The Ladies of Managua (7 page)

Don Pedro pushes my elbow softly, and before I start walking, I turn and kiss his cheek, because I won't be able to kiss my father's again, not after tonight. It's selfish of me; I've embarrassed Don Pedro. But he indulges me because, under the circumstances, how can he not?

I walk into the inner room, where Papa is lying in his casket. Mama is already sitting in one of the chairs placed next to it, crying, dabbing at her face with a lace-edged handkerchief. That's what I forgot to bring; I knew when I picked up my purse to get into the car that I'd overlooked something, but when I checked my keys were there, and my wallet and cell phone, too, and I couldn't think what else it might be. A handkerchief. Mama is never without one. But this isn't one of her everyday handkerchiefs, machine-embroidered with an
I,
the kind Dolly gives her a box of every Christmas. This one appears to be edged in handmade lace, and she has threaded a black ribbon through it. Or maybe it came that way. Do they make mourning handkerchiefs? Mama would know, but I don't. She's probably told me but I haven't listened. All this knowledge of etiquette and protocol that she has, it always seemed so irrelevant, a useless burden to carry around, but now I find myself wishing I knew about mourning handkerchiefs, wishing, even, that I were the kind of woman who never left home without a handkerchief tucked in her handbag. It seems disrespectful, somehow, not to have one now.

“He looks very handsome,” Mama says, and I nod, even though she's lying. He looks like a transvestite except for the navy suit. It's the rouge that offends me; the dead are supposed to be pale. Papa hasn't been ruddy in years, and he never blushed, not that I remember, anyway. Why force him to start now?

It's the rouge that makes hot tears seep out of my eyes. I lean over to kiss Papa good-bye, hoping my mouth or my tears will wash off some of the pink. But when my lips touch his powdery cheek, I realize the rouge doesn't matter. He's not in there. I don't know why I thought that he would be, that it would still feel like I was kissing my father even if he couldn't reach out and put an arm around me, press me to him long enough so that I knew I was special, but not so hard or for so long that it seemed like he was hugging me for more time than he did Celia.

Mama's cook told me that in her neighborhood, they say that the minute a person dies, his soul leaves the body and floats around for forty days, watching those he loved in life, saying good-bye. I wish I believed Papa were hovering around us here, seeing how many silly flowers people sent, how beautiful Mariana looks, how quickly she rushed to be here. And how Mama is crying, wiping her face decorously with a handkerchief that does him credit. It's not that I'm sure he isn't here, it's just that I wish I knew for a fact he was; it's the question of certainty that troubles me, always has.

The one thing I do know is that if he is here, he's not bothered by the rouge on his cheeks or my lack of handkerchief. He never was. Papa was a rarity for his age and class; he did what was expected of him, but because he felt it was right, not because he cared what others thought or said. I remember so many other times I kissed his cheek while Mama cried, wondering aloud what people would think, what they would say, how she could live with whatever fresh shame I was bringing upon the household. Whatever I did that wasn't to her liking, she could add a variation to that same theme, a situation-specific complaint. When I told her I wouldn't come out at the club, she said I was giving up the best night in a young girl's life, and humiliating her, and hurting Celia's feelings by implying that there was anything wrong with participating in a debutante ball, and that it was all that useless, skinny boy's fault that I had such crazy ideas.

“Ninexin doesn't have to do anything that she feels she shouldn't,” Papa said that night, and kissed me on the forehead. “Plus, she'll save me a pile of money.”

It was almost the exact same thing he said when I explained that I didn't want a big wedding like Celia's, no tuxedos, no linen tablecloths, just a priest and Manuel and maybe a barbecue in the backyard. But that time, when I jumped up and kissed his cheek, Papa held me longer than usual and said, “Are you sure you want to do this?”

I realize now that he didn't mean the barbecue wedding. He meant the marriage itself. I was so young. A decade younger than Mariana is now, more. But back then it was normal for twenty-year-old women to marry, and the Revolución gave it all even more of a sense of urgency than the Church did. Neither Manuel nor I wanted to sin. Nor did we want to be separated. And so marriage—a simple, non-bourgeois ceremony—was the answer. It would allow us to be together in every way, physically, spiritually, politically, and to fight for what we believed in. And we believed in so much in those days.

