The Mortifications

by Derek Palacio

  Ulises said, I can grow tobacco.

  We need to feed our people, the official said.

  Ulises suggested tomatoes.

  Fine, the man said. Then he asked, Where would you like to go?

  Ulises thought of the whole island, but then he was exhausted by the idea of learning some new place, relearning another Cuba, so he said, Buey Arriba. The soil is fine, and it gets plenty of rain.

  —

  Upon his return to Buey Arriba, Ulises miraculously discovered Delfín—who looked exactly the same—living with two children. In strange accents, they asked her who the stranger was. Ulises saw their hands flutter when they spoke, even when they whispered, and after some discussion he realized they were the mute orphans, Augusto and Adelina, from the rebel camp. They must have been six and seven years old, respectively, and though they were much taller than Ulises remembered, they were still very thin. Delfín told Ulises they had shown up in her garden one day like moles out of the ground. This happened a year after Uxbal had died. At the time they still could not talk, but now they sounded like Delfín, which meant they could communicate but were barely intelligible. Ulises told Delfín he was moving in, to which she replied, Thank God. The next morning Ulises found her dead, lying faceup, arms crossed, eyes open, mouth set in a frown, atop her bed quilt, the sheets clean and unwrinkled.

  She waited for you, Adelina told Ulises, her gray eyes wide and searching.

  Me? Ulises asked.

  Augusto grunted.

  —

  Ulises began to teach the children to speak a better Spanish, and after some time, he even started teaching them English. Apparently, Delfín had read to them from the Bible every night, even the gruesome bits regarding fire and brimstone, and Ulises continued this tradition, because it made the children feel safe around him. They fell asleep faster, sometimes all of them falling asleep together in the same bed. When Ulises translated the Spanish Bible stories into English, they were twice as fascinated. They did not know God could be heard another way.

  At the same time Ulises went about constructing a tomato farm. With government funds, he procured six hectares of the Buey Arriban plain west of the nameless lake and just north of the national forest’s boundary line. He hired men in the town to build trellises, and he took from Delfín’s garden roots with which to start fresh vines. He drew water from the lake and contracted local pig farmers for manure. He grew only oxhearts. In a year, he had his first harvest, which was small but consistent. He spent his most of his hours in the field or with Augusto and Adelina, and he had no other companions.

  At night he began leaving the children alone in the house so he could visit Buey Arriba’s one bar, which was little more than a room filled with the lonely men who worked his farm. They were good-humored, but they wanted to fraternize away from the boss, and many of them came and went, because the work was hard. If there were any women left in Buey Arriba, they did not socialize at the bar. The women, Ulises had been told more than once, were leaving the island again, escaping with their families and daughters to other countries.

  On the anniversary of Delfín’s death, Ulises and the children decorated her grave with flowers and small wreaths woven from palm leaves. They beat the ground around her headstone with fresh petals to attract the zunzuncitos, and they ate roasted swordfish. The meal reminded Ulises not of his mother’s death, but of Delfín herself. As Adelina and Augusto forked flakes of white meat into their mouths, Ulises saw the old woman scurrying about the kitchen, filling pots and cutting bread. The spices on the fish also stirred in Ulises’s nose the memory of Delfín’s scent, and he began to cry in front of the children.

  Augusto said, Do you miss Granma?

  Yes, Ulises said, but really it was more than that. Ulises missed not just the presence of the old woman, but the presence of all women. He felt an ache in his body, and he counted the days since he’d last seen a pair of hips shaking through the house, his house, any house.

  —

  From a pig farmer in town Ulises rented a shabby pickup truck. With it he drove all the way to Havana. He parked off of Avenida de Santa Catalina and ignored the jeers from passersby who called him a bumpkin. He walked up and down the street searching for a building with white paint and gold trim, but he found none. He drove home. For the next four months, Ulises went to Havana once every four weeks.

