Paula

  Nicolás and Celia keep us company; we spend much of the day in Paula’s room, closed now against the cold. In the summer, the children played on the terrace in their plastic pool littered with dead mosquitoes and bits of soupy cookies while our invalid rested beneath a parasol, but now that autumn is gone and winter is beginning, the house has drawn into itself and we all gather in Paula’s room. Celia is a consummate ally, generous and stable; she has been acting as my assistant for several months. I don’t have the heart to work, and without her I would be crushed beneath a mountain of paper. She usually has a child in her arms or dangling on a hip, and her blouse unbuttoned to nurse Andrea. This granddaughter of mine is always happy; she plays by herself and falls asleep on the floor sucking the corner of a diaper, so quiet that we forget where we put her and, unless we’re careful, could step on her. As soon as I learn to live with sadness, I will take on my grandmotherly duties. I will think up stories for the children, bake cookies, make puppets and colorful costumes to fill the theater trunk. I need Granny; if she were here she would be nearly eighty, a slightly dotty and eccentric old lady with only a handful of hair on her head, but with her talent for raising children intact.

  It seems this year will never end, yet I don’t know where all the hours and days have gone. I need time. Time to clear away confusion, heal wounds, and renew myself. What will I be like at sixty? Not one cell of the girl I was remains in the woman I am today, only memory, enduring and persevering. How long will it take to travel through this dark tunnel? How long to get back on my feet?

  I keep Paula’s letter in the same tin box that contains Memé’s relics. I take it out sometimes, reverently, like a holy object, imagining that it contains the explanation I long for, tempted to read it but also paralyzed by superstitious fear. I ask myself why a young, healthy, deeply in love woman in the middle of her honeymoon would write a letter to be opened after her death? What did she see in her nightmares? What mysteries lie hidden in the life of my daughter? Sorting through old snapshots, I see her again fresh and vital, always with an arm around her husband, her brother, or her friends; in all of them, except her wedding pictures, she is in blue jeans and a simple blouse, her hair tied with a kerchief, without adornment. That is how I must remember her, but that smiling girl has been replaced by a melancholy figure submersed in solitude and silence. “Let’s open the letter,” Celia urged for the thousandth time. In the last few days, I have been unable to communicate with Paula; she is not visiting me now. Before, the minute I stepped through the door I perceived her thirst, her muscle cramps, the variations in her blood pressure and temperature, but now I can’t sense her needs in advance. “All right, let’s open it,” I agreed finally. I went to get the box; shakily, I broke the wax seal, opened the envelope, and took out two pages written in Paula’s precise hand, and read aloud. Her clear words came to us from another time.

  I do not want to remain trapped in my body. Freed from it, I will be closer to those I love, no matter if they are at the four corners of the planet. It is difficult to express the love I leave behind, the depths of the feelings that join me to Ernesto, to my parents, to my brother, to my grandparents. I know you will remember me, and as long as you do, I will be with you. I want to be cremated and have my ashes scattered outdoors. I do not want a tombstone with my name anywhere, I prefer to live in the hearts of those I love, and to return to the earth. I have a savings account; use it to help children who need to go to school or to eat. Divide my things among any who want a keepsake—actually, there is very little. Please don’t be sad, I am still with you, except I am closer than I was before. In another time, we will be reunited in spirit, but for now we will be together as long as you remember me. Ernesto. . . . I have loved you deeply and still do; you are an extraordinary man and I don’t doubt that you can be happy after I am gone. Mama, Papa, Nico, Grandmother, Tío Ramón; you are the best family I could ever have had. Don’t forget me, and . . . let’s see a smile on those faces! Remember that we spirits can best help, accompany, and protect, those who are happy. I love you dearly.

  Paula.

