"[An] ambitious historical novel about a
remarkable
Caribbean family ... Original and
illuminating." -- The New York Times Book
Review
"Bracing ... challenging ... Drawn from the
soulful history of
[Alvarez's] native Dominican
Republic ... Lush, lyrical."
--USA Today
"Wonderful ... original and rewarding ...
Large and sweeping
themes run through this novel ... Alvarez weaves
a story of a
complicated and brilliant family ...
Important moments,
passionate impressions, wisdom learned and
shared." -- The Christian Science Monitor
"A powerful literary novel."
--Chicago Sun-Times
"Engaging ... Alvarez tugs the enigmatic
[Salome] from the
great silence of history and memory ...
[She] re-creates not
only Salome's often larger-than-life world but
also the
peripatetic existence of her daughter, Camila
... As Alvarez
eases us back and forth between each woman's world,
she also
weaves a vivid, rippling tapestry of
politics, racism, exile, sexual
identity, the staunch cords that bind families,
and the
inherent courage of the female spirit." --The
Boston Globe
is the author of How the
Garcia Girls Lost Their
Accents, In the Time of the Butterflies (a
National Book Critics
Circle Award finalist), and iallyost.
She has also published two col-
lections
of poetry (homecoming and The Other Side
El Otro
Lado) and a collection of essays (something
to Declare). All titles
are available in Plume editions. Ms.
Alvarez divides her time between
Vermont and the Dominican Republic, where she
and her hus-
band
run an oranieaaeff, ee @laran and a
literacystarts center.
"Lyrical ... One of the most moving
political novels of the
past half century."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"An enchanting novel."
--People magazine
"Revealing and inspirational ... intriguing ...
full of historical
and political insight. Like many great novels, it
addresses some
of the profound questions of our time ... A work of
fiction
that rings extraordinarily true."
--Austin American-Statesman
"Graceful and substantial ... An intimate
tale of a mother's
passion for her daughter and her country, and a
daughter's
struggle to unearth her mother's unembellished
nature ...
With a deft hand, Alvarez blends political
faces and
events in Caribbean history with the true story of
two
beguiling women ... An intriguing and knowledgeable
account of a significant era ... A story
well styled
and well worth reading."
--Denver Rocky Mountain News
"Vivacious ... Alvarez poignantly
explores the interplay
between personal and political revolutions."
--Entertainment Weekly
"Vibrant ... These lives, gently told, have
currents within
them as wide and deep as an ocean's--and no one
can miss
their primal force."
--Kirkus Reviews starred review)
"Rich in character and setting ... Skillfully
evokes a
Dominican Republic of corrupt leaders and
endless coups...
Successfully interweaves the lives of
individual women with the
struggles of their prominent families...
Alvarez's panorama
could be a Caribbean setting for War and Peace."
-- The Washington Post Book Worm
"This book tells more than the little-known tale of
two
strong women willing to sacrifice for a just cause.
It also reveals
a history of colonialism and dictatorship
here in the Americas.
The stories of Salomd and Camila transcend
themselves in
this intelligent, intriguing novel."
--St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"Some books demand reading all at once,
books where
extraordinary excursions through time and
place, and odysseys
of the heart capture from the first page... In the
Name
of Salomg is one of thes books."
-- The Austin Chronicle
"Poignant... Not least among Alvarez's
achievements in
this stirring novel is her depiction of a continuum
linking the lives of women."
--The Baltimore Sun
"Fuses the finest elements of historical
fiction with
postmodernist technique. The character of Camila
[is]
a finely delineated portrait of a soul in
turmoil."
-- The Dallas Morning News
"Well wrought and powerful... A novel to be
passed
from friend to friend, madre to hija."
--Library Journal
Also by Julia Alvarez
FICTION
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents
* In the Time of the Butterflies
to Yo!
ESSAYS
Something to Declare
POETRY
The Housekeeping Book
The Other Side/el Otro Lado
Homecoming
Seven Trees
Julia Alvarez
In the Name
of Salome
a novel
A PLUME BOOK
PLUME
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson
Street, New York, New York 10014,
U.s.a.
Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane,
London W8 5TZ, England
Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood,
Victoria, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10
Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario,
Canada M4V 3B2
Penguin Books (n.z.) Ltd, 182-190
Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:
Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England
Published by Plume, a member of Penguin
Putnam Inc. This is an authorized reprint
hardcover edition published by Algonquin
Books of Chapel Hill. For information ad
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, Post
Office Box 2225, Chapel Hill, North
Carolina
27515-2225.
First Plume Printing, June 2001

Copyright (c) Julia Alvarez, 2000
All rights reserved
REGISTERED TRADEMARK--MARCA
REGISTRADA
The Library of Congress has catalogued the
Algonquin edition as follows:
Alvarez, Julia.
In the name of Salome: a novel still Julia
Alvarez.
ISBN
1-56512-276-3 (hc)
0-452-28243-8 (pbk)
1. Urefia de Henriquez, Salome,
1850-1897--Ficn. 2. Henrfquez
Urefia, S:
Camila, 1894-1973---Ficn. 3.
Women poets, Dominican--Fiction. 4. Mothers
and
daughters---Fiction. 5. Dominican
Americans--Fiction. 6. Dominican
Republic,
Fiction. 7. Cuba Fiction. I. Tide.
PS3551.L845 145 2000
813".54--4321 00-0
Printed in the United States of America
Original hardcover design by Anne Winslow
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved
above, no part of this publication
be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any
or by any means (electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without
the prior written permission of both the copyright
owner and the above publisher of the
book.
PUBLISHER'S NOTE
This is a work of fiction based on historical
facts referred to in the a*
Acknowledgments on pages 355-357. Names,
characters, places, and incidents are
the product of the author's imagination or are used
fictitiously.
BOOKS ta tvt.e AT QU-QTITX
DSCOUTS WHE-TQ tOSZD TO RTOMOTZ
"RODU
SERVICES. FOR INFORMATION PLEASE WRITE
TO PREMIUM MARKETING DIVISION, PENGUIN
PUTNAM INC., 375 HUDSON STREET,
NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10014.
