We get into the club and my uncle receives a special welcome. “Mr. DeMalta,” says the dark, affable and puny attendant, “Dichosos son los ojos que lo ven.” [“Blessed are the eyes that see you”].
“How is the family? When is the baby due?”
“Any day now, Sir, thank you for asking.”
“Give my best to your wife,” says Uncle Berto giving him a big tip. “And good luck with the baby.”
“I received many blessings from you through the years, Sir; I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to repay you.”
The second car arrives and Ramiro, Ana and Uncle Jorge get out and come to the gate. Ramiro and Uncle Jorge ignore everyone and head straight for the courts with a swagger in their step. Ramiro is wearing shorts and holding two rackets under his arm. Uncle Jorge is wearing a white shirt, black pants and stylish sunglasses like a movie star. Ana is wearing a white dress that contrasts with her dark hair and lots of mascara on her already long eyelashes. We head for the pool and my aunt asks me if I want to go in. The water looks warm and inviting and I’m dying to go in but I don’t have a bathing suit and she knows it.
“Never mind that,” she says with decision. “You’ll wear mine.”
“Don’t be foolish Sonia; she can’t possibly wear your bathing suit.”
“I don’t feel like using the pool today, so she might as well enjoy it herself. I don’t see what’s wrong with that.”
“For one thing she’s a skinny little thing, and you’re a hefty woman with big hips and enormous breasts,” teases Uncle Berto.
“Who asked you anyway? Go to the club house with your cronies, “viejo” [“old man”] and don’t interfere in things you know nothing about.”
“That’s an excellent idea. Good luck, Vicky,” says my uncle turning on his heel.
She is furious now and she curses him under her breath. He has insulted her vanity and she will get even with him one way or another. We head for the changing rooms and I feel anxious and apprehensive because I already know the bathing suit will be big on me, but once my aunt gets an idea in her head there is no dissuading her.
Ana comes with us because she’s not swimming either, and looks at me with concern. The bathing suit is enormous on me and my aunt makes a knot with the straps in the front so the bra portion of the bathing suit won’t reach to my navel but there’s nothing she can do about the back which falls past my buttocks like a short dress.
“Oh,” says Ana. “The bathing suit is four sizes too big for her, Sonia; she can’t go out there like that. She’ll be the laughing stock of the pool.”
“She can and she will. She has to have personality. If she wants to enjoy the water; she should enjoy the water, to hell with people. When I was her age I already had a mind of my own. My aunts would tell me not to wear something because it made me look ridiculous, and I would wear it anyway. It’s a beautiful day, why should she be deprived just because she doesn’t own a bathing suit?”
I head to the pool wrapped in a towel and wish I could go in like that but my aunt takes the towel away, and I lower myself in the water praying that nobody notices me. The water inflates my bathing suit at once from the front and the back like a balloon, and everyone is looking at me and laughing. The kids are pointing their fingers and giggling like crazy and my face is burning with shame. I don’t know where to hide. I want to cry but no tears will come.
“Hold your head high,” hisses my aunt. “Don’t let them mortify you. They’re just a bunch of silly kids.”
But I can’t ignore them, or the discomfort I feel. I feel naked, exposed, like the time I was invited to a birthday party down the block and the elastic in my panties snapped when I was dancing, and my panties fell to the floor in front of everyone. I ran to the bathroom and cried, wanting to jump out of the window to go home so I wouldn’t have to face those people, but I had no choice but to go back through the living room, and they looked at me with such pity and sympathy in their eyes that I never forgot the shame and humiliation I felt.
“It was wrong of me to force you,” says my aunt when I finally get out of the pool. “Forgive me.”
I smile wanly and we go to the courts to watch Ramiro playing tennis with the same force and self assurance he goes through life, as if wanting to destroy his opponent. My Uncle Jorge is cheering him on and he’s showing off like a peacock. He’s agile like a cat and light on his feet.
“He’ll go far,” says Uncle Jorge, beaming. “He’s really a great player.”
