The Mortifications

by Derek Palacio

  —

  Willems told the counselor everything. He told her about the soap operas and the notebooks. He told her all the things Soledad had said, and he even told her about his violent urges, fleeting as they were.

  How close have you come to hitting her? the counselor asked. In order to hurt her, I mean.

  Not very, Willems said.

  Are you certain, Henri? There’s no going back from that. I have to make sure you don’t leave this office with the intent to abuse.

  Do you think I’m capable of that?

  I think you’re angry about this issue with the TV, and I don’t think you know whom you’re angry with. If it’s Soledad, then tell her again, and if she doesn’t hear you out, then you have the option of leaving her, which she seems to expect on some level or, at least, would understand. Cancer is not a reason to mistreat another human being, and you present yourself as mistreated to the point of violence. If it’s not Soledad, then we have to figure that out.

  Should I leave her? Willems asked.

  Let’s not start there. First, tell me: What’s its like watching Soledad watch TV? Do you really pretend to sleep, as she claims?

  I don’t pretend to do anything. I’m awake, and I watch her. She gets into her trance at the end of the bed, and there’s no need to sneak around, because she’s so far gone.

  How long does she watch TV for? the counselor asked.

  Two hours a day, Willems said.

  Do you feel like that’s too much?

  She usually spends another hour organizing her notes, and several hours on the weekend writing them out in longhand.

  Do you have intercourse on the weekends?

  Yes, but it lacks the same power as it has during the week.

  The sex is gentler?

  No, not exactly. It’s still rough. What I’m saying is, she can pull herself out of it. It doesn’t overwhelm her like it first did. Even when we’re fucking, I feel her absence.

  Forgive me, Henri, but have you come to enjoy the rough play? I’m not trying to be funny, but it almost sounds as though you’re nostalgic for it.

  It’s stupid, I know. Wanting something that I didn’t like just because I had it before.

  The way you describe it, you could barely keep up.

  It was the last thing she was giving me.

  And now she’s not offering it anymore.

  It’s childish, isn’t it? A grown man wanting to hit a woman because she won’t give him what he wants? She’s dying, and I’m still trying to take things from her.

  It’s difficult watching someone we love pass away, the counselor said. Or I should say, complex.

  I know, Willems said. I watched my mother die.

  What was that like?

  Willems told the counselor about the color of Rute’s skin, which went from sandy brown to yellow to cream and then to blue right before she went. He paused at the thought of his mother’s blue skin, but then he went on to list the other facts of her going: the fluctuating body temperature, the diarrhea, the kinds of fluids they fed her, the number of days in bed, the hour of her death, the color of her bedsheets, the weather patterns of that week, the meals he ate that she could not, the feel of her skin as it dried out, the names of all the nurses who nursed her, and the number of minutes between her passing and his father’s touching of her body, his closing of her eyes. He mentioned last Rute’s mysterious smell.

  How awful, the counselor said.

  It was, Willems said. She was like another person. I even started hating her for it.

  Really?

  Isn’t that terrible? I think that’s worst part. At first, I was afraid of the new smell, but eventually I was just angry about it.

  You were mad that it was so different?

  I was mad at my mother. I started to think she’d changed her smell on purpose, like switching a perfume. I started thinking she wanted to leave us and that she didn’t want me around at the end. Right before she died, I refused to see her, and I wouldn’t tell her why.

  Why do you think you did that?

  I’m sure I was feeling the sort of abandonment any child does when they have to watch a parent die. It was easier being mad at her for going than becoming sad about her being gone.

  Is there a chance this is where your reluctance with Soledad comes from?

  That’s a stretch, in my mind.

  Have you ever shared any of this with Soledad?

  Yes, some of it.

  Which parts?

  I’ve told her about my mother’s changing smell, but not about my hating her for it.

  Why not?

  It’s embarrassing.

  You were a child.

  Willems closed his eyes. He thought of the smell of Soledad’s skin—metallic and sterile—when she returned from chemotherapy. He heard the counselor shift in her seat, and he opened his eyes.

