ANY MINUTE NOW, Camila expects the carriage to come up the last hill into full view, her father sitting beside her aunt Mon, her parasol cocked to the angle of the sun. They will have ridden up through town from the dockyards, her father pointing out this house and that house where the best poet in all of Cuba lives, or the most accomplished flutist, or the kindest doña who cooks the finest pasteles. Camila rolls her eyes just thinking about her father’s excesses of enthusiasm.
“Camila dear, are they here?” Tivisita has come into the front room where Papancho has set up his office and library. Camila takes a deep breath before she replies in as even a tone as she can manage, “Not yet. The boat was not due until ten, after all.” It is that “after all” that gets her in trouble. Were her father here, he would observe in a voice full of tenderness for Tivisita, “That is no way to speak to your stepmother, Camila.”
Her stepmother says nothing, and Camila does not turn to face her, hoping she will get the hint and leave. There must be one room in this house where Camila can get away from the madness of this new family. Recently, they have all been trying her patience—from the baby Rodolfo, cute as he is; to the pink pig, Teddy, to the bear that should be called Teddy but is called Christopher Columbus. It is an embarrassment to have her friends come over and step in bear poopoo or endure the parrot Paco’s crude remarks, even if they are spoken in English. After three years of occupation, everyone in Cuba knows what Remember the Maine, the hell with Spain! means, or Bottoms up! or Stick it where the sun never shines! These jibes are especially embarrassing when her beautiful friend Guarina Lora, whose family is one of the oldest and finest in Cuba, is visiting the house.
Mon is coming to Santiago de Cuba just to see her, Camila, and no one else. Mon is her special aunt, her godmother, her mother’s only sister—as close to a mother as a person who is not your mother can be. Camila wrote to Mon early in the year, begging her to come for her fifteenth birthday party in April, but her aunt wrote back that travel was difficult for “a fat, old lady like me.” Instead she invited Camila to come spend the summer with her. That caused quite a disagreement in the household. Papancho would not let Camila go away. He said that the climate there would be very bad for her asthma. But Camila could tell this was just an excuse. Her father has never allowed her to go back home for a visit, even though the two islands are only a day away by steamboat. As often as Camila has been allowed to go back, Santo Domingo might as well be Mexico, where her brother Pedro lives now. She has not seen her aunt or her grandmother since Papancho moved the family to Cuba five years ago. This is so unfair.
She knows from comments between her father and stepmother, comments that are always shushed when she comes into the room, that Ramona does not get along with Papancho. She has no idea why. It is one of those mysteries from the past that no one ever talks about, for fear of upsetting her stepmother. At least that is the way Camila explains it to herself. Why else not tell her the truth of why Tía Ramona so dislikes Papancho? She has a right to know. After all, it is her life that is affected by their bad blood! Of course, she does not say so. In fact, it is only recently that Camila has been admitting any of these dark thoughts to herself, much less anyone else.
“I really don’t think you should stand by the window. All that dust from the street.” Tivisita’s voice is full of concern, which Camila knows to be false. If Tivisita cared so much about her, she would have allowed Camila to accompany the coach down to the dock to pick up her father and aunt. Hasn’t Papancho always extolled the salutary properties of the seaside air? But no, Tivisita said a ride down to the hot, low-lying city and harbor would be the worst thing for Camila’s lungs. Ever since they moved up to Vista Alegre, Camila has not heard the end of how these breezy hills are going to cure her asthma. God forbid there should be another lung tragedy in the family!
Well, there is another tragedy in the family even if they cannot see it. She is so unhappy, she can’t stand it. She has written about this only to her brother Pedro, and only in a veiled way, saying she has a friend who has a friend who is melancholy and would like to take his life, and her brother has written back, “Tell him to wait a while. Youth is never easy.” But Pedro has also written to their father asking that Camila be sent to live with him in Mexico City. She knows this because her father has developed the habit of using his letters as bookmarks, and Camila has often found herself reading La divina commedia or El Cid or Victor Hugo only to come upon a letter from one of her brothers marking the place where Papancho stopped reading.
