Eccentric Neighborhood (26 page)

La Concordia was overrun by poor peasants who had come from the hills looking for shelter from San Felipe; the epidemics of cholera and typhus that followed brought even more refugees. Slums sprouted like tumors all around the beautiful nineteenth-century city; its gleaming white buildings were surrounded by shacks that had no sanitary facilities, no electricity, and no running water. Adela felt terribly guilty to be living in a nice house and even having a servant to help with the housework. Her family tried to tell her there was nothing one could do about it, but she didn’t agree.

One time, having come home from an initiation ceremony, Abuelo Chaguito forgot to put away his trowel and Freemason’s apron, which he usually kept under lock and key in his desk. Adela found them and at first she was terrified. The parish priest had told her that Freemasons celebrated demonic rites in their temples, and she was sure Chaguito would go to hell. But when she learned that Abuelo had made Aurelio, and later the rest of her boys, join the fraternity and that they had taken the oath of brotherly love because they were sure it would help them in the building trade, Abuela was almost hysterical. She couldn’t even go to the Adelphi Lodge to denounce Chaguito’s heresy, because women weren’t allowed in Masonic lodges.

Adela redoubled her efforts at charity work and began to visit the slums of La Concordia on foot, to pay for Chaguito’s sin and prevent her sons from going to hell.

The streets of the slums were unpaved, and Abuela Adela took off her shoes and walked barefoot to do penance for her husband and her sons. Her Statue of Liberty robe got spattered with mud and she arrived home exhausted every afternoon. One day she felt so sick she couldn’t get out of bed, and a doctor was brought to the house. He examined Abuela and told Chaguito that a parasite had wormed itself into the tissue of her right leg; the illness it was causing was deadly. Eventually the parasites would invade her whole body, but fortunately their progress was slow. Adela might live for another two or three years. Chaguito, ever the optimist, felt sure the Americans were bound to discover a cure in that span of time.

After a while Abuela Adela felt better and got out of bed. She could walk around the house with a cane, but she couldn’t go out. She had to stop her charity work in the slums. She knew she had to settle the matter of who was to be the head of the family when she passed away. Staying at home, she began to see things a little more clearly, especially when the subject of Tía Amparo’s and Tía Celia’s education came up.

Abuelo Chaguito didn’t think women needed to go to college at all. He thought they should get married, have children, and take care of them. “A man without a profession isn’t worth a cent. But a woman can marry a professional and help him be a success in life,” he told Tía Amparo one time.

Abuela Adela couldn’t have agreed less. She believed the education of women to be of vital importance, and she was much more modern than Abuela Valeria in that respect. Valeria believed women should go to college to be more attractive to men and make a good marriage. But Abuela Adela wanted her daughters to be educated so they could be free and live fuller lives—with or without men.

She didn’t want Amparo and Celia to stay home as
she
had; she wanted them to have a completely different life. Adela had loved being a schoolteacher, but because Chaguito had promised to have her father operated on, she had consented to marry him. The operation had been a success, and Chaguito had proved to be very kind. Once they were married, Don Félix Pasamontes never had to sell another lottery ticket in his life; Chaguito took care of his every need. But he died only a few years later, so Adela ended up sacrificing her career as a teacher to raise Chaguito’s brood.

From the start, Abuela Adela tried to instill in her daughters a spirit of independence, something Abuela Valeria never did. She planned to send them both to college abroad, just like her boys. Then in 1928 the two catastrophes occurred: San Felipe hit the island like a freight train and brought Vernet Construction to the brink of ruin, and Adela discovered that Chaguito and her sons were Freemasons.

Adela’s priorities changed, and she began to see the matter of her daughters’ education in a different light. Even if college for the girls was now out of the question—the income from Vernet Construction was barely collateral for the bank loan Chaguito had had to take when Roque and Damián entered Northeastern—they could still have their own careers. Amparo and Celia would become missionaries of the Catholic Church and go abroad to preach the Gospel to the heathen. So Abuela nailed a map of Kenya to Tía Amparo’s wall and a map of Nepal to Tía Celia’s wall.

