3
The Empty Rocking Chair
Beatriz Cortés de Morales would remember that morning in October 1910 for the rest of her life.
They had knocked on her door insistently, and thinking they had come to tell her one of the sugarcane fields was on fire, she left the warmth of her bed to open up. It was Pola, crying: they couldn’t find Nana Reja anywhere. Wasn’t she in her bed? No. She wasn’t in her rocking chair? No. Where else could the little old lady be?
Dead, lying out there in the bushes, probably.
Beatriz had known Nana Reja her whole life because, having been neighbors for generations, the Morales and Cortés families often visited one another’s homes. Though she’d always known her future husband, she fell in love with him when she was sixteen, when Francisco Morales returned from his civil engineering studies at the University of Notre Dame and asked her to dance with him to a romantic song during the Holy Saturday festivities.
Since her father-in-law died and Francisco inherited his properties, Beatriz had shared responsibility for everything, including the now-missing old woman.
The Morales family mobilized the hacienda workers: some to ask around the town, others to look among the bushes.
“Could a bear have taken her?”
“We would’ve found paw prints.”
“Where could she have gone, if she hasn’t moved from her spot in thirty years?”
There was no answer to that question. Alive or dead, they needed to find her. While Francisco coordinated the search on horseback, Beatriz went to sit in the nana’s vacant chair, which creaked as it felt her weight. She thought it the right place to wait for news, but soon asked Lupita, the washerwoman, to bring a different chair. As much as Beatriz tried, she couldn’t manage to control the rocking chair, to which her body’s contours were alien.
She sat for endless hours on her own chair beside Nana Reja’s, which rocked by itself, perhaps helped by the wind that blew down from the mountain or maybe purely out of habit. Mati, the cook, brought her some breakfast, but Beatriz had no appetite. All she could do was look into the distance. Try to make out any far-off movements. Some interruption in the monotony of the crops or in the improvised and intact beauty of the hills.
How lovely, the view of the mountains and sugarcane fields from there. She had never admired it from that viewpoint, and now she understood the initial charm the place had held for Nana Reja. But why look eternally out toward those endless, unchanging hills? Why look always toward that dirt road winding through them? And why look constantly in that direction, if her eyes weren’t even open? What was she waiting for?
While she awaited news, Beatriz, a practical-minded woman, concluded they were unlikely to find the nana alive. Her pragmatism therefore also permitted her to make concrete plans for dear Nana Reja’s wake: they would wrap her in a sheet of white linen and bury her in a coffin of fine timber that Beatriz had already sent for. Father Pedro would conduct the mass, and the whole town would be invited to attend the funeral of the most long-lived woman in the region.
Of course, without a body, there would be no wake. Could there be a Requiem Mass without the deceased?
As for the rocking chair, she couldn’t decide on the best thing to do. They could burn it, or turn it to sawdust and spread it around the garden, or put it in the coffin with the dead woman. Or they could leave it where it was as a reminder of the body that occupied it for so long.
It would have been sacrilege to let it go from being an extension of Nana Reja herself to serving a practical use again for someone else. That much was certain.
She studied the old chair, because she had never before seen it vacant. It had never been repaired or maintained, but it held together. It creaked a little when it rocked, yet seemed immune to the weather and the elements, like its owner. There was a symbiosis between the chair and its owner, and she imagined that, while one lived, so would the other.
Beatriz realized with alarm that someone was running toward her on the road through the sugarcane plantations.
“What is it, Martín? Have you found her?”
“Yes, Señora. Sr. Francisco sent me to fetch the cart.”
Beatriz watched him hurry off in search of the wagon. They had found the body, she thought, and despite her practical woman’s mind, she felt a heavy sorrow. Nana Reja was incalculably old, and it was to be expected that she would die soon, but Beatriz would have liked for her to depart in a different way: in peace, in her bed or rocking in the wind on her chair. Not like this, attacked by a wild animal, perhaps, alone and no doubt scared, exposed to the elements on that road that disappeared into the hills.
Too long a life for it to end like that.
She shook off her sorrow: there was much to do before they arrived with the body.
When the men returned with the loaded cart, it was clear that the plans and preparations had been for nothing: defying all predictions, the nana was alive.
4
In the Shade of the Anacahuita
Francisco would later describe how some laborers found her, a league and a half from the house. They came to him, upset, because when they finally located the old woman, she refused to answer them or move from where she was. So Francisco sent for the cart and then went himself to the place where Reja was, sitting on a rock with her eyes closed, rocking in the shade of an anacahuita. She held two wrapped bundles: one in her apron, the other in her shawl. Francisco approached softly so as not to alarm her.
“Nana Reja, it’s Francisco,” he said, heartened when she opened her eyes. “What’re you doing so far from the house, Nana?” He asked without expecting any answer from the old woman, who had fallen mute years ago.
“I came to find him,” she said quietly, her voice croaky from old age and disuse.
“Whom?”
“The baby that was crying.”
“Nana, there’re no babies here,” he responded. “Not anymore.”
In reply, Reja held the bundles out to Francisco.
