes, Mami replied, “Ay Gabriela, someday you’ll have to learn what it means to be a woman. Don’t give yourself illusions just because we’re in this country.”

  I leaned forward in my chair. “But things are different here, Mami. Look at you. You’re the head of the household.”

  “That’s a disgrace, Gabriela, not something to be proud of.”

  “But why? What’s so horrible about women working and becoming independent?”

  She gave me a long, hard look. “When the proper time comes,” she said, “you can get married and leave this family to form one of your own. Así, like I did,” she added, “not without sacrifices.”

  “That’s the problem!” I burst out in exasperation. “Why should you make the sacrifices and be stuck with them forever just because he—”

  “It’s not forever,” Mami said firmly. “Those pills are relaxing your father. You don’t realize, Gabriela, how hard he had to w
ork all these years. He needed a rest. Later on, you’ll see, he’ll start to find his happiness. Then he’ll look for the right job.” Before I could rebut any of that with a point-by-point summary of the manuscript-without-end that my “relaxed” father had been creating since he psychotically attacked his own son, she’d stood up. “I have to get dressed. Are you coming in?”

  I shook my head with disappointment. If only I could have opened her eyes, illuminated the truth for her as Lara often did for me with her repertoire of knowledge. But all that came to my mind was a simple dicho I’d heard Tía Rita say many times: Quien espera, desespera.

  Too much hope deceives.

  • • •

  That afternoon, Mr. Lanham, whom I’d been surprised to find teaching my World Geography class at Royal Palm, unexpectedly borrowed me from the AC office for a project in his classroom. Its walls were covered with great posters of colorfully costumed people, mountains with snow, and the pyramids at Tucume, Perú. He handed me the staple remover. “Okay, Gabi. Take the old ones down.” He patted his shirt pocket for cigarettes, but there were none in there.

  I pushed a chair against the wall, climbed up, and started unstapling. While I worked, he unzipped a flat, wide case and emptied the contents onto his desk. “We’re going to Giza next,” he explained, studying the fresh batch of posters. He looked up. “Do you know where Giza is, Gabriela?”

  “No, Mr. Lanham.”

  “Egypt. Some of the greatest achievements of all time happened in Egypt. A Wonder of the World, as you will soon learn.” He held up a crisp poster printed with huge pyramids, stark and perfect. “Bigger than Huallamarca,” he pointed out. Then he confided to me that he’d worked in the Nile Valley as a graduate student, doing his thesis on the Great Nubian Civilization.

  Maybe Mr. Lanham is lonely here too, I thought as I carried a Peru poster to his desk.

  “Trade you,” he offered, handing me a new one. “What colleges are you thinking of, Gabi?”