Quisqueyanas valientes
This book is for you
enQue es Patria? enSabes acaso
lo que preguntas, mi amor?
What is a homeland? Do you know,
my love, what you are asking?
--SALOME UREIA
PROLOGUE 1
Uno: El ave y el nido . 13
One: Light 31
Dos: Contestaci@on 49
Two: The Arrival of Winter
Tres: La fe en el porvenir 57
Three: Ruins 107
Cuatro: stamor y anhelo 127
Four: Shadows 147
II
Cinco: Sombras 169
Five: Love and Yearning 189
Seis: Ruinas . 212
Six: Faith in the Future 233
Siete: La llegada del invierno 253
Seven: Reply . 275
Ocho: Luz -- 296
Eight: Bird and Nest 314
EPILOGUE 333
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PROLOGUE
Departing Poughkeepsie
June 1960
SHE STANDS BY THE door, a tall,
elegant woman with a soft brown
color to her skin (southern Italian? a
Mediterranean Jew? a light-skinned
negro woman who has been allowed to pass
by virtue of
her advanced degrees?), and reviews the empty
rooms that have
served as home for the last eighteen years.
Now in the full of June, the attic is hot.
Years back, when she
earned tenure, the dean offered her a more modern
apartment,
nearer to the campus. But she refused. She has
always loved attics,
their secretiveness, their niches and nooks, where
those never
quite at home in the house can hide. And this one has
wonderful
light. Shafts of sunlight swarm with dust
motes, as if the air were
coming alive.
It is time for fresh blood in this old house.
On the second
floor, right below her, Vivian Lafleur from the
Music Department
is getting on in years and going a bit deaf,
too. Every year the piano
gets more fortissimo, her foot heavy on the
pedal. Her older
sister, Dot, has already retired from
Admissions and moved in
with her "baby" sister. "Come quickly, Viv," she
sometimes hollers
from her bedroom. The music stops. Could this be it
for Dot? On
the ground floor, Florence from History has
been called back from
her retirement after the young medievalist from Yale
stumbled
into a manhole and broke her ankle. "I'm so
grateful)"' Flo cornered
her one day downstairs by their mailboxes. "I was
beginning to go
batty in that cottage in Maine)"'
2. Julia @alvarez
She herself is worried about the emptiness that lies
ahead.
Childless and motherless, she is a bead unstrung from
the necklace
of the generations. MI she leaves behind here are a
few close
colleagues, also about to retire, and her students,
those young immortals
with, she hopes, the Spanish subjunctive
filed away in
their heads.
She must not let herself get morbid. It is
1960. In Cuba, Castro
and his bearded boys are saying alarming, wonderful
things
about the new patria they are creating. The Dalai
Lama, who fled
Tibet last year on a yak with the Chinese at his
heels, has issued a
statement: One must love one's enemies, or
else all is lost. (but
you have lost everything, she thinks.) This winter she
read of an
expedition to Antarctica led by Vivian Fuchs.
Sir Vivian has asked
the world to agree not to dump its nuclear waste there.
(why
dump it anywhere? Camila wonders.) But these
are positive signs,
she reminds herself, positive signs. It is not
a new habit of hers:
these efforts to rouse herself from a depressive turn
of mind she
inherited from her mother. Of course, sometimes the bigger
picture
is rather grim. So? Use your subjunctive (she
reminds herself).
Make a wish. Contrary to possibility, contrary
to fact.
MOST OF HER THINGS have already been sent
ahead, several
trunks and boxes, years of accumulation, sorted
with her friend
Marion's help, down to the essentials. She
is taking only her suitcase
and the trunk of her mother's papers and poems carried
down
just now by the school grounds crew to the waiting car.
To think
that only a few months ago, she was consulting those
poems for
signs! She smiles at the easy gimmick she
thought would resolve
the big question in her life. Now, playfully, she
imagines the many
lives she has lived as captioned by the title of
one or another of
her mother's poems. How should this new life be
titled? "Faith in
the Future"? "The Arrival of
Winter"? or (why not?) "Love and
Yearning"?
IN THE
NAME
OF SALOMI 3
The horn honks again. It will probably be
titled "Ruins" if
she doesn't get downstairs soon! Marion
is impatient to go, redfaced
and swearing, jerking the steering wheel as she turns the
car
around. "Lady driver," one of the men mutters under
his breath.
Marion and Les, her new husband, have flown up
to help with
the move. (marion's companion of ten years
finally proposed marriage.)
Now the two best friends will head down to Florida
in a
rental car. Les has already been deposited
(marion's verb) in New
Hampshire at his daughter's door, so that
Marion and Camila can
have this last trip together. All the way down
to Baltimore and
Jacksonville and on to Key West where she'll
board a ferry to Havana,
Marion will try talking her out of her plans.
"Everyone who is anyone is getting out."
"Well then, I'll have no problem. 'I'm
Nobody--Who are
you?"'" She loves to quote Miss
Dickinson, whose home she once
visited, whose fierce talent reminds her of her
own mother's. Emily
Dickinson is to the United States of
America as Salome Urefia is
to the Dominican Republic--something like that. One
of her
nieces--is it Lupe?--loves those
analogies in the game books
Camila takes them when she goes to visit. But
she herself always
feels nervous when she is asked to put things
exactly where they
belong. Look at my life, she thinks, hither
and yon, hither and
yon.
But now--"Shall we have a drumroll, shall we blow the
trumpet,
and pipe a ditty on the flute?" Marion
teases--she is heading
home, or as close to home as she can get.
Trujillo has made her
own country an impossible choice. Perhaps it will
all turn out
well, perhaps, perhaps.
You are not nobody, Camila," her friend
scolds. "Don't be
modest now!" Marion loves to brag. She is
from the midwestern
part of the country, and so she is easily impressed
by somebodies,
especially when they come from either coast or from foreign
countries. ("Camila's mother was a famous
poet." "Her father was
president." "Her brother was the Norton
Lecturer at Harvard.")
