(A Twig)
Author: J. Angell
The Stairs to Grandma
I’d take a colectivo from across the school, the one going downtown. I might hang around a little with a couple of friends, but never for long. The colectivo, a car that picked up as many as five passengers and stopped wherever someone asked, took me straight to Plaza San Martín. From there, I walked to my grandmother’s home.
It was maybe a fifteen-minute brisk walk, and I always arrived energized. I can see it so clearly now, though I hadn’t thought about it in decades. Downtown was crowded, as downtowns tend to be, and the walk was long enough, but I felt elated.
Every step brought me closer to her.
Rosa did not live in the usual apartment building. It was more like a two-story commercial building, with half-iron gates and steep cement stairs. There was no handrail or banister. Somehow, she had rigged a rope from upstairs so she could pull the door open without having to go up and down those steps. I still wonder where she hooked that rope.
I remember the joy I felt rushing up those cement stairs, already anticipating the moment I would step into her space: her living room, the old radiola on the left, surrounded by small decorative objects; a beautiful figurine of a doll in a flamenco pose. She displayed my school projects there, too.
Her old “colonial” golden furniture was a point of pride. Every piece was covered in thick plastic.
It was a modest home. But for a woman who, at fourteen, found herself alone in the big city, working as a domestic and impregnated several times by her employer’s son, it was an achievement.
Grandmother Rosa was fifty-five when she took me into her home, only weeks after her daughter Julia gave birth to me. No one asked her. She certainly did not have to do it, and realistically, she did not have the resources to raise another child.
But she chose to care for me.
She mothered me.
My very first memory of this lifetime is of her gently pouring warm water over me in a steel wash tub she kept only for that purpose.
She was the first person I called mother.
Until Julia insisted she be called Mamá.
Rosa was relegated to Mamama.
And then came the day I was abruptly taken away.
What I wish for now is to return to those same spaces with her. To be among her things again. The simple furnishings. The old radiola. The plastic-covered furniture. The place of comfort and safety. The simple joys she knew how to enjoy.
For the first five years of my life, that was home.
Mercedes
“Well, I don’t know about that, but I can’t take sides, so let’s just leave it like that. God bless you for your help…”
Mila had recently written Mercedes a letter which included a brief mention of how abusive Apophis had always been, not only to her but also to their father and, in later years, even to Julia, his most ardent admirer.
Her voice message, not even an “I’m sorry that happened to you,” sounded as though she wanted to maintain control but couldn’t.
Her anger came across loud and clear.
And it was precisely that repressed rage that brought back recollections of odd mishaps Mercedes had claimed happened whenever Apophis was mentioned.
Recollections from when Mila was five and Mercedes was a budding, rambunctious teenager, loud at school, emboldened by Yvette, her even louder best buddy.
At some point, still at the Salaverry house, Mercedes gradually went from a good-natured, at times unruly child, to spending time alone. She drew beautiful pieces of ethereal women, faces from somewhere only she could see. She collected fan magazines and stayed in her room for hours on end.
“There she is, laying down. That’s all she knows how to do!”
Julia’s words, piercing as a razor, echo in their mind to this day.
In between evictions, the children were thrown out of the fancy schools their father had enrolled them in. Mercedes withdrew into her room, bothered by the most mundane things.
It was all attributed to her being “difficult.”
One of the lasting memories Mila has kept of Mercedes all these years is of watching Yvette help her climb onto the open back of a Jeep, the two of them laughing, full of purpose and possibility, heading off in pursuit of their grand idea to finish high school at night.
Soon after that, Yvette was never mentioned again.
Mercedes became reclusive, was allowed to drop out of high school, the drawings eventually stopped.
Apophis, just one year younger, roamed the streets late into the night, dispensing unsolicited advice pertaining to masculinity and the inferior nature of women.
This he learned from Julia, who insisted, “El hombre cae parado en todas partes.”
A man lands on his feet everywhere.
Much like a cat, which, in her mind, proved the superiority of men.
“If I had a do-over, I’d be reborn as a man and never have fucking children,” she’d say.
Often.
No exaggeration.
So while Mercedes was labeled “mental” for her social withdrawal, Apophis was admired for roaming the streets, preoccupied with his own sexual proclivities and delusions of superiority.
***
Mila had been at the Salaverry house for less than three years when, inexplicably, she made up a story about a man coming into the house at night.
A wild story.
Mila started telling Julia and the siblings that a man had begun sneaking into the house.
“He comes from the Continental Bank building, that one,” she said, pointing to a tall structure. “He talks with me. He’s nice.”