  Winter is back and it won’t stop raining; it’s cold, and you are worse every day. Forgive me for having made you wait so long, Paula. . . . I’ve been too slow, but now I have no doubt, your letter is so revealing! Count on me, I promise I will help you, just give me a little more time. I sit beside you in the quiet of your room in this winter that will be eternal for me, the two of us alone, just as we have been so often over these months, and I open myself to pain without offering any resistance. I rest my head on your chest and feel the irregular beat of your heart, the warmth of your skin, the slow rhythm of your breathing; I close my eyes and for a few instants imagine that you are simply sleeping. But sorrow explodes within me with the fury of a sudden storm and I feel your nightgown grow damp with my tears while a visceral moan born in the depths of the earth rises through my body like a spear and fills my mouth. They assure me you are not suffering. How do they know? It may be that in the end you have become accustomed to the iron armor of paralysis, and have forgotten the taste of a peach or the simple pleasure of running your fingers through your hair, but your soul is trapped and yearns to be free. There is no respite from this obsession; I know that I have failed in the most important challenge of my life. Enough! Just look at the ruins of what is left of you, Paula . . . dear God! This is the premonition you had on your honeymoon, and why you wrote the letter. “Paula is already a saint, she is in heaven and suffering has washed away all her sins,” says Inés, your scarred Salvadoran nurse who spoils you like a baby. How lovingly we care for you! You are never alone, day or night; every half-hour we move you, to maintain what little flexibility you have left; we monitor every drop of water and every gram of food; you receive your medicines on a precise schedule; before we dress you we bathe you and massage you with lotion to keep your skin healthy. “It’s incredible what you’ve been able to do; she wouldn’t do this well in any hospital,” says Dr. Forrester. “She can live seven years,” Dr. Shima predicts. For what? You are like the fairy-tale Sleeping Beauty in her glass coffin, except that no prince will come to save you with a kiss; no one can wake you from this final dream. Your only exit, Paula, is death. Now I can dare think it, say it to you, and write it in my yellow pad. I call upon my sturdy grandfather and my clairvoyant grandmother to help you cross the threshold and be born on the other side; I especially summon Granny, your grandmother with the transparent eyes, the one who died of sorrow when she had to be separated from you. I call her to come with her golden scissors to cut the strong thread that keeps you tied to your body. Her photo—when she is still young, with the hint of a smile and liquid eyes—is near your bed, as are those of all your guiding spirits. Come, Granny, come for your granddaughter, I plead, but I fear that neither she nor any other shade will come to lift this chalice of anguish from me. I will be alone beside you to take you by the hand to the very doorway to death, and, if I can, I will cross through with you.

  Can I live in your stead? Carry you in my body so you can recover the fifty or sixty years stolen from you? I don’t mean remember you, but live your life, be you, let you love and feel and breathe in me, let my gestures be yours, my voice your voice. Let me be erased, dissolved, so that you take possession of my body, oh, Paula, so that your inexhaustible and joyful goodness may completely replace my lifelong fears, my paltry ambitions, my depleted vanity. To vent my suffering, I want to scream to my last breath, rend my clothing, pull out my hair, smear myself with ashes, but I have lived half a century under rules of proper behavior; I am an expert in suppressing wrath and bearing pain, so I have no voice for screaming. Maybe the doctors are mistaken and the machines lie, maybe you are not entirely unconscious and you are aware of my state of mind; I must not distress you with my weeping. I am drowning in choked-back grief. I go outside on the terrace where there is not enough air to feed my sobs or enough rain to cry my tears. I get into my car and drive away from the town toward the hills; almo
st blindly, I reach the forest where I go to walk, the haven where I so often come to be alone and think. I plunge into the woods along paths made rough with winter’s debris. I run, tripping over branches and rocks, pushing through the saturated greenery of this vast bosky space, so like the forests of my childhood, the ones I crossed through on muleback, following behind my grandfather. My feet are heavy with mud and my clothes are dripping and my soul is bleeding, and as it grows dark, and when finally I can go no farther after walking and stumbling and slipping and getting up to flounder on, I drop to my knees, tear my blouse, ripping off buttons, and with my arms opened into a cross and my breast naked, I scream your name, Paula. The rain is a mantle of dark crystal and somber clouds lower among the black treetops and the wind bites at my breasts, turns my bones to ice, scrubs me clean inside with its swirling, wintry tatters. I bury my hands in the muck, claw out wet clods of dirt, and rub them on my face and mouth, I chew lumps of saline mud, I gulp the acid odor of humus and medicinal aroma of eucalyptus. “Earth, welcome my daughter, receive her, take her to your bosom; Mother Goddess Earth, help us,” I beg Her, and moan into the night falling around me, calling you, calling you. Far in the distance, a flock of wild ducks passes, and they carry your name to the south. Paula . . . Paula . . .