That is how she found out her oldest brother Fran, who seems to have dropped out of the family, killed a man. The letter, written from prison by Fran to their father, explained how the Bordas boy had threatened him first, how the victim got the doctor, and he got the ball and chain. Perusing her father’s copy of La vida es sueño, Camila discovered a letter from Mon, pleading with Papancho for custody of Camila. Even her brother Max seems to have picked up their father’s habit. Recently, Camila discovered that Max fancies her best friend Guarina. Her brother left a half-finished sonnet inside Salomé’s book of poems, perhaps frustrated by his attempts to match their mother’s talent. Reading it, Camila felt a pang of jealousy. Max has no right to worm his way into her special friendship with Guarina.
Her half brothers burst into the room, calling out, “Camila! Camila!” They are forbidden to enter their father’s study unless an adult is present, and of course, the minute they see their older sister headed for the front of the house, they are in fast pursuit. She has tried scolding and shooing them away, but they throw themselves at the door, begging her not to be so mean.
Sometimes she wishes she could tuck the whole lot of them back inside their mother, like the Russian dolls that fit inside each other that her father brought back from Paris for her when he was foreign minister. Then she would toss that mamá doll as far away as she can!
What an awful person she is to have these thoughts. Her mother must be looking down from heaven with a frown. Quickly, Camila makes the sign of the cross. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of my mother, Salomé . . .
It is all the more painful that her half brothers adore her and follow her around all the time. Little Rodolfo, in fact, calls her Mamila, and when he is in a temper, no one can calm him, not his mother nor his aunt Pimpa nor his big brothers Cotú and Eduardo nor her old nursemaid Regina, who is now his nursemaid. Only Mamila. He opens and closes his little hands, and Camila’s anger falls away before such raw, undisguised need.
“Boys, boys!” Tivisita calls out now. There is such indulgence in her voice that the boys know they need not heed her scolds. In this house, it is Tivisita’s older sister, Pimpa, who rules. “Leave your sister alone. Her aunt Mon is coming to visit her especially, and I want you to behave yourselves.”
They ignore her. Everyone but Papancho ignores the petite, pretty woman, or so Camila has always thought. But recently she has begun to notice how attentive men are to her stepmother. Camila’s own young gentlemen friends tell her that she has the most beautiful stepmother—as if this is a compliment to her! Whenever Camila goes with Tivisita to the shops, she notices how men on the street stop and gaze after them. Tall and awkward as she is, Camila knows the appreciation is not directed at her. Until recently, she has been glad for her invisibility, but now that she is a young señorita herself, she feels a pang in her heart. Especially when her friend Primitivo Herrera or Papancho seem to forget she exists the minute Tivisita steps into a room.
A puff of dust in the distance announces the arrival of the carriage. “They’re here!” her brothers call out. Papancho has been in the Dominican Republic for several weeks, summoned by the new government to be considered for a possible post, and now he is returning with his former sister-in-law. The boys, eager for travel gifts, break into howls of excitement and race out of the room.
It is now as Camila turns that she sees the expression on her young stepmother’s face: pain and worry not yet hidden behind cheerful calm. Something unspoken lurks in her hazel eyes that makes Camila uncomfortable. She doesn’t know what it is and doesn’t want to ask.
“Camila,” Tivisita begins, her voice hushed in confidence. “I hope—” She stops herself. Perhaps she has seen the look of impatience on her stepdaughter’s face.
Right this moment, Camila could ask, “What, Tivisita?” and encourage an intimacy that she knows her stepmother wants. But she cannot bring herself to open that door, even a crack.
She hurries from the room, afraid to be alone with this person she does not want to love.
HER AUNT RAMONA IS uglier than she remembered, fat and wonderfully cranky with everyone except Camila. She looks at her new nephews as if they were related to the pet monkey roaming the house. She shoos the pig away with her parasol. When they are finally alone in Camila’s room, she leans toward her niece and asks, point blank, “How can you stand it?”
