Extremes occur cyclically in a universe propelled by laws of birth and destruction. Like the five suns of Aztec lore that preside over the multiple beginnings and extinctions of the world, like the death star called Nemesis that every six million years floods the earth with the frost of darkness and extinguishes all but the staunchest life forms. Yet, despite the havoc and annihilation, the floods and ice and utter darkness, despite the five suns and the mighty death star, fresh species manage to spring to life among the ruins, adapting to the new worlds.
Blanca’s universe contained its own Nemesis, a fifth sun that threatened to erase the uniqueness of every member of her family: her grandmother. Paquita had an insatiable need to destroy. She was unable to accept the distinctive features of others, least of all in her own family. The blood they shared was an indissoluble bond that made them one, like a tribe or a web. She not only required their physical presence in her life, she demanded their minds and souls. Paquita pronounced herself the force ruling this unity and was willing to destroy whoever threatened her rule. The question remained whether she was mighty enough for the absolute destruction of renegades or whether the objects of her wrath could succeed in rising from the ashes of a world beyond her realm.
Everyone said Paquita had been a beauty as a young woman, but the tenacious pull of years weighted down by disillusionment tugged at a grim face that set stubbornly in implacable judgment. Her hard voice, frequently mocking, divulged her disdain for the weaknesses of others. Her opinions were inalterable and unquestionable precepts. To count Paquita as an enemy was worse than confronting death itself. She always said: “I forgive but I never forget,” while emphasizing the pronouncement with a blow to her chest. It was true. She never forgot a transgression. She never forgave either.
Because Paquita never forgave, her youngest daughter Evangelina exacted retribution in a silent act of rebellion.
It happened many years before, but Paquita’s grown children never forgot how it happened nor why. They were all scattered about the Puerto Rican countryside in those days, living here and there with one family or another. Working the fields from dawn to dusk. Always hungry. Always tired. Evangelina had been taken in at a very young age by an aunt and her husband.
One morning Evangelina awoke with a start. Her heart raced and her eyes searched in the darkness. It was that dream again. She dreamed the moon was dead and the night filled with darkness, a darkness so great it struck her heart with fear. It was a heavy, suffocating darkness, a black so dense it swallowed her with sucking contractions. It was a bad omen, she knew. She must see the spiritualist as soon as she finished her chores.
Her aunt Carmela stirred. Evangelina focused on the dark figure lying on the floor covered with a thin blanket. Diomedes, her aunt’s husband, snored in his wide cotton mesh hammock. He wrapped the sides around him so that his lean figure hung like a body in a shroud.
Dawn was climbing slowly. Evangelina pulled back the faded cotton scrap nailed to the entrance of the shack and looked out at the fields. Everyone said she was pretty, with her olive skin, long black braids, and sparkling brown eyes wide as a child’s. She had a tender face, oval and smooth.
She had only left the village twice, and on both occasions she proudly wore a pair of borrowed shoes. Her cousin had an extra pair that she had found hidden in the brush. The shoes were black and had large square buckles on the sides. They were small for the cousin, but she refused to part with them permanently. After all, she could now truthfully say she was the owner of two pairs of shoes. Evangelina stuffed them with bits of rag and walked several kilometers to her godmother’s wake. It had been a sad occasion. But the Feast of San Felipe Apóstol was the happiest of her life. She had danced all night with a young cane cutter, and now they were planning to live together as soon as he put aside some money to build a small house.
“Evangelina, are you daydreaming again, girl?” Carmela’s voice startled her. “Get some kindling to start the coffee,” she said wearily as the dark bundles on the floor came to life.
Evangelina brought a heap of firewood and set it on the black iron grill. “I dreamed the moon was dead again, Aunty,” she whispered anxiously. Carmela scooped water from a wooden barrel with a gourd cup and poured it into a black kettle.
“Maybe I should see a priest, huh?” Evangelina insisted.
“A lot of good that’ll do!” humphed Carmela. “The priest will tell you to say your Hail Marys and Our Fathers and order you to Mass on Sundays. What’s that gonna do?”
“What should I do, then?”
