It will be a simple burial. The woman will be dressed in the clothes she was wearing when she dropped dead and on her grave will lie whatever flowers they managed to pick from the roadside on the way to the cemetery she’d chosen. There will be no crosses, no songs or sermons. Her mother hadn’t wanted all that, or for anyone to sit with her body through the night—not only so her daughter wouldn’t have any extra costs to cover, but so Death wouldn’t think it was special or that his visit mattered to them.
The priest arrives, uninvited, and waits for them at the entrance to the burial ground. He offers his condolences to the daughter and tells her that, though he understands people are entitled to their own decisions, she mustn’t let her mother return to dust without receiving a blessing. He understands the woman was angry with the Church, and they aren’t asking for her forgiveness, he just doesn’t want her to let her mother take it out on God. The daughter will say what her mother told her she should say if the man turned up at her funeral: that they all got even with whoever they could. He’ll respond that her mother hadn’t been herself in her final days, that maybe she’d spoken that way out of illness, or pain.
Did he think so?
Yes.
Then why didn’t he take pity, and leave her alone?
He wanted to tend to her soul.
She thought her mother could tend to it herself.
He didn’t agree.
Why not? She’d done it all that time. She was doing it right then.
He decided to speak with one of the other daughters of the deceased. It seemed to him that her sister’s time in the mountains had made her forget the power of the Church. She, on the other hand, might better grasp what he was trying to say. She was a sensible woman.
She also refused. Although she believed in God and the Church, she also believed in her mother’s wishes. She wouldn’t take advantage of her condition.
Could he talk to another sister?
He could talk to whoever he liked: the answer would be the same.
What about her father? Could he pray for him?
Did this seem like an appropriate time to be pestering them? They wanted to bury their own.
Did she think there’d be another chance to do what he was asking?
Would he please leave them alone? They’d handle things directly with God.
Before leaving, he asks about the bundle in the arms of the deceased. They tell him what the girl’s mother had agreed with her own mother: that it was the late woman’s wish. A symbol. The man thinks it must represent one of the many times she’d had to flee for her life with what little she had. He’s ashamed of those who’d tried to get even with her, unable to get to those they were after.
Once he leaves, the sisters will cry for their mother and father. The eldest daughter she raised grieves for her grandmother as if she’d been born of her. The daughter at university and the littlest one cry to see their sister and mother suffering. Their aunts’ husbands and sons remain solemn. They comfort the mother’s sisters. The brother who’s still away and can’t leave the country he moved to will call that night to ask how everything went and whether they needed anything. He’ll swear to visit her grave once he sorts out his immigration status. He will salute her like a compañero fallen in battle, which is what he understands his sister did. Then he’ll make an offering of his uniform, which is what he understands his sister did by wrapping in a bundle and placing in her mother’s arms the suit she’d worn in combat and hadn’t turned in on the day of the disarmament. He will ask the woman he’d left his own uniform with not to throw it away or, if she can’t or won’t keep it any longer, to send it to his current address.
When she does, he will find that it no longer fits him. His body will disabuse him of the notion that no part of him has changed and that he could go back to being the same person as before if he wished to, or if he returned to the place he was from. He’ll exercise a little and change the way he eats for a while to get back to the weight he’d once been. But then, even though the clothing fits, he’ll no longer feel comfortable in it. The texture of the fabric and the cut of the pants don’t suit him. Because of his age, he can no longer move as he used to when he wore it every day.
The day he returns, he will leave the uniform in a closet in his house. He’ll say it’s not recommended to travel with things like that in your luggage, to avoid any trouble at the airport—even though the clothes mean nothing in that time and place. He’ll stand at her grave and speak to her as a son rather than a combatant. He’ll also apologize for taking so long to come and will plant at her grave something that had belonged to the brother who’d gone to live with him and died a long way from everyone.
The daughter who’s in the country where the firstborn was taken will also call to ask how her mother and older sister are doing. She’ll ask if Grandma left her any word before dying.
She’d asked her to be a good girl.
She laughs. She’d have liked her to tell her to come home.
Would she have come?
Not until she’s done with university.
She thinks that might be sooner than they’d thought. The counselor had told her that if she carried on like she was, she could reapply for aid in a year.