Perhaps Marion thinks that such reflected
importance will stem
the tide of prejudice that often falls on the
foreign and colored in
this country. She should know better. How can Marion
forget the
cross burning on her front lawn that
long ago summer Camila visited
the Reed family in North Dakota?
"You need a hand with anything else, Miss
Henry?" one of
the burly janitorial crew calls up. Her
name is Henriquez ("accent
on the i"), she has told them more than once,
and they have repeated
her name slowly, but the next time she requires
their assistance,
they have forgotten. Miss Henry, Miss
Henriette.
Beyond them on College Street, in their pastel
shirtwaist
dresses, a group of young graduates hurries
by on the way to some
last gathering. They look like blossoms released
from their stems.
One of them turns suddenly, a hand at her brow,
shielding
her eyes from the sun, a flag of red hair.
"Hasta luego, Profesora,"
she calls out to the flashing attic windows.
She couldn't possibly see me, the professor
is thinking. I am
already gone from this place.
BEFORE SHE LEAVES, SHE makes the sign
of the cross--an old
habit she has not been able to shake since her
mother's death sixty-three
years ago.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of my mother,
Salome.
Her aunt Ramona, her mother's only sister,
taught her to do
this. Dear old Mon, round and brown with a knot of
black hair
on top of her head, a Dominican Buddha but
with none of the
bodhisattva's calm. Mon was more
superstitious than religious and
more cranky than anything else. Back then, it was
a habit to kiss
each parent's hand and ask their blessing before leaving the
house.
La bendici@on, Mama. La bendici@on,
Papa.
(the American girls made faces in class
when she told them
about this old tradition. "What a drag,"
the plump, freckled girl
IN THE
NAME
OF
SALOM was 5
from Cooperstown said, lifting one corner of her
mouth as if the
old-world practice had a bad smell.)
When her mother died, Mon thought up this way for her
to
ask for Salome's blessing. To summon strength from
a fading memory
that every year became less and less real until
all that was left
of her mother was the story of her mother.
Sometimes the phrase is part prayer, part curse
--as now
when she hears the loud, rude honk from down below and
mutters
it under her breath. Marion will be the death of Dot
yet. The
two sisters have always been kind to their quiet
upstairs neighbor,
that condescending kindness of natives toward
foreigners who
are not frightening. Dot knits her awful matching
accessories
every winter that she must wear once in a while to show
her appreciation.
Another
loud honk, then the call, "Hey, Cam! Did
you have
a coronary up there or what?" She peers down
from the back window
and waves to her friend that she will be right down. Marion
stands beside her rental car, a Caribe turquoise
Oldsmobile. They
have debated the color. (she is from the Caribbean,
and she has
never seen that color blue, she argues. But the
manual Marion
whipped out from the glove compartment did say Caribe
turquoise.)
With her hands at her hips, her baggy trousers,
and paisley
scarf tied around her neck (can she really be from
North
Dakota?), Marion could be the drama coach at
the college, barking
at the girls up on the stage. Years of
teaching physical education
have kept Marion fit and trim, and her hardy
midwestern
genes have done the rest. She is warm-hearted and
showy, kicking
up a storm wherever she goes. "Are you
Spanish, too?" people often
ask, and with her dark hair and bright eyes Marion
could pass,
though her skin is so pale that Camila's father
often worried that
she might be anemic or consumptive.
They have lived through so much, some of which is best left
buried in the past, especially now that Marion is
a respectable
married lady. ("I don't know about the
respectable," Marion
6 Julia @alvarez:
laughs.) In her politics, however, Marion
is as conservative as her
recently acquired husband, Lesley Richards
III, whose perennial
tan gives him a shellacked look, as if he
were being preserved for
posterity. He is rich and alcoholic and
riddled with ailments.
She should not think so unkindly.
By the door hangs the chart her student helper
drew up when
they were sorting through the family trunks. Camila
found the
scrap of paper when she was cleaning up, no doubt
inadvertently
left behind. She was so amused by this young girl's
vision of her
life, she tacked it up on her bulletin
board. She considers taking it
down, then decides to leave this curious memento
for the next
tenant to ponder.
The car honks again, another shout of summons.
It will be a long ride to Florida. She has
measured the route on
the large atlas at the library using her fingers
to figure out the distance.
Each finger a day on the road. Five fingers, a
handful, with
Marion singing old campfire songs and driving
too fast, especially
with Salome's trunk tied to the roof of the
car. On the passenger's
side, Camila clutches the arm loop by the
door and hopes that they
don't run into a rainstorm, hopes and prays that
Marion will not try
to talk her out of her decision by reminding her that she
is sixty-six,
alone, and should be thinking about her pension, should be
thinking
about her future, should be thinking about moving into a
comfy bungalow just down the road from Marion, at
least until
things settle down at home in those hot-tempered
little islands.
"In the name of my mother, Salome," she says
to herself
again. She needs all the help she can get here at
the end of her life
in the United States.
SOMEWHERE PAST TRENTON, New Jersey,
to keep her restless
friend from further distractions ("Light me a
cigarette, will you?"
"Any more of those chips left? ... I sure could
use a soda!"), she offers:
"Shall I tell you why I have decided to go back?"
Marion has
IN THE NAME" OF SALOMI 7
been pestering Camila ever since she arrived a
few days ago to help
her friend pack. "But why? Why? That's what I
want to know.
What do you hope to accomplish with a bunch of
ill-mannered,
unshaven, unwashed guerrillas running a
country?"
Purposely, she believes, Marion
mispronounces the word so it
sounds like gorillas. "Guerrillas," Camila
corrects, rattling the rather's.
She has been afraid she will sound foolish if
she explains how
just once before her life is over, she would like
to give herself completely
to something--yes, like her mother. Friends would worry
that she has lost her wits, too much sugar in her
blood, her cataracts
blurring all levels of her vision. And
Marion's disapproval
would be the worst of all, for she would not
only disagree with
Camila's choice, she would try to save her.
