The Ladies of Managua

 

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To Emilio and Amalía, who exposed me to Nicaragua and to countless other new worlds as well

 

We are volcanoes; when we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains.

—
U
RSULA
K. L
E
G
UIN

When your country is small, your dreams for it are large.

—
R
UBÉN
D
ARÍO

 

1

Maria

THURSDAY, JANUARY 8, 2009

“Revolutionaries make bad husbands,” my abuela always says. I don't think that's fair, really. It's not like my papi was such a terrible son-in-law, such a bad husband to her daughter for the brief time my parents were married. His only mistake, as far as I can tell, was being in the wrong hall at the wrong time, opening the wrong door. Like a game show contestant on
The Price Is Right
choosing door number two; my Bela used to watch that every afternoon when we lived in Miami, before I went off to college and my grandparents returned to Nicaragua. Only this wasn't a game, it was a revolution, and choosing the wrong door meant that my father was shot and killed. He died because of a choice he made, I see that, but it was all a mistake. It's not like he opened the door in order to hurt my mother, to abandon us. It hardly seems fair to hold his death against him.

But my abuela would say he shouldn't have been there in the first place, in that general's mansion in Managua, playing at being a soldier, trying to change the world. Not when he had a baby at home, and a baby girl, at that—to my Bela, it makes a difference.

And I see her point, I do. There's a little hubris involved there, sure. But if no one ever tried to do the impossible, there would be no real change anywhere in the world. Mostly it's pretty noble, I think, to see something wrong and try to set it right. Besides, his whole generation tried to reform their country, to change everything. And they did, in some ways. They didn't like the way Nicaragua was being run as Somoza's personal playground, the way the dictator and his government stole and celebrated while most people lived in poverty. My parents didn't like it, even if they didn't really count as “most people.” Fomenting revolution, spreading reform—it's what people their age did back then, try to turn the world upside down. The same way my Bela and all her friends try to shore it up, to write letters, to look decorative, to conform to society instead of changing it. When I think about it, both my parents and my grandmother are just followers of trends. Although maybe I should give them more credit; maybe I'm the follower and, really, they're more trendsetters.

How many Christmas parties have I been to on holiday trips “home” to Nicaragua where some tipsy woman my mother's age trips over her Ferragamo heels on her way to tell me how she fought in “la Revolución,” how she trained and battled in the mountains of Matagalpa before deciding to help the movement in other ways, press relations, consulting on the rebranding effort? She'll slip me a fuchsia-and-turquoise business card with the words C
RISTIANA,
S
OCIALISTA,
S
OLIDARIA
on it, a little reminder that her rebranding effort has succeeded in making the Sandinistas a religiously affiliated political party, garnering them the support of the Catholic Church, and Daniel Ortega a win in the last elections. And then she'll step a little closer, so I can smell the ronpopo on her breath, and whisper, “Your parents were like movie stars to us when we were all young; so beautiful, so tragic.” She'll touch my face, and say something maudlin and semi-unintelligible: “Your father, he was so…,” she'll start, but she'll never finish her sentence.

I always want to scream, “What? He was so
what
?” I was four months old when my father died; I never knew him. And ever since I can remember, if I ask about him, Madre fusses with her scarf or studies her nail beds as if looking for clues before changing the subject. So I stop asking. When I was little, I stopped because I wanted to please her. With me living in Miami with my Bela and my abuelo
,
and Madre in Nicaragua, rebuilding the newly free country, I knew too well that her visits were precious; I didn't want to ruin the time we had together. She'd swoop in like a Very Special Guest Star in an episode of my favorite TV show, and I thought if I behaved, and I didn't upset her by making her talk about my papi, she'd return sooner. Maybe she'd become a series regular. I liked my friends, my school, so I didn't want her to take us back with her to Managua, but I thought if I could keep her happy the whole time she was visiting, maybe she'd decide it was a good idea to stay in Miami with all of us.

By junior high, I realized that she was never going to move in with us. Our apartment on Key Biscayne was too small, not in size but in scope. In Nicaragua, she was raising a young country, and therefore, reshaping the world. How could bringing up one not-very-interesting daughter compete with that? After my epiphany, I made myself stop asking about Papi, out of spite. Everyone else might act as if the Revolution was so fascinating, as if in talking to Madre they were interviewing some sort of female action hero, Jane Bond. But I wasn't everyone else, or I didn't want to be in her eyes. Let her ask about my life, for a change.