“Wouldn’t you like to travel to Africa and Nepal when you graduate from high school?” Adela asked them quietly. She didn’t want Abuelo Chaguito to hear. “If you become missionaries you can go there for free, and you need only a high school diploma to enter a missionary order. That way you’ll be achieving three important goals. You’ll travel and see the world, gain souls for the Catholic Church, and also be helping to save your father and your brothers from going to hell.”

Tía Amparo was so horrified when her mother told her she’d be going to Africa to do missionary work that she decided not to graduate from high school. Amparo was a senior and had almost finished her second semester; graduation was just around the corner. But she stopped studying and nearly flunked her final exams. Abuela Adela was upset. She couldn’t figure out what was wrong with Amparo and asked Tío Ulises to talk to her. Ulises was very close to Amparo. They both loved to party and covered up for each other when they came home late at night, climbing over the wall at the back of the garden and sneaking in through the terrace when everybody was asleep.

Tía Amparo was attractive in a blowsy sort of way. She was tall and soft-featured, with a delicate complexion and dark hair. She was very kind, but she had a weak core. As a baby she loved to be carried and didn’t learn to walk on her fat, rosy legs until she was two. She was also large-bosomed like her mother, which was why boys were always swarming around her. Tío Ulises and Father were constantly on the lookout and shooed her suitors away. Tía Celia didn’t need looking after: she was short and muscular and could take very good care of herself.

When Amparo told Ulises of Adela’s campaign to turn her into a missionary, he took the money he had saved from his job at the hardware store in Boston and bought Amparo a pair of silver dancing slippers with rhinestone heels. He put them on her desk. “They’ll be yours on graduation day,” he said. “And don’t worry your pretty head about traveling to Africa to baptize the little heathen children in Mombasa anymore. You’re too good-looking for that. I’m sure this summer you’ll meet the man of your dreams.”

Tío Ulises was right. That summer Tía Amparo met Arnaldo Rosales, the son of one of the richest sugarcane hacienda owners on the island. They got married at the end of the summer and Tía Amparo went to live in Maracai, a town on the eastern coast. At first Abuela Adela didn’t like the idea of the marriage because she was losing one of her combatants in her battle to win back the family’s lost souls. But Arnaldo Rosales was a good man and she wanted Amparo to be happy.

After Amparo left to live in Maracai with Tío Arnaldo, the house on Calle Esperanza was even more divided. The men in the left wing—where Abuelo Chaguito and his sons slept—read books on physics, chemistry, manufacturing, and banking and dreamed of the day they would establish a business that would make them rich. Ulises’s favorite mottoes became “E Pluribus Unum” and “Novus Ordo Seculorum”—stamped on dollar bills beneath the pyramid with the eye of God floating above. The women on the right side of the house—where Tía Celia and Abuela slept—recited the Rosary every night, read the
Lives of the Saints
, and talked about when Celia would go to Nepal to do missionary work. Aurelio hovered in between. Even though he slept on his father’s side and wanted Vernet Construction to be a success, he was also determined to fight for justice. The purpose of life was not just to accumulate money and make the Vernets’ star begin to rise but to help humanity live in a better world.

When Celia was a junior in high school she was a very good student and got straight As. She noticed that her parents never embraced or kissed anymore and that they slept in different rooms. If going to Nepal would bring them together again, she told herself, she was willing to do it. Celia fell asleep every night dreaming about Nepal. She found out everything she could about it and couldn’t wait to graduate from high school.

Once, Father saw Celia poring over a map of Asia spread out on her bed. “Why are you suddenly so interested in Nepal?” he asked her.

“I’m going to travel there as a missionary as soon as I graduate from high school next year,” Celia answered. “And once I’m there, nothing will prevent me from becoming a saint and I’ll be able to save your soul.” When Celia felt passionate about something, her blue eyes grew paler and shone with an intense light.

Aurelio looked at Celia in amazement. “That’s preposterous. Who’s been talking nonsense like that to you?” he asked. But Celia clammed up. Aurelio never talked to her except to scold her. Why should she start confiding in him now?

“No one. I just made it up.”

But Aurelio didn’t believe her, and he went to Adela’s room to find out what was going on.

“Celia wants to go to college and your father has no money to send her,” Abuela said. “The next best thing we can do is let her travel. The Sisters of Loretto will pay for her steamer ticket to Calcutta. From there they’ll take her by train to Nepal. The sisters have a mission in Kathmandu. She’ll be all right there, she’ll learn Nepali, work hard, and see the world.”