“I wish my Cato could play half as good as him,” says my uncle, adjusting his sunglasses and referring to Carlos. “But I’m afraid he is hopeless when it comes to tennis.”
Cato is the nickname he uses for his younger son while he, in turn, affectionately calls him “Chivito.” [“Little goat”]
“You’re only allowed to have one star in the family. What, you think everyone is going to be that talented?” teases Uncle Jorge, slapping him on the back.
The game ends and we go to the club house for lunch. The dining room is a stately room with mahogany tables, fancy silver wear and beautiful pictures of the red mountains, painted by a local artist. They order martinis and toast to the golden boy who won the game. Ramiro flashes a big smile and says:
“You haven’t seen anything yet and now if you will excuse me I’ve got to take a shower; I promised to have lunch with my gang afterwards, so arrivederci Roma.”
I feel relieved. I don’t like being around him even though something about him fascinates me. I always feel he’s judging me, treating me like the poor relative who glances into his world from time to time but will never really belong. He views me as a charity case, someone their parents take pity on, and he treats me like the hired help.
Yet he really loves my mother and confides all his troubles to her. He’s always coming down with his tale of woe, and she gives him the all comfort and understanding that she says he is missing at home. She feels sorry for him - he who has everything - he who never has to see his mother struggling to buy groceries. I resent that and feel betrayed.
She knows he hates me yet she makes excuses for his behavior telling me that he is jealous of the affection his mother feels for me, and that I should realize where the animosity is coming from and not hold it against him. Yet whenever he comes to see mother I have to leave the room because he won’t talk to her in front of me. I’m the enemy, the one relegated to the patio while he vents on my mother.
I tell mom he has nothing to complain about because he lives like a king, and she quotes the old cliché “No solo de pan vive el hombre” [“man does not live by bread alone”] and says I have a lot to learn about human need if I think that money takes care of everything. But I can’t help it; I do feel money takes care of everything because all our troubles are a result of not having enough money.
~~~
We finish a big lunch at the Tennis Club, and Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass are playing music to dance by, and Uncle Jorge looks at Ana questioningly and says how about it, and she blushes a bright red but quickly gets up to dance with him. They make a beautiful couple on the dance floor, she is dark and pretty and he’s slender and handsome with an enormous forehead, honey colored eyes, a big mass of curly brown hair and a perfect Greek profile, as my aunt frequently points out. My aunt adores his company and invites him all the time whenever he’s in town, because he’s always going to Venezuela or Argentina to find work due to the fact that he can’t find a job here and has a wife and two children to support.
He’s especially close to Ramiro and they are always fooling around and playing pranks on people. He wears a lot of cologne and we know he has arrived when the familiar whiff of Old Spice, which is his favorite, precedes him. I used to sit on his lap when I was a little girl, and smell his cologne and watch him smoke one cigarette after another feeling like the luckiest girl in the world, but he says I’m a big girl now and it’s no longer appropriate for me to sit there because his lap is reserved for bigger girls.
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Uncle Berto invites my aunt to dance and she sneers that his joints are getting too rusty due to advanced age, and refuses to dance with him.
“Take pity on this old man, “Sonita,” [“little Sonia”] he tells her, smiling. “Come to my arms and make me happy.”
She gives in and I watch them dancing and enjoying themselves, and I want to be big already, I want to grow up and belong to their world. I want to drink and smoke and wear beautiful clothes. I want to dance like Ana, swinging my hips from side to side and looking really beautiful in my white dress. I’m suddenly filled by a sense of longing for something I can’t begin to name.
“Hey,” says Uncle Berto. “You were far away. What were you thinking so hard about?”
“Nothing,” I mumble, remembering the importance the tennis club has always had in my life, all those years I came here with my aunt and uncle when I was a little girl and played in the swings by the big lawn facing the hills. I would get on the swing and my uncle would push me higher and higher while I dreamed that he was my father and my aunt my mother. I’m not that little girl anymore and I no longer want them to be my parents, but I still love my uncle more than anyone in the world. He is kind and gentle and I feel very happy in his company.