  When Adelina asked, he said he had business in the city. Augusto wanted to come, and Ulises promised him another time. During his visits he slept in the bed of the truck, and if it rained, in the cab. During the days, he visited cultural centers and museums. He saw art shows and bought tickets to historical exhibitions. On a Sunday in April, Ulises toured the Arabian House in Old Havana, which was when he finally found Inez.

  She was more than startled but said to him, You look really well, but I thought you would have gone back to the States by now. Did you find your sister?

  Yes and no, Ulises said. And I live in Buey Arriba now. I want you to come stay with me.

  Impossible, she said.

  Then let me, at least, sleep with you.

  Inez had moved. A hurricane had come through Havana a year ago and flooded the basement of her old building. The trapped water, which was never pumped out, eventually rotted out the foundation. Now she lived in a much smaller studio, much closer to the ground, and the space was lined, floor to ceiling, with books. There was barely room to stand and even less room for sex, but the two of them managed. Ulises paid Inez without asking.

  I will see you again, he told her.

  The next time he visited, he paid for the entire day, though they only slept together once. Ulises did this for several weeks, and he eventually began purchasing her entire weekends. Yet one Sunday Ulises returned to Buey Arriba and, while undressing in his room, found his money returned to his shirt pocket. He drove back to Havana.

  You can stop paying me, Inez said.

  There’s plenty of space for your books in Buey Arriba, Ulises said. We can add on to the house. We can build you a library.

  This Ulises also did without asking, and soon enough he convinced Inez to come visit his home.

  She told him, This is no different than the town I grew up in.

  Except here I’m a king, and you’re not a whore. He said this lovingly.

  Inez met the children, whom she liked. They can be yours, Ulises told her, which he knew was a cruel trick, but Inez didn’t seem to mind.

  They’re bizarre, Inez said. Augusto sounds like a caveman priest, and Adelina—she never flinches.

  You will love them, Ulises said.

  Why do you love me? Inez asked.

  Because you don’t adore this place, Ulises said. If someday I should say, let’s go, I think you would come. Then Ulises proposed to her, but Inez, after some moments, said no.

  She told him, This is moving backward. Your house is lovely, but it’s a dream I had a long time ago, and it seems like too much work learning to want an old fantasy.

  Ulises was, at first, heartbroken, and for a while he tried to forget Inez. But then he felt the urge to explain to her that he wasn’t angry and he understood her position. This led Ulises back to Havana, where he spent an entire night sharing with Inez all that had happened to him and his family: his time in Connecticut, the Dutchman’s tobacco farm, his mother’s dissipating chest, his sister’s orgies and religious awakenings, his own sexual episodes, the children he might have somewhere in the world by way of Sofia, by way of Lena, and Uxbal’s swollen knuckles. In the end Ulises knew he might have been capable of making Inez happy, but the more he thought about it, the more he found his attraction to her grounded in the way they spoke to each other, which was candidly, without the hint of false satisfaction. Satisfaction—contentment—was a mystery for others to chase. This became the foundation of their subsequent discourse, which some might have called a version of love, and following that long night they made a habit of weekends spent in conversation, interrupted only occasionally with se
x. In this way they lived a sort of marriage on the Saturdays and Sundays they were together.

  —

  A few months later a superfluity of nuns visited Ulises’s tomato farm. They had come to distribute paperback Bibles and pray with the workers, since there was no priest in town. One sister approached Ulises, but he told her he wasn’t interested. He said he’d prayed enough for a lifetime. The nun, however, stood fast, and when Ulises eyed her more closely, he realized it was Isabel. She looked beautiful in her vestments, more beautiful than Ulises remembered. He had been, perhaps, as a young man, too annoyed by his sister’s decisions to see how well the veil framed her face, how lovely her skin looked against the starched white of her blouse and the dark blue, almost black, fabric of her habit. The contrast softened her olive skin, which seemed firm and hydrated. He thought she looked healthy, though perhaps not happy. They both wanted to cry but could not.

  Where have you been? Ulises asked her.

  I don’t want to tell you, Isabel said. But isn’t it obvious? I’m with the religious again.

  What church? Ulises asked.

