Eccentric Neighborhood (42 page)

As soon as I arrived home for summer vacation, I was recruited for Father’s political campaign, which was now active even between elections. It was more interesting than going to the parties of the girls and boys my age. I enjoyed the banquets and balls, the small-town stumping, the caravans and parades. I loved to appear by his side, beautifully coiffed and dressed in an Oscar de la Renta outfit. Mother went to many of these events also, but she stayed in the background, dressed in black and holding on to her precious anonymity. The futility of these outings wasn’t lost on me: ladies weren’t allowed to speak at rallies or to meet the people from the towns to discuss with them the issues at hand. We simply stood next to the political candidate, smiling, adding beauty and respectability to his image. I was so desperate for a career, however, that I hoped that some of Father’s charisma would rub off on me.

My quarrels with Clarissa during those four years escalated from mere skirmishes to full-blown battles. I had a voluptuous physique. I was six inches taller than Clarissa and wore size ten shoes. My hips were wide, and I had a hard time keeping my generous breasts inside my bathing suit because I didn’t just lie about like the rest of my friends, sunning myself at the pool; I liked to dive and swim. I loved sports and played a lot of basketball and lacrosse at Saint Helen’s and had developed strong thighs and calves. Having been away from home for years, I had become a stranger to Mother. She wasn’t sure who this giant of a daughter was anymore.

When she saw me dancing with a boyfriend, the romantic memory of the love she had experienced in the garden at Emajaguas when Father had courted her vanished like a mist. My kind of love wasn’t a spiritual affair like Rima’s in
Green Mansions
, an emotion as delicate as the flutter of a bird’s wings. She saw it as an avid grasping of the flesh, a prosaic grappling of the sexual organs—an image undoubtedly nursed by the steamy, provocative films of the period:
East of Eden
,
A Streetcar Named Desire
, and
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
.

In my mind the difference between sex and love was clear. I hadn’t read Margaret Mead in vain. In spite of the nuns’ fascist rules at Saint Helen’s there were always opportunities to see boys alone—for example, when I stayed overnight at a friend’s house. I thought about sex all the time—it was like a flame burning inside me, something I’d never felt before. It lit up everything around me, got rid of the cobwebs, and energized me. But it was far too dangerous to indulge in.

The minute I arrived back in Las Bougainvilleas for the summer, Clarissa would let me know who was in control. I couldn’t step out of the door without asking her permission, and I had to go to all the parties with a companion—usually Clarissa herself or one of my girlfriends’ mothers. Clarissa would sit close to the dance floor scrutinizing my every move, and if she saw me dancing a bolero too close to my partner—riveted limb to limb, the way I liked—she would get up from her chair, draw near to where we were swaying dreamily to Rafael Muñoz’s “Perfume de Gardenias” or Lucho Gatica’s “Piel Canela,” and separate us with a sharp push. Then, in the privacy of the ladies’ room, she would lecture me on how a well-brought-up young lady didn’t let a man rub his penis against her thigh. Finally she would take a little lace handkerchief out of her purse and spread it across my low-cut dress. I hated her then and wished with all my heart that she would die.

Soon, of course, the rumor flew around town that Mother was some kind of sexual Gestapo, and young men were afraid to ask me to dance. This was made worse by the fact that I was the daughter of an important public figure. All of a sudden I became a wallflower, off-bounds to boys my age. I could dance only with my “official” partners, the political aides who accompanied us to all the parties. Weeks passed and the telephone at home never rang.

Father wanted to keep me shut up like a jewel in a silk-lined boudoir, just as he had kept Mother. My problem was that I wanted someone as bright, good-looking, and kind as he, but with a different name.

In July 1958, I was selected carnival queen again, this time of San Juan Casino. The theme of the ball would be “The Printed Word” and everything related to it: all the letters of the alphabet, of course, books, magazines, newspapers, tabloids, gazettes; as well as printing presses, rotary presses, handpresses, flatbed presses, roller presses, electrotype presses, rotogravure presses. The ingenuity of San Juan’s social set was taxed to the extreme as well-to-do parents rushed to come up with appropriate costumes for their children. The carnival was important for Father’s new gubernatorial campaign: reporters from all the newspapers on the island would be present at the ball. There would be maximum exposure for the father of the queen, which would come in handy for fund-raising.

