The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O'Brien

by Oscar Hijuelos

  In her desk drawer she had a copy of a publication entitled Woman’s World: The Magazine of the Middle West, an issue dated September 1923. Her sweet husband had picked it up for her at an antique shop, saying, “I thought you might get a kick out of this.”

  Her hands trembling as she turned the pages, she had felt, all the same, delighted by the articles and stories, which reminded her of her youth. She read “Wayside Tales—sketches of real people—taken from life’s highways,” and “The Postman’s Whistle—a messenger of sunshine and good cheer,” then “A special little poem for our very special subscribers”:

  September sunshine, warm and low,

  On all the hills is lying.

  But through the fields and pastures go

  The vagrant breezes, sighing.

  The butterflies flit aimlessly

  Above the short, green clover.

  The squirrel with his glancing eye

  Has searched the woodland over…

  (Oh, Mother, Margarita had thought, remembering how Mariela would sit and write her verses, remembering also how during their glorious trip to see the Pope they had sat in a garden atrium and Mariela had commented on how vivid the flowers of Rome were. Tiny sparrows would bound every now and then, and there would come a swirl of butterflies, rising in their elation for life. Then an old priest, more than eighty years old, had come along, meditating, rosary beads dangling behind his back, and he had stopped and nodded and then continued walking, and his serenity had inspired her mother to quickly write a poem.)

  There were advertisements for Buster Brown hosiery and Montgomery Ward & Co. catalogues and for crossstitch embroidery linen cloths.

  A picture of a Happy Home—a couple and their child, comfortable and content in the parlor of their house. Then another article, advising how a young woman of moderate means might sew her own “dainty underthings” “…Hemstitch two-inch nainsook band onto dimity, making one-inch band when finished on nightgown, ¾ inch bands on other articles. Mitre all corners…” Then a cooking tip: “Before baking potatoes let them stand in hot water for at least fifteen minutes. They will bake in half the time—Mrs. C.A.F., Ind.”

  And there was Sadie Le Sueur’s Needlework Page for Mothers, and an advertisement for Grape-Nuts cereal. Then Sunday Dinner Menus for September (an ideal meal consisting of “Fresh corn soup, Chicken Croquettes, Mashed Potatoes, Mashed White Turnips, Sweet Pickled Pears, Date Muffins, Tomato Salad, Cucumber Dressing, Chocolate Walnut Pudding, Cream Sauce, Coffee”).

  What women were once expected to go through! she had thought, laughing.

  The mayor of New Elm and the New Elm Friends of the Library had given her a plaque attesting to her fine service, and a $200 gift certificate for the local bookstore, which she had not yet used. These items she packed into her purse, and locking the library door behind her, she made her way back out into the world and home.

  —In Her Idle Moments—

  During many a future evening in the years after her retirement, she could not recall how long she had been with her second husband, or many of the events in the recent lives of her family. Now and then someone would telephone or an envelope would arrive with a note and perhaps some photographs of new great-grandnieces or nephews, life going on. She was not even sure whether her husband was in the house watching some sports event or out in the yard working, or whether he was in the house at all. She did not often leave her bed, and because of her headaches, she would have lapses of memory. She knew that she had her books, and in distant places, so gloriously alive, her family.

  On these nights, she’d wait for her husband to come to bed and would sigh because she did not hear his heavy, steady footsteps on the stairs. She was never quite aware of the year—but she’d notice that she had a nurse—thank God, a Puerto Rican woman—dressed in white, who would wash her with a sponge and bring her meals and cups of water with tablets, and with whom she would speak Spanish. There were evenings when she would think that the nurse was Lupe or Isabel or Maria and the confusion over her identity would annoy her, and wanting nothing to do with such confusions, she would content herself instead with her books. She could still read, and even though certain ideas seemed overly complex to her (one night she had confused the word Ireland with “ironing” and Cuba with Cubism and, trying to fathom its exact meaning, with “cover”), she clung to that habit of reading, as if for dear life. But such confusions sometimes bothered her, so that this elegant lady called out perhaps once too often to the nurse, asking her the meaning of a word.

  (“Cuba, that was where your mother was born.”)

  She often prayed and liked to open the pages of the Spanish Bible that her mother had given her in 1925, its inscription heartening: “For the jewel of my dreams.”

  —In the Late Hours of the Night—

  On those evenings when she was feeling particularly well, she’d ask her nurse, whose name was Anna-Maria, to bring her the parcel of her mother’s notebooks kept in a cabinet drawrer in her bedroom, and the nurse, sighing, would carry them to her once again, as she often did, and the oldest of the fourteen sisters would pass the hours before she fell asleep turning the pages of those notebooks, which she would hold in her trembling hands, her pretty eyes squinting, as she read over her mother’s poetry and those longer passages that always pleased her.

  ***

  She got into the habit of reading one passage again and again, the evocation of an early and happy event from another age, which lifted Margarita out of herself, so that in the late hours of the night she floated back like a moth through time, a powdery winged creature, heart filled with love, flitting through her beloved mother’s description of her journey to America many years before.