Camila would like to say, “I can’t, Mon; I’m desperate; take me back when you go home.” But, she has developed the habit of accommodating, and her recent revolt has been mostly internal, except of course, when it leaks out in the presence of her stepmother. Unless Camila catches herself, she will say something rude that will bring that look into her stepmother’s face.
“You are looking more and more like your mother,” Mon says, cocking her head this way and that as if to see her niece from different angles.
Camila loves to hear this compliment. She glances up at Salomé’s portrait, an oil portrait her father recently commissioned by an artist in London. The painting used to hang in Papancho’s office, but when he moved his practice to his home, he asked Camila if she would like to have the picture in her room. Camila guesses that Tivisita might have complained that her predecessor’s portrait should not hang in the new family’s parlor.
Her aunt is looking at the portrait and shaking her head. “That’s not what your mother looked like.”
Camila loves this portrait. She always brings Guarina back here so that her friend can see what a beautiful mother she had, as beautiful as Tivisita, though darker-featured, with sparkling black eyes and a pretty, aquiline nose and rosebud mouth. She does not want to hear that her mother did not look like this. But in fact, when her father brought the portrait home from his office, Tivisita also observed that the picture was not really a true semblance of the Salomé she knew. That time her father shared in Camila’s annoyance. “Of course it is, Tivisita. It’s just that by the time you knew Salomé, she was already quite ill.”
“Papancho says it is a true likeness,” Camila insists. “Before Mamá got sick,” Camila adds, to soften the defiance in her voice.
Her aunt is studying the portrait, shaking her head. “Your mother was much darker, for one thing.”
“As dark as me?” Camila wants to know. Even though she herself is quite light-skinned, next to the pale Tivisita and the new brood, Camila looks like one of the servant girls.
Her aunt hesitates, “Darker. Pedro’s color, with the same features.”
Camila can barely remember her brother’s color, much less his features. He left Cuba three years ago, mailing the farewell letter Camila recently found in her father’s copy of Rodó’s Ariel just before boarding the ship.
By the time you receive this, Papancho, I will be bound for the land of the Aztecs. I fear that if I stay, I will succumb, like my mother, to moral asphyxiation.
Moral asphyxiation? Everyone knows her mother died of consumption! What is she to make of her brother’s diagnosis? She tries to picture his handsome, swarthy face but Pedro’s image has become so faded that Camila would probably not recognize him were she to pass him walking down a crowded street in downtown Santiago de Cuba. Would he turn and gaze after her only if her stepmother were along? she wonders with a pang.
“They say Mamá was quite tall. Very attractive,” Camila continues, hoping her aunt will supply more details, filling in the many blanks in her head.
Mon looks at Camila a moment as if trying to decide something, before waving her questions away. “Get to know your mother from her poems. That is the truest Salomé. That is Salomé before . . .” She trails off. Camila is so sure she can complete the sentence that she does not need to ask if her aunt is referring to Papancho.
“I know all Mamá’s poems by heart,” Camila boasts. In fact, she loves to rehearse the poems with Guarina, reciting while her friend follows along in the book.
Her aunt smiles proudly and pulls her rocker toward one of the trunks she has been unpacking. A third and fourth trunk with books the family left behind when they emigrated to Cuba have been stored in the front parlor. Two men unpacked the wagon of baggage that followed the coach up the hill. “You came with a whole household!” Pimpa observed, initiating the war that would soon rage between the two outspoken sisters-in-law.
“I brought some of your mother’s things that I think you should have,” Ramona explains. She unpacks a silver comb that she says Salomé’s father gave her on her fifteenth birthday and a black silk dress which she spreads on the bed. Camila smooths out the fabric with the palm of her hand, a dark silhouette of her mother’s body. From a velvet reticule, Mon withdraws a gold medallion and a small book whose binding looks hand-sewn. She lays these articles on the lap of the dress. “She wore that dress the night she got the national medal. Those are the original poems—”
“Her book?”
Her aunt shakes her head. “No, your father tinkered with those. These are the ones I copied down from the originals. Some day I hope you or Pedro—since you’re the ones inclined in that direction—I hope you will publish them.”