  A parish somewhere in Cuba, she said.

  Did you know I had come back?

  Yes, but I haven’t known for long. I visited the work camps to look for you. I asked every prisoner I met about a bald giant doing time. Some of them said they had seen you before, but they could never remember where. Where did they hide you?

  Somewhere not far from here, just outside Santiago. I was in solitary. They thought I was a threat. How did you know I was here?

  A month ago I met some military at a church in San Luis. One of the sisters introduced me to a private who’d been a guard at a prison she’d passed through. He said that he’d seen you but that you’d been released. That you were sent home to grow food for the state.

  Tomatoes, he said.

  I didn’t think I would see you again, she said.

  I thought that’s what you were after, which makes me wonder why you looked for me. If I was so hard to find, why not take that as your excuse?

  I came to tell you that my daughter was born, she said.

  You have a daughter, Ulises said, and he felt the need to lie down and close his eyes.

  He was overwhelmed by two things: the tender fact that his sister would find him to share this news, and the realization that children can sometimes make their parents human again. Despite Isabel’s veil and her hard eyes, she was suddenly a mother to him.

  He managed to ask, When?

  The day before I came down the mountain, Isabel told him. I would have come to see Ma sooner, but the girl came when I wasn’t expecting her. She was early, dangerously so.

  You wanted to see Ma but couldn’t.

  Yes and no, Isabel said. I wasn’t sure. Then I had her, and I was terrified that my last image of Ma would be her crying for me as I left on a mission. I felt this desire all the way inside my bones to see how she’d changed, how she was different. I wanted to know as much about her as possible and not just what I remembered from Hartford. And then I decided I should be there when she went.

  I remember that kiss, Ulises said. He paused. Why didn’t you bring the baby with you? What if she’d died?

  I was afraid, Isabel said. So I left her with the women at the camp. They said she would be fine, and I saw Adelina and Augusto and thought, yes, she will be fine. But I was also superstitious. I didn’t want her to see anyone’s face in case she might remember something. In case one day she got curious about a memory.

  What’s her name?

  If I tell you, you might try to find her. Cuba isn’t so large. There are only so many convents.

  I could ask one of your sisters right now, but I’m done chasing after you, he said. I was already convinced I would never see you again.

  Isabel gathered her hands into a knot. She said, To me she is Yerma Soledad.

  That’s beautiful, but what do you mean to me? Does she have another name? Does she have an alias? Do you really not trust that I won’t come looking for you?

  Isabel’s eyes reddened, and she placed a hand on her throat. She wiped her face and tucked her veil under her chin.

  Yerma is an orphan, Isabel said. She lives with other orphans at an orphanage. The parish runs the orphanage, and we look after the children who are there, including Yerma.

  But she’s not on orphan, Ulises said. She has her mother.

  Everyone else, Isabel said, calls her Lucia. They tell her that I found her during my mission work in the countryside. They tell her I knew her mother but that she died in childbirth, and I brought her to the orphanage so that she could be taken care of, which was her mother’s dying wish.

  Why do they tell her that?

  Because that’s what I told them, Isabel said. The moment we’re born, we begin to want. If we’re lucky, satisfaction follows. But Yerma won’t ever be satisfied, not with this family. Not if there’s someone, especially her mother, who can only give her half answers. Not if everything I tell her leads to more questions.

  Then Isabel said, Promise me that you’ll never try to see her. Promise me that you will leave her alone.

  This is why you came? Ulises asked. Because I could ruin Yerma’s life by finding her?

  Ulises stepped closer to Isabel. Suddenly he could smell her odor, which was something of the body and something from a cheap washing machine, and he knew without thinking it that the nuns did not wash their clothes often, nor did they shower with expensive soap—two inclinations toward vanity. Being a nun is giving things away, he thought. Being a nun is being chaste, which is the same as renouncing motherhood. Under the veil Isabel’s hair was long, and Ulises could see how it had to be rolled together and pinned up so as not to drop beneath the cape of the fabric. If it was pulled back any tighter, she would look as bald as a woman suffering chemotherapy.