  EPILOGUE

  Christmas 1992

  NEAR DAWN ON SUNDAY, DECEMBER 6, AFTER A miraculous night in which the veils that conceal reality were parted, Paula died. It was at four in the morning. Her life ended without struggle, anxiety, or pain; in her passing there was only the absolute peace and love of those of us who were with her. She died in my arms, surrounded by her family, the thoughts of those absent, and the spirits of her ancestors who had come to her aid. She died with the same perfect grace that characterized all the acts of her life.

  For some time, I had sensed the end. I knew with the same irrefutable certainty with which I awakened one morning in 1963 knowing that, only a few hours before, a daughter had been conceived in my womb. Death came with a light step. Paula’s senses had been closing down, one by one, during the previous weeks; I think she could not hear any longer, her eyes were almost always closed, and she did not react when we touched or moved her. Inexorably, she was drifting away. I wrote a letter to my brother describing the symptoms imperceptible to others but evident to me, looking ahead with a strange mixture of anguish and relief. Juan answered with a single sentence: I am praying for her and for you. To lose Paula was unbearable torment, but it would be worse to watch her slowly agonize through the seven years foreseen by the I Ching sticks. That Saturday, Inés came early and we prepared the basins of water to bathe Paula and wash her hair; we set out her clothes for the day, and changed her sheets, as we did each morning. As we began to remove her nightgown, we noticed she was deep in an abnormal sopor, like a swoon, lifeless, and wearing the expression of a child, as if she had returned to the innocent age when she used to cut flowers in Granny’s garden. I knew then that she was ready for her last adventure and, in one blessed instant, the confusion and terror of this year of affliction vanished, giving way to a diaphanous tranquillity. “Do you mind, Inés, I want to be alone with her,” I asked. Inés threw herself on Paula and kissed her. “Take my sins with you, and try to find forgiveness for me up there,” she pleaded, and she did not want to leave until I assured her that Paula had heard her and would serve as her messenger. I went to advise my mother, who hurriedly dressed and came down to Paula’s room. The three of us were alone, accompanied by the cat, crouched in a corner with her inscrutable amber pupils fixed on the bed, waiting. Willie was doing the marketing and Celia and Nicolás never come on Saturdays, that’s the day they clean their apartment, so I calculated we had several hours to say our farewells without interruptions. My daughter-in-law, however, woke that morning with a presentiment and, without a word of explanation, left her husband to the household chores, picked up her two children, and came to see us. She found my mother on one side of the bed and me on the other, silently caressing Paula. She says that the minute she entered the room, she noticed how still the air was, and what a delicate light enveloped us, and she realized that the moment we most feared and, at the same time, desired had come. She sat down with us while Alejandro played with his toy cars on the wheelchair and Andrea dozed on the rug, clutching her security blanket. A couple of hours later, Willie and Nicolás arrived; they, too, needed no explanation. They lighted a fire in the fireplace and put on Paula’s favorite music: Mozart and Vivaldi concertos and Chopin nocturnes. We must call Ernesto, they decided, but his telephone in New York didn’t answer and they concluded he was still on his return flight from China and could not be located. The petals from Willie’s last roses were beginning to fall on the night table among the medicine bottles and syringes. Nicolás went out to buy flowers, and shortly after returned with armfuls of the flowers Paula had chosen for her wedding: the smell of tuberose and iris spread softly through the house while the hours, each slower than the last, became tangled in the clocks.

