“He nearly killed me but it was worth it,” exclaims mother holding the baby. “All babies are worth it. You’ll find out someday when you have your own children.”
I smile faintly, I’ve already decided never to have children and have told her that a million times but she doesn’t believe me. I look at the ugly, tiny, wrinkled creature in her arms and feel a mixture of tenderness and fear. He is so fragile, so tiny and yet he has a head full of hair and a round face like Gustavo’s.
“The baby looks like Gustavo,” I comment, anxious to let her know he is outside waiting to see her.
The smile disappears from her face. “I hope not, I really hope not.”
“Well, he has the same round face.”
“No, he doesn’t. I think you need glasses.”
“Mom, he’s here.”
Oscar lifts his foot to show her his new pair of shoes. She widens her eyes and we tell her the whole story.
“Well, I don’t want to see him; I don’t care what he bought you. Tell him to go away.”
“He won’t leave, ma, you have to see him.”
She closes her eyes and rubs her eyelids with pain.
“I’m very tired; I was in labor all night. I don’t need that man aggravating me right now, tell him to get lost.”
But before I can reply I see him entering the ward with a sheepish look on his face.
“It’s my child too and nobody is going to keep me away from him, María.” he says looking at the infant. Mother says nothing and allows him to pick up the baby. He holds his son with delicacy and cuddles him against his heart.
“I knew he was a boy,” he whispers. “I felt it in my bones.” Despite her initial anger, mom’s face softens and she tells him not to worry, the baby won’t break. I know in that moment that her resolve is weakening and he’ll be back in our lives again. He kisses her and kisses his son, thanking her for this beautiful gift.
“At least you had the good taste not to get drunk for the first look,” says mother, acidly. “How did we get so lucky this time?”
“I’ll do right by you and him,” he says with his voice breaking. “I swear it on my father’s grave.”
“Don’t defile your father’s name like that, you know you won’t be able to keep your promises, your love affair with the bottle will go on child or no child. You said the same thing when I got pregnant and look what happened to those promises, they were lifted with the wind like snow flakes in the mountains.”
“This time is different, María, this time I’m going to take care of my baby properly.”
“To see it is to believe it, said Saint Thomas,” says mother, caressing her baby.
“And even if you see it, don’t believe it,” chimes in Oscar.
We find out she can come home the next day and Gustavo stays with us and arranges for a taxi to pick up mother and the baby. We ride back home with him and she seems happy, hopeful.
“Life is so much better when there is a man around, isn’t it?” she whispers in my ear when he pays for the taxi. “I was dreading the return by foot with the baby and me in this condition.”
“Then I guess it is good he showed up.”
She sighs deeply. “You blame me for taking him back, don’t you? But he has helped us, hasn’t he? Look, he even bought you news shoes, he’s not so bad; the only problem is that he drinks; if he didn’t have that lousy habit, he would be a good man.”
“I’m glad he’s here too, ma.”
“Good, because so am I.”
~~~
The next months are blissful and he seems determined to keep his promises, he keeps his drinking to a minimum and hands mother his entire salary. His sisters and mother come over frequently bringing all kinds of foods and gifts for the baby. Mother is nursing him, same as she nursed Oscar, because she says that mother’s milk is the best thing for an infant and it’s a shame I rejected her breast milk, preferring regular milk which didn’t contain any of the antibodies a baby so desperately needs. She praises God and all the heavens for the miracle the baby has produced in Gustavo.
“The baby has reformed him,” she says knocking on wood each week that goes by without an incident. “I don’t think he will ever let his drinking get out of hand again, and we might even get married soon.”
I have to admit his behavior looks promising but I’m not ready to let down my guard yet, he has disappointed us so many times that I’m certain he will do it again. Mother thinks I have a pessimistic nature and that at my age that’s a sin, people are capable of change and I should have a little more faith in human nature. I’m happy for her and for us because life is a lot better when he is around, but I still can’t relax, something in his behavior feels forced, unnatural, yet he is keeping decent hours and clearly enjoys playing with his baby, celebrating every little thing he does and every foolish sound he utters.
