Chapter 15

Anmoore, West Virginia

December 1936

“Don’t push until I tell you,” Mercedes ordered. Julia was lying on the same bed in which Mercedes had given birth to her five children. This was Julia’s first. The father was one of two young men in Anmoore, but she was not certain which. It did not matter. Neither was interested in marrying her or raising the child.

“But it hurts so much,” Julia cried. “I just want it out of me!” Her long, black hair was matted to her head with sweat.

“Maybe you should’ve thought about that before you decided to become the town slut,” Mercedes said sharply.

“Mama!” Pilar said. She was kneeling beside the bed, holding Julia’s hand and blotting her forehead with a cool, damp towel. “That’s a mean thing to say.”

“Well, it’s the truth,” Mercedes snapped. “Okay, Julia. I see the top of the head. Now, push.”

It was a boy. Pilar helped their mother clean and swaddle him. Mercedes held out the baby for Julia to take. “Please,” Julia said, “just put it in the crib. I’m so exhausted.”

“For God’s sake, Julia!” Mercedes hissed. “He’s your son, your first child. Don’t you want to hold him?”

“No, mother, I don’t,” Julia said. “Not now. Please, just put it … put him in the crib.”

Mercedes cuddled the baby and started out of the bedroom. Turning back, she said, “Tend to your sister, Pilar.” She cast a harsh glance at Julia. “In all my life, I—” she began, but she said no more. Mercedes turned and left the room.

“He’s a beautiful baby,” Pilar said to Julia, in English, as she washed the sweat and blood and secretions from her sister. She rinsed the towel in a ceramic basin on the floor by the bed and wrung it out. “What’ll you call him?”

“I don’t know,” Julia said. She looked past her sister and fixed her eyes on a blank spot on the wall opposite the bed.

“Don’t worry about mama,” Pilar said cheerfully. “She’ll calm down. And we’ll raise the baby, you and me. Oh, it’ll be nice! He’s a beautiful baby, and I’m sure he’ll be sweet.”

“Oh, please, Pilar,” Julia said, sighing. She rested the back of her hand on her forehead and closed her eyes. “Stop it. I really don’t feel like chatting with you about this now. Just clean me up and let me sleep.”

“Yes, Julia. I’m sorry,” Pilar said, getting back to her work. “I didn’t mean to annoy you.”

In silence, Pilar finished bathing Julia and then changed the sheet, shifting her sister from one side of the bed to the other, like a hospital orderly. For two years, Pilar had been assisting Mercedes with her midwifery. She kissed Julia on the forehead, switched off the lamp on the bedside table, and quietly joined their mother in the living room.

Julia lay on the bed in the darkness and wept.

* * *

In the American Civil War, for the large part, organized armies from the North and South slugged it out on battlefields in classic Napoleonic warfare. Generally, the territory of the opposing sides was clearly defined. The Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 was altogether different. Nearly every city, town and village was divided almost equally between supporters of the Nationalists and the Republic. Armies did clash on battlefields, but the ugliest violence was small and close. Neighbors slaughtered each other in the places where they had lived together for centuries. The same social strife and revolutionary fervour that fueled the Asturian labor unrest earlier in the twentieth century made it a vicious civil war battleground.

* * *

“My dear brother and sister-in-law,” Mercedes wrote. Julia still was in the bed she shared with Pilar, recuperating from the birth three days before. The baby, whom Julia finally had decided to call Richard, was alternating fitful sleep with squalling in the crib. Mercedes had wheeled the crib into the kitchen so she could keep an eye on him, and try to comfort him, as she wrote the letter at the table. “I hope you and the children are doing as well as could be expected under the circumstances. My heart is broken with yours.”

Antonio and María’s son Avelino had been shot to death the month before. Antonio González Conde did not take up arms in the civil war, but he did support General Francisco Franco and the Nationalists, driven by his fear of the communists who were fighting for the Republic. Like partisans on either side, Antonio justified the atrocities of the forces he backed and vilified the atrocities of those he opposed.