  At midafternoon, Dr. Forrester came by and confirmed that something had changed in her patient’s condition. She did not detect any fever or signs of pain, Paula’s lungs were clear, and neither was this a new onslaught of porphyria, but the complex mechanism of her body was barely functioning. “It seems to be a cerebral hemorrhage,” she said, and suggested calling a nurse to bring oxygen to the house, in view of the fact that we had agreed from the beginning we would never take her back to a hospital, but I vetoed that. There was no need to discuss it; everyone in the family had concurred that we would not prolong her agony, only make her comfortable. Unobtrusively, the doctor sat down near the fireplace to wait, she, too, caught up in the magic of that unique time. She would spend all night with us, not as a physician, but as the friend she had become. How simple life is, when all is said and done. . . . In this year of torment, I had gradually been letting go: first I said goodbye to Paula’s intelligence, then to her vitality and her company, now, finally, I had to part with her body. I had lost everything, and my daughter was leaving me, but the one essential thing remained: love. In the end, all I have left is the love I give her.

  I watched the sky grow dark beyond the large windows. At that hour, the view from the hill where we live is extraordinary; the water of the Bay is like phosphorescent steel as the landscape turns to a fresco of shadows and lights. As night approached, the exhausted children fell asleep on the floor, covered with a blanket, and Willie busied himself in the kitchen preparing something to eat; we had only recently realized that none of us had eaten all day. He came back after a while with a tray and a bottle of champagne we had saved all year for the moment when Paula waked again in this world. I couldn’t eat, but I toasted my daughter so she would awake happy in another life. We lighted candles, and Celia picked up her guitar and sang Paula’s songs; she has a deep, warm voice that seems to issue from the earth itself, and her sister-in-law loved to hear her. “Sing just for me,” she would coax Celia, “sing low.” A wondrous lucidity allowed me to live those hours fully, with penetrating intuition and all five senses alert, as well as others whose existence I hadn’t been aware of. The warm glow of the candles illuminated my daughter—silken skin, crystal bones, the shadows of her eyelashes—now sleeping forever. Transported by the intensity of our feeling for Paula, and the loving comradeship women share during the fundamental rituals of life, my mother, Celia, and I improvised the last ceremonies: we sponged Paula’s body, anointed her skin with cologne, dressed her in warm clothing so she wouldn’t feel cold, put the rabbit fur slippers on her feet, and combed her hair. Celia placed photographs of Alejandro and Andrea in her hands: “Look out for them,” she asked. I wrote our names on a piece of paper, brought my grandmother’s bridal orange blossoms and one of Granny’s silver teaspoons, and placed all of them on Paula’s breast for her to take as a remembrance, along with my grandmother’s silver mirror, because I reasoned that if it had protected me for fifty years, surely it would safeguard Paula during tha
t last crossing. Now Paula was opal, alabaster, translucent . . . and so cold! The cold of death comes from within, like a blazing, internal bonfire; when I kissed her, ice lingered on my lips like a burn. Gathered around her bed, we looked through old photographs and remembered the happiest times of the past, from the first dream in which Paula revealed herself to me, long before she was born, to her comic fit of jealousy when Celia and Nicolás were married. We celebrated the gifts she had given us in life, and all of us said goodbye and prayed in our own way. As the hours went by, something solemn and sacred filled the room, just as on the occasion of Andrea’s birth. The two moments are much alike: birth and death are made of the same fabric. The air became more and more still; we moved slowly, in order not to disturb our hearts’ repose. We were filled with Paula’s spirit, as if we were all one being and there was no separation among us: life and death were joined. For a few hours, we experienced that reality the soul knows, absent time or space.