“What are they?” Francisco took the bundle wrapped in the apron, then quickly dropped it, startled. It was a beehive. “Nana, why were you holding this? Have they stung you?”
As the hive hit the ground, the bees still living inside came out in a rage, in search of the culprit. Some laborers ran to get away from the danger, pursued by the insects, but in unison the bees stopped their aggressive foray and returned, as if called home. The shawl-wrapped bundle that Nana Reja still held moved, and Francisco and some workers who had resisted the temptation to run from the enraged bees were left dumbstruck, especially when the old lady hugged the package to herself again, continuing to rock it as if it were a child.
“Nana. What else do you have there?”
Then the bundle burst into wails and frenetic movements.
“He’s hungry, boy,” said Nana Reja as she carried on with her constant swaying.
“May I see?”
As he unrolled the shawl, Francisco and his men at last saw what the nana had in her arms: a baby.
Their horror made them step back. Some of them crossed themselves.
5
Ribbons and Lice
I was never allowed childish illusions about the source of babies. I always knew that the story about the stork was just that: pure make-believe for inquisitive children. My mama never pretended with me like most ladies of her time did. If I threw a tantrum, she would tell me how many hours she had spent in labor with me; if I disobeyed her, she bemoaned the pain of giving birth. After some of my pranks, had it been possible, she would have made me pay dearly for every contraction.
My mama was a good woman. It’s true. She just couldn’t explain where I came from. I don’t mean the physical aspect of it: she was very intelligent, and though she lived in an age of modesty, she knew that the consequence of marital intimacy was children. The problem was that she had assumed her fertile period was over: my two sisters were already married and had made her a grandmother. My arrival late i
n her life came as a surprise.
With this in mind, it is easy to understand my mother’s shock when she realized she was expecting a baby at the unlikely age of thirty-eight. I can imagine how hard it was to confess her condition to my elder sisters. Worse still to her friends at the Linares Social Club. And I understand her desperation when, after having two señoritas with their ribbons and lace, she gave birth to a little boy complete with mud, head lice, and dark-skinned toads.
And so, my mama had me after she had started playing grandmother. She loved me and I loved her very much, but we had our problems. I remember how, unable to cover me in flounces and bows, she insisted on dressing me up like a little Spanish lord, in outfits she made herself. But I was anything but lordly. And I was not at all Spanish, either, though she insisted on clothing me in little embroidered suits copied from the latest magazines from Madrid.
To her dismay, I was always covered in food or dirt, or in dog, cow, or horse crap. My knees were always grazed, and my blond hair was stiff and dark with mud. The snot that hung from my nostrils never bothered me. The handkerchief embroidered with my name, which my mama stuffed into my pocket every day, I used for everything except wiping my nose. I don’t remember this, but they say I preferred eating beetles to the chicken or beef liver the nanas made for me—on my mother’s orders—so that my cheeks would color pink.
Now that I’m a father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, I admit I wasn’t an easy child to deal with. Much less manipulate.
My mama complained all her life that, after I finally learned to speak, my favorite words were no, I do it, and not fair; that no sooner could I walk than I started to run; that once I mastered traveling at speed, I climbed every tree that appeared in front of me. She did not know what to do with me. She felt too old and thought she had already done her job as a mother with her two grown-up daughters, who were almost perfect.
She had a girl who was the apple of her eye, she would say: for my elder sister Carmen, it has to be said, was beautiful. When she was little, my mama curled her blond hair and took pleasure in people calling her an angel, a darling, a beauty. Later, Carmen broke half the hearts in town, first when she left for Monterrey as a student and then when she married. Married and living elsewhere, she never mentioned it, but I know my sister was embarrassed that the legend of her beauty was kept alive on the town’s streets. For years, my mama kept the countless letters of eternal love and slushy verses from all the unrequited admirers Carmen had, before and after she married. Anyone would think they had been written to my mama from the way she treasured that pile of papers like trophies and showed them off at any opportunity.
She would also say that she had a girl who was the apple of her ears, because my other sister, though pretty, was distinguished more by her voice. My mama would make Consuelo sing to anyone who came to visit, and her melodious voice always received praise.
“She has the voice of an angel!” they all said.
I’ve never heard angels sing, but I suppose it was true: my sister possessed an angel’s voice. What few people knew was that behind that voice she hid a demonic temper. Not even at the worst of times did she lose her melodious tone, of course, and her every sentence was pure poetry. She could say, Don’t come near me, you flea-ridden brat, you’re disgusting, and still sound like an angel to Mama’s ears. I’m telling him fairy tales, she always replied when mama asked what she was saying to me.
I didn’t much care what she said, for she was a stranger who did not really belong in my world. For years she was like one of the witches from those fairy tales; I knew she was using her voice to enchant everyone, to make them believe she was good and sweet as an angel, especially my mama.
I was one of the few who was immune to her charms. My mama couldn’t understand why I didn’t fall head over heels for my sister whenever she visited. She could not comprehend why I preferred to spend the day far away, or why, when I was sent on a visit to Monterrey, I would choose to stay at my elder sister Carmen’s house. Your sister’s such a good girl, so nice, so sweet, my mama would say to me, attempting to soften or improve our relationship.
