His face tightens and his whole demeanor changes. “It’s hardly necessary to rehash the past, María, especially since you’re not as blameless as you seem to think you are. Your scandalous behavior in the courts is what brought about my estrangement from her. There was no reasoning with you and I found that unbearable.”
“And why did I have to resort to the courts to begin with? Couldn’t it be because you wouldn’t give me a cent willingly?”
“I don’t see much point in continuing this conversation,” he says summoning the waiter. “I met you in good faith and wanted to have a civilized conversation with you, but you are making that impossible again.”
“Same old, Ernesto. You will never change and realize what a gift I’m giving you – the chance to get to know your daughter. My child is in for a tough ride. I was almost certain of that before I came, but I kept hoping you had mellowed with age.”
“Your insults have long ceased to have any effect on me,” he says leaving the tip and escorting us out. “You might have saved yourself the trouble of coming here since I heard it all before.”
“This is not about us, this is about her,” says mother keeping her voice low. “But true to form you’re dismissing me now the way you’ve dismissed her all your life.”
We ride back to the bus station in the cab silently, the tension so thick I’m glad we got to finish lunch before mom started reminding him of all his mistakes because I would have hated to leave that juicy steak unfinished.
“I believe this is where you meet your bus?” he asks coolly. “I’ve got to go back to the office.”
“Goodbye, Ernesto,” says mother shaking his hand. “And don’t worry; we will never see each other again.”
She has a somber expression waiting for the bus in the windy station. The early afternoon chill seems to go right through her coat, and she shivers, lifting her collar to shield her neck.
“Why did you say, we will never see each other again, ma? How do you know that?”
“I just know, Vicky. Same as I know he is a cold, indifferent man who will never change. His mother has done a very good job with him, and he will die like that. He has no empathy about your situation at all. He’ll do nothing to earn your love and respect. He’ll give you room and board but nothing else, so I wouldn’t expect an ounce of affection from him.”
“I know that, ma,” I say realizing that she is right. I hated the look of disapproval that came on his face when she started talking about the past.
“You might be living with him but there will always be an ocean between you. He will never have any curiosity about your life or ask if you went hungry or cold all these years. You will just be another piece of furniture in his house, another possession.”
She pauses painfully. “My advice to you is to use him for whatever purpose providence has in mind for you, but never try to get close to him.”
We ride the crowded bus in silence, each immersed in our own thoughts and feelings; we have come to a pivotal point in our relationship and the future looms ominously ahead of us. We get off to switch buses, and I offer to take her home.
“But it’s so far out of your way,” she protests. “You will be exhausted coming back.”
“I don’t mind,” I insist. “Aunt Sonia won’t know what time we finished the visit, and I want to spend more time with you.”
She holds onto my arm lovingly, she seems so small and vulnerable I want to protect her, enfold her into my arms and return home with her for good.
“I need to go to the black market,” she tells me walking back. “You mind coming with me? I want to see if some of my knits sold, and you always bring me good luck.”
I assent, aware that she is hard up again, and note bitterly that my aunt leaves money scattered all over the place. I see it under the flower pots in the terrace or in the kitchen cabinets, and swear to myself I will take it next time, before the maid does.
“Was it hard to see him, ma?” I ask, climbing the muddy streets of the Black Market.
She swallows hard. “Yes, because it’s always so disappointing. I keep trying to see something good there but all I ever see is his mother in him. I guess there was never anything but his mother there, and I was too blind to see it.”
Her face looks pained, remembering her turbulent marriage and the long, bitter years that followed.
“He is and will always be the biggest disappointment of my life, Vicky, how ironic that you will go live with him now.”
I press her arm. “You don’t hold that against me, do you, ma?”
“No darling, I understand because I don’t think you’ll ever forget who you are regardless of where you live.”
We move from vendor to vendor at the market and always get the same reply, “nada, Seňora, vuelva maňana.” [“Nothing, Madam, come back tomorrow”].
I put the few Bolivianos I got for my spending money in her coat pocket and she tries to return them, but I won’t let her. We walk back quietly and I see tears in her eyes. Once at the house she reheats some soup, and serves it to me with a piece of bread. It gets dark and Oscar walks me to the bus stop. He is wearing a faded pair of jeans and his favorite hat turned backwards.
I want to say so many things to him but nothing comes out of my mouth, and all I can do is make idle chatter. I can’t tell him that I’m afraid that when mother gets upset there will be no one to defend him. I can’t tell him that I’m worried about my own situation in Uyuni. I can’t tell him that I’m afraid of the loneliness in store for me. At least he will be in familiar surroundings, with a person who loves him despite her emotional upheavals.
He looks sad and I take off his hat and fix it, the way I did so many times before, but he doesn’t fix it back. His eyes are full of questions I have no answers for, and he looks angry and hurt.
“Nothing is going to change,” I tell him mussing his hair. “You and I are always going to be close.”
“How?” he says beginning to cry. “When you’re going to be miles away?”
I hold his chin and wipe the tears off his freckled face with my handkerchief. “It’s not going to happen right away, but when the time comes, you need to be strong for ma; you have to promise me that.”
“I can’t understand why you’re going.”