Now that I'm an adult, officially, anyway, I like to think I'm less stubborn. Most of the time now, I'll ask about my papi if the timing seems right, if we hear a song that makes Madre say, “We used to sing this during the Revolución.” But when I do, she still flushes and looks away and mutters something that reveals nothing at all, even if I can manage to make out the actual words she's spoken. And I don't press the issue. I can tell she's upset, and I'd like to say that I stop asking because I don't want to sadden her. But that would be a lie. I just don't want to push her so hard that she blurts out what I suspect is the truth: that it's not simply too sad for her to talk about Papi, it's too painful for her to talk about him to me. That it hurts her to tell me about his death because I haven't properly honored his life. Because while she's carried on his work in his memory all these years, I've done nothing but resent her for the absence her efforts required. And that's not a truth I'm ready to hear.

So when I'm visiting Managua at Christmas and a (festively, never inappropriately) drunk woman caresses my face and intimates that she knew my father, knew him well enough to tell me something real about him, I can't help but stare. And she'll see the searching look in my eyes and recover with something like, “And your mother, so strong at such a young age. And so impressive now. We look up to her in the Movement, all of us women. How lucky to have such a strong mother.”

And once again I've learned nothing more about my father, and I regret having revealed how desperate I am for information. Because all that I've gotten out of the conversation is a reminder that it's not just my parents, but their whole generation, who are amazed by how unlike them I've turned out to be, what a pale, torn copy.

*   *   *

I thought I'd avoided all that this year by spending the holidays with Allen and his mother at their house in the Berkshires, curled up by the fire, watching snow fall outside. I expected it to be everything Christmas in Managua isn't. Cozy. Quiet. A little boring. No listening to strangers' boozy reminiscences by the professionally decorated, artificial tree. It turned out that Christmas in the Berkshires was like the end of
It's a Wonderful Life,
neighbors caroling, bells ringing, angels getting their wings. A much larger cast of extras than I had anticipated. I had thought Allen and I would have time alone, to walk in the snow, to talk in front of the fire, to make plans for the future, to plot it out, making it seem manageable rather than frightening. But the house has been in his mother's family since before her own mother was born. The cottage, I mean—she called it a cottage, as if we were living in a fairy tale. So Allen's aunts and uncles kept stopping by, both real relatives and people who had just known him since he was a little boy vacationing with his parents, who stand across from him once a year, gin and tonic in hand, and ask about his painting and what's going on in his life, which, for Allen, is pretty much the same thing.

I was right about the coziness, and the tree—we were the ones who decked it with silver snowflakes and the ancient plaster handprints that I suppose we could auction off now as Allen's earliest artworks. But I was wrong about the quiet; apparently boozy strangers are inevitable at Christmas the world over.

I decided to relax and try to enjoy the nice long weekend, not to bring up anything important and possibly upsetting until Allen and I returned to New York, life got back to its normal state of controlled chaos, and the black-and-white glow of Christmas in the mountains faded. Which happened faster than I thought possible. By the time we were crossing the bridge into the city, all I could think of was how different this new year was going to be than last January, when Allen and I had been together only six months and were still blissfully floating along. A year later, I knew it was time to focus on our future, on our separate lives, and if we'll be building one life together, somehow.

While I couldn't wait to get back to New York to start making plans, Allen was just as eager to return to his paintings. As the short winter days passed, I got so worn out from trying to get Allen to focus, to look at me instead of the canvas in front of him, that by the time we'd been back in New York a week, all my senses felt dulled, as if I were a pencil in need of sharpening. Suffocated by my winter coat, I dragged my feet through the slushy streets, consoling myself with the thought that at least I hadn't gone home for Christmas and New Year's. At least I wasn't in Managua with Madre and my Bela, trying, and failing, to put on a happy face so as not to worry them, when in fact, the whole time I'd be wondering what my life will be like next Christmas, and if Allen will be a part of it. They'd each pick up on my anxiety and Bela would rage on about Allen not deserving me if he was making me suffer so. And worse, Madre would listen in judgmental silence before asking a probing question that made me realize I was overreacting, getting so worked up over something as trivial and bourgeois as a relationship. She'd pin me with that look, what seemed like concern shining in her big, brown eyes until I realized it was pity. Pity for me that I'm not like her—strong, confident, and consumed only by love for her country, her people. That I was so obsessed by my relationship with one petty little man. As long as there was no one to notice my anxiety—no, my fear—as long as I wasn't pierced by their questions or weakened by their sympathy, I knew I'd be fine. And then Abuelo outsmarted me, bringing me home anyway.