DECEMBER 6, 1993, was the first anniversary of your death. I wanted to remember you as beautiful, unassuming, content, dressed as a bride or holding a black umbrella and leaping over puddles in the rain in Toledo, Spain. But at night, in my bad dreams, I was assaulted by the most tragic images: your hospital bed, the hoarse sound of the respirator, your wheelchair, the handkerchief we used to cover the hole of the tracheotomy, your clenched hands. I had prayed so many times to die in your place, and later, when that exchange was impossible, prayed to die after you did, that in all fairness I should have been seriously ill. But dying is very difficult, as you know and as my grandfather told me shortly before he completed a century of living. A year had gone by since your death and I was still alive, thanks to my family’s affection and the magical needles and Chinese herbs of my wise Japanese friend Miki Shima, who had been with you and me during those long months when you were saying good-bye. I don’t know what effect his remedies had on you, but his tranquil presence and spiritual messages kept me going week after week. “Don’t say you want to die, that makes me so sad that I want to die,” my mother reproached me once when I hinted at that in a letter. She was not my only reason for living; I had Willie and Nico and Celia, and those three grandchildren who often woke me with their grubby little hands and slobbery kisses, smelling of sweat and pacifiers. At night, all in the same bed snuggled close together, we would watch frightening videos of dinosaurs devouring the actors. Alejandro, four years old, would take my hand and tell me not to be afraid, it was all a big fib; afterward the monsters vomited up the people whole because they didn’t chew them.
On the morning of that anniversary I took Alejandro to the forest we now call “Paula’s forest.” That’s rather presumptuous of us, daughter, it is a state park. It was raining, and very cold; our feet sank into the mud, the air smelled of pines, and a sad winter light was filtering through the treetops. My grandson ran ahead of me, toes out and arms flapping like a duck. As soon as we neared the stream—tumultuous in winter—where we had scattered your ashes, he immediately recognized it.
“Paula was sick yesterday,” he said. For him anything in the past was yesterday.
“Yes. She died.”
“Who killed her?”
“It wasn’t like television, Alejandro. Sometimes people get sick and just die.”
“Where do dead people go?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
“She went down there,” he said, pointing to the stream.
“Her ashes went with the water, but her spirit lives in this forest. Isn’t this a great place?”
“No,” he decided. “It would be better if she was living with us.”
We stayed a long time remembering you in that green cathedral, where we could feel you, tangible and present, like the cold breeze and the rain.
That evening the family, including Ernesto, who’d come from New Jersey, and a few friends got together at our home. We sat in the living room and celebrated the gifts you had given us during your lifetime and the gifts you continued to give us, such as the births of the grandchildren Sabrina and Nicole, and the incorporation into our tribe of the mothers Fu and Grace, along with Sally. A humble white candle with a hole in the center presided over the altar we had improvised to hold your photographs and mementos.
The year before, three days after your death, I had met with the Sisters of Disorder at one of their homes, as we always did on Tuesday; we made a circle around six new candles. I was numb with grief over your departure. “I have this burning in the center of my body, like a fire in my womb,” I told them. We joined hands, closed our eyes, and my friends directed toward me their affection and their prayers, to help me endure the pain of those days. I asked for a sign, an indication that you had not disappeared into nothingness forever, that your spirit existed somewhere. Suddenly I heard Jean’s voice. “Look at your candle, Isabel!” My candle was burning in the center. “There’s your fire in the womb,” Jean added. We waited. The flame melted the wax and formed a hollow in the middle of the candle, but it did not bend or split apart. Just as it had spontaneously caught fire, instants later the flame went out. The candle was hollowed out, but erect, and I took that as the sign I was waiting for, a wink you’d sent me from another dimension: the raw burn of your death would not break me. Nico later examined the candle and couldn’t find the cause of that strange flame in the center; maybe the candle was defective, or had a double wick that lighted from a spark. “Why do you want an explanation, Mamá?” he asked. “What matters is that you received the sign you asked for, that’s enough.” I suppose he wanted me to be content, because given his healthy skepticism, I don’t think he believed it was a miracle.
Fu explained to all of us that we lighted incense because the smoke rises like our thoughts, and the light of the candles represents wisdom, clarity, and life. Flowers symbolize beauty and continuity; they die but they leave seeds for other flowers, just as our seeds survive in our grandchildren. Each person shared some sentiment or memory. Celia, the last to speak, said, “Paula, remember that you have two nieces and a nephew, and you must take very good care of them, for they may have porphyria too. Remember to watch and see that Sabrina has a long and happy life. And remember, too, that Ernesto needs another wife; so go ahead and find him a girlfriend.”
To end our evening we mixed earth with a pinch of the ashes I had saved from your cremation, and planted a little tree in a pot, with the idea that as soon as it set its roots we could put it out in our garden or in your forest.
Cheri Forrester, our compassionate doctor, was also there, along with Miki Shima, who days before had cast the I Ching sticks for me. What they had said was: “The woman has patiently tolerated the desolate earth; she is crossing the river, barefoot and with determination; she counts on people who are at a distance, but does not have companions; she must walk alone through the middle crossing.” I thought it was very clear. Dr. Shima said that he had received a message from you. “Paula is fine, she is moving along her spiritual path but she looks after us and is present among us. She says she does not want us to keep weeping over her, she wants to see us happy.” Nico and Willie exchanged meaningful glances; they do not fully believe in this fine man. They argue that he can’t prove anything he says, but that night I had no doubt that it was your voice because it was so similar to the message you left in your will. “Please, don’t be sad. I am still with all of you, just closer than before. Later on we will be reunited in spirit, but in the meantime we will be close as long as you remember me. Don’t forget that we, we spirits, most effectively help, accompany, and protect those who are content.” That is what you wrote, daughter. Cheri Forrester cried and cried because her mother died at your age, and from what she said, you two were very much alike physically.