“I can’t either, but I have to do it.”
“Nobody is forcing you. You could tell Aunt Sonia you don’t want to go.”
“Life is forcing me, Oscar, but I’ll never abandon you, I swear it.”
The bus comes and I wave him goodbye, watching his tiny silhouette disappearing in the distance while I’m left wondering where I’m getting the courage to do this terrible thing.
~~~
Against my aunt’s wishes, I visit my family frequently during the next few weeks, treasuring my time with them and trying very hard not to weaken my resolve. My father has already left for Uyuni, and I’m to make the trip by myself, a thought that horrifies mother who keeps begging me not to talk to strangers, not to let them know I’m alone, and not accept anything from them because one doesn’t see a young girl traveling alone that often, and many bad people could take advantage.
~~~
My aunt invites mother and Oscar to lunch days before I’m to leave, and we have a good time chatting in her terrace afterwards. Watching the two of them sharing a spontaneous laugh, I want to hold this moment close to my heart because it’s so rare. Their relationship has always been fraught by so much tension and strife, that moments like this when they are just sisters, are unforgettable. The latest rumor is that Uncle Jorge is getting a divorce because he got involved with another woman in New York, and his wife left him, bringing her two children back to Bolivia with her.
“Poor Alicia,” says mother, pensively when I walk her back to her bus. “She has always been the long suffering wife with my brother, but this time he went too far. It wasn’t enough to live as though he were single most of the time, now he had to get someone else pregnant and expect her to put u
p with that too?”
Mother has always loved Aunt Alicia, a soft, gentle person who never said anything unkind about anyone. The circumstances of the break up were so sordid, mother was in shock; he’d had the audacity to introduce his mistress to his wife as an old neighbor, expecting them to be friends, till a concerned acquaintance had told her the truth, and rather than making a scandal, Aunt Alicia, who had a lot of class, had grabbed her kids and returned to Bolivia for good.
“If he has any sense, he will come back home to his family,” says mother with consternation. “Poor, Alicia. I will make it a point to pay her a visit.”
~~~
The night before the journey to Uyuni I couldn’t sleep at all; feelings of guilt, fear, sadness and a terrible sense of loss, beset me. Mother has been surprisingly strong saying she would see me at the station the next day, but Oscar dissolved in tears during my visit, and I couldn’t console him. He felt that things will change forever between us, and that we will never be a family again. I didn’t know how to make him understand that I will always feel a sense of love and responsibility towards him.
Images of him as a baby passed before me, and I found myself reliving our relationship from the time he was a little runt and depended on me for everything to the present time. We have been so close, that leaving him was more heartbreaking than leaving mother. He won’t be able to see me off because he has to mind Angel, so we had to say goodbye at the house, and I felt as though I was abandoning my own child, leaving a big part of myself behind. I felt selfish, mean and cruel, deserting everything I loved in search of the unknown.
What did I hope to accomplish in Uyuni? The feeling that I might be making a huge mistake overtook me, and I sat in bed shivering, wanting to wake up everybody and say that I wasn’t going. I bit my pillow to stifle my sobs and watched Carlos sleeping soundly in his bed next to me. How I envied him, he didn’t have to make life and death decisions, he didn’t have to fear the future, his life was assured. I was leaving my whole life behind, and the only one excited about the trip was Angel, who had an adventurous spirit, and in his innocence showed me lots of joy, not realising what the trip meant. But I knew I was exchanging one world for another, and the old one, with all its familiar joy and pain, already seemed lost to me.
The next day dawned gray and cold, and after a quick breakfast it was time to go to the station. As my aunt went down to the cab, my uncle took me aside to slip me some money to tie me over till I got to Uyuni.
“It’s a long trip,” he said patting me on the back. “You need to buy meals. Your aunt thinks of everything except the essentials.”
“I’ll write soon,” I said with tears in my eyes. “And I’m going to miss you very much, Uncle Berto.”
“I won’t write back but that doesn’t matter, you just write.”
Mother was supposed to meet us at the station but she didn’t make it, and only my aunt saw me off. I looked for her anxiously as the train was getting ready to leave, unable to understand why she wouldn’t come, when I saw her anguished face running towards the train, and was able to wave to her briefly before pulling away. I saw her talking to my aunt and crying while she waved to me, and felt extremely happy to see her, even if it was only for a second because I knew that nothing but an accident or something dreadful would have stopped her from coming.
Knowing that those overcrowded buses she was forced to take were legendary for breaking down in the middle of the road, I thought she had encountered faulty brakes or other problems. There was never any money for maintenance, and most people faced those problems nonchalantly, but all the despair in the world seemed to be concentrated in her enormous eyes, and I was haunted by them.
While I waited for her at the station in vain, she must have made a scene, she must have gone crazy, and that probably aggravated the situation. How did she make it to the station anyway? I was awed by her.
~~~
I turned my face from the window and started remembering another journey that had taken me away from home for the first time in my life, five years ago. There had been an excursion to the jungles of Yungas with a religious group, and mother had agreed to let me go when I had won the tickets in a raffle at school. The emerald green slopes and lowland valleys of Yungas were legendary for their beauty, and a prime vacation site in Bolivia. But it had proven unforgettable to me on another level. It had been the site of my first puppy love, a bittersweet memory that had taught me about enchantment and loss.