Marion has turned to face her. Briefly, the
car weaves into the
left lane. A honk from an oncoming car
startles Marion, and she
pulls back over just in time.
Camila takes a deep breath. Perhaps the
future will be over
sooner than she thinks.
"I'M LL EARS," Marion says when they
have both recovered.
Camila's heart is still beating wildly--one of
those birds
that sometimes gets trapped in her attic apartment so
that
she must call the grounds crew to come get it out.
"In some
ways," she explains. "I have to start with
Salome."
"Can I confess something?" Marion asks.
As she does not wait for Camila to answ
your feelings hurt, but I honestly de
heard of your mother unless I had
diseys
She's not surprised. Americents
arrot
heroes and heroines of
movie about them.
Up ahead a man on a billb,
him a herd of cattle waits until he
8 Julia @alvarez
"So, what's the story?" Marion wants to know.
"As I said, I'll have to start with my mother, which
means at
the birth of la patria, since they were both born
about the same
time." Her voice sounds strangely her own and not
her own. All
those years in the classroom. Her half brother
Rodolfo calls it her
teacher's handicap, how she vanishes into whatever
she's teaching.
She's done it all her life. Long before she
stepped into a classroom,
she indulged this habit of erasing herself, of turning
herself into
the third person, a minor character, the best friend (or
daughter!)
of the dying first-person hero or heroine.
Her mission in life--
after the curtain falls--to tell the story of the great
ones who have
passed on.
But Marion is not going to indulge her. Camila
has not gotten
past the first few years of Salome's life and the
wars of independence
when her friend interrupts. "I thought you were finally
going to talk about yourself, Camila."
"I am talking about myself," she says--and waits
until they
have passed a large moving van, a sailing ship
afloat on its aluminum sides--before she begins
again.
PROFESORA CAMILA HENRIQUEZ
UREFIA'S FAMILY
B. 1894
Her father: Francisco Henriquez

"Pancho" or "Papancho"
president of D.r, for four months,
kinda short?
Her mother: Salome Urefia
1850-1897
the National Poetess--
Should I have heard of her?!
Her Brother
Francisco
Pedro
Maximiliano
Profesora Camila
b: 1882
b. 1884
b. 1885
b. 1894
"Fran"
"Pibffn"
"Max"
never married--
killed a man
most famous
ambassador--
tons of love letters
and disappeared
of all the family,
during
she wouldn't let me
from the family
Harvard's Norton
dictatorship?
read to her
Lecturer (wow!)
Her Stepfamily:
Natividad Lauranzon "Tivisita"
Prof's stepmom--
didn't talk a whole lot
about her
Half brothersstsisters
Salome (dies as infant)
Cotubanamt (weird name
-- correct?)
FA-UADO
Rodolfo (obviously a favorite)
Marta (dies age two)
Others:
Paris family
1890 or so
--ask Prof C.
to pin down better
Federico Pancho
older brother
Ramona
Salome's only sister and
"guardian of her memory"
--do I have this right?
Friends:
Hostos philosopherst
educatorst
Prof's best friend--
revolutionary
phone # RI-NGLING 5-4233
Gregoria and Papa Nicolas
"Manina" and "Nisidas"
Prof's grandmother and
grandfather she never met
Pets:
Columbus, a bear
lots of monkeys
Paco, the parrot
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND:
Tons of revolutions and wars, too numerous
to list!
I
UNO
El ave y el nido
Santo Domingo, 1856-1861
THE STORY OF MY life starts with the story
of my country, as I was
born six years after independence, a
sickly child, not expected to
live. But by the time I was six, I was in better
health than my
country, for la patria had already suffered eleven
changes of government.
I, on the other hand, had only endured one
major
change: my mother had left my father.
I could hardly remember my parents' separation,
and as for
my country, I grew up amid so many wars that
I had no real understanding
of the danger I was in. What I feared was not the
revolutions
themselves, but the dark hole underneath the house that
we had to hide in whenever a war broke out.
We children had no idea what the fighting was about.
One
side was red and the other side was blue--color being
the only
way we could tell one side from the other, though
both sides said
that whatever they were doing, they were doing for la
patria. We
had fought off an invasion from Haiti, and
soon we would fight a
war with Spain. Now we were fighting among ourselves.
I still remember
the song my sister, Ramona, and I used to sing:
14 Julia Alvarez
I was born Spanish,
by the afternoon I was French,
at night I was African.
What will become of me?
We were living, my mother, my sister, Ramona,
my tia Ana
--the second mother of the household--and myself, in a
small,
wooden house with a bright zinc roof, far enough from the
central
square to escape bombing and looting. "Who ever
heard of two
women owning a house!" my father was said to have
exclaimed
when he heard the news that his wife had bought a
house with her
sister.
We were proud of our house, and most especially
we were
proud of our zinc roof. If you had a
fine, old house from when
the Spaniards first settled in the island, you no
doubt had a Spanish tile
roof, which was all very fine and pure-blooded of your
family
to have, except for the fact that if you had that kind of
house,
you would be living in the old Spanish section of the
city along
with the government house and the prison house and the
cathedral,
and in time of war, that would be the area where the opposing
side would aim its cannons and blast your fine,
old family
roof to hell.
And so, a zinc roof from the United States of
America, which
was a country much closer by than Spain, was a more
convenient
roof to have in 1856 when I was six years old and
bombs were going
off up and down the streets of the capital, as the
Reds fought
to recover la patria from the control of the Blues.
IT Is AN AFTERNOON in October
1856, and a bomb has just
blown up the candle factory down the street.
"Girls," my mother says, "get ready."
We know the procedure: wrap up a platano
and a chunk of
codfish in a scrap of cloth from Mami's
basket, slip on our oldest
IN THE NAME' OF SALOM 15
smocks, and then hurry down the back steps to a
hole underneath
the house for just this purpose.
"Can I bring Alexandra?" Ramona asks.
My older sister won't
go anywhere without the porcelain doll with
egg-yolk-color hair
that our father has sent her from St. Thomas.