It wasn't what Papa had planned for me, but he was the one who made me feel I could do anything I wanted, even if other people didn't approve. When I got involved in the youth movement, Mama said that our country needed to change, but that it wasn't my responsibility to change it. If she'd had a son who wanted to join the Frente, to fight, even, she would have supported him, she said. “But each time you give birth to a girl,” she told me, “after just a hint of disappointment, you feel relief, because a daughter will never leave to fight a war or work far away. A daughter will stay close to you always, even after she marries.” She never expected a daughter like me.

I wonder if Papa wished Celia or I had been a boy. He never said so. And when we had vacation after Christmas and at Easter, he taught us how to ride bikes, how to fish in the lagoon. Or taught me, anyway. Celia didn't like to get sweaty or dirty. Still, he didn't exclude her. At the time I assumed that she
chose
not to do those things; she just wasn't interested in them. But now that I've raised a daughter myself, watched her long for things and fear them at the same time, I wonder if perhaps Celia thought she wasn't capable of doing them, or if she worried about inviting ridicule by trying and failing. Mariana would be furious if I ever said it, but that's how she is with her paintings. She says she doesn't show them to gallery owners yet because she's still learning, developing her skills, but it's really because she's terrified someone will tell her they're not any good, even though they're wonderful. Mariana worries too much about what people think; that's another thing that skipped a generation.

Maybe that's what Manuel saw in me when we met in the church youth group—a willingness to try, to walk the muddy streets of the poorer neighborhoods delivering food, and later, ideas. It wasn't so much that I lacked fear. It was more that it never occurred to me to feel it. The world seemed ripe for improvement when I was a teenager, but somehow it felt safe to me, too.

And that was Papa's fault, I guess. He was the reason I turned out this way, even though he steered clear of politics. He made me feel invincible until life taught me otherwise. This was what I had lost now, the person who could still make me feel fearless.

I pressed my cheek against his one more time, just to prove that I didn't fear this either, this powdery skin that didn't warm to my touch. When I rose up, I saw Mariana flinch, then busy herself rummaging through her large leather bag. Had I embarrassed her? She'd asked on the phone if we were going to have an open casket, and the question surprised me; I don't think I've ever seen a closed one, except during the Revolución, if a body wasn't recovered, or was too mangled to display. How can you say a proper good-bye if you don't see a person, or the shell they've left behind, for the last time?

I tried to think of funerals she's gone to, but the only one I know of for certain was Beth's grandfather's in Virginia. They must have closed caskets there. Was today too much for Mariana? Too Latin somehow?

I took my place beside her as she pulled a packet of Kleenex out of her bag. “It's not quite my Bela's handkerchief,” she said, and handed it to me with her strange half-smile, which made me accept it although my eyes were dry now.

“He made me feel I could do anything,” I told her, because I wanted her to understand. “You know?”

“I know how wonderful Abuelo is. Was,” she corrected herself. “But no, I don't really know what it's like to have a father.” And just like that the moment was over, and her back was facing me as she leaned over to whisper some words of comfort to Mama.

 

10

Maria

As soon as I heard myself saying the words, I regretted doing so; talk about hitting a man when he's down! But it infuriates me the way Madre can be so obtuse, so wrapped up in herself. How can she not be aware that every time I see a father holding his daughter's hand on the subway, I wonder what that's like? It's ghoulish, I know, to envy her even this, the pain of losing her father. I'm like a twelve-year-old girl watching
Titanic,
wishing I knew the exquisite pain of having loved and lost because my love would be different than everyone else's, so much grander, more profound.

I told a therapist in college that I had to leave the common room each time Beth spoke to her dad on the phone, to avoid hearing the way she'd say, “Love you!” and hang up, eager to move on to the next activity, already having forgotten what they spoke about, whatever advice he had given her, which she wouldn't remember until his check arrived later in the week. Imagining his unheard responses on the other end of the line, picturing him staring at the phone after she hung up, it made me short of breath. The therapist—he wasn't a psychiatrist, just someone getting a PhD in psychiatry, but he was kind and the mental health services were free if you didn't go over ten hours a semester—he told me that I shouldn't judge my feelings or myself for having them, should just recognize them and let them pass. I laughed, the nervous giggle that was my trademark in college. I couldn't help it. I imagined a scene like something from
The Electric Company,
which my Bela let me watch in Miami; I saw flashing neon words float past me as I waved at them: “Jealousy.” “Anger.” “Sorrow.”