We feel like a complete family with him around, and the pressure eases off mother tremendously too, now that she no longer has to worry constantly about money. Her tense, desperate demeanor changes and she feels secure and content as in the early months of their courtship, taking great pride in referring to him as “her husband.” Now we go to the market with money in our pockets and no longer have to buy things on credit, begging for a little patience.
~~~
Mom decides to call the baby Angel instead of Simon because she says he has acted like an angel for this family, and we all begin to see him as a lucky baby, the only one growing up with a mother and father, and with an extended family which includes aunts and a grandmother. The aunts take little Angel away every weekend but he comes back so cranky and spoiled, all he wants is to be held. Mom is happy now, so she is patient; she pampers him and sings all kinds of lullabies to him. She keeps our room immaculate and cooks Gustavo’s favorite dishes, asking him daily what he wants for lunch. There is talk of moving again to be near his mother and all the members of his family. At night we hear the funny, steady creaking of the mattress and we know they are making love again. I want to enjoy this new happiness but it feels fake, alien, like a temporary respite from a furious storm.
~~~
Mother knows Gustavo doesn’t like her to talk politics but she makes him laugh with her numerous tales of Mariano Melgarejo, one of the most disastrous presidents we ever had. She tells him he was so ignorant he didn’t know how much land he was giving away whenever he pressed his thumb on a map to reward Chile or Brazil for arms and ammunition.
“I don’t understand,” asks Gustavo, puzzled. “What the hell is that mean?”
“It means that on a map everything looks small and he thought he was outfoxing everybody when in reality he was giving away vast lands to these opportunistic countries,” says mother. “They realized early on that they were dealing with a complete fool and flattered him into believing he was a genius. He was a supremely vain man and he fell for it royally, ruining Bolivia more than it already was. We even lost access to River Madeira in Paraguay because of him.”
Gustavo laughs but he says he still doesn’t believe it. “Nobody is that stupid,” he reiterates. “That’s your mother making up tall tales again.”
“He was the country’s biggest embarrassment, ever” says mother seriously. “There are books written about his gaffes that cost our country plenty.”
“It’s true,” I confirm. “We learned that in our history class.”
“Goes to show you,” he says with nonchalance. “Education went right through me. I’m afraid that all those years my father beat me to pay attention did nothing but make me more adverse to education.”
Mother says he ruled by ignorance and machismo from 1864 to 1871 and that he rose to power by murdering the current president in the central square of town and emerging with his corpse onto the balcony shouting “Belzu is dead, who lives now?” To which he himself answered leading the crowds, “Melgarejo, long live Melgarejo.”
“He was the caudillo from hell,” says mother. “And the indigenous populatio
n were deathly afraid of him.”
“But he had guts, you have to give him that,” says Gustavo lighting a cigarette. He is not a heavy smoker but now that he’s given up alcohol he seems to have replaced his habit with cigarettes and cokes.
“Fuerza bruta,” [“Brute force “] says mother. “He had plenty of that.”
“Whatever you want to call it,” says Gustavo with irritation and mother drops the subject.
~~~
A wondrous voice fills the air and I raise the volume on the radio. It’s “Joselito” “José Jiménez” the magical child singer and actor from Spain who has conquered my heart and the world with his powerful voice. He was discovered when he was ten years old and he looks like my brother. He has the same sweet face and brown eyes. I adore him but find it hard to believe that a little boy could have such a fantastic voice.
“He’s got a great pair of lungs,” says Gustavo when the song ends. “I’ll give him that.”
“He’s the best singer in the whole world,” I say, inebriated with the song. I would love to have his records but I know we can’t afford a record player so whenever the radio plays one of his songs I feel elated and his music lasts me for weeks.