  — 1902 —

  For three days the young newlyweds, an Irishman and his pregnant Cuban bride, had been on a ship out of Havana headed for New York, the couple staying in a cramped compartment in the second-class section, near the fiery boiler room on the lower deck. At first, as the ship made its way northward through the Windward Passages, the weather was fine, and although the rocking of the choppy windswept sea had made for some discomfort, they would often pass the daylight hours on the upper deck, in the first-class section, taking the air—as the ship’s kindly captain, a German fellow who knew of the wife’s pregnancy, had allowed them access. On that deck the men were very properly dressed in flat black brimmed hats or bowlers, white frock coats and striped summer suits, and stood by the railings, watching the sea for the occasional school of dolphin and whale churning the surface. They would check their vest pocket watches for the time, read old newspapers, step aside politely for women, and consult with the captain about the conditions of sea and sky. And the ladies with parasols and rump-raising dresses seemed touched by the sunniness and quiet demeanor of the wife, that diminutive but pretty woman whom the Irishman always referred to as “my Cuban beauty.”

  Those mornings would find the husband, Nelson O’Brien, a handsome and sturdy young man, cordially greeting their fellow passengers and playing the affable and hopeful Irish chum, respectfully doffing his hat and never interrupting while hearing a piece of advice, despite the sad feelings buried deep inside his heart.

  He’d carry a ledger book around with him and keep himself busy filling its pages with English phrases for his Cuban bride, Mariela Montez, to learn. He’d hug it close to his breast, protecting it as if it were the key to their future, for in those days he was intent on preparing his wife for their sojourn in the Pennsylvania countryside, where he owned a house and land.

  Pulling out the ledger and turning to a page in which he had jotted down some phrases, Nelson would say to Mariela in English, “And how are you today?” (“Fine, thank you.”) “How lovely you are!” (“Oh, thank you.”) And “Are you hungry?” (“Yes, thank you.”) And he would go on and on, and Mariela, Margarita’s mother, would look off into the sky and, with her pensive brow creasing, stare straight into the sun, imagining angels around it.

  His f
ellow passengers noticed this friendly young man and his pregnant wife, the “darkish one,” who would join him on the deck, timid in her movements among the passengers, and while she did not say very much, quite content to look about and smile, or to lean back in her chair, eyes closed, holding him by the elbow, she seemed very much in love. Under her plain dress, her pregnant belly seemed big as the moon, and although the unsteadiness of the journey must have been hard on her, she was of a cheerful disposition. They never seemed to speak, except when he would look up a few phrases in that ledger book, pronouncing them in his Irish brogue, but she was always content, humming and singing little songs. And they noticed Nelson like a grand tutor reciting to his wife a litany of useful phrases to which she would listen like a diligent student. “From here on in, I’d like you to speak English, understand? For your own good.”

  She would nod, as she always did, as if she understood.

  But it did not often work out that way, because very few of the Americans on board spoke much Spanish and Nelson, always a gentleman around his wife, took to translating the polite exchanges in spite of what he’d told her, speaking in Spanish and often gesturing to Mariela with his hands, his voice loud as if she were a deaf-mute. And indeed, to some of the passengers, she had behaved so, especially to the haughtier types, who tended to whisper behind fans whenever she and Nelson came up on deck together, speculating as to why this uncouth Irishman and this mute Cuban woman were traveling to New York—the comment “The trash remain with trash” from the unkinder souls.

  They had gracefully endured that attitude—for Mariela, a series of disapproving glances and haughty surveillance—and when his young bride would lower her head with shame or sadness or doubt, he would pull her close. When he did so, she would feel heartened by his concern for her and would try to give him a kiss, but he would stroke the back of her head and say, “Not here, in public.” And yet she would continue to press her lips against his, and even though people were watching, he would begin to kiss her with pecking and timid kisses and say in Spanish, “My darling, I will take care of you.” And those simple words would restore her.

  ***

  At night, while Nelson went to join the other men to smoke cigars in the bar, Mariela would remain below in her bunk, singing and floating on a ship in her own sea of life. Gazing out the porthole, she’d daydream about the hallways and shafts of moonlight that shimmered in the depths, and she would feel so touched and happy that she would take out of her suitcase a concert harmonica that a laundress had once given her, to play cheerful, jaunty zarzuelas and contradonzones, the music of her childhood. She’d play for hours, and the music would sometimes carry up onto the deck, and now and then a sailor or a passenger would rap on her slightly open door to pay a compliment, or, as in the case of Mr. Myers, a ruined banker, to tell her to shut up. She enjoyed the praise, but mainly played because she did not have much else to do. Dreading the inevitable confinement of that compartment and those trips down the corridor to the narrow toilet, which she tried to avoid, she played to keep her mind off the discomfort of the journey. Suffocated by the stale engine oil and tobacco-saturated air (and always the perfume of that toilet), she’d make do until her husband, Nelson, el irlandes, came back below to rest beside her: whatever his true nature, she thought him a good man, but even so she could only guess at what he was saying in his lilting, hope-laced English, which she did not mind listening to and was reluctantly learning, as this was a big improvement over the sternness of her father’s demanding voice.