I suppose Ramona likes the doll better
than me as it does not
cry. There are days when I wake up crying and
cannot even say
why I am crying, which worries Mami, as
melancholy is an affliction
like leprosy or dementia, for which people can be locked
away. Sometimes when I cry so hard, my chest
tightens up and I
can't breathe, which worries Mami even more, as
melancholy is a
trifle compared to consumption. But Dr. Valverde
says all I have is
a touch of asthma, and Mami must stop worrying
or she herself
will succumb to hysteria. All in all, we sound quite
unhealthy.
But today has not been a weeping day. I have been
entertaining
myself writing in the back of one of the catechism
books that
my aunt Ana, a schoolteacher, hands out to her
students. I look
up from the Caten cristiano and ask my mother what
is the fighting
about today.
"La patria," Mami says, sighing.
Today the word catches my attention, the way a word
will
suddenly stare back at you and refuse to tell you
what it means.
"Mami," I say, "what is la patria?" and
my mother does not answer
but looks ready to weep herself.
A shell explodes in the street beyond the barred
door, so that
the walls shake and our crucifix comes tumbling
down, Christ
first, followed by his cross.
Mami motions desperately. Tia Ana is
already down the back
steps and calling for us to come.
Quickly, I gather my things, including the Caten
cristano. It
is not so much that I am interested in reviewing my
catechism,
but in the back of the book, I have illegally begun
writing a small
verse.
Several hours later, after three cannon shots
have announced a
16 Julia Alvarez
change of government, we crawl out and climb up
the steps, and
then, since I am the smallest, Mami and Tia
Ana hoist me up on
top of the zinc roof. A new flag is flying
above the government
palace,
"Red," I call down.
"Your father will be back soon," Mami observes.
A WEE-RATHER: LATER THERE is a knock on
the front door. The front
door is always kept closed because of the noise and
dust of the
streets. It is also kept closed because on a
sunny afternoon in October
a civil war might erupt and a band of men come
galloping
down the streets, guns drawn and firing.
But today there is just a knock and no war going on.
Tia Ana
is teaching the alphabet to fifteen little girls who
have carried their
own small cane chairs to our house on top of
their heads. When
these girls are older, they will enroll, most of
them, in the school
of the sisters Bobadilla a block away, the
school that Ramona and
I now attend. At Tia Ana's school, the
little girls learn how to sit
properly in a chair, how to hold their hands when
they are sitting
down, and how to hold them when they are standing up.
They
learn how to recite the alphabet and how to pour a
glass of water
and how to pray the rosary and say the stations of the
cross. Then
the sisters Bobadilla take over.
At the sisters Bobadilla, the older girls
learn manualities,
which means they learn how to sew and how to knit and
crochet;
they learn how to read--the Caten cristiano and
Friends of Children,
and Elements of All of the Sciences ("The earth
is a planet revolving
around the sun"), and they memorize lessons in
morality
and virtue from Morality, Virtue, and
Urbanity. But they will not
learn how to write, so that even if they receive a
love letter, they
will not be able to write one back.
Of course, I am growing up with my tia Ana
and my mother,
Gregoria, who has left her husband,
and these are not women to
JN THE NAME' OF SALOM 17
hold back orthography from a little girl whose first
question on
noticing the crucifix was not "Who is that man?"
but "What are
those letters written above his head, I, n, R,
I?" And so, long before
Ramona and I go a block away to attend the
school of the sisters
Bobadilla, my mother and aunt have taught us how
to write
as well as how to read.
That afternoon when there is a knock, I run to the
door because
I am not in school today. I have caught cold from
spending
so much time in the damp revolution-hole this past
month. I pull
the stool over and open the top of the Dutch door
because this is
what I have been taught to do when there is a
knock.
Standing outside is a handsome man with curly,
black tresses
(he wears his hair long like a pirate!) and a thin
mustache and skin
the color of fresh milk in a pail. He
studies me a moment. Then
his face lights up with a smile.
"Good morning, sir. What is your business?"
"Only to see those lovely stars! Only to hear
my cooing dove!"
I have never heard anyone talk this way before. I
am intrigued.
"Quien
es?" my mother calls from the back of the house.
"Who are you, senor?" I echo my mother's question.
"I am the bearer of this letter." The way he says
it, the words
all rhyme like a song. He holds up a
piece of parchment, folded
over and sealed with a red wax seal I have seen before
among my
mother's papers.
I take the letter, turn it over, and read.
Se@noritas Salome and
Ramona Urea. "This is for me?"
"So you can read!" He grins. I don't like this
sense that I am
providing him with amusement every time I open my
mouth.
"I can write, too;" I pipe up, though this
is something that
Mami has instructed me not to boast about,
especially not to
the sisters Bobadilla. But this man is a
stranger--no one I have
ever seen near the likes of the two elderly
sisters, who are pure
Spaniards, with a house made of stone and a roof
made of tiles.
18 .julia @alvarez
"Perhaps you will write a reply to my letter? You had
better
write that letter, or I die without reply!"
I nod. I will do anything he asks me, this man
who speaks in
rhymes.
The face softens with a look that I have seen before on
my
mother's face. "Write me, little dove. Give
it to any mule driver to
deliver to the house on Mercy Street with the
gardenia bush by the
door and the laurel tree in the backyard." He
hands me a mexicano,
which is a heavy, silver coin that I don't often
get to hold in
my hand.
The man catches sight of something over my
shoulder. All
playfulness vanishes from his face. "Remember,
it's our secret," he
mouths. "Now put it away." And before I can
remember that I
have never kept anything hidden from anyone in my
family, I slip
the letter and coin into the pocket of my pinafore.
A moment later, Tia Ana is at my back.
I feel an antipathy I
have never felt inside my own house before. It's as
if the hatred
that has been causing all the fighting on the
streets has been put in
a small bottle, and stoppered--so that for days now
there have
been parades and sunshine and happiness--and now
someone
has come and opened that little bottle right here
between my aunt
and this strange man.
But my aunt Ana is a schoolteacher. She
has to set a good example.