“Get yourself settled with that young man of yours so he’ll feed you,” Diomedes said as he picked up a gourd of steaming coffee and slurped. “How old are you now?” he asked.
“Fifteen, Uncle.”
“You wanna be an old maid, is that what you want? I can’t feed and dress you anymore; it’s time you went off on your own.” He looked at Carmela’s bulging abdomen. “We got another mouth to feed soon.”
“But who’ll help Aunty with the chores and the children if I go?”
“Elisa. She’s about ten now, a big girl. She’ll be ripe for a man soon, too.”
Carmela worked silently at the stove. Evangelina was a grown woman, and her young man was a good catch. But she loved her like her own daughter, and it would hurt to see her go. It was women’s fate, though. Nothing she could do.
Diomedes put on his straw hat, took his machete, and headed toward the fields. It was the tiempo muerto or dead season when the sugar cane fields were littered with stubble after the harvest. Though the cane cutting season was over, he had a lot of work to do. He was charged with burning and clearing the fields of trash and termites, spreading new seeds, and digging irrigation ditches.
Evangelina drank some black coffee, and, carrying a bundle of dirty clothes and tallow soap, retreated to the river, her favorite place. Climbing the hill quickly and weaving through the prickly bramble that lay low on the ground, she clambered down the other side of the hill slope pounding hard on the matted earth. She heard footsteps and stopped at a small dell. She put the sack of soiled clothes under a low canopy of stunted trees and noiselessly approached a thicket hedge. She parted the branches aside and saw Paquita, face gleaming with perspiration, marching up the path that led to the plantation houses.
Evangelina stepped out shyly. She had not seen her mother in several years, but she would recognize that angry face anywhere.
“What’s this business about running off with a field hand?” Paquita screeched without preamble. “How come he didn’t come ask for my permission? Who does he think I am, trash like him? And you better not have a turkey in the oven, young lady.”
Before Evangelina could step back, Paquita grabbed her by the hair and slapped her face, her shoulders, her chest. When her strength was spent, she let go, and Evangelina crumbled on the ground.
“Let this be a lesson to you. Don’t think that because I live all the way in Santurce, I don’t know what you’re up to, you little slut. I know everything that goes on around here. Everything! I’m going to Carmela’s right now to give her a piece of my mind. And you can forget about this peasant of yours. If he didn’t have the respect to talk to me, your own mother, about any plans he had with you, he’s out of the picture.”
The next morning, Evangelina was found in the tobacco shed hanging from the rafters. For the rest of her life Paquita would matter-of-factly dismiss her daughter’s death by saying that there had been an epidemic of suicides in Manatí that year, as though Evangelina had been claimed by cholera or yellow fever.
Paquita took her granddaughter in, but warned Ramón about his monetary responsibility towards the child. She expected a weekly sum for Blanca’s sustenance, or else he would have to deal with her. To avoid confrontations with Paquita, Ramón paid the stipulated weekly sum, and every once in a while, perhaps goaded by his conscience, he provided a few extra dollars for luxury items such as a little taffeta dress for Christmas. Relieved of countless obligations beyond the monetary one, Ramón gladly delivered Blanca to his mother.
Blanca slept on a cot that she unfolded every night in the living room of the small apartment. Lying there before the lights were turned off, she would stare at the bleeding Sacred Heart of Jesus hanging on the wall. Then Paquita’s husband Salvador, the man Blanca called Papá, would give her his blessing and turn off the light before going into the bedroom.
Every night as Blanca lay in the dark, she counted her fingers to convince herself that she was still there. She feared that once she fell asleep, she would drown under the sheets.
Darkness felt vast and wide as an ocean.
Blanca heard the story many times. Her grandmother launched into frequent soliloquies about her life in Puerto Rico and New York when callers dropped in for a cup of strong Puerto Rican coffee.
One afternoon, a little boy drowned in the mud and the shantytown yammered noisily. Salvador stood hesitantly looking into the shack where Paquita lived with her son Pedro.
“Doña Paquita,” he called, craning his neck so his voice would carry over the rickety board and into the four-legged shack.
“What is it?” she said, turning her back to the hot kerosene stove, perspiration dripping down her flushed face. She approached the open door.
