“And me unable to send you a cent,” I say lamely. “I never had access to money. You know I would have sent you everything I had.”
“I know that, darling,” she says touching my face. “That’s why I never mentioned it to you.”
We go back to her rooms and I feel sad, oppressed. Angel is peppering me with questions about Uyuni and I answer him mechanically.
“In the evenings, when the sun goes down, the Indian children play their instruments here in such an exquisite fashion, it’s hard not to cry,” says mother looking out of the window wistfully. “They are so innocent they don’t know the kind of life that awaits them.”
“They are teaching me to play “charangos, quenas and zampoňas,” [“small string instruments, flute and panpipes”] says Oscar, glowing. “And I’m pretty good at it too; you know I’ve always loved music.”
Did I ever, Oscar was a natural musician; he had a keen ear for music, especially Indian music, and was obviously delighted with his new neighbors, but mother looked pale, wan and exhausted.
She makes tea with bread and I tell her some of my experiences in Uyuni, especially with Fernando. She reads his letter and laughs with irony. “Who would have thought you would fall in love with my rival’s brother? Life is very funny, isn’t it? What does your stepmother have to say about that?”
“Nothing, she thinks it’s not serious and it will pass.”
“It sounds pretty serious to me.”
“It was,” I say looking away but there’s been a new development, and that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
She looks alarmed. “What’s going on?”
I tell her about the trip to America and the fact that I can’t pass it up and she gets very quiet.
“Please say something, ma, hit me or do something but don’t get quiet.”
“What can I say? Uyuni wasn’t far enough for you, now you want to go to another continent to get away from us.”
“It’s what I always wanted, ma, you know that. It’s too bad it happened now that I have Fernando but I can’t let that stop me, I can’t let anything stop me.”
“Then you’ll have to give him up too.”
“I’m hoping he will understand, but if I have to give him up, I’ll give him up.”
“I see,” she says with sadness. “What do you want from me?”
“You have to sign again for me, ma, will you?”
“And if I refuse?”
“I’ll kill myself,” I say impulsively. “But I won’t stay here.”
“Then you might as well go,” she says drying her eyes. “With that trip to Uyuni you broke with us for good anyway; don’t think that I don’t know that.”
“I left, ma, but I never really left. My heart was always here.”
“Pretty words,” she says sarcastically. “But you were always good at words, weren’t you? Perhaps some day you’ll make a living at writing pretty words.”
Going back home I realize how right mom is, I have made a permanent break with the past, but I have every intention of bringing her to America, something she doesn’t believe will ever happen because she is not used to good things happening to her, but my heart is full of hope because she is still young, healthy and has many years ahead of her. I know that once she experiences good things, her negative, fatalistic attitude will change and she will be happy, that’s the thought that keeps me going now that my dream is within reach.
Chapter Seven
Weeks pass and Fernando doesn’t answer me. I have lost him and I feel as though somebody has died. My aunt notices my red, swollen eyes in the mornings and tells me that love always hurts and that crying is good for the soul. She says that some day, when I look back on this bittersweet experience, I will be glad it happened because it will make me stronger for the real thing, but I doubt it because I’m desolate, and I don’t see how I can ever be glad. She says it is all part of the grieving process and that time will eventually erase him from my mind because no malady lasts forever.
I spend the following weeks filling out the necessary papers for the once coveted visa, marveling at the ironies of life because before meeting Fernando nothing would have made me happier than getting my passport, moving ever closer to my dream, and here I am now halfheartedly going through the motions.
An unsavory incident occurs with mother during one of my weekend visits because I find her nervous, angry and ready to take offense. She accuses me of deliberately ignoring her on the bus a few days ago, when I was doing a few errands for my aunt.
“But I didn’t see you,” I protest loudly. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“Why should I? You’re obviously ashamed of me.”
“You’re not making any sense, ma; we don’t even take the same buses.”
“I was going to see Mrs. Gotia, to find out if anything sold, and I was in the front seat of the bus so you couldn’t possibly miss me, yet you passed right by me and sat a few rows away, like you were blind or something.”
Absent minded and distracted as usual I hadn’t even realized she was there. The logical thing would have been to call my name but she wouldn’t do it. She felt slighted and hurt, reading a million motives in an innocent oversight. She had sat there stewing and now her pent up hostility and rage is bubbling over. She cries and complains for hours, wringing her hands and saying that her friend Luisa was right in telling her to rob a bank if necessary, but not to resign herself to a life of poverty because her own children would be ashamed of her some day. We haven’t had lunch yet and I’m starving but I can’t take it anymore. I get up to leave and she makes no effort to stop me. Oscar follows me outside and begs me to come back.
“I can’t,” I tell him angrily. “She looks for motives to be miserable. She knows damn well I didn’t ignore her on purpose.”
“Things are bad,” he says beginning to cry. “She hasn’t sold any of her knits and she owes money to everybody. We work hard knitting but nothing sells, she’s been crying all night, she puts on a front for you but we’re pretty desperate.”
I put my arms around him and try to console him. “Please come back,” he begs. “If you don’t, she’ll take it out on me.”