Camila picks up the book and opens it. The pages are roughcut, and each time she turns one, the binding strains, so that she is afraid the whole will come apart in her hands. She begins to read “Sombras” and since she knows the published poem by heart, she can make out the small differences. “Why did Papancho do that?”
“He thought he knew better,” Mon says, twisting her mouth as if to knot it shut.
Just then, there is a soft knock on the door. “May I come in?” Tivisita calls out. Camila feels her shoulders tensing.
“Of course, you may come in, Tivisita,” Mon says in a voice loaded with patience.
The door opens, and Tivisita peeks in. Her eyes fall on the bed, where the dress and medal are laid out.
“I’m intruding,” she states, the edge of a question in her voice. She wants so much to be asked into this moment of privacy. Camila feels herself weakening and glances at Mon to see if her aunt might want to collude in indulging the nervous woman.
“I haven’t seen my Camila for five years,” Mon says firmly. “We’re just catching up with each other. Aren’t we?”
Tivisita looks as if she has just been slapped. Why can’t she be a horrible stepmother so I can hate her? Camila wonders. Instead, she feels a stirring of affection that she does not want to feel. It would amount to betraying her mother.
“Of course you want some time together,” Tivisita says, pulling the door quietly closed.
“We’ll be out soon,” Camila calls after the retreating footsteps. Then, just to be sure her aunt knows that she, Camila, does not like Tivisita either, she rolls her eyes skyward.
THE FIRST SUNDAY OF Mon’s visit, Camila asks that her friends Guarina and Primitivo be invited to the big dinner at noon. Her stepmother, of course, turns the gathering into a repeat birthday party, since Mon missed the April festivities. Paper streamers hang from the pillars of the galería just as they did for her quinceañera party. Back then, a group of Max’s musician friends played, and everyone danced on a makeshift platform set up in the garden. Primitivo had written her a poem, “Rimas galantes,” and he recited it to her as they danced a danzón. The first dance, a waltz, had been reserved for her father. Her stepmother had actually been nice about it and taken herself and the three young boys and Pimpa for an overnight outing to Cuabitas, letting Camila be the mistress of the house, for once.
Today, just before her friends are expected, Camila, dressed in her mother’s black dress with the silver comb in her hair, joins the family in the front parlor.
The moment she comes into the room, Papancho’s face clouds over. He pales and puts his hand to his heart—the threat of a heart attack always part of his performance of displeasure. “That is not appropriate for a quinceañera party.”
“Why not?” Mon has come in behind Camila, dressed in what looks like gray drapery. With her girth, Mon’s clothes have no shape to them.
“Black is not the color for a birthday party. And I hardly have to tell you, Mon, that such a dress brings painful memories.”
“How about your beautiful lavender,” Tivisita says, helpfully. She comes forward to escort Camila out of the room, almost as if the tone between Pancho and Mon is not appropriate for a young lady to listen to. The little boys are still in their room being dressed, and the punctual Primitivo has not yet arrived. As for Guarina, she is being picked up by Max, which means she will not be on time, as Max is always late for anything someone else has planned. “Your lavender dress will go beautifully with that gold medallion.”
“I hate that dress,” Camila blurts out, knowing full well the comment will upset her stepmother. The dress, fussy with bows and gathers, was a gift from Tivisita for her quinceañera party. Camila never liked the dress, but Papancho insisted she wear it so as not to hurt her stepmother’s feelings. “She hunted all over Havana for that dress,” her father had explained to Camila.
“But it looks so nice on you,” Tivisita says quietly. That look comes into her eyes: something she wants to say but cannot bring herself to mention to her stepdaughter.
Together, they leave the room, the voices in the background rising, especially when Pimpa joins the discussion of what is and is not appropriate for a young girl of fifteen to wear to a quinceañera party.
Back in Camila’s room, Tivisita opens the mahogany armoire. “What would you like to wear, Camila? I mean, besides that dress.”
“The beautiful lavender,” Camila says with more sarcasm in her voice than she had intended.
“Why do you say that?” Tivisita asks, looking pained.