“Good afternoon.” He gave a slight bow and tapped the rim of his hat. “Could you come out a minute, please? I would like to talk to you.”
It was the tacit moral code. A decent woman never received male callers in her home while she was alone and her son Pedro was too small to be considered a suitable chaperon. Paquita went out as she wiped her hands on the faded house-dress she wore when she came home from work. Salvador glanced at her sideways. She crossed the creaking board that straddled the mud canal between the shack and the dirt road. It was dinner time in the shantytown and the crusty odor of cod fritters sizzling in white-hot lard mingled with the sharp smell of sewage. For months now, Salvador had gazed at her wistfully when she returned from Miramar where she washed and ironed for a rich family. The young man swallowed the vision of her wide hips quavering under her flowery print dresses, but he had not mustered the courage to address her directly until that moment.
On steady ground, they faced each other.
“Good afternoon,” he repeated and twirled his straw hat nervously between his hands.
“Good afternoon.”
“Um, I’ve wanted to say something to you for a while now. I spoke to your brother Chebo, and he said it was fine with him, if you agree.”
“What in the devil’s name are you talking about? What plots are you and Chebo hatching?”
“No, no, it’s not a plot; it’s just that I’m a bachelor, you see. I live alone and need a companion. You understand? I know you’re a hard-working woman, always in your home, and I’d like, if you allow me, to visit you in Chebo’s house on Sunday afternoons. That is, if you allow me.”
She smirked. “You must be joking, Salvador. I’m old enough to be your mother.”
“That’s nothing. I’m almost 20 and I’m a hard worker.” He spoke rapidly, trying to say all he had come to say before she turned away. “I don’t like the young ladies of today. All they want is to look pretty and waste their time talking nonsense.”
“You’re crazy. And I’m warning Chebo not to stick his nose into my business. Forget it.” She swiped the air as though shooing a mosquito and shook her head from side-to-side. She crossed the wooden board to her shack without a backward glance.
But Salvador did not surrender. He liked this mature woman with strong character. He was dazzled by her blue eyes and pink cheeks. He knew she was almost forty and had four children somewhere in the hills of Manatí. But they were all grown by now and the youngest one, Pedro, liked him. He won him over by carving little wooden horses for him to play with.
Flattered by the constant attentions of the young man and egged on by her brother Chebo, Paquita relented. They lived together and from their meager wages saved enough money for Salvador’s immigration to New York where he would seek, in the streets paved with gold, a better life for his new family.
While Salvador was in New York, Paquita wove through the maze of shantytown alleys looking for the rare person who could read the letters she received from him, and what was more difficult, someone who could write her responses.
There were nights when bats flapped on the corrugated tin roof and frightened Paquita. She would turn the knob of an oil lantern and it would cast its sputtering glow over her as she maintained her tireless vigil with her asthmatic boy, who struggled ferociously for each breath of air.
On one of those nights of vigil, she lay down on her cot, dead tired after a long day of hard work. Startled by a noise outside, she rose, opened the door, and found another small door. She opened it and walked through to a circular stone stairway curling into darkness. Hesitantly, she went down the stairs, smelling the musky air of shadows and listening to the rhythmic lap of water. When she reached the bottom, she could see a tiny white boat rocking on a glassy lake. She clambered into the boat, sat on the plank that crossed the beam, and the boat glided toward a disc of light. The disc became larger and larger, and suddenly she found herself in a wide blue rippling river, bobbing to a shore that was green and lush with bamboo and fern. She felt the cool air of thick vegetation on her skin and racing through her hair. She drifted to shore, got off the boat, and headed toward a rustling soursop tree rooted in a bed of sand. The bright sun drove her under its enormous shade. Then she poked her head behind the smooth bark, and the gleam of a distant forest struck her. She was inexplicably drawn to it. A narrow stone path led into the forest. She penetrated the thickness of its vegetation, and as she entered farther, it grew darker. The trees were so tall that they blanketed the sky. Here and there shafts of light penetrated like milky beams and warmed her skin. She could feel the rustling of leaves under her feet. When she came to a clearing, a plume of smoke drifted through the green forest. An archangel rose from a thick white cloud. He was identical to the Gabriel posing on the promotional calendar of Mueblería Cimarrón that hung on her wall. With a voice that seemed to emerge from the depths of the soil, the archangel spoke. His voice was unintelligible, yet somehow the swirling sound attached itself to her mind and she understood that he was telling her how to cure her asthmatic son Pedro.