This time I would be attired in a black sheath and train, making my entrance in the casino’s ballroom as Lady Ink, my costume embroidered with hundreds of shimmering onyx beads, symbolizing ink drops; and on my head I’d carry a cut-crystal urn, supposedly my inkwell. For weeks I had to go through the whole rigmarole of rehearsing the coronation, practicing the waltz, going for fittings. I took everything very seriously and didn’t find any of this ridiculous, since I was helping Father. But I was getting tired of being trotted out like a mannequin each summer and swore this would be the last time.

Since I was older now, I would no longer be escorted by Father. Instead I was assigned a king, Víctor Matienzo, a tall, gangly bachelor with a nose as large as De Gaulle’s but a brain considerably smaller. We went to several preball cocktail parties together and he bored me so badly I had a hard time suppressing my yawns. Years later I learned he didn’t like women at all.

My parents and I had just come into the casino’s ballroom the night of the coronation when the orchestra began to play “
Lágrimas Negras
”—“Ink Tears”—the song Victor and I were supposed to waltz to. Unfortunately, my headdress weighed at least ten pounds and was beginning to give me a headache, so I went to get some aspirin. When I walked back to where my parents were standing I overheard Mother say something that stopped me in my tracks: “We have to be careful now that you’re a candidate for governor again. As long as Elvira is with Víctor she’s all right, but unfortunately he won’t be her partner through the evening. The young men buzzing around her could be scoundrels. They’re probably more interested in our money and position than they are in her.”

I flushed with anger but controlled myself.

After Víctor and I danced the waltz, which marked the beginning of the ball, I excused myself and said I had to go to the ladies’ room to freshen up. Clarissa followed me. She was about to pinch me and take out her little lace handkerchief to tuck into my plunging neckline when I asked her angrily if she was covering up my breasts or the family’s sacks of gold.

Clarissa was furious. She lifted her hand to slap me, but I stopped her in midair. It was easy; I towered above her, and for a second I saw my own hatred shining back at me in her eyes. Then something terrible happened: Mother cringed and began to cry.

I walked out of the ladies’ room trembling. That was the last time Mother tried to hit me, and I was never afraid of her again.

I refused to attend any more parties or political gatherings that summer and decided to get a job. I worked as a volunteer at the Municipal Children’s Hospital in the mornings and as a proofreader at
El Listín Noticioso
, a small local newspaper, in the afternoons. Then I did some scouting around town and published several articles, one of them about the old cemetery of La Concordia, which was shamefully neglected because of the town’s fiscal crisis; I had seen dogs chewing human bones there. But since Father had recently acquired the newspaper—after the success of my coronation ball he realized the importance of the press in a political campaign—the editor believed he was doing me a favor and didn’t give me any encouragement or pay me for my work. I left the job, and the summer dragged on like a sack of stones until, thankfully, September came around again and I left for Saint Helen’s. There I could live and study all I wanted, and no one knew who Father was.

I
N THE SPRING OF
my junior year I wrote a letter to Father asking him to let me attend the University of Geneva during the summer. Alvaro, who was at Princeton, had done the same thing the summer before, and he had spent three months studying French at the Sorbonne, living by himself in Paris. Saint Helen’s offered an exchange program in Geneva and I could take French courses for credit.

I wanted to go on studying and get a doctorate in English literature when I graduated from Saint Helen’s. Graduate students could live in boardinghouses; they didn’t have to stay in dorms, and there were no rules for parents to enforce. In the States, women were considered adults at twenty-one and could do more or less what they wanted—find a job and live by themselves, for example. Only in places like Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Puerto Rico were they treated like little girls until they were so old no one cared anymore.