“Don’t worry,” I say heading back. “I won’t let on that you told me, and I’ll get you some money.”
We come back and she seems relieved to see me. We have noodle soup with bread, and I talk about different things, anxious to distract her from her troubles. She looks a little thick around the middle, and I tell her she’s gained weight but it’s very becoming to her. She lowers her eyes.
“It’s not that kind weight gain. I’m four months pregnant and I don’t know how I’m going to support this baby.”
The news hit me like a thunderbolt. “How could this happen? You don’t see that bum anymore.”
“He came back, I was lonely….someday you’ll understand.”
But I knew I wouldn’t, not if I lived a hundred years. She sees my disapproval and snaps. “I did it strictly for sexual reasons, are you satisfied now?”
I’m stunned, unable to comprehend her regression. I hate him; I hate having taken that fateful walk that brought him into her life that day.
“Don’t worry,” she says sarcastically. “You’ll be gone before the baby is born.”
I go home in a daze, Laura Gianni is visiting my aunt and they both notice I look troubled. I tell them the news and my aunt sneers. “Maybe she’ll have triplets this time. Three children are obviously not enough for her.”
“That’s not fair, Sonia,” says Laura springing to her defense. “These things do happen. My last child was an accident too.”
“But you have a husband to support you; you can afford to have accidents.”
“So what, she needs help, not scorn.”
I love Laura for having the guts to stand up for my mother, but I can’t understand how she allowed Gustavo to walk back into her life, get her pregnant and walk away again. I notice that Laura looks thinner and mo
re beautiful than ever, with her diaphanous skin glowing and her shoulder length hair up in a bun. She is not smoking anymore because she’s been having some health issues, and she says her husband is very happy she finally gave up cigarettes, and that now that the major cause of their discord is gone, they are getting along much better.
“He’s been after me to give up cigarettes for years but I wouldn’t do it,” she says laughing, while we’re having a light dinner. “Sometimes I think I did it out of spite, just to annoy the hell out of him.”
“It’s good you stopped,” says Aunt Sonia. “My cousin Eli tried many times but always went back to it. I think cigarettes are her crutch, and every time her husband cheats on her, she smokes some more.”
“Carlo wouldn’t dare cheat on me because he knows I would cut off his balls,” she says laughing. “The truth is that if you get scared enough, you can do anything. When I had that cough that wouldn’t go away, I knew it was time to stop.”
She turns towards me and says she’s very happy I’m going to America. “It’s a wonderful thing to be your age and to be going to that country. I envy you with all my heart, the opportunities you’re going to have; the people you’re going to meet.”
I thank her but my eyes fill up with tears. “It is puppy love,” says my aunt. “She met a guy in Uyuni and she’s been like that ever since.”
Laura smiles and looks at me tenderly. “I hope you have your heart broken many, many times over so that when you’re an old lady in your rocking chair, you remember your tumultuous romantic life. There can be nothing sadder than having no memories of love and passion and that happens to so many people.”
“Like me,” says my aunt, facetiously. “I have no memories of love or passion whatsoever.”
We both laugh because we know my aunt’s scandalous past, but I have a hard time believing that some day I’ll be glad my heart was broken more than once. They are talking animatedly now and I excuse myself to go to the bathroom. They are in the dining room and can not see me, so I sneak into my aunt’s bedroom and take twenty Bolivianos from her purse. With trembling hands I go to the bathroom and hide the money inside my shoe. I’ll be taking it to mother tomorrow morning, and I’m sure my aunt won’t even notice it. The maid is gone for the day so she can’t be blamed, and my aunt will just assume she miscounted.
I feel guilty I’m forced to steal from her, but I can’t let mother starve, yet the thought of being found out and ruining everything is so terrifying, I break into a sweat. I take a few minutes to compose myself in the bathroom and then rejoin them, trying to act as normal as possible. Luckily they’re still engrossed in conversation so I pick up the dishes and start washing them in the kitchen. I start drying and putting them away, when right there in the cabinet, inside the porcelain kettle she uses for special occasions, I see thirty Bolivianos stashed away. Without thinking I take them and put them inside my other shoe. What made me look in there? Did I ever see her putting money there? I can’t remember but I feel panic now, and think of putting the money back when I hear footsteps outside the kitchen.
“Don’t do too much work,” says my aunt cheerfully. “Josefa will be back in the morning and she’ll have nothing to do.”
I follow her into the living room, praying that nobody notices what I’ve done. That night I sleep fitfully, but I’m not sorry I took the money. Mother will be able to purchase groceries for a week with that money and my aunt won’t even miss it, but if she suspects me, I’ll act extremely offended and will deny everything. Josefa has been with her for a long time and has never taken anything so she won’t be a suspect, and for that my conscience is clear. I couldn’t bear for an innocent person to get in trouble on account of me, and would almost have to confess that I did it and pay the consequences. But it’s a hard way to live, every look, every gesture seems an accusation, and I wonder how people make a living out of stealing.