The sky was tinted pink and orange by the early morning light when Paquita woke up and rushed to a botánica, the local herbalist shop. She banged on the owner’s door.
“What the hell is all this racket?” A scowling barefoot woman opened the door.
“I need some iodine.”
“What?”
“Iodine, I need iodine.”
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph, can’t you wait until decent people are up?”
“No, no, I dreamed of Archangel Gabriel, and I can’t wait.”
“You’re crazy,” the woman mumbled under her breath and turned around.
Paquita clutched at her cotton night shift, ready to tear it off.
“Ok, ok, I’ll sell it to you. Is a peseta’s worth enough?”
Paquita’s shadow faded in the dawn and the botánica owner shook her head.
“May it poison your insides, you whore,” she cursed.
Once back home, Paquita pulled a jar of honey from a wooden tub, poured some into an old tomato sauce tin used for drinking water, and since the Archangel had not volunteered the necessary proportions, she put a few drops of iodine into the heavy golden honey. She held her breath and stirred the mixture carefully. With a gourd strip, she stuffed the celestial remedy into Pedro’s reluctant mouth. She feared the iodine might poison the child, but she believed in the infallibility of visions. She fed the boy the potion three times a day. Three seemed like a good honest number with magical endowments.
The miraculous disappearance of Pedro’s bronchial asthma provided Paquita with a favorite topic of conversation for many years.
The day Paquita had been waiting for finally arrived. Pesky flies whirred in black swarms, not respecting the impatient slaps of the slum dwellers. A hot noon sun beat on the tin roofs of the arrabal, beaming heat in all directions and stirring the muck-moist odor of sewage that rose from the mud. Paquita hurried past the gambling parlor, stomping on a few bright purple weeds which sprouted from under dusty stones. Distractedly she kicked a dead mouse aside, and a swarm of red ants scrambled in confused circles. She walked around the scurrying ants and stood at the open door of a jerrybuilt shack. She knocked on the door jamb.
“Buenos días,” she called into the shack.
A teenage girl peeked out timidly. She wore a pale blue shift. A thin naked toddler was perched on her hip.
“Mariana, a letter from New York.” Paquita held out the white envelope rimmed with blue and red stripes. It had two rows of letters over a pair of wings. “It’s Salvador,” she said as though he were waiting breathlessly inside the folded sheet of paper. “Read it to me, please.”
“Come in, Doña Paquita, and sit down if you like. I’ll put the baby down so she doesn’t bother us. Sorry I don’t offer you anything. You know Severo’s out of work,” She shrugged resignedly and held out a bony hand for the letter. Curlicued veins threaded under the skin of her pale, almost transparent palm.
Mariana stood by the door under a shaft of dusty light that helped her see better. She rested a bare foot over the other and leaned against the door jamb. She peered at the envelope closely and read haltingly, “Ah-eer mah-eel, correo aéreo. That means it came on an airplane, not a ship.”
Paquita looked up admiringly. How did this slip of a child know so much? As though reading her mind, Mariana said:
“I went to school for a long time, you know. Years. Finished the fourth grade even.” She looked past Paquita’s shoulder at the child sitting on the floor quietly sucking her thumb. “Then I got in trouble.” Mariana turned crimson and lowered her eyes. “I could’ve been someone,” she mumbled under her breath as she unfolded the lined paper, smoothing it with her fingertips before she started reading.
Paquita cocked an ear toward the girl and concentrated on Salvador’s words. When the girl finished, Paquita thanked her and pressed a few coins in her palm.
When she returned home, Pedro was squatting on the dirt path playing with pebbles. He looked up at her. “We’re sailing.” Paquita caught her breath. “Tomorrow I’m buying the tickets. Salvador sent money and says he’s already got us a place to live in New York.”