As ludicrous as the story was, the moment came when Mila was told to repeat it in front of her father, while Julia and Mercedes stood around, listening.
The girl, feeling empowered, added a couple of details to the already unlikely saga of the nightly visitor, which must have amused her father greatly.
She was well aware of her own lie.
She was also aware that through it, she was being heard and seen, if only briefly.
Her father leaned on a short wall, listening intently, while Julia looked on with disgust.
As he headed back into the house, Mercedes blurted out:
“That’s true, because some of my stuff is inside out…”
“What? What did you say?” he asked, much to Julia’s consternation and Mila’s delight.
The girl knew instantly that Mercedes’ claim was as fake as her own story of the visiting stranger.
“Yes,” Mercedes said. “I’ve had my underwear on backwards sometimes…”
Neither girl understood the implications.
Was she, too, made to play along with Apophis’ nasty bouncing “game”? Did it escalate?
No one thought her comment relevant enough to ask questions.
Mila’s story of the friendly intruder faded and was never brought up again.
***
The lack of cohesiveness and supervision made for a pattern of risk.
There was Apophis, overtly favored and sexually preoccupied. Julia, mocking instead of protecting. Mercedes, withdrawing further into herself, parents too quick to dismiss potentially disturbing claims.
No direct accusation.
Mere speculation.
Mercedes, throughout her life, was labeled as the “mentally ill” one before anyone ever asked what she might have endured. Everything she said, remembered, or protested got filed under that label.
I still wonder what happened before the label hardened around her.
Almost Funny
I never once saw him angry.
Not really angry.
Not the way Julia got angry.
Her insults came easily, sometimes within earshot of the children, sometimes loud enough for the neighbors, and maybe even for innocent passersby who had only meant to walk down the street and got an earful.
It was always one of those he makes me lose it situations.
As if he had forced her hand.
As if his very existence had reached across the room and shaken her into cruelty.
“Look at you, you klutz. All you’re good for is writing stories about nothing. Still editing that damn book?”
That damn book was El Espejo.
When his novel piqued the interest of a movie producer, Fernando was happy. Proud, even. He told people. There had been an offer, a conversation, even a tentative new title.
Julia laughed.
“Wonder if it’s even true.”
It was true.
The film never happened. The deal fell apart somewhere, as things often do. But the offer had been real.
So was the book.
So was the man she constantly mocked.
Once, she chased him through the house with one of her heels in hand.
A heel.
Not a slipper. Not a rolling pin, which at least would have had some old comedic dignity.
A heel.
She chased him right into Mila’s bed.
Mila did what children do in ridiculous emergencies.
She pretended to be asleep.
Years later, the memory does seem rather comical from a distance: Fernando ducking, Julia storming behind him, heel raised as if it were just another prop in the tragicomedy of their lives.
Almost.
Then the afterthought arrives.
There was a child in that bed.
Julia mocked him for years. Then she came to the United States and, once here, behaved as if he had never existed.
Three years later, Fernando died.
“I am his widow now,” she said. “I’m a widow.”
The word seemed to please her.
Not the loss.
The title.
***
I never once saw him lose his temper with her. Never saw him raise a hand. Never heard him scream back. Once or twice, exasperation crossed his face, and he would quickly leave the room.
How did he manage that?
Outside the house, Julia performed the submissive wife.
Inside, she ruled with a heavy hand.
Yet Fernando remained calm.
Maybe calm was the only safe place left for him to stand.
***
As a child, Mila did not realize how grateful she would one day be that her father stayed in that house.
Because as bad as things were, they never became what they might have become had he walked away.
A terrible kind of gratitude.
Still.
Thank you, father.
The Roses Under the Bridge
They met when Julia was almost eighteen and Fernando was nearly thirty: handsome, articulate, unemployed, and overdependent on his mother.
His last name still carried a small degree of influence. Before the family moved to the capital, they had enjoyed considerable wealth through land and investments.
The entire fortune, family legend suggested, had been lost to poker tables and Cuban cigars lit with large bills.
Fernando lived with his mother and father in a large house. His mother was known to discreetly fill his pockets with cash and cigarettes.
A broker of favors by day.
Don Juan by night.
Across town, the Berkemeyer family lived in an affluent community and were known for owning several household-name brands. One of their sons, Gustavo, had also shown interest in Julia.
There are not many details about how she met either man, especially the wealthy one.
But she boasted of his pursuit for decades.
Julia’s two suitors.
Fernando and Gustavo.
