The Ladies of Managua (38 page)

Whatever Brigida's plan was, it wouldn't have worked. That's what I told myself, anyway, through all the events that followed. At Manuel's funeral when his supporters clogged the streets of Managua sobbing as I passed by them, dry-eyed, holding his crying baby. And every time since I have thought of that night, although I've tried my utmost not to. I've always told myself that Manuel may have gotten caught up in the excitement of the takeover of Memo Paredes's house, but he never would have left me. I had his child. And I think I had his heart, too. Brigida just had his attention momentarily.

Maybe that's wishful thinking. Maybe I'm underestimating Brigida, or overestimating how well I knew Manuel, or how well he knew himself at that point. Maybe Manuel would have left me and Mariana for her, who knows? We were so young then, practically children; I see that now. Manuel had been out with girls before me, but he was my first kiss. I know I was the first girl he told he loved.

It turns out, I was the last girl, too. The one time I saw Brigida again was in the airport two years after Manuel's death. I was on my way to Mexico, to do some recruiting for the Frente. She must have been visiting from Houston. She saw me; I know she did. But then she raised an American magazine up high so that it hid her face. That was my cue to keep heading straight to my gate, and maybe it's because I knew that was what she wanted that I surprised myself by walking up to her and saying hello, sitting right down in the empty seat next to her. Still she didn't acknowledge me. Finally, I said her name. And when she turned to look at me, I saw that her eyes were wet, threatening to spill over. For a minute I thought she was afraid of me.

“You never wrote back,” she said. And just when I thought there was nothing she could say or do to shock me, I realized it wasn't fear that was making her emotional. She was angry. “I wrote to you. I forgave you. And you never wrote back.”

If life were the way it is in Mama's telenovelas I would have thought of something witty to say. But I just blurted, “You had an affair with my husband!”

“Is that it?” Brigida laughed, once. “It was hardly an affair. A few stolen kisses here or there after a planning meeting—which they wouldn't even let me attend. It was always, ‘Oh, Brigida, it's safer if you just go away and let us save the world.' You all took the plans and just brushed me aside.”

“Not Manuel,” I said. “Not from what I saw.”

“They let me stay for the meetings once or twice and I asked him to drive me home. We got caught up in it all, the thrill of changing the world. It was intoxicating.”

“But why him?”

“Who else would drive me home? Most of the other compa
ñ
eros were strangers. And not all of them from nice families; half of them didn't even have a car.”

“That's not what I'm talking about!” I grabbed her arm and she shook my hand off. “He was my husband,” I said more softly.

She looked at the magazine in her lap. “When we were little, I always wished I was part of your family,” she said. “I think Manuel was my attempt at trying on something of yours. But even when I was with him, I knew it was just playing pretend. The whole time he talked about nothing but the Movimiento. And you.”

As I heard her say the words, I waited to feel happy. Brigida was too self-centered and too awkward to make things up to please me. Hearing that my husband wasn't in love with her should have made me feel better. But it didn't. It just reminded me how much I'd lost. So much of what matters to me, what defines me, I shared with Manuel: my passion for justice, my love for my country. And Mariana. When I met Manuel I was a girl. It's because of him I became an adult, a revolutionary. It's thanks to him I became a mother.

“He's not a jerk, Mariana,” I say.

“What?”

“Your father. He's not a jerk; I mean, he wasn't one.”

Mariana raises herself up on her knees so that her face almost reaches mine. “You said you know what you saw.”

“I saw Brigida kiss him, and I didn't see him push her away, that's true.” I'm talking slowly, determined to make sure that, strictly speaking, I'm telling the truth. “But it was all so shocking, I have no idea how much time passed between Brigida kissing Manuel and Memo calling out to her. Was it ten seconds? Or half a second? Maybe there wasn't time for your father to push Brigida away, or maybe he was just so confused, he didn't want to cause trouble. Brigida was the one who gave us the plans, after all.”