Father was shocked. The next day he went to Abuelo’s office to tell him what he’d heard. “Celia says she’s going to Nepal as a missionary if you don’t send her to study at a university in the States. And Mother is her ally. If I know Mother, Celia will end up in Kathmandu in a year’s time.” Abuelo Chaguito was even more incensed. “No daughter of mine is going to become a nun unless it’s over my dead body! Can you imagine what my brother Freemasons would say if they heard about this? We’re supposed to eradicate the Catholic Church, not add to its members! Anyway, it’s impossible to send Celia away to study, because I’m already in debt up to my neck.”

Aurelio decided to take out a personal loan at the bank and send Celia to college on his own. It was a difficult decision; he was courting Clarissa at the time, but he didn’t give it a second thought. When Abuela Adela heard the news, she was entranced. “I knew you could do it. I knew you’d come through for us!” she told Aurelio. “Celia will be grateful to you for the rest of her life.”

Aurelio lied to Celia. “I found the money,” he said. “We made a very good deal in San Juan selling cogwheels to a new sugar mill. Next year you’ll be going to a first-rate college in the States.”

But Celia said she didn’t want to go to college anymore. “I’d rather be a missionary and go to Nepal,” she informed Aurelio, pale-blue eyes burning. “That way I’ll keep all of you from going to hell.” Every night Celia prayed for hours, her arms extended like those on a cross. She stopped eating her favorite dishes—even
bacalaítos fritos
—and lost ten pounds. She put pebbles in her shoes and in her bed and offered up the pain for the salvation of unrepentant souls. During the day she went to school and acted as if nothing were wrong.

One evening Aurelio knocked on Tía Celia’s door. “I think we should talk with Mother about your trip to Asia,” he said. And he went with his sister to his mother’s room. “Celia insists on going to Nepal, and I think it’s a good idea, Mother. But she’ll be able to do a lot more good if she has a college degree first. Don’t you agree?”

Abuela Adela said yes, and as Tía Celia was always respectful of her mother’s desires, she agreed to do as Aurelio suggested. But things turned out differently.

On September 7, 1930, Abuela Adela woke up feeling very ill. She realized she was going to die. The family was in chaos, but in true Vernet tradition, none of them expressed what they were feeling. Tía Amparo was notified and came immediately from Maracai to stay at the house. Tío Damián and Tío Roque were there also, having just graduated from Northeastern.

Only Father was away; he had had to travel to Tallahassee, Florida, to see about a possible contract for a sugar mill, and it took him several days to return to the island. Everybody stood around Abuela Adela’s bed holding back the tears. They knew the moment had come for her to pass the baton to one of her sons, and they wondered who it would be.

Tío Ulises put himself in charge of the situation. He made the arrangements at the funeral home and picked out a coffin. Then he called the hospital and had several orderlies come to the house to help carry Abuela Adela to the large mahogany bed she had shared with Abuelo Chaguito. Framed by the bed’s columns, with their giant pineapples on top, she looked like a dying Amazon on an altar.

Two long days passed. Adela was suffering: the parasites had gotten into her bloodstream and every movement was horrendously painful, but she didn’t complain. She hadn’t said a single word in twenty-four hours or shed a tear. She looked at her family and smiled courageously but wouldn’t let anyone touch her, not even Ulises, who tried to soothe her by mopping her forehead with a handkerchief soaked in eau de cologne. Even the graze of a hand on her skin caused her an unbearable flash of pain. The image of the Virgen de Guadalupe was placed in front of Adela’s bed, surrounded by a dozen burning candles. Abuelo Chaguito, Ulises, Roque, and Damián all stood silent on one side of the bed, their hands clasped behind their backs and their eyes sand-dry; Amparo and Celia knelt on the other, reciting the Rosary and asking God to be merciful by taking their mother away so she wouldn’t suffer anymore. Ulises was profoundly distressed. He couldn’t understand why Adela wouldn’t talk.

On the third day, the parish priest of La Inmaculada, where Abuela Adela had done so much charity work, came to give her Holy Communion and anoint her forehead. But even then, Abuela wouldn’t speak. Hours passed. Every once in a while she groaned, opened her eyes, and asked for Aurelio, who still had not appeared.