One with a name still faintly perfumed by old money.
The other with money.
***
In the middle of 1949, Fernando arranged for Julia to give birth at a relative’s home in the next town over.
When the baby girl was born, Gus made his way to the remote place locals referred to as “down by the river, under the bridge,” and presented Julia with a stunning arrangement of roses.
Julia’s sister, a teenager then, remembered those roses for the rest of her life.
What Julia did during the next few years was rarely discussed. She had a baby to care for, no income, and no wish to seek support from relatives.
For a couple of years, she avoided more pregnancies.
But by the end of 1954, she had given birth to two more children.
And she was pregnant with her fourth.
***
Then Julia had a striking realization.
Leaving her three small children on Fernando’s parents’ doorstep might force the matter.
So that is exactly what she did.
She walked up to their front door, settled the children there, rang the bell, and walked away.
It worked.
Soon afterward, she was invited to stay.
His parents fled the house.
After ten years or so, they were all evicted.
***
Rumor had it Julia wanted no more children because she already had two girls and two boys.
And for the first few years of marriage, there were none.
Other than the broken mahogany chair and the marble telephone stand, the house had no furnishings.
Well, old beds.
Four children.
A house that had once belonged to someone else’s parents.
A pressured marriage.
And then, at thirty-two, Julia found herself pregnant again.
The same rumor had it she never wanted it.
Whether “it” meant the pregnancy, the child, the marriage, or the life that had closed around her, no one ever said.
The Ceremony of Contempt
The sisters had been estranged for years, though estranged may be too clean a word for what existed between them.
Estrangement suggests a break.
What they had was older than that.
They had grown up in the same household of willful blindness and secrets, both shaped by it, though not in equal measure.
One learned to survive by silence.
The other learned the usefulness of piety.
There had been a time, as adults, when they tried to make something resembling friendship out of biology.
A few visits. Calendar holidays. Group vacations.
The kind of gatherings that looked like family, especially in photographs.
But even then, the arrangement had its own quiet accounting.
One sister doing most of the labor and paying more than her share.
***
Years passed.
There had been an early marriage, sudden and ill-suited, the kind families approve of because it looks like “the right thing to do” from the outside.
Another child followed.
So did disappointment.
Then came a relationship no one wanted to name except as accusation.
No one asked questions.
The relationship, as mismatched as the previous one, lasted for a bit over a decade.
But when we came to be, suddenly everyone found their speaking voice.
“If you marry that woman, you need to know I’ll be no part of it.”
The woman was me.
No one had asked her to be part of anything because, by then, the fragile attempts the two sisters had made at closeness had long faded.
Still, she voiced her opposition as though she had been personally wronged.
Her hostility toward me had the heat of a jilted lover more than a sibling.
***
There were suggestions, of course. Offensive, familiar ones.
Why not go back to someone from before? Why not choose the arrangement easier to explain? Why not return to a life that had already failed, so long as it looked more acceptable from the sidewalk?
That was the strange part.
Not the disapproval. Disapproval is ordinary.
It was the possession.
That is where the distaste remains to this day.
***
As their mother’s health deteriorated, the devout sister began making decisions quietly.
Strategic decisions, presented later as unavoidable.
Their mother, who had saved money in small, stubborn ways for decades, was moved despite her wish to remain home.
Cash that had been tucked away over the years was gathered in secret and controlled.
No conversation was had with the daughter who had also been born to that mother.
Later, the money was distributed with the same hierarchy that had always existed between them.
Gold pieces went here.
Larger sums went there.
The most favored were given generous amounts and a few pieces of jewelry.
The distribution followed categories invented by one person alone.
My wife received a small money order.
Not cash pressed into her hand with tenderness.
Not a sister saying, “This is what Mom left for you.”
Not even the dignity of a face-to-face interaction.
A money order.
Worse, relatives were turned into witnesses, made to confirm that the money had been written out and sent, as though my wife were not grieving but potentially troublesome.
As though the important thing was not what she had been denied all along, but that no one could later accuse the righteous one of having denied it.
The money order was torn and discarded.
It was not the amount that stayed with us.
It was the ceremony of contempt.
Still, even that is not the moment I return to most.
The thing that remains lodged in me happened at the end.
***
When their mother was dying, my wife was allowed into the room.
Permission granted.
Access controlled.
A daughter admitted to the final threshold of the woman who had given birth to her.
It should have been private.
Not perfect. Not sentimental.
Not the kind of scene people pretend death gives them.
But private.
A daughter beside her dying mother.