  Where did you go just now? the counselor asked.

  Henri, who’d spent the majority of these sessions staring at his knees, studied the woman across from him. She was in her fifties, she wore a brown dress, and her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Her mouth was set into a line, and her cheekbones were nonexistent, as if her face were a plane. It gave him the impression that he spoke to a painting.

  I was thinking about the women I’ve lost, Henri said.

  The women you’ve lost, the counselor repeated.

  Yes.

  Is Soledad a part of that group?

  Willems paused. He said, I suppose I’m also counting her.

  Why?

  I seem to keep things from the women I love when they’re about to die.

  The things we talk about here?

  Yes, and other things.

  Such as?

  Willems said, Sometimes I have dreams.

  What kind?

  The kind where I see Soledad after a beating.

  Describe one.

  In the dream Soledad has a bruised eye and a swollen nose. The nose might be broken. It’s bloody around the nostrils. I can feel my fists. My knuckles throb. I can hear Soledad breathing through her mouth.

  The counselor asked, Are you aroused?

  No, Willems said. I’m not. I don’t think I am.

  The two of you are alone, the counselor said. You stand across from each other and look into each other’s faces.

  Yes and no.

  Explain.

  There’s another man in the room. I can’t see him. He’s behind me. Soledad can see him, and she looks at both of us. She looks over my shoulder to look at him. He looks over my shoulder to look at her. He wants to see her. He’s confused, because Soledad’s face is her own, but it’s not. It’s misshapen, because I’ve hit her.

  The counselor asked, Who is he?

  Uxbal.

  For the first time during one of their meetings, the counselor got up from her chair. She brought a pitcher of water from across the room and poured Henri a glass, then sat down next to him. So close to her, Willems was suddenly afraid.

  Are you showing Uxbal what you’ve done to his wife? the counselor asked.

  I don’t know.

  Do you hit her in the dream, or is she bruised when the dream begins?

  I have to hit her.

  How does she look before you hit her? Is she happy? Depressed? Is she asking you to strike her?

  No, she doesn’t ask, but I hit her twice with an open palm.

  And then she changes.

  Yes and no. Her form is different from the start.

  Her form? the counselor asked. How?

  In the dream, she doesn’t have cancer. She hasn’t had surgery. In the dream her breasts are still there. I can see them under her shirt.

  In your dream she is healthy.

  Until I hit her.

  How do you feel, the counselor asked, once you’ve hurt her?

  I want to take her in my arms, Willems said.

  Does she fall into your arms?

  She doesn’t.

  Why not?


  Because I’m the one who hurt her.

  Uxbal does nothing?

  He’s quiet. He stays behind me like a shadow.

  Do you say anything to Soledad?

  I tell her I’m sorry. I tell her I love her. I tell her that she is beautiful.

  Is she?

  Incredibly so.

  Even after you’ve struck her? Even with her bruised eye?

  Always.

  In the house the old woman served Ulises a plate of chilled cherry tomatoes sliced and mixed with olives and pimento. On the table she also placed grapefruit and fried plantains, which she’d been warming under the sun on the windowsill, and she told Ulises to eat, eat, but he could barely understand her. She spoke with what Ulises assumed was a distant countryside Spanish, though, unlike the Cuban slang he remembered from his childhood, her words did not run together. She made sounds that were close to words he knew, but it was as if she’d not had a lengthy conversation with anyone in a long, long time. Her clothes made him think the same. She wore a loose floral blouse and a canvas skirt, the kind made for farmers’ daughters, but underneath her skirt she wore pants as well, fatigues the hunter green of a soldier’s uniform. Ulises wondered how she didn’t faint in the heat.

  And she kept calling him Uxbal. He tried to correct her, but she waved her hands at him and pushed more food onto the table, some peaches and the thinnest pork chop he’d ever seen. She poured him a glass of what looked like water but was, when he drank it, clearly liquor. He thanked her and pecked at the food, but she kept waving at his plate, so he traded bites for answers. After an hour he knew that he should call her Granma, that Uxbal had not been to the house for some time, and that she couldn’t see well at all.