Right this moment, her fifteen charges sit behind her,
peering
at the stranger and wondering what is about to happen.
She
reaches out a hand through the top opening of the Dutch
door in
a half abrazo. "Qu`e hay, Nicolas?"
she says, and then over her
shoulder she calls, "Gregoria, you are
wanted!"
The fifteen little girls bow their heads to their
tablets as Tia
Ana turns back to them. Mami hurries in from
the backyard.
There is an excitement in her face that I
don't often see there, and
then also its opposite, a rein to the excitement as
if Mami were
trying to make her face stop showing it.
"What is it?" Mami asks Tia Ana, who
glances toward the
IN THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI 19
door, and then looks surprised herself. "Why
Nicolas was just
standing there."
I look in the direction my aunt is pointing,
and sure enough
the man has disappeared.
"What did you say to him, Ana?" my mother asks
in her quiet
voice that is like something coming to a slow boil on a
low fire.
Before my aunt can answer, I've lifted the
bottom latch and
run out the door to the corner. The stranger is
already halfway
down the next street. I call out the one word I
know will make
him stop. "Papi!"
Sure enough, my father turns around and waves
back.
I DON'T THINK ANYONE ever told us why
our parents separated
in 1852, two years after I was born. In
fact, until the day Ramona
and I buried our father and met our counterparts in my
father's other family at the gravesite, we did
not know why our
mother had left our father. Of course, once people
knew that we
knew, they filled us in on all the particulars.
Supposedly, for several years, my mother did not
suspect that
her husband was finding pleasure outside their
marriage bed. She
* was very much in love with her fun-loving
Nicolas, who wrote
poetry and studied law and came from a fine, old
family in the
capital.
The marriage between my mother and my father had been
acceptable
enough to his family, particularly because, if you count
back from the birth of my older sister, Ramona,
there was very
little room for argument as to what should be done. But had
there
been time to discuss the matter, the
Urefias might have 	had a long
talk with their son Nicolas in which they might have
pointed out
that though Gregoria herself was pale enough, and though
she
spoke of her grandpapi from the Canary Islands,
all you had to
do was look over her shoulder at her grandmother and
draw your
own conclusions.
20 "Julia @alvarez
The way my mother finally found out about her husband's
transgressions was through her sharp-eyed,
straight-talking older
sister, Ana. Every time Nicolas did a little
stepping out, Ana somehow
found out. The capital was then a small city of
some five
thousand inhabitants, enough to keep your business
secret if you
kept your voice down and your clothes on in
public. But Nicolas
was a flamboyant man, a poet as well as a
lawyer, and one time he
found himself obliged to leave a woman's
house quickly, wearing
only what he had grabbed on his way out of the
window. It was
early in the morning when respectable people were getting
up, and
not only was he seen by certain people on that street, but
my father
himself talked about the incident with great charm and
frequency.
In those days, the Red party had come to power, and so
my father
had a post in the government. Early evenings, he
would return
from the palace to find a tearful wife who
addressed him formally
as usted and refused to let him put his hand down the
front of her
dress when his mother turned to stir the sancocho: That
night he
would find himself kneeling by her bedside, trying
to convince her
in that silver-tongue voice which could convince fellow
ministers
that fulano should be fined for watering down his milk
or fulanito
should be allowed to graze his cattle on public
land, that what her
sister, Ana, had heard was not to be trusted but was
part of a political
intrigue to discredit the new government.
And this worked, of course--why shouldn't it work? If
you
love your charming husband, why should you believe your
sister,
who is three years your senior and still not married and
known for
her difficult temper and gruff manner? But
then, one day this sister
will tell you something worse than your husband was seen
on
San Francisco Street in the dawn hours
with a woman's mantilla
wrapped around his bottom; she will tell you that he
has started a
whole other family and set up a whole other
woman in her own
house, while you are having to live with your
in-laws and carry on
all your fights at night in whispers after everyone
else has fallen
asleep.
IN
THE
NAME" OF
SALOM 21
And the next morning, after he has left for work, you
dress
your two little girls in their matching calico
dresses, tell them to
sit quietly on the bed, ,while you gather their
other clothing and
their second set of shoes, and your own clothing and
second set of
shoes, on top of a sheet whose ends you fold over
and tie in a
knot, and then you send this bundle ahead with a man
on a mule
you have hired to be delivered to Senorita Ana who
has the little
school on Commerce Street. Then, shortly
afterward, without a
word of goodbye to the sisters or the mother or father of your
husband, you take your two girls down Mercy
Street and up
Commerce Street, and for the next four years
you do not talk to
this man you were married to and you do not let him see his
daughters, even when you hear he has been thrown
in prison by
the newly victorious Blue party, even when you
hear he has been
exiled to St. Thomas. You say good riddance,
though your heart
has broken in so many little pieces that looking at
those pieces no
one would be able to tell what it was they composed when
they
were all part of something together.
IN THE BEDROOM, by the light of an oil
lamp, Ramona and I
write our first letter to our father on a sheet of paper
torn from the
back of my aunt's Catdn cristiano:
Dearest Papa,
could it be true,
you have returned,
just to be near,
two little doves,
who always thought,
you had run off
because we were
not good enough?
22 .julia Alarez
He writes back:
Darling damsels,
Do not dare
Darken dreams
With despair,
Father's love
Always cares.
Little notes begin to go back and forth from Mercy
to Cross
Street. We all assume pen names. "Just in
case the letters should
fall in the wrong hands," Papa writes,
imbuing the correspondence
with intrigue and danger. He signs his name
Nisidas,--which is a
name he also uses when he publishes something
disturbing in the
paper; he renames me Herminia because I am more
patient and
persistent than my sister Ramona, who is
given the pen name
Marfisa, which our father never explains
except to say, "Read the
Italians!"
The letters are often in verse. Sometimes they involve
little requests
or reminders:
Herminia and Marfisa,
Tell your missus
Many thanks and many kisses
For the robe she made Nisidas.
Slowly, our father is regaining a foothold in
our mother's affections.