The roads to Yungas were treacherous, however, with narrow, snaking dirt roads and dizzying, hair-raising curves stretching for miles and miles on end through the mountains. The truck the evangelists had rented skidded on the wet roads, and I saw its tires barely missing the precipices while the other students squealed with delight, singing popular songs, blissfully unaware of the danger. They seemed to relish in the horrific ride while I crouched in the corner in terror.
I was convinced that I was going to die when a young, red haired student who had been staring at me for a long time, took his seat next to me on the floor assuming a tender posture.
“Stay here, don’t get up. If you don’t look down, it won’t seem that bad,” he said softly. “I’m scared too. I wouldn’t have come here had I known it was going to be like this.”
“Then we are the only ones,” I said pointing to the others. “Look how much fun they are having.”
“They’re stupid and the driver is crazy. He shouldn’t be racing like that. I have a bible here; let’s pray we make it to Yungas alive.”
He put his arm around me and we prayed, he repeated the words out loud, and I felt comforted and reassured by his words. He was the best looking boy there, and he had chosen me as a friend. He was so close to me I could feel his breath, the sweet smell of his hair, and a strange happiness swept over me as I listened to his conversation. He wanted to be a preacher in Santa Cruz, but first he wanted to go to the Amazons to teach the poor natives about evangelism. I was fascinated by the certainty of his plans because I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted. He wasn’t much older than me but he expressed himself in such a mature manner, that the horrific ride turned into a magical one for me when he suddenly kissed me on the lips and whispered in my ear:
“Did anybody ever kiss you like that?” I told him no, because as far as I was concerned nobody had. Fleeting thoughts of the pediatrician who had been the first one to kiss me against my will came to my mind, but I dismissed them because his kiss didn’t matter; only Eduardo’s did, and I was never going to forget that kiss as long as I lived. Suddenly self conscious about my appearance, I ran a hand through my hair wishing I had long hair down to my waist, instead of the eternal Prince Valiant cut to my neck that I hated.
I cuddled in his arms, and for the first time enjoyed the marvelous scenery - thick, rugged and varied green forests opened before us regally, and the jagged, stubborn peaks of the Andes rose defiantly in the distance with blinding snows. It was simply the most beautiful and most terrifying ride of my life, and as we passed through a tunnel and screeched to a slippery halt, I dug my nails into his arm realizing that we barely avoided falling into a precipice when the driver made a sharp turn that nearly toppled the truck to avoid an incoming vehicle.
“I can’t take this anymore,” I cried. “This is torture.”
“Hush, we’re coming to a stop soon,” said Eduardo stroking my hair. “I think the worst is over.”
Mercifully we came to our first stop, and few miles later, I had the bright idea of quelling my fright with “chicharrón” [“deep fried pork meat, a national specialty”], that I purchased from the transient vendors while Eduardo ordered a gigantic corn on the cob with cheese. It was mutually understood that we will be keeping company at camp once we got to “Coroico,” our destination in Yungas, and he began to give me a little history of the region, telling me that the town was founded above the “Hori Huayco River” [“golden Valley in Aymara”], and that it was once very rich in gold. We were talkin
g animatedly and I was looking forward to spending all my time with him when fate intervened and the greasy “chicharrón” made me violently ill and I threw up all over his black leather jacket, putting an abrupt halt to the budding romance.
I apologized a thousand times over and offered to wash the jacket when we got to “Coroico” but he declined, hosing the jacket himself and going out of his way to ignore me afterwards. I was broken hearted, spending a lonely, regretful week at camp, wondering why he hadn’t been able to understand that I didn’t do it on purpose, and that I was more mortified than he was. I became so despondent, that when I inadvertently petted a gigantic cobra wrapped around a tree, I wasn’t very upset, even though the evangelist guides behind me were frightened to death.
~~~
As the train got near to my first stop, I wondered why I had been so crushed over a boy I hardly knew and why I should still remember the experience so vividly. I descended from the train hugging my jacket, but the sun felt hot and there was less wind here than at the main station in La Paz. There was a crowd of people down below and for a second I thought I heard mother’s voice calling my name. Thinking that I was still daydreaming I turned towards the voice and was thrilled to see her standing there waving at me. Without any assurances that she would get there on time, and going through great expense and trouble, she had taken a cab to meet my train.
We hugged and kissed and I scolded her for doing this crazy thing, but she said she wouldn’t have been able to live with herself if she hadn’t seen me off properly. Just as I suspected, she said the bus broke down on the way to the station due to brake failure, and they had to wait a long time for another one.
I kept reassuring her that I’d take care of myself, and promised to write the minute I got to Uyuni. She stifled her sobs and made a dramatic cross over me to bless me before I boarded the train, when I suddenly remembered the money Uncle Berto gave me and put it in her hand. She refused to take it but I insisted, lying that I had more in my other pocket, but she looked doubtful and wanted me to show it to her when I was saved by the train which gave its last whistle warning, forcing me to run up the stairs in a hurry.
Beyond the Snows of the Andes Page 25