Avelino was betrayed by a group of young men he thought were his friends. One afternoon, riding back to Naveces from Avilés with his compatriots, the driver stopped the wagon deep in the woods and whistled three long times. A band of Republican militia emerged from the trees. The driver nodded toward Avelino. The militiamen dragged him from the wagon, threw him to the ground, and shot him in the face as he pleaded for his life.

“We are holding up relatively well,” Mercedes continued in her letter. “Antonio is working for one of the new government relief agencies, building roads. He seems happier. Luis and Manuel have gotten jobs at the carbon plant which opened recently here in Anmoore. President Roosevelt’s programs are making life feel a bit more normal after the terrible years of so much pain and destitution. The laundry in Clarksburg has reopened, and Julia is working there part-time.”

Embarrassed and ashamed, Mercedes still had not told her brother about Julia’s baby boy, her first grandchild. “I hope that awful war there will end soon, and that this letter reaches you without too much delay. Mercedes González Conde.”

* * *

August 1937

“And then! … and then! …” Julia was laughing so hard, she was having trouble finishing the story.

Pilar, gasping with laughter as much as Julia, picked up the tale. “Just as I got ahold of the fish—oh, mercy, it was so fat and slimy— Julia slipped on the mud and fell in the river!”

“But I had a death grip on that fishing pole!” Julia struggled to add through her laughter. “Papa would’ve killed me if I’d lost it.”

“And there was no way I was going to lose my fish!” Pilar exclaimed. “But when Julia tried to get up, the line went taut, and the fish jerked and started flopping even more, and then I slipped on the mud and piled in the river, too!”

“But, somehow, I hung onto the pole,” Julia said, “and Pilar kept her fingers dug into that fish, and somehow we got to shore with both of them!”

The crowd standing around Julia and Pilar were bent over with laughter. Much of the population of Anmoore came every sunny Sunday through the spring and summer for picnicking at the clearing on the top of Pinnick Kinnick Hill, as they had for decades. The hill rose behind the town like the back of a great, surfacing whale.

These afternoons were a slice of Asturias transported across the Atlantic. Only the eucalyptus was missing, and the views of the sea. The women brought pots of fabada and cheeses and lengths of chorizo and loaves of crusty bread. The men hefted up barrels of beer and crates of Asturian-style cider, despite the despised Prohibition. Bagpipers played. The aging immigrants sang the old Asturian songs, and danced the old Asturian dances, that they had learned as children from their parents and grandparents.

Back when the smelter was still operating, the weekly picnics gave the workers and their families an afternoon of relaxation together. Now, their adopted country was in the eighth year of the Great Depression. Their native land was still convulsed by civil war, though the Republican army was disintegrating after the Battle of Ebro. And Europe appeared to be sliding quickly toward a new continental conflict, only twenty years after the end of the Great War. The weekly gatherings on “the pico”—as most of the inhabitants of Anmoore called Pinnick Kinnick Hill, using the Spanish word for peak—provided a few rare carefree hours each week for the immigrants and their children and grandchildren.

The Ribas sisters were sitting atop a picnic table. Julia held court in a way that would have made her uncle, Antonio González Conde, proud. She loved being the center of attention, and people loved giving it to her. Julia possessed a seemingly inexhaustible repertoire of stories and energy. Pilar, usually unwittingly, served as the perfect straight man.

“Tell us again about getting lost on that Indian reservation in South Dakota!” one young man shouted from the back of the crowd.

“Nah,” Julia demurred, “people have heard that one too many times. It’s wore out.”

“I’m not putting that there, no matter how much better it may make me feel!” another young man shouted, quoting the punch line of the tale. That alone was enough to send a new wave of laughter rippling through the crowd.

“Where are you off to next?” a third young man asked. Julia’s trips, most of which did not end as badly as Mexico with Rico, had become legendary in the town. The immigrants had been village people in Spain, and their crowded, steerage-class journeys across the Atlantic did not convert them into travelers. They generally ventured no farther than the few miles to Clarksburg. Their children, with the exception of those who moved to a different city for work, tended to be equally stationary.

“Canada!” Julia announced. “Day after tomorrow. I’ll hitchhike up through Pennsylvania, New York and New England, and cross over from Maine into Québec. I’ve never been anywhere they speak French!”

