The Ladies of Managua (9 page)

So when Dolly and I arrived at Sacred Heart, of course we spoke to Betsy, who cleaned the third floor where the boarders' lived and cared for our uniforms and other clothes. She was pretty, with a shy half-smile that covered a crooked tooth. But beyond that, she had grown up in New Orleans and we most certainly hadn't. If we didn't speak to her, who was going to tell us where to get our hair set? We knew which salon the other girls went to, but not which hairdresser the best-coiffed among them used. And who would return our handkerchiefs and hair ribbons when they'd fallen under our beds or we'd left them in a classroom?

It seemed only natural to us to give Betsy a pair of gloves from papa's factory at Christmas, and she loved them; she wore them to Mass all year. She was one of the bright spots of that lonely first Christmas, before I'd met Mauricio, when Dolly and I were among five boarders who lived too far from home to return for the holidays. On Christmas Eve all five of us homesick girls were crying in the chapel when Mother Dauphinais came in and, instead of scolding us, gave us each a small box of her famous fudge. As we ate the fudge, Dolly and I told her all about Christmas at home—the nacimientos in every house and park, the way the drivers in Granada decorated their horse and carriages. And she invited us to join her in the kitchen the next morning, once the cook had put the turkey in the oven, to help make her equally famous rum balls. Dolly and I had never cooked, and Mama said we were too easily distracted to help her supervise the kitchen, but we didn't want to miss these extra hours luxuriating in the warmth of Mother Dauphinais's presence. I arrived a few minutes before the others, because I had something to confess: I had been reading
Gone with the Wind
to pass the time during the long, lonely vacation. It wasn't my copy, I pointed out, although I didn't tell her it was Connie's. But I had been enjoying it. “Oh, you can go ahead and read that, dear,” Mother Dauphinais said, patting my shoulder. “That girl just gets what was coming to her.”

There wasn't really much for us to do in the kitchen. There was no need for measuring cups, she said, pouring liberally straight from the bottle; she'd been making rum balls since before she'd taken her vows. But we helped stir, and chatted away, and drank tea, and then Betsy stopped by, straight from Mass, wearing her gloves and bringing us each a packet of her mother's famous pralines. And Mother Dauphinais seemed pleased as punch to see her. So we ignored Sister Dunphy's instructions and kept our relationship with Betsy just as we liked it.

To tell the truth, we liked Betsy more than we did some of the students, more than Silvia, definitely, so when Silvia made Betsy iron her skirt twice because the pleats weren't stiff enough, we weren't above making faces behind her back. And when Silvia left the floor, I showed Betsy the trick Gloria at home used to make starch work even better.

So one Saturday when Connie was down the hall in the lavatory and Dolly wasn't in shouting distance, I thought nothing of beckoning Betsy as she passed by the door with a stack of towels, and asking her if she could please button up the back of my dress.

“You going out with your fella, Miss Isabela?” she asked. Then she opined as to how he sure was handsome, and she told me a little bit about her fella, who worked at a restaurant in the Quarter and was saving up for them to marry in a few years. And so I asked her, without even thinking about it, if she wouldn't mind receiving mail for me from Mauricio, if he could send letters to her house, and she could give them to me when I saw her, or leave them in my underwear drawer, hidden under my balled-up stockings. She hesitated for a minute; I can see now that I was asking a lot, too much, maybe. I might have been suspended if we had been found out, but she would have been fired, and I knew her parents counted on her salary to help with her siblings, and needed everyone to do his or her share. But I was young and selfish and in love and I didn't think of this at the time, although I did make sure that the next Christmas I slipped a few bills into the fingers of her gloves to help with her household contribution.

I don't know if it's because she was brave or kind or just didn't know how to refuse me, but Betsy agreed and the letters became even more frequent and still more passionate. I don't know where Mauricio learned to write love letters or how; maybe he copied them from somewhere. I wouldn't have been able to tell, I don't read those kinds of books. Although, years later, when I came across the Song of Solomon, which no priest I had listened to ever read in church, I felt a shock of recognition, not at the words so much but at the style, the ecstasy of belonging to, and possessing, another being.