There were two angels in the family, and there was the boy, which was me. When my mama talked about me, she would say, as if apologizing, This is the boy. Or, He’s the runt. She never said that, in me, she had the son of her dreams. She would never have had the audacity, or perhaps it never occurred to her. Ay, Dios! she would say all the time. I can’t remember ever bumping into my mama in the halls of my house, in the courtyard, dining room, or kitchen, without her letting out a loud sigh. Ay, Dios, she would say, blowing out a little, just look at that hair, that snot, those clothes, look at how dirty he is, how untidy, how suntanned, I’m too old for this, ay, Dios! Before long, her sighs shortened. Gradually it became just the Ay, Dios!, then just Ay!, and then not even that: a snort.
I was always noisy, my voice shrill. My body was a refuge for every tick, flea, or louse that needed a home and sustenance, so there was little point in my mama letting my blond curls grow. Out of necessity, I was always close cropped. Like an orphan boy.
Ay, Dios! Sigh.
If I had been entirely in the care of my mama, I might have ended up wearing more bows than my sisters. Circumstances saved me from this fate, because my papa, who was a grandfather before I was born and had resigned himself to working the land only to bequeath it to his sons-in-law, would not allow anyone to turn the son who had arrived so late in his life into a wimp. And while he had never interfered in his daughters’ upbringing, from the moment he learned a male had been born to him, he began confronting my mama about mine. He was well aware there was no place for the fragile in our land and in our time, with war surrounding us and sometimes coming to visit.
Those confrontations with my papa must have troubled her. She adored him, which was strange for a wife of almost forty, so she took a step back from my hands-on upbringing to keep the peace. My papa, meanwhile, had neither the time nor the inclination to be responsible for me, first because he did not know what to do with a baby or a little boy, and later because he spent his time going here and there, supervising and defending the cattle ranches in Tamaulipas and the orchards in Nuevo León.
Nonetheless, I had many arms just for me. My Nana Pola would leave me with the cook, Mati, who would hand me over to Lupita, the washerwoman, who would drop me off with Martín, the gardener, who after a while would leave me in the good company and care of Simonopio. He didn’t pass me on to anybody until night fell and someone came out of the house asking where the boy was.
6
Wings That Covered Him
Simonopio’s arrival was an event that marked us irreversibly. A family watershed. Later, it became the difference between life and death, though we would not understand this until we looked back on it from far in the future.
My papa would berate himself for the rest of his life for how he reacted when he first saw Simonopio.
I suppose that, as well traveled, well learned, and well enlightened as he felt, he had not completely thrown off the superstition that existed in a town not far from a community of witches. And perhaps the situation that day had weakened his conviction: first the empty rocking chair, the missing nana, the certainty of her death, the search among the surrounding bushes that extended ever farther from the house; then the discovery, the talking nana, the warlike swarm from the apron-swaddled hive; and finally a newborn baby with a disfigured face, wrapped in the nana’s shawl and a living blanket of bees.
As far as first impressions go—and first impressions are always important—Simonopio, as the nana insisted he be baptized in spite of my parents’ and the priest’s objections, had not made the best. The campesinos asked their master to leave the monstrosity there, under the anacahuita, by the side of the road.
“It’s God’s will, Señor, for this boy is the devil,” Anselmo Espiricueta insisted.
By then my papa had recovered from his initial reaction. Drawing on all the strength conf
erred upon him by knowing himself to be a man of the world, a man well traveled, well learned, and well enlightened, he had shaken off superstition in order to focus on the mystery.
“That’s absurd. We don’t believe in those things here, Espiricueta,” he said, before continuing his gentle questioning of the nana.
From the few words the little old lady uttered, Francisco understood where she had found the baby and in what circumstances. How and why the old woman had walked up the mountain to the bridge, under which she found the baby, nobody would ever comprehend. I heard him was all she would say; I heard him. Whether superstitious or enlightened, everyone knew it was impossible to hear the faint wail of a child abandoned under a bridge several leagues away.
That was the great mystery, and it grew even greater and was granted eternal life when Don Teodosio and young Lupita said they had not seen the boy when they passed the same place shortly before. How was it possible that the old woman had heard him? There was no imaginable answer. No believable answer.
“I can’t even hear my wife talking next to me at lunch,” said Leocadio, a peon on the hacienda, to anyone who’d listen.
But there was a fact nobody could deny: the wooden, immobile old woman had left her little world to go to the rescue of this unfortunate child, and had seen fit to carry him off, beehive, winged friends, and all. When my papa was about to shake off the bees that completely covered the newborn’s body, Reja stopped him.
“Leave them, boy,” she said, wrapping the baby up again.
“But, Nana, they’ll sting him.”
“They would have done that already.”
Annoyed, he ordered his men to put Nana Reja on the cart, but she clung fast to her bundle, fearing they would snatch it from her and follow through on their threat to leave the baby to its fate once again.
“He’s mine.”
“He is yours, Nana,” my papa assured her, “and he’s coming with us.”
The Murmur of Bees Page 3