“Because if I don’t wear it, I will be in trouble with Papancho.”
Tivisita nods thoughtfully, as if she is finally realizing Camila’s predicament. “I understand,” she says, which surprises Camila in turn, as her stepmother has always seemed a shallow woman, someone whose thoughts could be skimmed from the surface of whatever she was saying.
They arrive at a compromise dress—neither her mother’s black silk nor the overdone lavender gown, but a cream lace dress that has recently been delivered by the seamstress to the house. “Are you sure, Camila?” Tivisita hesitates. The dress has been made expressly for her commencement in September. “It’s rather dressy for just a dinner party, don’t you think?”
Of course, her stepmother is right. But Camila refuses to alter her choice and find herself in agreement with the woman. “That’s what I want to wear,” she says, biting her lip so as not to cry at her own awful peevishness.
Tivisita glances up at the portrait above Camila’s bed, an uncertain look on her face. She is a small, delicate woman, so that Camila always feels she should be nicer because she towers over her—as if over a child. When Tivisita finally nods, Camila can see the hairpins holding up the pompadour on top of her head. “I’ll go fetch it then.”
The dress is being stored in Tivisita’s armoire under a sheet for protection. Camila chose the fabric and lace trimmings in part to aggravate her stepmother, who felt that such a dress would be too extravagant for an afternoon graduation.
As she reenters the parlor, she finds her father unpacking books from the trunk, while Mon on a small ladder places them on the shelves. How did they manage to make peace? she wonders. As querulous as her aunt is, she has never disowned Papancho and his new family. “You can’t choose who you are related to,” she often reminds Camila.
“Now that is much better,” Papancho says, smiling at Tivisita.
Look at me! Camila wants to cry out. Almost as if he has heard her thoughts, her father turns to her. “That is a beautiful dress, Camila. You look like a bride!”
“I love your dress,” Guarina agrees when she arrives a moment later.
Her brother Max follows behind Camila’s girlfriend. “I only surround myself with good-looking women,” he flirts. Guarina hides her smile behind a gloved hand. At twenty-four, Max is nine years older than Camila and Guarina. Why can’t he find a girlfriend his own age? Camila thinks as she slips her arm through Guarina’s in a proprietary way.
As Primitivo takes his place beside her at the table, he leans over and whispers, “You look lovely, Camila, just like your mother.”
Camila colors with pleasure. But a moment later, she realizes that Primitivo has never seen an image of Salomé. The only portrait hangs in her bedroom, which the young man is not allowed to enter. He must be comparing her to her stepmother!
He can stick his compliment where the sun never shines, thank you!
HER FATHER TINKLES HIS glass with his spoon, calling the table to attention. He is so handsome and elegant with his silvering hair and mustache there at the head of the table. Guarina has confessed to Camila that her father looks “very presidential.”
In the silence before Papancho intones grace, the parrot calls out, “Chow time, amigos!”
The children laugh, but Camila’s face burns with embarrassment.
“¿Qué dice ese bendito animal?” Mon asks, directing her question at Camila as if only her niece can be trusted to tell her the truth of what this dreadful animal is saying.
“It says to eat your food!” Cotú, the oldest of the half brothers, announces to the old woman. He has already stuffed his mouth with mashed plantains, which he displays to the table as if to demonstrate how it is one chows.
“Cotubanamá, por Dios,” Tivisita says, shaking her head with obvious pride. The boy grins, biding his time. “I am so sorry, Mon, you know how children are.”
“Some children,” Mon observes.
“My theory is that the parrot was a mascot for the rough riders,” Max observes, no doubt hoping to change the subject. “That’s how he picked up all those ill-mannered expressions in English.”
“Ree-mem-berrr-da-Maine!” Cotú calls out. “Da-hell-to-Espain!” Eduardo and Rodolfo join in.
“Hush now,” Camila says quickly before Paco becomes encouraged and goes through his whole repertoire of disgusting Americanisms. The boys glance up at her, little Rodolfo offering her his most charming smile. He looks so much like Tivisita! she suddenly thinks.