Her neighbors would not have been more astonished had Julia said she planned to take a hot air balloon to Mars.

After the crowd dispersed, and the sisters were strolling through the picnic ground, Pilar said: “Julia, you didn’t tell me you’re going to Canada.”

“Because I decided it just then,” Julia replied. She was manic. “I’d been thinking about it for a while, but at that moment, I decided I’ll go. It’ll be a great adventure.”

“But what about Richard?” Pilar asked. He was not yet a year old.

Julia had not taken to motherhood with any greater fondness or devotion than she showed on the night the baby was born. “Oh, he likes you and mama better than me anyway,” she said. Julia waved a hand dismissively in the air. “He won’t even notice I’m gone.” The boy did gravitate to Pilar and Mercedes. It never occurred to Julia it was because she showed no interest in him, rather than him having little interest in her.

“Mama won’t be happy about it,” Pilar warned. “Not one bit.”

“Mama hasn’t been happy about anything I’ve done since I was about Richard’s age,” Julia said. She snatched a bottle of beer from an iced bucket beside the table of a young man she knew. “Okay?” She asked him, lifting up the bottle. She smiled and arched her eyebrows.

“Of course, Julia,” he said, grinning. “I won’t even charge a deposit for the bottle.”

Pilar resumed their disagreement. “I’m sure that’s not true, Julia, about mama never being happy with you.”

“I assure you it is, Pilar. But let’s not talk about that.” She offered her sister a drink of the beer. Pilar waved it off, and Julia took a swig. She changed the subject. “I noticed that cute boy from your class … what’s his name? Miguel? I saw he was eyeing you when we were telling the story about the fish.”

“Eyeing you probably is more like it,” Pilar said. She frowned and looked down at her scuffed shoes. “The boys don’t like me the way they do you. I’m too plain, and I’m too shy when you’re not around.”

“Oh, sweetie, you’re not plain,” Julia said. She stopped and took her sister by the elbow. “You’re a very pretty girl, Pilar. Boys are just stupid most of the time. And it’s better they don’t follow you around like a pack of dogs. It’ll make it easier for you to spot the right one when he comes along.”

Pilar looked off toward the crowd of picnickers. “I don’t know. I’d like it if they paid attention to me and brought me presents and flowers like they do you.”

Julia put her arm around Pilar and pulled her close. “One will, one day, and then you’ll be glad you didn’t have to bother with all the jerks in the meantime.”

Pilar shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe you’re right.”

“Of course I am!” Julia said, holding the beer bottle high. “If anybody knows those awful creatures, it’s me!”

Pilar giggled and asked: “So, you’re really going to Canada day after tomorrow?”

“That I am,” Julia said. “And every minute that passes, the more sure I am I will. I need to get away from here for a while.”

“I’ll never understand that part of you, Julia,” Pilar said.

Julia curled up one side of her mouth, almost their father’s Gallego half-grin, and said: “Well, I’ll never understand why you never want to leave this grubby little place.”

They made their way back down the trail from Pinnick Kinnick Hill to Anmoore and up the street to their little house across the looming, boxy, smoke-belching Union Carbide plant which had replaced the long, brick buildings of the abandoned smelter.

* * *

As Pilar predicted, their mother was displeased when Julia announced at dinner that she would leave in two days for Canada. But Mercedes was more weary than ever. She mounted only brief, token resistance.

Julia’s journey unfolded just as she had described to the adoring crowd on Pinnick Kinnick Hill. She was bored across most of western Pennsylvania—just farms and factories—but she was duly overwhelmed by Niagara Falls. She thought nothing could be so breathtaking, until she found herself in the sublime beauty of the Adirondacks. She lingered there for two weeks, meandering from village to village. As always, Julia sent postcards regularly to Pilar, and she bought a little hand-carved forest fairy for her sister near Blue Mountain Lake.

Julia did not expect to meet a man in Montreal, let alone one like Gilles. She was basking in the sun at a park near Mount Royal, marveling at the enormous six-sided dome of St. Joseph’s Oratory which dramatically dominated the landscape atop the hill. Gilles came over to where she was sitting and told Julia he had been watching her for an hour.