~~~
Mom has company when I get home and I’m glad because I feel sad and don’t know why, and I won’t have to explain it to her if I don’t know it myself. Seňora Lita, mother’s long time friend, is a little white-haired old lady, totally hunched over who walks slowly and has deformed feet. She wears her silver hair loosely held up in a bun, has a pretty, distinguished face despite the ravages of her age, and a frail, tiny body. She wears the same black skirt, black jacket and white ruffled blouse like a uniform all year round, under her gray overcoat. A black bonnet tied around her chin frames her pale face and makes her look like a porcelain doll.
She has brought mother a bag of meringue cookies, and mother says my timing is perfect because I can now join them at tea. Oscar and I love the meringue cookies made out of eggs that she bakes, because they are fluffy and delicious, and we can’t get enough of them.
“You have to stop bringing us things,” scolds mother gently, putting the meringues on a plate. “I hate for you to go through the trouble all the time. You know we love your company and don’t want you to feel obligated.”
“But I don’t,” she says tremulously. “Meringues are my specialty and I love sharing them with you. I also have something for Vicky that I think she’ll like. Dear, get my purse from the bed and open it, will you? I have a surprise for you.”
I do as she asks, and she pulls out a small book. “It’s the Ugly Duckling by Hans Christian Andersen, knowing how much you love to read, I wanted to give it to you.”
“You spoil her too much,” says mother. “But that book is a treasure, thank you so much. I have loved it since I was a child, because that’s how I felt all my life, like the Ugly Duckling.”
I put the book under my pillow and give her a big smile. The key to my heart is through books, and I will never make fun of her again. From now on I will slap Oscar silly whenever he starts imitating her walk because this is a kind, generous old lady. He already got in trouble once when he tried to straighten her foot, and mother forced him to apologize, explaining to us later that arthritis and osteoporosis are terrible things to have, and that she suffers enough from these ailments without some stupid kid trying to straighten her foot and cause her more pain.
Oscar and I eat meringues and drink tea sitting on my bed, and he whispers in my ear that the tears will come next, and surely enough they do when mother asks about her daughters. She hesitates a little and then pulls out her white handkerchief with the flowers on it and tells us tearfully that they are as mean as ever and she can’t understand what she ever did wrong. She dries her tired eyes gently and tells us that all her life she sacrificed for them not wanting to remarry after their father died so they wouldn’t have a stepfather, and this is the payment she gets.
“Life is nothing but Russian roulette, my dear Lita,” says mother sadly. “And just as we can’t choose our parents we can’t choose our children. Some people are lucky and they have good children and good husbands but others aren’t, and that’s all there is to it. You were a wonderful mother and you have nothing to reproach yourself for. They should be taking care of you now instead of giving you grief. They live in your house; they eat the food provided by your meager pension, where would they be if they didn’t have that?”
“They want me to die so they can inherit the house and split it between them,” says Seňora Lita, drying her eyes. “It’s a terrible thing to get to this age and know that the people who are supposed to love you the most, are actually waiting for you to die.”
Mother shakes her head. “How can people be so inhuman, after you gave them life, a mother is a sacred thing, they are going to go to hell for this and someday when you’re gone, they will regret it and it will be too late, don’t you believe otherwise.”
“Not my daughters, they will never regret it, I know it. They take turns screaming at me, hoping to rush my demise.”
She tells mother she feels their hatred every minute of her life, they call her a useless old thing, only taking up space in this world and that Hitler was right to kill all the useless people in the world like her. Mother’s eyes fill with tears.
“I can’t believe their viciousness. I’m appalled that they would treat you so cruelly. They should be denounced to the authorities for elderly abuse, but in our country….”
“Please don’t let them know I complained to you,” pleads Seňora Lita in earnest. “There’s no telling what they’ll do to me if they know I’ve been talking to you.”