But weeks later, we learned that the moment had not been private at all.
Images had been made.
The room had been documented.
Pieces of that final intimacy had been shared beyond the room, beyond my wife’s consent, beyond ordinary decency.
I remember the sensation in my body when she told me.
Something heavier than surprise.
A suffocating disgust.
What stunned me most was not only that it had happened, but that my wife seemed accustomed to their intrusions.
I wanted to say, “Do you understand what they did?”
Not because she was naive.
Because she had been trained, for too long, to accept being managed.
Her grief had been managed.
Her inheritance had been managed.
Her access to her mother had been managed.
Even her final goodbye had been handled by other people, turned into proof, possession, preserved to maintain whatever story they needed it to serve.
And that, more than any insult directed at me, is what remains in my mind.
The intrusion.
The theft of a final moment.
The Girl Who Drew Women Who Floated
At the Salaverry house, Mila was sometimes allowed to share Mercedes’s room, though Mercedes made her dissatisfaction known. She had misgivings about the child.
Rock music would blast from Mercedes’s room. Then she’d appear nonchalantly where Mila was minding her own business.
“You can come in, if you want.”
Those rare invitations into Mercedes’s private space felt almost unguarded. The Beatles played loud as she flipped through her prized collection of fan magazines.
The nostalgia of dusk brings those moments back now, their significance only recently understood.
Mercedes had an innate ability to draw women whose forms seemed almost ethereal. She would spend hours alone with all sorts of pencils, charcoal, ordinary pencils, whatever she had, always drawing women’s faces with a variety of expressions, women in flowing gowns that seemed to move, on sketch pads, notebooks.
One afternoon, right after coming home from school, Mila heard a terrifying scream followed by a terrible crashing sound.
It was the first and only time Mila ever saw Juana sob.
Julia had taken Mercedes’s entire collection of magazines and thrown them all out.
Mercedes crashed every dinner dish in the bathtub.
Of course, the story was revised afterward. Then it became that Mercedes had gone off in a rampage. The magazines, supposedly, had taken up too much space.
After that dramatic episode, Mercedes was observed rather than seen.
Mercedes and Mila were never close. There were a few years between them, and by the time Mila was placed at Salaverry, Mercedes was almost a teenager.
Still, they both existed in the same sick environment where Julia ruled, and where girls were treated as more of a nuisance than anything else.
***
Years passed. In time, Julia rented an apartment in Queens and allowed both Mercedes and Stuardo to move in with her, apparently on the premise that they would eventually split expenses with her.
Stuardo seemed absent. He began speaking of delusions. He often smoked, drank to excess, and had started acting erratically in the community.
Mila offered to take him to a local psychiatrist, chosen right out of the Yellow Pages.
“What did the doctor say?” Julia asked anxiously.
“That Stuardo has schizophrenia. He’s got to be on medication from now on.”
As dry as it sounds, that was the extent of it.
***
Jobs didn’t always come easily for Mercedes, whether factory work or part-time hours at the mall. She held on to the Alexander’s job the longest.
She became Stuardo’s caretaker.
After a few years of watching over him, Mercedes sought mental health services. What no one spoke of was the tremendous toll that sitting all day in the apartment with Stuardo had taken on her.
The story got edited to shame Mercedes for seeking help.
And wasn’t she lucky to have a place to live?
Mercedes was used by Julia as a caretaker for Stuardo for about twenty years, then discarded when she was no longer needed, just when Mercedes herself needed a hand.
Not that anyone ever admitted it.
That is how Mercedes’s whole persona disappeared into one billable psychiatric label and endless medications.
“Yeah, I told you, she’s always been weird,” Julia would comment to whoever asked.
Mila was in her own turmoil by then, descending further into addiction. In between binges, she clipped a few classified ads to encourage Mercedes to look for her own space.
“Listen, Mila, we buy The New York Times here, so don’t send me any more clippings,” Mercedes said hastily, almost offended.
And not long after came Julia’s warning:
“Stop telling her she could rent an apartment on her own. She might end up believing you!”
Two decades went by. Julia retired, got a mortgage, and moved them all into a house in Hartford.
The Apophis-approved tenants didn’t pan out. Julia grew desperate.
In short order, Julia sold the house, made a financial agreement, and moved to New Jersey.
The agreement did not include Mercedes.
Julia told her to leave.
Next thing she knew, after twenty years as an unpaid caretaker, Mercedes was on her own.
Her mental health began to spiral, yet she still managed to find services. She rented rooms at the Y. Eventually, she was referred to a subsidized housing program, which led to a studio.