~~~
Gustavo’s sober behavior lasts six months, then the “reformed man” goes back to drinking with a vengeance and the midnight brawls begin again in earnest. He doesn’t care about the neighbors or the fact that his child is sleeping, he comes in singing at the top of his lungs incoherencies, and pays no attention when people scream at him from their windows or throw dirty water at him which he almost always manage to duck, even in his condition. We have to open the door quickly and help him down the two steps leading to our room before he falls like dead weight, forcing us to drag him to the foot of the bed by his feet and quiet him before the irate neighbors start pounding at our door and cursing at us.
Mother covers him with a blanket and lets him sleep it off, she’s not going to break her back or mine trying to lift him to bed. Sometimes he gets up by himself and insists on holding his baby, mindless of his cries of distress and fear. Pretty soon we go back to the “nocturnal raids,” our situation more precarious than ever without his support. He gets paid every month and he takes to hiding his money in different places, and the trick is to find it without waking him up. I do my best but sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the raids, and before I engender his wrath I smile at him and tell him I was just making sure he had a blanket on him because the floor was cold, and I didn’t want him to get sick.
Mother likes the fact that I can think on my feet and she says I inherited that quality from my aunt because God knows she’s never been able to do that, and as a result terrible things have happened to her in life. But the brief, carefree period we all enjoyed has come to a screeching halt and the pressures begin to mount on her again, shattering her nerves. She complains to Gustavo’s sisters hoping they will talk some sense into him, but they are not very supportive saying that he’s doing the best he can, and he doesn’t really drink that much because he wouldn’t be able to hold his job. The only one who seems sympathetic and understanding is Gloria, the oldest sister and mother’s favorite, who says her brother will never grow up and doesn’t try to cloak his sins the way the rest of the family does.
Gloria is a tall, good looking woman with almond shaped brown eyes, brown hair which she always wears in a graceful bun and a shapely, robust body she carries with pride. She is kind and considerate, and recognizing his gross irresponsibility feels sorry for mother and tries to help her in every way she can. Gloria is an executive secretary in downtown La Paz, near “Plaza Domingo Murillo” [“Domingo Murillo Square”] where we have ”El Palacio de Gobierno” [“Government Palace”] which everybody knows as “El Palacio Quemado” [“ The burned Palace”]. The nickname has become entrenched in our culture since the palace was torched during the revolt of 1860, even though it was rebuilt many times over since then.
Gloria works in one of the buildings in the complex and Gustavo says she is a very competent and well paid secretary. His other two sisters, Olga and Lydia work for the post office also in administrative positions, and help support their mother, Edna, who has been home since her husband died, having sold the grocery store she owned to take care of her husband when he got sick. The girls always look fashionably dressed and pretty, especially Lydia, who is the coquette of the family frequently showing up with a different beau in tow whenever she comes to pick up the baby. Although they look alike, Lydia is the most attractive of the sisters – her features are softer, more delicate, with big brown eyes, thick eyelashes, a perky nose and a distinctive beauty mark under the right side of her lip. I marvel at the dainty, ornate clothes and shoes she wears, and at her bubbly, flirtatious personality; she makes me want to grow up quickly and be pretty; fashionable and pampered by men like her.
“If you are going to admire anyone, admire Gloria,” scoffs mother during our conversations. “Now that’s a girl worthy of respect and admiration - she’s kind, good natured and mature. She has one steady boyfriend not a dozen and she doesn’t put on airs. Lydia reminds me of your aunt, all she cares about is how pretty she is and how many men she can attract – you don’t want to be like that.”
But I do, passionately, for she is the one having fun, she is the one with a twinkle in her eye unlike Gloria who is always complaining to mother about her boyfriend’s growing indifference to her, and her own jealousy. Lydia doesn’t have those problems, men only have eyes for her and she is the one with the wondering eye.