Today, they are dressed like sailors in navy blue outfits with white trimming, Rodolfo’s ribboned cap still on his head. The poor child has been jealous for days, since Mon arrived, and his favorite companion, big sister Mamila, has been sequestered away in her bedroom, talking, talking, talking, refusing to open the door to his howls.
“I would like to make a toast,” Max stands up. Her brother has gotten so stout and manly in the last few months. For the past year, he has lived in Mexico with Pedro, but after a bout of lung trouble, which Papancho feared was tuberculosis, Max came home to recuperate. He has been staying up in the country, at Cuabitas, where fresh air, daily exercise, and five shots of rum a day have restored him to near perfect health. Love is doing the rest.
“This is a splendid gathering,” Max begins, removing a sheet of folded paper from his pocket. “Not since Greece have so many Graces gathered together.” Camila hates it when Max gushes with compliments. It’s so embarrassing. She looks over at her friend to share a smirk, but Guarina is smiling. “And so in honor of my dear aunt and sister and her lovely friend,” a nod in Guarina’s direction, “I have composed a poem for the occasion—”
“Can we eat first?” Eduardo pleads, though he knows the rules. Poetry is sacred in this household. Whenever anyone stands up to recite, all forks and spoons must be laid down.
Today, Papancho intercedes on their behalf. “I think it is best if we wait for the poem until later, son, so the food does not get cold.”
Camila can tell Max is annoyed to have his poem deferred, but he will not show his temper in front of lovely Guarina. Instead, he sits down and begins reciting it quietly just to her, not realizing that he is sitting on the side of her bad ear. But Camila has promised not to say anything to anyone about her friend’s increasing deafness. They have traded secrets: Guarina’s deafness for Camila’s first kiss from Primitivo; Camila’s growing annoyance with her stepmother for Guarina’s frustrations with her strict father, the general; their likes and dislikes among the young people around. But there is a secret Camila cannot admit even to her best friend: the funny sensations she has when they have sat together in bed, propped up on pillows, reading her mother’s poems.
Glancing around the table, Camila sighs with relief. Everyone seems to be finally at peace: Primitivo and Max are in deep conversation with Mon over one of Salomé’s poems. At the other head of the table, Papancho is conversing with Guarina, trying to extract conversation from the shy girl. The boys are comparing mouthfuls, Pimpa fussing now at them, now at their nanny Regina. Only Tivisita at the far end seems withdrawn, listlessly spooning her sancocho into her mouth. Camila has a sudden shocking premonition: Tivisita is going to die soon. But perhaps this thought is not so much a premonition as another of those secret wishes she cannot talk about, even to Guarina.
She feels awful when these dark thoughts come in her head. And yet, she tells herself, it is probably no different from the way Tivisita feels about her. No doubt her stepmother wishes Camila had died right along with her mother in that dark sickroom. She remembers how angry she was when Tivisita named her first child, Salomé, as if wanting to replace both Camila and her mother. “It’s my mother’s name, and she gave it to me,” she had told her stepmother. “Salomé Camila.” Later, when the infant died, Camila felt guilty, as if it were her anger that caused it.
But something has been happening in the weeks since she wrote to her brother Pedro. She no longer wishes she were dead. She finally has a lovely girlfriend and a young man who calls her lovely, even if he seems more taken with her mother’s poems and her stepmother’s looks than with her. But this is far better than the desperate loneliness of the last few years. Who knows? Maybe soon, she will surprise herself and burst out of her shell like the naked Venus in Pancho’s artbook from Paris that Camila loves to gaze at.
Tivisita glances up, and catching Camila’s dreamy gaze, she smiles back. Quickly, Camila looks away before that other look comes on her stepmother’s face.
“FELIZ CUMPLEAÑOS,” TIVISITA marches in, singing. The cake on its platter is blazing with candles. Behind her the two oldest boys are trying to follow the tune on their violins. Camila bites her lip so as not to laugh at the caterwauling sound.
She glances toward her friends and smiles in apology. Thankfully, Guarina smiles back as if to say, Don’t worry. It’s just the same at my house.