“Right!” Mariana is standing now, pulling me up to stand with her. “And you said she specifically told you to give them to Papi, didn't you? Maybe that's why she stayed behind when she was supposed to go to the disco, so she could be alone with him. I mean, it's possible he didn't want her to kiss him at all. He could have been totally taken by surprise when she hurled herself at him.”

“I guess it's a possibility,” I say.

“Of course it is.” Mariana looks straight into my eyes. And I make sure I'm looking back at her when I say, “Yes, it's entirely possible.”

 

40

Maria

Mama's been asleep for hours and still I just keep dozing, coming in and out of consciousness, but never falling asleep long enough to rest. I have to pee but I'm so tired and the little bathroom with the toilet pull seems so far, all the way across the pitch-black room. There's something so complete about this darkness.

Poor Mama. I can hear her breathing. There's still a catch each time she breathes out, a catch I remember from being little and crying so hard that my breath was interrupted long after I stopped sobbing over the lost toy, the unexpected scrape on the knee, or the vast injustice that adults seemed incapable of understanding.

I didn't find it easy to be a child. I'm not complaining; my childhood was fine, I knew Abuelo and my Bela loved me like crazy. There were birthday parties and field trips, many indulgences, and more than a few moments of real happiness: riding a bike for the first time with Abuelo cheering me on, pointing out his granddaughter to the old Cuban men sitting on their park bench; or afternoons at the public library on Key Biscayne, which had square cushions on the floor in the children's area where you could sit all day reading as the sun streamed in from the window, and no one would bother you to go outside and play. But I remember feeling on edge all the time, as if I had to be alert to every subtle shift in the unfamiliar world around me. I was painfully aware that there was so much I didn't know, that I couldn't control. Like where my mother was. Or when I'd see her again. Half the time I wondered if we'd ever go back to Managua, which my Bela and Abuelo missed every day, and where it might be possible to see Mama all the time. And the other half I prayed that we wouldn't, because I liked my school, my friends, and even though Rigobertito called me a baby and always beat me at checkers, I didn't want him to die in the army like my Bela said he would have if we'd stayed. I only prayed on the inside. I didn't put my hands together or anything, except in church or at bedtime. My Bela, Abuelo, T
í
a Celia, they were always watching me, trying to keep me safe and happy. It was almost a relief to grow up, go away to college, and be able to make my own mistakes without worrying anyone but myself.

Madre never had the luxury of screwing up with no one watching or caring. First it was her parents who had to be considered, then her compa
ñ
eros and their cause, and then me. I have always admired how self-sufficient Madre is, how in control. She didn't seem to worry about pleasing people, not even me; she just went where she was needed and got done whatever job it was she wanted to do, even if it made my Bela lie down for days, saying she was sick with worry, or me whimper that I wanted her to stay longer. There were wars to fight and peace treaties to negotiate and rights to guarantee, and they weren't going to get done right without her. It never occurred to me that the downside of acting as if you control the world is that you might actually believe that you are, in fact, responsible for everything that happens, the good and the bad.

All these years Madre thought that she was the one who took my father from me. Not Memo Paredes, maker of who knows how many widows and orphans. Not the cause that Papi devoted himself to. Not Brigida, who, although her life was not a cakewalk, seems like a royal bitch, as far as I'm concerned. Not even Papi himself, with his rash choices and unlucky stars. It wasn't Madre who lured Papi into the wrong hall, where Memo surprised him after holing up in his study to practice his toast. He got there himself, with Brigida's help.

I believe in everything Madre was fighting for, but I still wish she had been more interested in watching me than in making history that night; I wish Papi had been, too. But what Madre told me tonight makes me see how flawed and rushed and risky the whole evening—their whole life—was at that point. Papi wasn't just a hero. He was also a confused, excited kid. Someone who was still easily flustered enough not to push away the wrong girl when she threw her arms around him.

There are so many questions I'm tempted to ask Mama: Does anyone else know what really happened? Has she ever confided in another one of the compa
ñ
eros? Is this why she always happens to be out of town when the commemoration of the takeover of Memo Paredes's house is celebrated? Has
she
ever killed anyone, in combat?