~~~
While mother and Oscar knit, the care of the baby falls again to me as the oldest and most experienced member of the family, but unlike Oscar who was easy to love, Angel is a moody, cranky and demanding baby who screeches at the top of his lungs if he isn’t picked up right away, and one day I put him across my shoulder trying to quiet him down and he wiggles right out of my arms onto the floor hitting his head. Mother lurches at me like a tigress and scratches my ear so bad she draws blood. Oscar picks up the baby who is hysterical and she gets her special belt, and lashes me with it till she leaves welts on my legs. It’s the most vicious, violent beating I’ve ever encountered from her yet, and I run out of the house screaming, afraid for my life.
I walk down to the river where I spent so many happy hours with my brother, and sit on the side of the hill sobbing, shivering and wishing I had the courage to jump into the murky water and end my sorry life once and for all. I hurt all over, my head where she’s pulled clumps of hair, my chest and back where she’s punched me repeatedly, but my worst injury is to the back of my ear which keeps bleeding and feels deep and raw.
I cry a long time, till it begins to get dark and the river looks black. I hate the fact that I can’t be left alone, not at home, school or at my aunt’s house. I’m always coming up short, disappointing the adults in my life. What do they want from me? Why doesn’t somebody just kill me and get it over with?
My history teacher has caught me drawing houses in class, and he’s made me stand in front of the class extending my hands so he could hit me in the palms with a ruler, till I turned as white as his chalk. And as if that wasn’t enough, mother now thinks I dropped the baby on purpose and has nearly killed me. My nose begins to bleed and I wipe it with my sweater miserably, not caring what I look like or the mess I’m making of my clothes.
An acrid smell assails my nostrils and I realize two Indian women are squatting next to me. I walk away with disgust and another Indian woman with her baby strapped to her back looks at me with concern, and tends to my wounds with her awayo. The gesture touches me deeply and I begin to cry, and she hugs me like a daughter. She speaks to me in Aymaran, and when she realizes I don’t understand, she calls another native boy wearing a red “chulo” [“Typical Aymaran knitted hat”] and poncho who is coming behind us that I gather is her son, and asks him to tell me to go home quick because it’s getting dark due to an approaching storm, and it’s not safe to be in th
is open area.
I thank her and offer to clean her awayo with my other sleeve but she waves me away saying “no mamita, no mamita,” and asks her boy to find out where I live. I tell her “Calle Pasos Kanki” [“Pasos Kanki Street”] and she and the boy escort me home. She is a homely, short woman with long braids, no teeth and the kind of prematurely wrinkled, leathery skin so typical of the high plains people, but to me she is an angel.
We get to the corner and I see my mother looking for me with a desperate look on her face. I want to thank the gentle woman and her son again but they disappear, satisfied that I’m safe. Mother ushers me inside and apologizes to me with tears in her eyes.
“Look what you made me do,” she says applying cold compresses with a towel to my ear which is still bleeding.
“I love you with all my heart but you make me crazy, dropping a baby on his head is very dangerous, he could be damaged for life, babies have gotten paralyzed for less, luckily he is fine, but you have to be careful.”
I don’t answer her, it is the same old pattern – she will hit us quite viciously at times and afterwards she will be sorry. What is the use trying to avoid incidents? At least today she had a good reason because most of the time she hits us for the most inane of reasons and the severity of the punishments has grown over the years. Whereas in the past she waited with clenched teeth to punish us till we got home, now she will pinch, smack or pull our hair in public, oblivious to the people around her or the scene she is making, if she is angry enough.
And when passersby dare to criticize her she sends them to the devil telling them to mind their own damn business, but afterwards she is ashamed of herself and cries repeating the same old mantra,”Dios mio, que todo acabe conmigo, que todo acabe conmigo.” [“Dear God, let it all end with me, let it all end with me”]. But she can’t help herself, the pull of the past is too strong, the abuse she has herself sustained too vivid, and the pressures of her life too great.
Beyond the Snows of the Andes Page 18