I wish I still had those letters. I thought I'd remember every word, always, but of course I've forgotten them, as I have so many things I could never have imagined losing. It would be so precious to me, now, to have proof that someone once loved me this way. I'm aware of how people see me, as an excitable old woman, one who is, perhaps, prone to exaggeration. Of course I know how much Mauricio loved me. But how nice it would be, nonetheless, to have physical evidence! Instead of just telling Mariana that revolutionaries make bad husbands, I could show her the kind of men who must make good ones, men who have no higher cause, career, or preoccupation, men whose revolution is you.

But a few years after I married Ignacio, Padre Juan Cristobal urged me to burn those letters; it was a sin to keep them, he said. Burning them would free me, he promised, would lift my depression, and I had my daughters to think about. So I stole away to a quiet corner of the courtyard on Christmas Eve, and when everyone else was shooting guns and watching fireworks, I set fire to my letters and forced myself not to cry while I watched them burn. I drank an entire glass of Ignacio's scotch as I watched the flames, something I've never done before or since. Even at the time I knew I was making a mistake. I don't like to contradict a man of the cloth, but I'm certain it was the burning of the letters that was a sin, not the keeping of them.

I don't know why Padre Juan Cristobal gave me such poor counsel. Maybe he felt loyal to Ignacio, whose family had donated so much to the church in Granada. Or maybe he truly believed he was giving me the right advice, having never been in love himself. Sometimes, now, I pray to forgive him. And to forgive myself. Because the first time I lost Mauricio, I still maintain, was not my fault. But burning the letters meant losing him a second time. And I was the one who lit the match.

 

12

Ninexin

Celia smells like she did at her debutante ball, sweet and familiar, like the jasmine we used to have in the front yard, and I wish, so strongly that it feels as if I've never wanted anything else before, that we could go back to that night. Not to the country club, of course not, but to a time when everything was ahead of us and Mama glowed with happiness and Papa would always keep us safe. I hold on to Celia for a long time; she makes no move to break our embrace. Finally Rigobertito puts his hand on my shoulder and says, “T
í
a Ninny.”

And even that makes me shaky, that stupid nickname I never forced him to drop. Rigobertito resembles his mother in looks but his grandfather in temperament. He has Papa's way of making sure the machinery of society runs smoothly; if he's breaking up our sisterly hug, it must mean that other people are waiting to speak to us, that they are in need of my sister's embrace, too. So I step back from Celia and immediately feel her absence; I keep feeling the need to reach for something that's not there.

Some colleagues from the ministry are filtering in through the door; they've come not so much to honor Papa but to show respect for my loss. And I wish they hadn't. I don't want to see anyone from work, I don't want to be strong and competent. I appreciate the show of sympathy, of respect, but I wish they had chosen to come to the funeral tomorrow instead; surely I won't be expected to speak to anyone there, and they still would have fulfilled their obligation. But the funeral is an hour away, in Granada, where Papa was born and lived until Mama was pregnant with me. Her father's glove business was starting to falter, and they felt they could escape her family's drama, and expand Papa's law practice, if they made the move to Managua. No one wants to waste a whole morning driving to the funeral of a coworker's relative and back, no matter how much he respects the colleague. I don't blame them; I wouldn't want to either. But did they have to come tonight, when I'm expected to talk to people and smile politely through tears? And now I'll be obligated to take note of who came and lie and tell them how much I appreciate it at work next week, when I know all I'll want to do is hide out at the office and pretend that life is normal and nothing has changed.