  Ulises asked, Did Ma know? Did you tell her?

  I don’t know if she knew or if she really understood. She was so close to the end by the time I arrived. But, yes, I told her. She squeezed my hand. She didn’t ask any questions.

  Isabel touched her face. The way her hand moved looked as though she were forming a sign, albeit a mysterious sign no one but she understood. She looked at her brother and said, I wanted her to know me just then. I think she did.

  Ulises thought, He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who is victorious will not be hurt at all by the second death.

  He took his sister’s hand in his. Yerma will never know me, he said.

  Isabel embraced Ulises, and he felt her breath on his neck.

  Nearby, the other sisters had gathered to go. They stirred without speaking, and their skirts churned the air beneath them.

  I’m sorry, Isabel whispered into her brother’s skin. I’ve come and gone as I’ve wanted to. I can’t imagine what you think of me.

  Ulises said, When I wake in the morning, you are my first thought. When I go to bed at night, you are my last. You haven’t fallen out of grace.

  She kissed his cheek, and they said good-bye.

  —

  Early the next morning Adelina and Augusto found Ulises alone in the kitchen, sitting in his dirtied work clothes and drinking coffee.

  You should be gone, Adelina said.

  I’m not going to Havana this weekend.

  Why not? Augusto asked.

  I don’t feel like it.

  You’re sick, the boy said.

  No, Ulises said. My sister came to see me yesterday, and we haven’t spoken in a long, long time. It wore me out.

  We have an aunt? Adelina said.

  No, not exactly, Ulises said.

  You said she was your sister, Augusto said.

  She is.

  You’re not our father? Adelina asked.

  Well, no, Ulises said. Not in a biological sense.

  Do you know what happened to him? Adelina asked. Or our mother?

  Augusto added, Do you know where they are? Are they farmer
s like us? What language do they speak?

  Ulises did not know what to tell them, and he said as much to Inez the following week when he returned to Havana.

  You can’t lie to them, Inez said. Even if your sister would.

  Ulises felt the same way, but still he said, If I tell them who their parents were or might have been, then I will have to tell them about the rebel camp. If I tell them that, they might run up into the hills to see the old shacks. If they see the camp, they might want to know about my father and what he did. I would have to tell them about Isabel, and then they might want to find her. They don’t know that they might have a cousin, or maybe three cousins, and maybe they’d run off looking for her or them.

  What you tell them might also be a reason for them to stay, she said. Or to come back to you. You’re the only one who knows their histories. But probably they’re just curious children who have an itch to scratch.

  They might abandon me to see about their real family.

  It sounds as though you’ve grown to love them, Inez said.

  Eventually, then, Ulises gave in to the children’s demands for answers, knowing how powerful the draw of the past was and how dumb it was to fight it. Saying first, Know this above all: fate is family, and family is fate, Ulises began the arduous task of explaining to Augusto and Adelina where they had come from. He began with his own childhood, what he could remember of it, and told the children about Isabel, Soledad, and Uxbal. He told them where the tomato vines on his plantation originally came from. He told them about the packinghouse church and his sister’s singing, the old guava crates men used to sit on, the hummingbird traps his father used to step on. He explained what it was like to ride a train for the first time and how much colder it was up north than it was on the island. The story, Ulises quickly understood, was much too long and possessed too many details, so after a while he limited himself to one or two hours a night alone in the garden with the children by the gravestones. In this fashion he made his way toward the distant end, which was only Augusto and Adelina’s beginnings, but he hoped, after a while, that hearing everything was enough of an answer as to why the two of them lived with a perfect stranger in Buey Arriba. Some nights he forgot where he had left off or what he’d already told them, but the children never forgot; they knew exactly what his last word had been, and this should not have surprised him. They were good, obedient children, and though they spoke with odd accents, they listened extremely well, perched as they were, like bee hummingbirds, on the various strands and branches of the account of their creation, of Ulises’s life, and of the manner in which he eventually returned to Cuba.