  You find everything in this kitchen with ease, Ulises said.

  A map in my brain, Granma said.

  How is it you know Uxbal? Ulises asked, but the woman laughed as though it were a joke. Are you feeling well? he said.

  The same as always, Granma told him. Old and older.

  How old?

  She clucked at him. The food gets cold, she said.

  It was an exhausting way to talk, so Ulises just kept eating. By the time he finished the meal, he’d made a mess of the kitchen. He’d been covered in dust from walking the road from Bayamo, and when he moved, it shook from his body onto the floor and made a ring of filth around his chair.

  Clearing his plate, Granma noticed this too, rubbing one bare foot on the tile. She ushered him out of the kitchen, through a bedroom, and into the house’s only bathroom, where there was a wide tin tub, nearly twice as wide as ordinary tubs, with a wooden chair inside it.

  The old woman probably couldn’t stand in the shower without it being a danger anymore, Ulises thought.

  Granma left him alone to bathe. As the water ran, he watched the dust from his walk turn to silt at the base of the tub, and he worked it with his feet into the slow drain. When he was done, he went back into the bedroom and found clean clothes laid out for him: a denim shirt—the kind his father had worn—a green canvas belt, and a pair of dungarees. His sunglasses and hat were also on the bed.

  Ulises was tired from the food and thought he should nap before trying to talk to the old woman again, but when Granma saw that he was bathed, she put him to work. She took him around the house and pointed out small, waiting repairs: three trellises had cracked from the weight of the tomato vine, a flower bed was in desperate need of weeding, a pipe under the kitchen sink dripped, the kitchen door would not close all the way, and the legs of an end table in the small living room were rickety. On the kitchen table Granma had placed a toolbox. She took Ulises there last, pointed to the tools, and went into her bedroom, perhaps to take the nap he had wanted.

  Ulises moved first through the house—the kitchen door, the pipe, the table legs—and then outside. Of the weeding he made steady work, but for the broken trellises he had to scrounge for scrap wood. In the end he found some old window parts in a closet that would do. He found some rocks as well, and he buried them at the base of the trellis for more support. The whole time he fought what he thought were bees or, at least, extraordinary Caribbean flying insects. They hummed as they zipped past his ears, but he couldn’t catch sight of them.

  The work was light compared to what he’d done for Willems. He fell into an old pattern easily, tuning out the world and focusing his efforts on one task at a time. Consequently he didn’t notice the light rain that passed over the house, wondered how his shirt had gotten so wet, and had it not been for the squawk of a cuckoo, he wouldn’t have looked up to notice a boy watching him labor. The kid sat atop a gray bicycle that was too small for him and rubbed his arm while he watched. Ulises waved, but the boy did not wave back. Ulises stood up, which caused the kid to grab his handlebars, and when Ulises offered him some tomatoes to take home, the boy rode off.

  In the house, Granma was waiting for him, though she’d changed her clothes and now wore an impossibly thin linen robe, which did little to preserve her modesty. She didn’t seem to mind, however, and she took Ulises by the arm and led him back into the bathroom, where she’d drawn a fresh bath. Ulises stood by as Granma disrobed, and when he made to leave, she grabbed his arm and motioned for him to help her. She smelled terrible, and Ulises wondered how he hadn’t noticed that before. Perhaps he’d had his own stench from traveling. He’d not showered in the bartender’s apartment in Las Tunas, and the hostel in Bayamo hadn’t had a bathroom. But Granma somehow kept her musk pent up in her clothes, beneath the skirt and the hunter green pants. She seemed to think it might drive him off, because she held fast to his arm even after sitting down in the wooden chair.