The smart thing to do would be to get it over with, to clear Celia out of the way so that my coworkers can march right up and shake my hand, offer their sympathy. But I don't have it in me to face them yet, so I busy myself squatting down to talk to Rigobertito's boys. They're looking a bit shell-shocked themselves; this is probably their first funeral, their first dead body, too, and they loved their great-grandfather in the way that happy, rambunctious five- and seven-year-old boys do a man in his eighties: they climbed on him more than they should have, they laughed with glee at his stories and screamed in delighted terror at the way he'd pop out his dentures to scare them. They'll cry the first few times they notice he's not there at Sunday dinner but soon they'll get used to life without him. He's just one of a vast team of older people who love them. As I am, too, I suppose. They're quiet tonight, but normally they tear around the house opening drawers and upending shelves and it surprises me how much I love it, and them, how eager I am to see them again, to let them rifle through my bag and hug me with cookie-clutching hands that leave crumbs on my suit jackets. I said as much to Mariana last Christmas when she was here, that this must be what it's like to have a grandchild, and she laughed and said, “Well, God bless Rigobertito for letting those two take over his life. Between him and Beth, seeing how they're run ragged, I don't know if I could handle having kids.”

“Really?” I asked before I could think better of it. I couldn't articulate why I was surprised. It's not that I view her as particularly maternal, or that I want her to settle down. She's always had boyfriends, so I suppose she's had plenty of chances if she were interested. Even though she's thirty-three, an age at which her grandmother and I both had adolescent children, Mariana doesn't seem in a particular rush to start a family, unlike Rigobertito, who married his college girlfriend before he began business school. Mariana still seems so unsettled, and I want her to make her own life first, a life that matters, before having a family. It just hadn't occurred to me that she might have already decided never to do so, that she wasn't interested in motherhood.

I don't pry into her private life, and she doesn't offer any information unless Mama is around to tease it out of her. Last year, when Mariana was here for Christmas and Rigobertito kept trying to set her up with a friend from business school, she announced that she had recently started dating someone, but she didn't want to discuss details until things got more serious. “That's okay,” I told her. “I'm used to dealing with classified information.”

I wasn't joking, but she laughed and relaxed. I was grateful for the laughter, the way it eased the conversation. Along with the new boyfriend, she had a new job. She had just switched galleries, taking on a more influential position than she'd had at the last one. And she was happy to talk about that, both what she wore to work (Mama's question) and what the job consisted of (mine). She researched promising new artists, she explained, acquired new works for the gallery, and advised collectors on what pieces were likely to appreciate in value, and would be good investments.

“So impressive!” Mama couldn't stop grinning and I knew she was picturing Mariana waving a manicured hand at some painting, like a model on one of the game shows she used to watch in Miami, as a host of wealthy, single businessmen looked on in awe.

“It's great experience if I want to start my own gallery; I'm making a name, developing a following,” Mariana said. “When I get a little more established, I'm going to try and cultivate some Nicaraguan artists, maybe plan a trip to Solentiname.” Just the sound of the name made me happy. It's a beautiful word, of course, but also, it may be the one place where Mariana's career and mine could coincide: some of my colleagues had hidden there during the war, and a few still remain today. Inspired by Ernesto Cardenal's liberation theology and cultivation of the arts, they're working toward a better future by creating their paintings and sculptures. I'll admit it's not my idea of nation-building; I like the mental puzzles of political engagement, arguing over new laws, discussing policy with foreign officials. But Mariana is an artist and if love of art and love of politics come together anywhere, it's Solentiname. The area could be common ground for us, I thought. I could introduce her to people, help her in her exploration, and maybe she'd ask for my advice or even invite me to visit the archipelago with her.

The summer she was seventeen, after Marianna returned from that art school in California, she spent most of her days unsuccessfully trying to find Internet connections to email a boy she'd met while there. But I'd asked her to bring me a new pair of running shoes from Miami, and she brought hers, too, and we did spend one weekend hiking the Canyon of Somoto. We didn't argue once that weekend, but we did talk. I don't think she sulked for the entire forty-eight-hour period. At the time, we agreed to visit one part of Nicaragua that Mariana wasn't familiar with on each of her trips, but since she started working and her visits have become shorter; that hasn't really happened, or it's been relegated to day trips a short hike in El Chocoyero, an overnight in L
é
on to see the Purísima celebrations. Solentiname would be the perfect place to restart the tradition.