“I am stupefied by your beauty, and I must know your name,” he said and invited her to a café.

Despite her many travels, Julia was accustomed only to the rough manners of the barely educated, working class young men in northern West Virginia. This urbane French-Canadian seemed to have descended from a different branch of the human evolutionary tree.

Gilles took Julia to restaurants with white linen tablecloths and introduced her to foods and wines of which she had never heard. He showed her churches and museums and took her to jazz bars and symphony concerts. Gilles bought her three colorful Parisian dresses from a boutique in Plaza St. Hubert, and then he luxuriated in removing them at night in his spacious old apartment on Dorchester Boulevard.

“You love me, don’t you, Gilles?” Julia asked as they lay panting on his bed. A chilly breeze blew in off the river through the open doors to the balcony. Julia felt like she had been transported to a different universe during this time in Montreal with Gilles, but the old uncertainty still always lurked inside her.

“I enjoy our time, very much, Julia.”

“And you want marry me and love me forever?”

“Love and forever are such bourgeois conceits, my dear,” Gilles said.

She had no idea what he meant. He often said things, about paintings and music and philosophy, that she did not understand. Usually, she would just nod and go on, but this question mattered intensely to her. “Well, I love you and want to marry you and live with you forever, Gilles. I’ve never been so happy in my life.”

“I am very happy, too, that I came across you in the park,” Gilles said. He looked long at her and stroked her hair. “I cannot remember passing a more intoxicating month.”

“But,” Julia said. She did not like the sound of what he was saying.

“But what?”

“I’ve shared your bed for four weeks now, and I am telling you that I love you,” Julia said, lifting herself up on an elbow. “Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

Gilles sat up and propped himself against the headboard of the bed. “Of course, it does, Julia. It has been a beautiful time. As pleasurable and lovely as any I have known. Our days and nights together always will be very special to me.”

“I’m such a stupid cow.” Julia was disgusted with herself and with him. She climbed abruptly from the bed and began to dress.

“What are you doing?” Gilles asked, truly mystified. She had seemed such a free spirit when he talked to her in the park and over the weeks since. “Come back into the bed.”

“Why?” Julia said sharply. “So I can be your whore for another night? No, Gilles, I’m going.”

He looked deeply offended. “Why … why do you say such a hurtful thing, Julia? I have not treated you like a prostitute.”

Julia pulled on the cheap dress she had brought with her from Anmoore. She stuffed the remainder of her belongings into the second-hand leather duffle she had purchased that spring, after a year of saving a few cents from each paycheck at the laundry. She carefully draped the three Parisian dresses from Gilles over the back of an armchair across from the bed.

“I’m sorry, Gilles,” she said. “You’re right. We’ve had a lovely month, and you’ve been very kind to me. Thank you.” The duffle thrown over her shoulder, Julia returned to the side of the bed. She leaned over, kissed him on the cheek and patted his bare chest three times. “Thank you, Gilles. But I have to go. I want a man who loves me and wants to marry me.”

He grabbed her hand. “Why must you be so old-fashioned, Julia? There is so much more to life than working class conventionalism.”

She pulled away from his grasp. “Not for me, Gilles,” she said. “You take care of yourself.” She turned to leave.

“Julia, Julia, wait,” he said. He started to get out of the bed. “Where will you go? It is nearly midnight.”

“Don’t get up, Gilles,” she told him, motioning him back with her hand. “I’ll let myself out. And don’t worry, I’ll manage on my own. I always do.”

She descended the winding staircase of the Beaux Arts building and breathed in the crisp air of the Montreal autumn night. She loved that fall scent of dried leaves and wood smoke. Julia was disappointed, but not quite heartbroken. Guadalajara had been much worse. She had grown to expect little from men, and she felt foolish for having allowed herself to be so drawn into Gilles and this strange, wonderful, foreign world. But she also was thankful for it. Julia set off for the train station, suddenly eager to return to the familiar, comfortable confines of Anmoore.

A month after she returned from Canada, Julia miscarried Gilles’ baby. She was glad.