Did she want to?
Did she want to come home?
Sometimes.
Sometimes she felt she could understand the firstborn’s reasons. But she didn’t say so, because she knew the freshly buried woman would have disagreed. She’d have said she could never understand the fear at the core of a person who’s been passed from hand to hand—she’d never had to leave anywhere against her will or be cradled in the arms of strangers. They couldn’t know for certain what the nuns who’d taken her in or the people who’d given her to them had done, but they could gather, from the girl’s rejection of them, that it hadn’t been pleasant.
It was different for her. What she felt was more like awe.
Should she feel guilty for believing a different life was possible where she was now?
The grandmother wouldn’t have answered that. She wouldn’t have seen any sense in it. She’d have looked at her with indignation and started on some chore, indicating that that the conversation was over and she was just getting in the way.
Her mother, however, would ask her to explain how she thought her other daughter felt. Then she’d be faced with the trouble of not knowing how to put it into words, unable to draw the connections for her the way she has in her own head, of hearing herself say something that didn’t make much sense out loud, and seeing her grandma’s face move like that of someone who’s been right all along.
Instead, she asked to talk to her. Could she?
She’d go and fetch her immediately. She was with the ex-compañera-in-battle, the one her sister lived with in the city, and with the friend who’d introduced them.
Were they friends?
Maybe.
During war, friendship meant sharing personal things, revealing your given names and sleeping side by side every so often. Although they’d done none of that then, they had come to join her at the funeral and had made themselves available to her for whatever she might need. She’d taken them up on their offer and asked them to look after her house while she took her mother’s body, her father’s ring, and the stones wrapped in her uniform from the war which symbolized her daughter all the way to the farm named after a horse, where the recently deceased had wanted to be buried. Her ex-compañera’s friend told her she could count on them, that she could leave with an easy heart and take however long she needed. She was cooking something for them by way of thanks because, had it not been for them, she’d have had to do it in the backyard, without any help from the neighbors. Not because they wouldn’t have offered, but because she wouldn’t have let them.
They were speaking nearly in whispers when she came to say her sister was on the phone. Her mother immediately paled. She asked if everything was all right. Had something happened?
Grandma had died. Her sister was far away.
Anything else?
She feared her firstborn might have died. Ever since she’d picked up those stones and walked with them, she’d felt that, the moment she buried them, the body of the woman with her girl’s face might expire, no matter where she was. She couldn’t stop picturing the phone ringing with the news that something had happened, that a car had run her over at the very same moment, or she’d committed suicide, and they were letting her know out of courtesy or—in the best of cases—because the daughter had asked them to. Perhaps it would be an end-of-life apology, a bridge laid out at the last minute across which she could reach her when her time came.
Her daughter at university said she didn’t think there was anything else. What more could there be?
The daughter who was helping pay for her sister’s schooling from far away was worried about her.
Worried why?
Her sister had said she’d never seen her cry like that. None of them had ever seen her cry at all.
Sometimes she cried while they were sleeping or at school. Mostly when something had happened to them or when she hadn’t yet found her daughter. But she didn’t say this or explain that it wasn’t easy to say goodbye to her mother and daughter on the same day. There were certain things she was still too young to understand. All she said was that she was sad.
Wanting to make her happy, her daughter told her what she’d heard: the firstborn was returning to the country. She didn’t know if the conversation in which she’d called her dumb had anything to do with it, but the girl had decided to split up with her partner and bring her two daughters back to the country where she was raised.
She would’ve liked to say she’d asked after her, but she knew her mother could sniff out a lie. She didn’t want to bring her any more sadness, so she offered to do the only thing she could: to get in touch with her once they were both on the same soil. Maybe she could bring her to her house sometime.
The mother doesn’t cry as she tells her daughter not to worry about her or pester her firstborn. This is when the daughter understands that the lost baby had been buried that day. She offers her condolences a second time. The day she finally sees her sister, it’ll be as a fellow countrywoman in a foreign land. She’ll be pleasant, but distant. She thinks of how fortunate the firstborn’s adoptive brothers were, amid everything, to have been taken into arms that made them want to return. She decides she’ll go home when she’s asked to. Or maybe earlier.