Why does Tivisita have to make her go through this? She knows how much Camila hates being the center of attention. The cake is a rich chocolate, her favorite, and Tivisita has gone to quite some trouble to make the little marzipan lady at the center. It is July, the heat in the kitchen is unbearable. Anyone making marzipan in this weather deserves a medal.
Camila touches the medallion around her neck and whispers a quick apology. In your name, Salomé. How awful to compare her mother’s accomplishments to her stepmother’s marzipan.
“What are you wishing for?” Cotú wants to know.
“I can’t say,” Camila reminds him, though in fact, she has not made a wish, so concerned is she with her imagined offense to her mother’s memory.
“Yes, you can! Tell us your wish!” Cotú insists. The oldest of Papancho’s new family has a striking, indigenous look no one can trace to a known ancestor. Max’s theory is that the Taino name that Papancho once used as his pseudonym and then gave to his newborn son, Cotubanamá, has worked like the Creator’s Word in Genesis and made the boy into a likeness of his native name.
“Wish! Wish!” Rodolfo beats heartily on his plate. His aunt Pimpa swoops down and wrests the spoon from his hand. The baby, of course, bursts out crying again.
“Come sit by me,” Camila finally calls out when no one has been able to quiet the bawling boy. Across the table, Ramona is shaking her head at this new wife who cannot control her children.
The baby’s high chair is brought around and placed beside Camila. To keep him happy, Camila turns to him periodically, reminding him of how they will go get seashells at the beach with Mon, how they will visit Cuabitas and catch butterflies and tickle big brother Max’s toes, how he can have a second serving of cake and keep the marzipan girl if he is a good boy.
It happens so quickly that it takes a moment for Camila to realize why everyone is gaping at her. With his spoon piled high to feed his Mamila her birthday cake, Rodolfo has turned toward her and, of course, not managing the aim, lands the spoon on Camila’s chin and the chocolate cake goes tumbling down the front of her new dress.
THAT NIGHT AFTER EVERYONE has gone to sleep, Camila commences her accustomed prowl of the house and garden, ending up as usual in her father’s study, where she reads until late hours. La dormilona, sleepyhead, she is known in the family. Everyone assumes that her late wakings, midmorning, have to do with her asthma, not her insomnia.
Tonight, her father’s study is a mess of unpacked books in different stages of progression toward the shelves. There are textbooks from when her parents ran that progressive school in the capital, inspired by their friend Hostos; her father’s medical tomes, all in French; inscribed books that seem to have been given to her parents by various famous persons.
Since her father’s library is now fully here in Cuba, it’s clear they are not going to go home any time soon. Papancho’s long debate whether to move the family back has always snagged on how he would earn a living there. It would be difficult to rebuild a medical practice at this late stage in his life, and the government posts he keeps getting offered pay more with prestige than with pesos.
“I just want to stay here and take care of my patients,” Papancho claims. But any time he is called over to the home island to consult on some national problem or fill some brief, honorary post, he goes, and leaves the family behind. From time to time there have even been rumors that Don Pancho is being considered as a compromise presidential candidate. “Anything to serve my country,” her father has said, bowing his head to his duty, as if he wouldn’t love running a whole country, not just the small domain of his family.
Seeing Mon again, Camila realizes how lonely she would feel if she did go back to live with her cranky aunt and ancient grandmother Minina and the ghost of her mother everywhere. But if only her father would allow her to visit Pedro, or at the very least to travel to Havana, where her brother Fran lives with his new wife, María, and see something of the world! Maybe she would get some inkling of what she is meant to do with her life, besides behave herself so as not to disappoint others.
But her father does not like the idea of his children wandering off. It will be the death of him, he claims, putting his hand to his heart just to hear it mentioned. As an example, he cites the case of his own father. Papancho believes it was his departure from Santo Domingo that caused Don Noël’s death, just as it was Max’s absence in Mexico that brought about his incipient tuberculosis, and Pancho’s going off to study in Paris that caused Fran to lose his temper thirteen years later and kill a man. No wonder he doesn’t want Camila to leave his side. What unhappy thing would she become apart from him?