Several girls I knew at Saint Helen’s were going to study in Geneva that summer also and would live in a boardinghouse near the university campus; we could keep one another company. Father agreed but suggested I accompany Mother and him on the first leg of a European trip they themselves had planned. First we would go to England and France, then to Switzerland, where he promised to drop me off in Geneva at the university at the beginning of July. I could stay there by myself for two months and at the end of August fly directly to New York after finishing my courses.

Everything went as planned, and we arrived in Geneva from Paris after having spent the night on the train. We stayed at the Beau Rivage, a beautiful hotel on the shores of Lake Geneva with red geraniums on the windowsills and an elegant restaurant overlooking the water. A wide marble staircase led from the terrace to the suites on the first floor where we were staying. The lake’s famous geyser was clearly visible from my window. It fluttered in the wind like a huge ostrich feather, gracefully swaying this way and that over the silvery water. We were having lunch on the terrace two days later, under a Martini & Rossi umbrella, when I said to Father: “I’ve contacted my friends from Saint Helen’s and I have all the information for the French courses I need—they look fascinating. I can move to the student pension tomorrow; my bags are all packed.”

Father looked around, as if he hadn’t heard what I said.

“Look who’s sitting at the table next to ours,” he whispered to Clarissa, smiling conspiratorially. “It’s Grace Kelly, and that’s Prince Rainier sitting next to her.”

“You’re right!” Clarissa answered, a little too naïvely. “And I think I recognize the Shah of Iran a few tables down, with Farah Diba. How exclusive!”

I looked at Father over the coupe
geleé à trois saveurs
and slowly set my spoon down on the table. I didn’t even bother to look at Mother; I already knew what she thought. “You promised, Father. You gave me your word in the letter you wrote me at school,” I whispered, my voice full of apprehension.

Father sighed deeply and finally looked at me.

“This is a beautiful hotel, isn’t it? I’m sure you don’t have a view of the lake from your window at the pension. Your mother and I have decided to stay in Geneva for three weeks so you can be with us. You can still audit the French courses at the university. You don’t really need those credits, and in three weeks you can learn all you need.”

“I’m twenty years old, Father. I can take care of myself. I want to take those courses for credit and stay at the pension with my friends.”

Clarissa aimed one of her flamethrower looks in my direction. “Your father never changes. He’s always making promises he can’t keep. You’re not staying by yourself at the pension and that’s final. I never did such a thing, and you won’t either. It’s the duty of a well-brought-up young lady to sacrifice herself and obey her parents. You can’t throw your reputation to the wind.”

A cold breeze rose from the lake as I sat there stone-faced. I was pondering the many meanings of the word
sacrifice
. For Tía Celia it had meant celibacy
and
freedom; she had taken a vow of chastity but she had also lived a life full of adventure and had traveled all over the world, going where she was most needed. Mother had remained a hostage at Emajaguas until Father came along. Then she had willingly entered another prison, the house on Avenida Cañafístula. I was supposed to follow in her footsteps—except that my jailer might not be as kind as Father.

I got up from the table and slowly walked up the wide marble staircase that led to my room on the first floor. As I went up I opened my handbag and searched for my wallet, saw it was empty, and threw it over the banister. Then I took out the key to my room. I confirmed that I had no passport or plane ticket in my purse; Father had taken them both, to keep them safe for me. So I threw my purse over the railing also, and it fell down the stairwell with a clatter and landed on the restaurant floor. When I got to the landing I walked down the hall to my room and took out my suitcase. I opened it wide and emptied its entire contents over the banister. My Saks Fifth Avenue shoes, my lace Blackton panties and bras, my Ceil Chapman dresses all landed on the heads of Grace Kelly, Prince Rainier, the Shah, Farah Diba, Mother and Father, and the rest of the exclusive guests of the Beau Rivage. When the suitcase was empty I threw it over the banister as well, but luckily for me it fell on one of the waiters and not on the head of Prince Rainier.

Then I slowly walked down the stairs and back to our table, where Father and Mother stood staring at me. As the alarmed guests whispered among themselves, I sat down and finished my ice cream. That night I swore I was not going to be like Clarissa; I would never sacrifice myself.

Recuerde el alma dormida,

avive el seso y despierte