We have breakfast the next morning, and I’m terrified she’ll find out when she heads into the kitchen and checks the kettle. She doesn’t, she pours herself more coffee from the old coffee pot, and takes it into her bedroom. My whole body shakes when she closes the door after her. She’s done this a million times but now it feels different, my guilty conscience is making me look more suspicious, and I know I won’t be able to breathe till I leave the house with the money.
“Vicky,” she calls me. “Come here quickly.”
With my heart beating fast, I rush to her side. “Yes?” I say, trying to appear normal.
“Here,” she says pulling down some clothes. “Take these skirts and try them on. I have too many clothes and I’m trying to get rid of some things.”
I try them on and they fit me fine. “You can have them,” she says. “They are practically brand new, I only wore them a couple of times.”
“Thank you, Aunt Sonia. I could use them.”
“Here, try on these sweaters too,” she says opening a drawer. “I’m trying to downsize, your uncle is right, I have too much of everything.”
I put on the red skirt and black sweater and feel stylish, like a whole new person.
“Too bad your feet are so big,” she says looking at the shoes on the floor of her closet. “I could give you some shoes too.”
“They would never fit me,” I say with trepidation. “But perhaps I could take them to mother. I’m supposed to see her this morning.”
“Yes,” she says putting them in a bag. “Do take them to her. She has smaller feet and they might fit her.”
Once I’m finally outside, I breathe with relief. I jeopardized my whole future for fifty Bolivianos, but I can’t allow myself to think of the consequences now. I ride to mother’s home in a blur, a thief’s life is a hard one, and it means living with fear, apprehension, guilt and shame, but watching mother’s relief at the sight of the money makes it all worthwhile and I forget my misgivings.
“God bless you,” says mother, deeply touched. “This will buy groceries for two weeks, and we were really strapped. I was going to have to cook Maizena [“Corn Starch”] for the children every day. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Two weeks? I thought the money would only last you only for a week at the most.”
“Not the way I shop. I go to all the cheap places, you know.”
“Whatever you do, ma, please don’t eat Maizena.”
“Sometimes you have to, Vicky, and Maizena is a cheap, nutritious meal. When you were little I gave you a lot of Maizena and look how well you developed.”
“All the same, I don’t want you to eat it, and now you don’t have to.”
‘Where did you get it?” she asks, eagerly. “Did you ask your aunt for the money?”
“Not really.”
“You asked your uncle?”
“No, I was saving it from my allowances, but please don’t breathe a word to her or my uncle, they are not supposed to know I gave it to you.”
“Who gives you an allowance?”
I’m irritated she keeps asking so many questions. Why can’t she just take the money and be grateful?
“Uncle Berto,” I lie. “Can we please stop talking about it?”
“Thank you, darling,” she says stroking my hair. “I’ll cook something special.”
I get back home in a state of nervous anxiety. What if my aunt found out about the theft? Deny, deny, everything with a straight face, I tell myself, but I don’t know if I can go through with it without guilt giving me away. Luckily, when I walk in nothing seems amiss, and she tells me cheerfully that Uncle Jorge has sent all the necessary papers, and we will be going to the embassy first thing in the morning on Monday to begin the solicitation. I feel pangs of guilt at her happiness for me, and secretly apologize to her for the theft. But at night I can’t sleep with the excitement of what lays ahead for me. I will go to New York, the city I had loved from afar all my life; it seems too good to be true. I can’t wait to embrace the city, to wrap my arms around it and claim it for myself.
~~~
The pain over the break up with Fernando is subsiding, but I still feel a kind of regret and sadness when I think of him. He has filled many empty hours, but his memory is fading and I find myself struggling to hold onto old feelings. I’m convinced the same thing is happening to him and I have mixed feelings about it; a part of me wishing him a great life and the other hating him for moving on, for replacing me.
I still keep his letter tucked under my pillow, but it no longer brings me the same thrill, the same overwhelming emotion. I’m letting him go and with it the realization that love is a mysterious, evanescent thing that comes and leaves our lives when we least expect it. But the experience, brief as it was, has changed me, enriching my life enormously, and for that I will always be grateful. Hadn’t mother always said that nothing really belongs to us? That we can’t hold onto our youth, children, husbands or lovers indefinitely? According to her, life itself is nothing but a passage into the infinite universe, and we should be prepared to let go of it anytime.
I can’t image ever being ready to let go of life, however. I love life. I think I’m more attached to earth than any living creature in the planet. And every time I see a beautiful sunset or feel particularly good, I think of her words that nothing is permanent, and live that moment more intensely. Yet mother has known so little happiness in this world, that it’s a puzzle to me she still treasures her life and has taught us to treasure ours.
~~~
In a good, hopeful frame of mind I submit to all kinds of tests the embassy requires for securing my visa. They take blood tests and pictures of my lungs, and we are told to come back in two weeks.
“At the rate we’re going, you should be in America within a few weeks at the most,” says my aunt cheerfully, hailing a taxi. “Things are moving very quickly.”
She has invited Laura and Aunt Eli with their husbands for lunch, and is in hurry to get back to the house. She is chatty and gay on the way back but I’m not listening, I’m thinking of my future, feeling all the excitement and joy I have held back because of my grief over Fernando.
Beyond the Snows of the Andes Page 29