My own person, she thinks, excited at the thought of what that might mean.
Sitting in her father’s chair, Camila opens the first book in the pile before her. Lamartine’s poems, a gift to Herminia, whoever she is, from someone named Miguel Román. She turns several pages, looking for some further clue as to how her father acquired the book. Tucked in the middle, she finds several letters from Paris, France, which her father must have written her mother during those years he studied medicine abroad, and one from her father to her uncle Federico, which seems to have been crumpled and then smoothed and folded back up.
This is the first letter she reads, her heart racing, her chest tightening. Then, she goes on to the next letter, and the next. When she is done with Lamartine, she picks up Marco Polo.
Book by book she goes, until she knows the whole story.
“WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL me the truth?” Camila has never spoken to her aunt so boldly. Her voice is shaking. According to Doña Gertrudis, her bel canto teacher at the conservatorio, Camila’s voice is not strong enough to sing opera, a dream she has had ever since she heard Lucrezia Bori singing La Traviata in the opera house in Havana.
It seems that whenever she feels a strong emotion, she cannot get enough air in her lungs, and her voice fades. She clears her throat and takes the deep breaths Doña Gertrudis has coached her to take before she begins an aria. The one thing she must not do is look at her mother’s portrait. That would undo her.
“Calm yourself, Camila. There is nothing to get so upset about.”
“How can you say that? I know everything!” And then, detail by detail, she enumerates the secrets she unearthed from reading her parents’ letters last night.
“He even has another daughter. Her name is Mercedes. Mercedes Chrittia. She goes by her mother’s name.”
Mon is shaking her head as if to keep the idea from taking root. “You’re coming home with me,” she says, plucking her handkerchief from her enormous bosom and blowing her nose. Camila feels that familiar tightness in her chest. But she does not like to cry in front of other people, not since she was very little and missed her mother so miserably she thought she, too, would die.
“And there were others. Someone named Trini. And a Herminia.”
“Herminia was your mother actually, Camila, a pseudonym she once used.”
“I just want to know one thing,” Camila goes on, ignoring her aunt’s explanation. She can see Mon bracing herself, glancing worriedly toward the portrait above the bed. “I want to know about Papancho and Tivisita. I mean, Papancho remarried within the year. Even Roosevelt had the decency to wait two years before marrying his second wife—and he’s an American.” She doesn’t know quite what she means by that except that she detests the parrot’s freewheeling chatter and so assumes that those who trained him, the Americans, must also be lacking in proprieties.
“I don’t know anything about that,” Mon says, crossing her arms, as if she were ready to block Camila’s access to the past. “All I know is Tivisita moved in right after Salomé got sick. Then of course, when you were born and your mother almost died . . .”
This is a topic everyone always avoids. It’s as if they do not want Camila to make any association between her mother’s death and her own birth.
“You were such a solace to your mother,” Ramona adds quickly. “That’s why even with the doctors’ prognosis, she got better. She lived for three more years. She lived those years for you, Camila. I do believe that.”
“But why did Tivisita stay?” Camila persists. She still believes there is something her aunt is not telling her.
“Your mother wanted her to stay. You were quite attached to her. You felt toward her the way your little half brother feels toward you.”
Camila is so resistant to this idea she cannot believe anyone would think it was ever in her head.
“Tivisita has always been good to you.” Her aunt sighs as if she has to overcome her own resistance toward saying anything kind about Papancho’s new wife. “It was a bad labor, as you can imagine. Your mother, your father, even I—we all thought you were dead. Tivisita saved your life—”
“That’s not true!” Camila objects, though, in truth, there is no memory at all she can put in its place. As much as she hates crying in front of anybody, her eyes are wet and burning. She looks toward her mother’s portrait, as if for protection, like a child being bullied. Through her tears, her mother’s blurry, pretty face resembles Tivisita’s.
The knock makes them both jump. They look at each other a moment, and quickly Camila dries her eyes. This time Tivisita does not wait to be invited inside. She enters the room, bearing the washed dress on its hanger like a trophy, its front immaculate.