  Ulises realized he was to bathe her. Strange as this seemed, she had fed and clothed him. If she needed this help, this might be her only wash for a long time. Touching Granma’s arm, Ulises smiled at the old woman till she let him go. Into the bath he poured some shampoo, and when there was a good lather, he began with the woman’s hair, going slowly. Granma’s face relaxed, and her body leaned against his. He went slower, and now when she spoke, she spoke slowly, and Ulises could understand much more, though still not all, of what she said.

  How long do you stay?

  Ulises understood the old woman’s eyes were still seeing Uxbal, and Ulises decided not to correct her anymore.

  I’m just passing through, he said. I am looking for someone.

  When you were last here, she said, I can’t remember. You’ve wasted tomatoes.

  Am I supposed to come get them? Ulises asked.

  Someone gets them, she said. But not for a long time. A year? I don’t know. No clocks. Do the back.

  It’s been a long time since I was here, Ulises said. Have you changed the house much?

  Cleaner, she said. You never kept it clean. The walls aren’t accidentally white. Your clothes are together. Same closet. I think you’ll leave tomorrow.

  Why do you think that? he asked. And where would I go?

  The mountains. You have guaro here. Take it with you. I can’t drink it. My heart jumps. You’ll take it?

  Is that what you served me at lunch? he asked.

  She nodded.

  All right, he said. I’ll take it. Am I the only one who visits you?

  Barely, Granma said.

  Have you seen my daughter? Did she come through here ahead of me?

  I met a young woman, and she took our tomatoes, Granma said. Don’t scold me: I told her to. She was beautiful. She was like a filthy saint. I fell asleep. When I woke, she wasn’t here. I’m old. I dream a lot.

  I don’t think it was a dream, Ulises said.

  Don’t say that. You look like a dream. Your arms are not real. You’ve gotten stronger now, bigger too, but you should be older and thinner.

  Granma reached out of the tub and touched Ulises’s face. She ran a hand over his cheekbones and across his forehead. Her hand went higher, and when she discovered his scar, she asked, What did they do to you?

  Who? Ulises as
ked.

  Granma pulled away. The water is cold, she said. Help me out.

  Ulises lifted her from the tin tub, and she hurried to wrap her body in the robe, which stuck to her wet sides, and suddenly she was bashful, as if a stranger had walked into the room.

  She said, I miss you, but I want you to go in the morning. The girl looked like your wife, but a thousand years ago. You look like yourself, but a thousand years ago. I must be dying.

  Granma took a towel, walked into her bedroom, and locked the door.

  Ulises did not know what to say, so he cleaned the tub and dried the water off the floor. He went into the kitchen and poured himself some of the guaro, and he sat there thinking how strange the woman was and wondering how she knew his father and his family. And though she was not far away, just locked away in another room, he missed her presence. She’d smelled like lemons coming out of the bath, and Ulises thought of the women in his house, not as they were at that moment but when they were both healthy and sane, and how pleasant they always smelled. He missed their talking and the quiet way they moved.

  This house was also a pleasant place, quiet and undisturbed. He’d wanted to ask the boy on the bicycle about life here, who the woman was and for how long she’d owned his childhood home. He wanted to know enough to ask the woman to stay, to feel comfortable staying. He had been moving for days now, and it seemed like the time to rest. He wanted to wake up in the second bedroom and plan the next day around the ripe oxhearts that needed picking and the flower beds that needed weeding. He wanted to be touched again on the head by the old woman, and he could see her kissing him on the cheek, cooking vegetables, and washing his clothes. The house was a tiny castle, a little kingdom.

  In the morning Granma emerged from her room in a clean blue dress and with her hair done. Ulises thought she looked like someone he should have known. Granma wore a perfume different than the bath soaps, and the house filled with the scent of lavender. Ulises decided he was aching for Soledad at home before she went to work. At the courthouse his mother wore polyester dresses and put her hair up. She was well gathered, Willems used to say. Granma made Ulises breakfast, bread and guava paste, some fried tomatoes, a banana, and some coffee, which was exceptional. The old woman walked around Ulises, and he noticed how careful she was to not brush up against him, and this, he figured, was how he would act if a ghost came to live in his home.