A relapse led to conservatorship and, subsequently, placement in a facility.
***
Years later, Mila understood something she could not have known as a child: not being invited into Julia’s household may have saved her.
As a young woman, she had wished to belong there, or at least to be allowed to stay. But looking back at Mercedes and Stuardo, she saw the bargain more clearly.
Julia did not offer shelter.
She assigned roles.
Stuardo was protected.
Mercedes was used to protect him.
And when Mercedes herself needed protection, there was no role left for her.
The girl who drew women who seemed to float right off the paper.
Julia made sure she went nowhere.
The Exit
Epilogue
Julia sat in the nursing home room with the television on.
The sight brought back the memory of Julia watching television in her bedroom, back when HBO was advanced. How many times Mila had wished for an invitation to watch a movie from that old gray folding chair, the same one she slept on during the rare occasions she was allowed to spend the night.
The blue light from the screen washed over Julia’s face. Sundown fell across her knees and the nightstand, where a brush sat unused.
She always liked things to be looked after or, at least, to appear that way.
Mila paused at the door for a moment.
Neither to condemn nor to condone.
Not to embrace her. Not even to ask why.
Why did you have me taken away from my home?
You did not want me.
Why did you help the others, but never me?
Did you ever regret it?
No. Mila had not come for any of that.
***
Never flashy, Mila wore clean, pressed clothes. Moccasins. Clothes made well enough to last. A blazer that sat right on her shoulders. A shirt that fit just right.
She stood there in front of Julia in all of that.
Not fancy.
No pretense.
No submission.
Assembled.
Will you look into my eyes?
Julia’s expression shifted between fear and disdain.
And Mila wondered, absurdly, whether this would have pleased her.
Julia always noticed.
The gray chinos. The oversized, frayed red blouse with the tiny pocket on the left breast. The red flip-flops.
Always the red flip-flops.
“Did you notice she came in flip-flops? To my house?”
For days on end.
Her house.
As if lack of money were mud Mila had dragged into her apartment.
As if she had not known.
That one late afternoon, as they were about to settle in for an HBO movie and Mila was expected to leave, Julia got up to walk her to the front door. Quietly, she slipped a folded twenty-dollar bill into Mila’s left hand while the others sat nearby.
“Okay then, dear. Take care. Call me…”
Her face remained composed, frozen in a quarter smile, as if forced her into charity.
Mila took the money.
Of course she took it.
She needed it.
Another humiliation.
How Julia gave it.
That Mila had to take it.
For weeks, she wished she had said no.
Keep it. Keep your twenty and the little performance. Keep the satisfaction of seeing me degrade myself by taking anything from you.
But addiction has no dignity.
So she took it.
And Julia knew she would.
***
The old crime stories played on, but Julia no longer watched television. These days, it was only background noise.
Smaller now.
Not softened.
Just reduced.
There is a difference.
Her hands rested on the blanket. The same hands that had struck the face of a child for things like stealing cocoa or breaking a vase.
Mila stepped closer.
Julia glanced at her.
“Ah, I know you from somewhere. It’s these glasses…”
For that one second, Mila wanted it.
Not love. She knew better than to want love from Julia.
She wanted recognition.
Just that.
She wanted Julia to see. To know she had always been more than the child left standing outside herself. More than the young alcoholic in red flip-flops.
Mila wanted Julia to see that she had survived her.
And maybe not even that.
Julia’s eyes rested on Mila, the same lethal glare. But there was fear in it now.
Clothes.
Shoes.
Hair.
Presentation.
Maybe Julia was no longer capable of judgment. Maybe there was nothing left in her eyes but tired light.
Still, Mila felt it.
That old measuring.
And then she understood something she had not gone there to learn.
Even if Julia approved, it would not be the same as being seen by her.
Even if she looked at the attire and found nothing to criticize, even if she noticed the clean lines, the good fabric, and the woman standing upright before her, it would not be much.
It would only mean Mila had finally come to visit in a language Julia respected.
She stood there long enough to take in the moment, to let it fix itself on her.
The television kept talking.
Someone laughed in another room.
Julia looked at her.
Maybe through her.
A confrontation would have been unfair.
There was no embrace.
Mila turned toward the door.
Behind her, the room remained exactly what it was: the television, the blanket, the fading sunlight, the woman whose focus in life had been to be admired for what she never was. The same woman who mistook coldness for refinement. The mother who never failed to notice appearances, yet never learned how to see what mattered.
At the threshold, Mila paused.