I had intended on that memorable day to put the final word to the manuscript of the book and offer it to you as a gift. Fu blessed the bundle of papers tied with a red ribbon, and we all toasted with champagne and shared a chocolate cake. There was deep emotion, though it wasn’t an evening of mourning but, rather, a quiet ceremony. We were celebrating that at last you were free after having spent so much time as a prisoner.
SADNESS. As the therapist had pointed, out, there was sadness in both Willie’s life and mine. It was not a paralyzing emotion but an awareness of the losses and difficulties that colored our reality. We often had to adjust our burdens in order to go forward without falling. Everything was disorganized; we had the feeling we were living at the center of a storm, boarding up doors and windows so the winds of misfortune did not level everything.
Willie’s office was operating on credit. He accepted hopeless cases, spent more than he earned, maintained a herd of useless employees, and was entangled in a number of tax wrangles. He was a terrible administrator, and Tong, his loyal Chinese accountant, could not control him. My presence in his life brought stability because I could help with expenses in emergencies, run the house, check the bank balances, and do away with most of the credit cards. He moved his San Francisco office to a Victorian house I bought in Sausalito, the most picturesque town on the bay. The property had been built around 1870 and boasted a notable pedigree: it was the first brothel in Sausalito. Later it was converted into a church, then a chocolate cookie factory, and finally, a complete ruin, it passed into our hands. As Willie said, it kept sliding down the social ladder. It sat among sick, centuries-old trees that threatened to fall onto the neighbors’ houses with the first gale. We were forced to cut down two of them.
The executioners arrived dressed like astronauts; they climbed up the trees with saws and axes, swung from the branches on ropes, and proceeded to draw and quarter their victims, who bled to death quietly, as trees do. I had to run away, unable to witness that massacre any longer. The next day we didn’t recognize the house. It was naked and vulnerable, its wood devoured by time and termites, the shingles twisted, the shutters dangling. The trees had hidden the degree of deterioration; without them the house resembled a decrepit courtesan. Willie enthusiastically rubbed his hands. In some previous life he had been a builder, one of the ones who construct cathedrals. “We are going to make this house as beautiful as it was when it was young,” he said, and set off in search of the original plans to return it to its Victorian grace. He succeeded magnificently and, despite the profanation of tools, its walls still hold the French perfume of the whores, the Christian incense, and the chocolate of cookies.
In the same rooms where the long-ago ladies of the night made their clients forget their sorrows, Willie today combats the uncertainties of the law. In what was formerly the carriage house, I clashed with my literary ghosts for years, until I had my own cuchitril at our house, where I now write. Using the move as an excuse, Willie got rid of half of his employees and then was able to choose his cases more carefully; his office, nonetheless, was still chaotic and not profitable. “However much you bring in, more goes out. Add it up, Willie. You’re working for a dollar an hour,” I pointed out. Willie was never fond of keeping tabs, but Tong, who had worked for him for thirty years and had more than once saved him from bankruptcy by a hair, agreed with me.
I grew up with a Basque grandfather who was very cautious with money, and then with my Tío Ramón, who barely survived on his meager salary. My stepfather’s philosophy was, “We are filthy rich,” no matter that out of necessity he had to be very prudent with expenditures. He proposed to live life in grand style, though he had to stretch every cent of his paltry pay as a public servant to maintain his four children and my mother’s three. Tío Ramón would divide his month’s salary and put the money to cover our basic needs, counted and recounted, into four envelopes; each had to last a week. If he managed to save a little here and a little there, he would take us to get ice cream. My mother, who was always considered a very stylish woman, made her own dresses, transforming them again and again. They had an active social life, unavoidable for diplomats, and she had a basic gray silk evening gown to which she added and removed sleeves, belts, and bows, so that in photographs of the day she always appears in a different dress. It never passed through their minds to go into debt. Tío Ramón gave me my most useful guidelines for living, as I discovered in therapy as a mature woman: a selective memory for remembering the good things, a logical prudence to avoid doing anything to ruin the present, and defiant optimism for facing the future. He also instilled a spirit of serving, and taught me not to complain because that will ruin your health. He has been my best friend; there is nothing I haven’t shared with him. Because of the way he and my mother brought me up, added to the alarms of exile, I have a peasant mentality when it comes to money. If it were up to me, I would hide my savings under the mattress, as Tabra’s former suitor did with his bars of silver. The way my husband went through money horrified me, but every time I stuck my nose in his business, it caused a battle.
After the manuscript of Paula was sent to Spain and had safely arrived in the hands of Carmen Balcells, I was overcome by a profound weariness. I was extremely busy with family, travels, lectures, readings, and the bureaucracy of my office, which had been growing until it had reached terrifying proportions. Time refused to do my bidding; I was circling around in the same spot like a dog chewing its tail, and not producing anything worthwhile. I kept trying to write. I had even finished most of the research for a novel about the gold fever in California. I would sit before my computer with my head filled with ideas but be unable to transfer them to the screen. “You have to give yourself time, you’re still grieving,” my mother reminded me in her letters, and Abuela Hilda softly repeated the same advice. During that time, she was taking turns between staying at her daughter’s house in Chile and then ours or Nico’s in California. This kind woman, the mother of Hildita, my brother Pancho’s first wife, had been warmly adopted as grandmother by all of us, especially Nico and you, whom she spoiled from the moment you were born. She was my accomplice in any madness I dreamed up in my youth and companion in your and Nico’s adventures.