I don't think I want to know the answer to that one. I wouldn't want to bring up any more painful memories. I hate it that the last moment Madre saw Papi alive, it was in the arms of another woman, even if it wasn't a real kiss, even if they weren't fooling around behind her back. I wish Papi had died with his name on her lips. And my name, too. But I can't make that happen. I can't bring him back or make it so that my mother never saw him and Brigida together. All I can do is tell Mama that what happened wasn't her fault.

I did tell her that, in the dark, once we got back to our room. I brushed my teeth first, and she drank the cold tea that was left in my cup. She held the mug to her forehead, shielding her face for several minutes, but I could tell she was crying. Even though she tried to do it soundlessly, I could see the white T-shirt that covered her shoulders rising up and down, as they glowed a bit in the darkness.

I thought about hugging her, but then she would have realized that I could see she was crying. Instead I said I was tired, and unsteady on my feet, and could I lean on her arm to walk back across the room now that I was done in the bathroom? By the time we got to the edge of my bed, her eyes were dry, so I was able to kiss her good night on the cheek. Once we were both lying in our separate beds, I said, “I'm glad I know.”

“I should have told you sooner.” Her voice in the darkness sounded like she was lying in the bed next to me, but I knew she was against the wall, in the other bed, where the balsa-wood figurine on the side table wasn't an angel but a toucan.

“No. You were right to wait.” I turned on my side, rustling the sheets so that she could hear the sound, to indicate that the conversation was over and I was drifting off to sleep. I didn't want to have to say that if she had told me sooner, I would have blamed her. I would have thought that she told me about the kiss, or whatever it was, so that I'd think less of my father. Or at least that she was trying to justify her choice to devote most of her time to carrying on Papi's mission because she felt responsible for his death, even though she knew I wanted her to spend most of her time raising me, loving me back.

Blaming her would have been ridiculous. Still, I would have done it. I would have armed myself with any ammunition possible to justify my resentment that she wasn't the kind of mother I wanted to have, that she never gave me the chance to be the kind of daughter I wanted to be, as sweet and loving and involved as Beth. But I would have been wrong.

*   *   *

Talking in the darkness offered safe cover; the blackness kept us from looking at each other too closely, from judging each other too harshly. It softened the edges. But when I closed my eyes, the words took shape in front of me and I saw everything that Mama had described instead of just hearing it. Now I keep waking up in the dark room in an attempt to banish the images that appear in my sleep. First, red welts forming on the backs of Brigida's thighs as Memo Paredes's thick belt hits them with rhythmic slaps that, once I woke up, I realized were actually the sound of the ceiling fan clacking as it rotates. Then Mama, in a soggy shirt, with an open mouth out of which words won't come as she watches Memo Paredes's gun, then his leg, emerge out of his study door.

This time I woke to the sound of a gunshot. I knew it had to be a boat engine backfiring somewhere out on the lake, but still I grabbed my stomach, thinking of my father. The difference is, Papi fell forward, at least in the scenario I envisioned outside in the dark. And I'm lying on my back, which I guess makes me Memo, bleeding as his daughter's face blurs, then disappears, above him. The thought makes me feel cold and damp, as if I'm lying in something wet.

I can't believe this happened. I was never a bed wetter, not even as a child. It must have been the chamomile, and my ridiculous refusal to get up in the dark. Or is this something that happens all the time to pregnant women? No, that would be too awful. But then, I hadn't really realized that your boobs leak either, until Madre got graphic with her story. There's no use wondering why; I should just try to mop this up as best as I can without waking her.

I keep my hands out in front of me as I cross the bedroom in the dark. I make it successfully, but in the bathroom it happens again, a rush of liquid I have no control over. I don't even know if it all hit the toilet. I can't possibly clean all this up in the dark; I'll have to get the little flashlight the waiter gave us, which is lying next to the balsa-wood toucan on Madre's bedside table.