She begins to take in his laundry, then she sews
him his
black robe and little Chinaman cap (he is a
justice in the supreme
court), measuring him with a piece of string, from
shoulder to
wrist, from waist to heel, then lingering as she
measures from neck
to small of the back where his buttocks stretch the
seat of his
trousers. She cuts his long hair so he does
not look like a lunatic
and saves his curls in her box of valuables
along with her wedding
IN
THE NAME OF SALOMI 23
earrings and my and Ramona's first milk teeth.
They will never
live together again as man and wife, but his devoted
love for Ramona
and me, and the fact that he has stopped seeing the
other
woman, a fact that finds its way back to my
mother because people
will tell you about what they know you want to know about,
qualifies her disappointment and allows her
to perform some, if
not all, of her wifely duties toward him.
Our mother now allows us to visit our father every day in
the
late afternoon when he has returned from the government
palace
or from the Colegio Central where he teaches or
from the printing
office of the small newspaper, La
Republica, in which he publishes
his articles and poems, sometimes under his pen name,
Nisidas.
We enter the two-story house on Mercy
Street with its laurel tree
in the inner yard, whose top you can see from the street.
We are
greeted by our nervous aunts and our watchful
grandparents, who
remark on how tall we are, how much we look
like our other grandmother,
and then we are sent along with a nod, "You know where
to find him."
Up in his room surrounded by stacks of books,
old newspapers,
a box of goose quill pens, an uncapped ink
bottle, a trunk
not yet fully unpacked, Papi sits in a
rocker by the balcony overlooking
the street. He is rocking to the rhythm of something
he
is writing, a bottle beside him from which he takes
a swig from
time to time, in celebration of a clever rhyme or
felicitious phrase
he has just thought of, and sometimes, though he tries
to hide it,
sometimes he is just drinking and crying.
We pick a book. "Any book you
want!" Papi tells us, and then
all three of us go downstairs to the lovely garden
that he has cultivated
and sit under the laurel tree and read, Tasso and
Simon
de Nantua and Florian's Numa
Pompilius, which I so dearly love I
tell myself that one day, when I have my own little
girl, I will
name her Camila. ("She runs through a field of
grain and does
not bend a single stalk, walks across the sea without
wetting her
feet ...") Our father also reads us poems, which
we commit to
24 "Julia Alvarez
memory: "The Ruins of Italica," "On the
Invention of the Printing
Press;" as well as his own poems, "To My
Patria," "Night of the
Dead Spent in Exile," "The Beloved
Bumpkin," and "On Gregoria's
Birthday."
SOMETIMES WHEN I THINK back on this period
of my life, I
remember it as intensely as a love affair. In
fact, it is then that I begin
dividing my life into B.n. and A.n.: Before
Nisidas and After
Nisidas. And if Before Nisidas is a dark
and dreary feeling of being
confined to a well with a cranky aunt and a sighing mother
and a sister whose idea of fun is combing the yellow
hair of a
porcelain doll, then After Nisidas is a
sunny, flowery feeling of sitting
in the lap of a charming man, rocking to the music of a
language
that can sometimes sound like the low cooing of doves and
sometimes like the piping shrillness of the Danish
whistles our
Papi once sent us from St. Thomas.
IN 1859, THE BLUES are in power again and
my father is back
in exile. This time, he is gone for over two
years. Occasionally, he
comes back secretly in the middle of the night
to conduct quick,
revolutionary business. I wake up knowing there
is more light in
the room than there should be, and I struggle to the
surface of
sleep, open my eyes, and there is my father
kneeling by my side, a
lamp in one hand, hushing my joyful cry. He
promises me that he
will be back as soon as our country is a free
patria again.
"How long will that be?" I always want to know. And
just
when my chest starts tightening and I am about to burst
out crying,
Papi reminds me, "Remember,, don't
waste them. Tears are
the ink of a poet."
And I try very hard to remember that tears are the
ink of a
poet. Especially at night, when I am
sitting by my mother, making
cross stitches on a baptismal gown, or
stirring the sancocho so the
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOM 25
viveres won't stick to the bottom (if we have
viveres--food is
such a scarcity during this latest, yearlong siege
of the capital that
many nights supper is a tea of boiled leaves
sweetened with molasses).
Suddenly, I cannot help myself. I think of my
father far
away on an island all by himself, or I hear the
latest victim from
the latest skirmish for la patria screaming from his
sickbed where
his infected leg is being sawed away by Dr.
Valverde, and I burst
into tears.
There is nothing anyone can do to make me stop, not
my aunt
Ana with her tea of guanabana leaves to calm
the nerves; or my
mother rocking me, singing me lullabies; or my
sister, Ramona,
offering to let me play with Alexandra if I stop
crying. There is
only one way to make it stop, a way which
Papi has been trying to
teach me, and that is to sit down and think of the words for
it all,
then write them up in the verses my mother copies
neatly into her
letters to my father.
THE NEXT TIME I see my father, he is
standing in the central
square on the morning of March 18, 18611
The exact date is not hard to remember. Every time
I think of
it, which is often, I bring my hand to my heart as
if the date were
carved there and I could feel the numbers and letters with
my fingers.
I think of Cuba and Puerto Rico about to fight
for their independence,
and of the United States just beginning to fight for
the independence of its black people, and then I think of
my own
patria willingly giving up its independence
to become a colony
again, and I ask myself again, "What is la
patria?" What is this notion
of a country that will make so many people die for
its freedom
only to have a whole other set of its people put it
back in a
ball and chain again?
Of course, back then when I am living it, I
have no idea what
is going on. All I know is that the government
is going to be
changing and that means that my father is coming back, for the
26 Julia @alvarez
defeat of the Blue government always means that my
father will
be back with the Red party.
On the eve of March 18th, a proclamation is
read out at all
the major cross streets in the capital. We
are to gather at the main
plaza at sunrise tomorrow for the president has
important news.
"We're not going," Tia Ana argues with
Mami that night. "They're
liable to get us all dressed in our best clothes
and then shoot us
down."