Mother promises and she leaves our home before dusk. I help her up the stairs and she leans on me grudgingly, fiercely independent she wants to maneuver the steep steps on her own, painful step by painful step till we finally reach the top.
“When I see those two monsters, I’m not talking to them,” says mother, indignantly. “They are such hypocrites, talking to me nice in the street and treating their mother so shabbily. Old age is a terrible thing, Vicky, thank God I won’t get there, and you’ll never have to worry about taking care of me in my old age. Rest assured that I will never be a burden to you or your brother.”
Ever since a fortune teller read her palms when she was a teenager and told her she would die young, she’s convinced her days on earth are numbered. The fortune teller also told her that after many disappointments in life she will find happiness at last, and she holds onto to those words dearly, hoping that some day the prophecy will come true and she will indeed find some measure of happiness on this earth before she dies.
~~~
A few months later we’re abruptly awakened by mother in the middle of the night. “It’s my mother,” she screams. “I saw her very clearly. She was begging my forgiveness, and I told her I forgive you mother, I forgive you.”
“It’s a nightmare, ma,” I say still drowsy, my eyes heavy from sleep.
“No,” she says, deeply agitated and disheveled. “I saw her plain as day. She entered the room, she stood by my bed. I saw the look of agony on her face, and I heard her voice, I didn’t dream that, she was here.”
Scared and bleary eyed, we sit up beside her. It’s not the first time she has awakened us from a deep sleep. She’ll do that often when she needs to punish us for something she suddenly remembers we did, or because she is troubled and can’t get to sleep. We know that Grandma Claudia is suffering from terminal cancer and that mother has been unable to make the journey for lack of funds, relying solely on letters from her half sisters to update her of her condition.
Mother has asked us to pray for her nightly because she says we’re angels and God will listen to us because he seems to have forgotten about her all together. This night she won’t be consoled, however, she is frantic with worry and foreboding, wringing her hands and crying.
“She is
dead I tell you, she is dead,” she wails. “That’s why I had the dream. I should have gone to see her. I should have picked pockets, assaulted people on the streets if necessary, but I should have been there. She kept begging me to come in her letters, and I didn’t do it, I didn’t do it.”
“You couldn’t afford the fare, ma, how could you have gone? You couldn’t just walk there.”
“God knows I tried, Vicky,” she says, shaking. “I begged your aunt, I begged Uncle Jorge but nobody would help me, nobody would help me.”
She starts pulling her hair and I brace myself for another horrible night while Oscar jumps to the stove.
“Let me make you a cup of Api to quiet your nerves, ma. It will do you good.” [“Api Morado” is a hot drink made out of corn, soy beans, lemon, cinnamon and dried fruits]
“I don’t want anything,” she snaps. “I want my mother, I want my mother.”
Oscar and I huddle in a corner hoping to make ourselves invisible till the tempest passes but tonight she rages for hours, pouring out all the miseries and frustrations of her life till she exhausts herself. Finally she falls into a heavy, dreamless slumber while we keep a nervous, vigilant eye. Besides my brother who has wet himself out of fear, I need to comfort my cat, for he becomes so fearful and agitated, it takes me a long time to quiet him down.
“I’m going to cover her with a blanket,” says Oscar. “She’ll catch a horrible cold like that.”
“Oh, let her die,” I respond spitefully.
“Shush, do you want her to hear you? She’ll start up again.”
This time she has really fallen into a deep sleep but at other times she pretends to faint or have a heart attack to keep us in line, and we cry hysterically trying to raise her till we realize she’s just faking it the way her mother did when she was a child.
“You have to change those wet clothes right away, and I’ll have to clean the puddle you made so she doesn’t realize you wet yourself again,” I snap, hiding the soiled clothes under the bed. “We’ll have to wash them early tomorrow morning before she sees them; you know how she gets when you wet your bed.”
Beyond the Snows of the Andes Page 6