It's a nice thought, the idea that you could remove guilt from a toxic cocktail of emotions by letting the others have free rein. But it's just that—a thought. I know I shouldn't have said what I did to Madre. At worst, it makes me a sadist. Ever since the first time I realized I was the only person with the ability to make my mother blush and stammer, I've reveled in my own power. I'm not proud of this. Well, that's not true. I'm not proud of the reveling, but I am proud of the power. It makes me feel unique, strong in my own right, that I'm the only one who can intimidate this woman who stalks through life, whether in camouflage or in tropical brights, handing down decisions, enacting changes, affecting everyone and everything she touches. I was seventeen and in Managua for spring break the first time I realized I had this talent. I'd been admitted to a summer program at CalArts near San Francisco, but Madre wanted me to spend the summer in Managua with her, interning in her office at the foreign ministry, working on my Spanish, which she said I spoke like an American. “Dude, I am an American,” I said, just to annoy her. I knew I would capitulate in the end; I liked being in Managua with my relatives, even, when I didn't let my teen angst get the better of me, enjoyed being with Madre herself. What bothered me was that she seemed to know it, too, and the clearer that became, the angrier I got.

“My Bela says I should go to CalArts,” I told her. “And my abuelo, too.”

“They're not your parents.” She pressed back her shoulders the way she did before she had to give a speech. “They're your grandparents. I'm the one who gets to decide! I'm your mother.”

“Okay,” I answered. “Then let's just ask my father.”

I don't know what possessed me to say that. It had gotten to the point where neither of us ever mentioned Papi much; Madre certainly wasn't going to bring him up and I had moved on from fantasizing about how handsome my heroic papi must have been to noticing how cute the editor of our school's literary magazine was. One point for Sigmund Freud, I guess. But I didn't think it was fair that by her logic, Madre was the only person left on earth who had the right to weigh in on my future. What surprised me wasn't so much that I brought up my papi, but her reaction. She left the room. She didn't storm out or slam the door behind her. It wasn't like anything you'd see on my Bela's TV shows. But she was gone three hours and when she came back she said, “Fine, you can do the program. I made some calls and it comes highly recommended. But after those six weeks, the rest of the summer you're with me in Managua.”

Madre said it as if this were her idea, as if she were giving me a command, telling me what we were going to eat for dinner, and where, and with whom. But the truth is, the scenario she was describing was exactly how I would have designed my summer if I thought she'd let me. I wanted to spend time in Managua, to see Rigobertito, whom I grew up with like we were siblings, and whom I only saw on holidays since he'd gone to college. And I also wanted to do the program and live in a dorm with kids who had no idea who I was or who my mother was or why I had no father or even where Nicaragua was. I had gotten exactly what I wanted. And while that fact on its own was mind-boggling, I wasn't so stunned that I failed to notice something else, too—I now knew that when I needed to, I could invoke my father and hurt my mother.

I knew it wouldn't always be the right thing to do. In fact, it usually isn't. And I certainly shouldn't have referred to him, even obliquely, now, at Abuelo's funeral, when I should be supporting Madre and my Bela, or at least keeping track of what's hidden in my pocket, so it doesn't fall into the wrong hands. Instead I had lashed out, and I know what I said reveals me to be stunted emotionally. Beth would say I'm blaming the victim here, but Madre always seems to bring out the worst in me. For so many years, my entire childhood, really, I tried to be my best self around her. On the last day of first grade before Christmas break, our music teacher let us watch a video of “The Nutcracker” in class, and at the end, when she turned the lights on and everyone lined up for recess, Amy Santiago refused to stand. I was the last person in line, and she motioned to me to come over and whispered, “On the way out, tell Miss Thomas that I'm not getting out of my seat until my mom comes to get me.” I asked why not, but she just looked down at her desk. And that's when I saw something dripping from the back of her seat. I did what she said, but I couldn't believe it. Not that she'd peed her pants; it had happened to Kimberly Nosewicz in Brownies the week before. But that she wasn't embarrassed to let her mother know she'd had an accident. When Madre came to visit, my Bela dressed me in my cutest clothes and let me stay up late talking to her, singing all the songs I'd learned in school, reading the Spanish picture books she'd brought me. But even though I got all the songs right, Madre never stayed past Three Kings Day.