Not for Julia.
For the girl in the red flip-flops.
The one who had to take the twenty.
The one who swallowed the shame because she needed food, a way through the day.
She did not pity Julia.
Grandma Rosa came to mind.
“You come from good stock, Mila.”
***
I looked at Julia for the last time.
Then I left.
Not healed.
Not forgiven.
Gone.
What Followed Her Out
Years have passed. The specter of Julia is buried, yet remains.
Mila didn’t know her. No one did.
She knew her arrogance. Her indifference.
Was Julia aware of who first opened that wound?
Her father’s wife ran a clothes-washing business and made Julia iron for hours on end while her father said nothing.
The stepmother had a teenage son who could do no wrong.
Young Julia could do no right.
“Baja la cabeza, mierda,” she would say, pulling the girl’s hair to avoid her stare.
That was life for young Julia: in and out of public school, back and forth between her parents, ashamed of her own social class.
Mila never knew what happened in that house.
She only knew what followed her out of it.
***
The first time Mila showed Julia a little piece she had written, they were on a city bus, of all places. Mila was in her early teens.
She had thought about it for days, whether to show it to her or not, then dared herself to do it right there.
“What’s this?” Julia said, unfolding the small piece of paper.
“Chip off the old block. Just like her father,” she said, laughing uproariously as she looked at it.
Mila smiled as if that had been the joke all along, folded the paper, and tucked it away.
Yes, Julia had once been a girl forced to lower her head and suffer indignities.
And no one came for her.
Maybe that was where the wound began.
She regretted having children, let alone motherhood.
No reproach there.
But it was still her choice to pass humiliation down to the last child she birthed.
No absolution.
Old age doesn’t exonerate her any more than sobriety exempts addicts from the harm they caused.
At dusk, Mila wonders if, in the recess of what is left of Julia’s mind, she remembers.
Hope not.
The Lounge Singer
Mila’s hiring at the Sheraton Hotel bar broadened her world.
At barely eighteen, after years under Julia’s seething wrath, Mila mistook that widening for freedom.
Maybe it was, at first.
The music. The polished glasses. The hotel guests, mostly from the United States, came and went with offers of fun and money, secrets and grief.
Mila had no idea how unprepared she was.
She soon befriended the lounge singer, Zaida, who became flirtatious first with her eyes, then with small gestures Mila did not know how to name. Secret glances turned into something neither of them dared call a romance.
It was Zaida who planted the first kiss ever on Mila’s lips, as they parted discreetly one late afternoon.
Mila had secretly wondered why her father had been so vocal against the job.
It meant nothing to Julia.
“Of course your father would say that. He doesn’t even look for steady work.”
To his credit, her father never once showed up at the Sheraton to ask Mila for even a dollar.
Apophis sure did.
It didn’t take him long to ask for a loan. Mila, who by then felt nothing but revulsion at the sight of him, turned him down.
The next day, Julia showed up with Apophis. The usual head slant. The bright red forced smile. Her hair no longer coiffed.
It worked.
Apophis never paid her back.
It didn’t take long for Mila to start dating, hanging out after work with the rest of the crew, drinking until dawn.
She knew when to push the booze aside and sip water.
She felt invincible.
Uplifted by Zaida.
Dates that lasted until the moment they both had to return to the lounge.
Discreet glances across the room.
A certain gaze that meant: this song is for you.
Mila began to imagine not leaving after all.
And if she did leave, maybe she would be the one waiting for Zaida in Miami by next year.
Then, suddenly, Zaida became ill. Hours after a dental appointment, she was rushed to the hospital.
Mila went back and forth as often as she could.
One night, it was just the two of them. Mila sat beside her on the hospital bed, close enough for their hands to find each other under the sheet.
Out of the corner of her eye, Mila caught Zaida trying to fix her hair, smiling almost sheepishly.
“Te ves linda así, natural…”
In the wee hours of a Thursday in April, Zaida managed to get out of bed. She took a few tentative steps toward the place where she was sure to find Mila.
When they embraced, Mila’s hands slid, uncertainly, to the small of her back.
The allure of intimacy.
Even if neither of them had a word for it.
Zaida was Mila’s first kiss.
Her first shared secret.
Her first moment of being wanted.
They stood locked in a silent embrace, hiding tears, desire, fear, and everything they did not yet know how to say.
As if they could disappear into each other.
Zaida died the next day.
That was one of the doors.
Not the only one.
But one of the first to close behind her.
Beer came easily, scotch followed.
Her father had told her not to take the job.
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