  In their compartment she would play with the curls of his reddish-blond hair, fondle him under his shirt, sigh, kiss his face, and then put his hand on her belly so that he could feel the child, the man always kindly but oblivious, she felt, to the inner workings of her heart.

  When they’d married in Cuba, after a year’s courtship, Mariela did everything she could to further her young husband’s vaguely defined ambitions. She, too, would sit around with a dictionary and for many hours they would grapple, grunt, and laugh over the most basic of messages, his brogue further confusing her ear. She rewarded him with kisses and her exuberant and fecund company in bed, and only when the pregnancy was well along did they refrain, as love had become their most common language. And while she comported herself as a demure, passive spirit, she knew what the moments of intense heat inside her body meant, and that even when she thought men useless and none too bright—just look what they had done with the world—she enjoyed his lovemaking, invited his caresses, and explored his body with the unabashed and mischievous curiosity of a child.

  At evening’s end, Nelson would find her waiting in their berth and always gave her a kiss. Then they’d strip down to their undergarments and pass the night holding one another, he asleep and she cherishing the life within her.

  ***

  Holding her belly and feeling the movement of her daughter one night, she had slipped off into a dream about her father, who since childhood had loomed in her mind as a tempestuous force of nature, represented in fantasies and dreams by shadows, electric shocks, lightning, fire, and tropical storms. Thinking of him, she remembered an afternoon when she was a little girl and a storm had filled the sky and the acacia tree quivered and the rain beat down on their house and patio with such force that the ceiling began to sag and all the flowers in their garden collapsed in mangled piles of stem and blossom on the ground. She had felt enchanted by the first rain, and while the family hid inside their house, she decided to enjoy it, running out the door and turning in circles as little children do, oblivious to the terror. In those days, her father, Don Emilio, had more patience with her, and when he had stood at the doorway and ordered her to come inside, she ran from their patio into the yard, headed for the cobblestone road in front of their house, wanting to play. He had called to her through the pouring rain—his voice muted as if through a mask—but she continued to spin, willing her father, in a clean white suit, to come out after her, to show his love. He waved her inside, clapped his hands, and finally charged out into the powerful downpour, grabbing her roughly by the wrist, and with the fiercest and most unforgiving expression on his face dragged her toward the house. Once inside, his little girl now in tears, he could only speak about how the storm carries stupid children away and that she was lucky that he loved her enough to come after her, and that she should learn to be like the other good girls on the street, obedient and respectful of their fathers, which was why he slapped her hands until they were as red as plums. So now, in the logic that pervades dreams, she found herself on this uneasy morning, to her own consternation, suffering from what was called in those days “feminine weakness.” The future she had planned for herself with an Irishman who would take her far away to live in a different country seemed most bleak. And with these feelings came not only the memory of the day when her father had dragged her back from the storm but the storm itself, swirling through the room and battering her with such force that the imaginary rains drenched her bed, left her cheeks sore and chilled, and rolled her over on her side. With her hands covering her belly, she was overwhelmed with fear that the rising water would swamp the room and her baby would drown.

  ***

  That did not happen, but on the fourth morning of their journey—the sea was rough, the sky gray with clouds and thready blackness—while her husband, Nelson, was dallying by the rail waiting for her, his head filled with thoughts of the future and with contemplations of the flat and endless sea (on which this ship was nothing more than a jagged-edged shadow of smoke stacks and bow and stern), their baby, the first of the fourteen sisters, had started to kick away in her womb. He had been on the upper deck when Mariela had awakened from her sleep. That morning she climbed the stairs, the thought that she had made a mistake by linking her future with her Irish husband’s weighing heavily on her. Deckside, the winds were fierce, but she had joined him, Mariela thinking about their differences. (He was dismayed by the vastness of the water, while she reveled in its possibilities. Behem
oths, mermaids, and underwater kingdoms proliferated there. She was not bored. She was eager to see what the days would bring. She was neither admiring of nor frightened by the frock-coated men on the ship, though she averted her eyes when passing them. She thought that whatever awaited her was going to be satisfying.)

  ***

  On the day of the storm he was glad to see Mariela, and their breakfast together cheered her. But while they were eating a meal of buttered biscuits and deeply sweetened coffee, the skies darkened and high white-crested waves began to break against the ship. And, with that, a purser now marched along the deck with a megaphone, urging the passengers to remain inside.

  Nelson, her husband, did not drink too much in those days, but he left Mariela in the company of a kindly Englishwoman, went to the bar, and, exhilarated by the storm, joined in the barroom camaraderie, the men throwing back drinks and talking about their prospects for an unexpected adventure. He was sipping Irish whiskey when the ship abruptly listed to one side, so that glasses, utensils, and plates flew off the tables, cane chairs toppled to the floor, and many a passenger went stumbling, some falling, like drunks. He was sipping whiskey again, and feeling quite amused, when the walls, battered by the wind, gave out thumping sounds and the bells of an ornate grandfather clock began to clang as if the ship were on fire or, sailing the seas, had just reached the furious waters at the edge of the world.