I NEVER DOUBTED THAT Willie and I would take charge of Sabrina: if the parents can’t do it, it becomes the responsibility of the grandparents; it’s a law of nature. However, I soon discovered that it would not be that simple. It wasn’t just taking a basket to the hospital to pick up the baby when they released her in a month or two. There were matters to be taken care of. The judge had already determined that she could not be handed over to Jennifer, but the man she lived with was still in the picture. I didn’t believe that he was the father because Sabrina didn’t have his African features—though I was assured that she was not purely Caucasian and that her skin would darken over the course of the weeks. Willie asked for a blood test, and although the man refused to take one, Jennifer had confirmed that he was the father, and that was all that was needed legally. From Chile, my mother advised us that it would be insane for us to adopt Sabrina, that Willie and I were worn too thin for a task of such magnitude. Willie had enough problems with his children and his office, and I had no break in my writing and traveling.
“That baby will have to be cared for day and night. How do you plan to do that?” she asked.
“The same way I cared for Paula,” I pronounced.
Nico and Celia came to talk with us. Your brother, slim as a birch and still with the face of a runny-nosed kid, had a child in each arm. It was obvious from her belly that Celia was six months pregnant; she looked tired and her skin was sallow. Once again, I was amazed when I looked at Nico, who inherited nothing from me; he is a head and a half taller than I am, composed and rational, he has elegant manners, and is blessed with a gentle sense of irony. His intellect is pristinely clear, focused not only on mathematics and science, which are his passions, but also on any human activity. I am constantly surprised by what he knows, by his opinions. He finds solutions for all kinds of problems, from a complex computer program to another, no less complex mechanism for hanging a bicycle from the ceiling with no fuss. He can fix almost any object of practical use, and does it with such care that it comes out better than it was originally. I have never seen him lose control. He has three basic rules that he applies in his relationships: it isn’t personal, everyone is responsible for his or her own feelings, life isn’t fair. Where did he learn that? From the Mafia, I suppose. Don Corleone. I have tried in vain to follow his path of wisdom but . . . for me everything is personal, I do feel responsible for the feelings of other people, even those I scarcely know, and I have for more than sixty years been frustrated because I can’t accept that life is unfair.
You had very little time to know your sister-in-law well, and I suspect that you weren’t overly fond of her since you were rather stern. I was a little afraid of you myself, Paula, I can tell you that now: your judgments tended to be concise and irrevocable. Besides, Celia raised people’s dander on purpose, it was as if she took great pains to shock everyone. Let me remind you of one conversation at the table.
“I think they ought to ship all the queers to an island and make them stay there. It’s their fault that we have the AIDS epidemic,” said Celia.
“How can you say something like that!” you exclaimed, horrified.
“Why do we have to pay for those people’s problems?”
“What island?” Willie asked, to be annoying.
“I don’t know. The Farallons, for example.”
“The Farallons are very small.”
“Any island! A gay island where they can take it in the ass until they die!”
“And what would they eat?”
“Let them plant their vegetables and tend their chickens! Or we can use tax money to set up an airlift.”
“Your English has improved a lot, Celia. Now you can articulate your bigotry to perfection,” my husband commented with a broad smile.
“Thank you, Willie,” she replied.
And that was how the conversation went as we sat around talking, until you left, indignant. It’s true. Celia tended to express herself in rather bold fashion, at least for California, but we have to remember that for several years she was involved with the Opus Dei, and that she came from Venezuela, where no one’s tongue is tied when it comes to saying anything they want. Celia is intelligent and contradictory; she has tremendous energy and an irreverent sense of humor that, translated into the limited English she had at that time, caused havoc. She worked as my assistant, and more than one journalist or unwarned visitor left my office put off by my daughter-in-law’s jokes. But I want to tell you something you may not know, Paula: she looked after you for months with the same tenderness she devoted to her children; she was with you in your last hours; she helped me prepare your body in the intimate rites of death; and she stayed beside you, waiting a day and a night, until Ernesto and the rest of the family that had traveled long distances arrived. We wanted you to receive them in your bed, in our house, for the final good-bye. But back to Sabrina. Nico and Celia joined us in the living room, and for once she had nothing to say; her eyes were glued on her wool socks and Franciscan monk’s sandals. It was Nico who did the talking. He began with my mother’s argument that Willie and I were not of an age to be taking on the care of a baby. When Sabrina was fifteen, I would be sixty-six and Willie seventy-one.
“Willie is no genius when it comes to raising children, and you, Mamá, you’re trying to replace Paula with a sick little baby. Would you be strong enough to bear grief like that again if Sabrina doesn’t survive? I don’t think so. But we’re young, and we can do it. We’ve already talked it over and we’re prepared to adopt Sabrina,” my son concluded.
For a long moment, Willie and I couldn’t speak.
“But very soon you’re going to have three children of your own,” I managed to say finally.
“And what is one more stripe to the tiger?” Celia mumbled.
“Thank you, I really do thank you, but that would be madness. You have your own family and you need to get ahead in this country, which won’t be easy. You can’t be responsible for Sabrina, that’s up to us.”
In the meantime, behind our backs the days were going by and the cumbersome machinery of the law was following its inexorable course. The social worker in charge of the case, Rebecca, looked very young, but she had had a lot of experience. Her job was not one to be envied; she had to work with children who had suffered abuse and neglect, children who were shuttled from one institution to the next, who were adopted and then returned, children terrorized and filled with rage, children who were delinquent, or so traumatized that they would never lead a more or less normal life. Rebecca fought the bureaucracy, the institutionalized negligence, the lack of resources, the irremediable wickedness of humankind, and, especially, she fought time. There weren’t enough hours to study cases, visit the children, rescue the ones in the most urgent danger, find them a temporary refuge, protect them, save them, follow their cases. The same children passed through her office again and again, their problems growing worse with the years. Nothing was resolved, only postponed. After reading the information she had before her, Rebecca decided that when Sabrina left the hospital she should be sent to a foster home that specialized in children with serious illnesses. She filled out the necessary documents, they leaped from desk to desk until they reached the proper judge, and he signed them. Sabrina’s fate was sealed. When I learned that, I flew to Willie’s office, pulled him from a meeting, and loosed a barrage in Spanish that nearly flattened him, demanding that he go to speak with the judge immediately, file suit if it were necessary, because if they put Sabrina in a hospice for babies she would die no matter what. Willie got into gear and I went home to tremble and await results.
That night, very late, my husband returned bearing ten more years on his shoulders. I had never seen him so defeated, not even when he had to rescue Jennifer from a motel where she lay dying, cover her with his jacket, and take her to that hospital where she was received by the Filipino doctor. He told me that he had spoken with the judge, with the social worker, with the doctors, even with a psychiatrist, and that every one of them agreed that the baby’s health was too fragile. “We can’t take her on, Isabel. We don’t have the energy to care for her or the strength to bear it if she dies. I’m not able to do this,” he concluded, with his head in his hands.