"By presidential order," my mother
reminds her. "That was
the proclamation."
"What does this or any president we've had
since 1844 know
of order?"
Listening to their disagreement, I know I am going
to start
crying unless I do something to distract myself. I cannot
write my
father a poem except in my head, because we are
saving up our
lamp oil in preparation for another invasion from
Haiti that never
comes. We sit in the yard under the stars, discussing
the plans for
tomorrow morning.
Later that night, lying next to Ramona, I
let go of the tears
I've held back all evening. My sister
stirs, coming awake. "What is
it this time?" she whispers, her voice full of
impatience.
"Ramona," I ask her between sobs, "does it
hurt you, too?"
Ramona sits up on one elbow. I
know what she is thinking.
Recently, she has gotten her menses, which
means she bleeds between her legs, which is a good thing,
she boasts, as it means there will be room in her
organs for babies in the future, "What abow
me?" I have kept asking. "When do I get
to bleed?" Ramona must
be thinking that I have gotten my menses. "What
hurts?" she ask
me.
I tell her. It hurts to be alive.
"What kind of a hurt is that, Salome?
Honestly. It's late. We've
got to get up early to be at the square for the
proclamation."
Our mother has laid out our dresses, our
petticoats, our good
shoes, our stockings, our hair ribbons, and our
little national flag
IN THE NAIVE OF SALOM. o2
to wave at the president. Tia Ana has
told me the story of our flag:
how during the war of independence from Haiti one of the
patriots
tore up the Haitian flag and asked his
aunt to sew up the
scraps in a whole different pattern as he had
no money to buy
more fabric. This seamstress, a brave patriot
herself, was later shot
down for disagreeing with the new president over what
it means
to be a patria, and just before she was executed, she
asked the firing
squad if they would kindly tie down her skirts
as she did not
want her underwear to show when she fell down dead in
front of
them.
I am thinking of the story of this brave woman and
asking
myself again, What is a patria in whose name people can do
such
things, murder the woman who sewed up your national
flag?
Make your father disappear? Take away one
man's leg and another
man's arm? And so, I cry and cannot stop, and
soon I am having
a hard time breathing. My sister takes
me in her arms the way she
does her doll, Alexandra, and sings a song about
a baby boy who
becomes an angel, which really is enough to make
anyone cry as
it is one of the saddest lullabies in all
creation.
The next morning, Mami shakes us awake.
How can it be
morning and be so dark? We dress quickly, Mami
letting us sip
from her cup of sweetened coffee as she braids
our hair. We can
hear our aunt Ana, grumbling in the back of the
house about having to get up to make coffee for a sister
who is determined to go get herself and her two young
daughters killed. Ramona, who is
never the one to cry, begins to cry.
"What now, mi'ja?" Our mother sighs.
"I don't want to go," Ramona wails.
"You're a young senorita, for heaven's sake,"
Mami scolds.
"Don't you understand, this is a presidential
order?"
It is not that our mother is inordinately
obedient to orders.
But she has heard a rumor that Nicolas has
come back. If Papi is
in the country, he will be at the square, and though
Mami will
not return to live with him, will not let him slip his
hand down
28 .julia Alvarez
the front of her dress when Tia Ana's back
is turned, nevertheless,
she is willing to risk everything for the sight of the man
she loves.
So, in the early morning, Mami and I set out,
leaving behind
a howling Ramona with our cranky aunt, who
complains that not
only is her sister going to get herself shot down,
but she is taking
a lamb to the slaughter and leaving her, Ana, with a
senorita who
acts like a baby girl instead of being grown up in
consideration of
her old aunt's nerves.
The streets are full of people of all ages
hurrying toward the
center of the city. Many of the children are bearing flags,
and some
are still nibbling on a plantain fritter or
piece of water bread. We
gather in the central square. I believe all
five thousand inhabitants
must be here, even if we subtract Tia Ana
and Ramona. A large
dais has been erected to one side of the
government building right
beside the flagpole from which a large version of the little
flag I
am carrying is tossing in the wind.
A blast of trumpets makes both me and
Mami jump. Two
lines of soldiers in blue drill uniforms march
into the square, their
scabbards empty, their firearms gone. They stop
and face each
other, and then, down that alleyway comes the
president himself,
a short man with a mean face like a dog who
bites, and gold braid
all up and down his uniform. This is not the same
president who
was president when my father was a justice in the
supreme court,
whose hand I once shook, who asked me if it was
true that I could
recite all twenty-five verses of "On the
Invention of the Printing
Press," but then stopped me when I got
to number ten, and so I
give the flag I am holding only a quick,
obligatory wave.
This president climbs up on the dais and begins
to speak in a
voice full of curlicues. He talks of the
Haitian threat and the protection
we will get from being a part of Spain again. Then he
hands over the keys to the city to a run with a plume
in his hat
and a sword on his belt, and some voices in the
crowd shout, "Long
live Queen Isabela! Long live Spain!"
And then, one hundred
canon shots are fired. I count them all.
IN THE NAME OF SALOMIST 29
Silence follows the last cannon blast. The
flag is lowered--
the big version of the little flag in my hand--and another
flag,
yellow with red bands, flies up in its place.
"Whose is that, Mami?" I ask, pointing. I
know a red flag
means Papi will be back, and a blue flag means
that he will have
to go into exile, but what a yellow-and-red flag
means, I cannot
guess.
"The Spanish flag," Mami answers
blankly.
"Will Papi be back then?"
Mami nods. I wave my flag in
celebration, but Mami snatches
it away. "No more!" she snaps, and then my mother
cracks the rod
in her two hands and throws the pieces on the
ground.
I am so astonished at my mother's anger that I
cannot even
cry. I pick up the pieces of the flag from the
street, blinking
away tears, and stuff them in the pocket of my
pinafore. I will
never let my mother read my poems to my father again!
I will
never thread my mother's needles again! I will never
drink Scott
Emulsion for my asthma again! But this is too many
nevers. They press against the inside of my eyes,
and finally I burst into tears.
Because I am crying, the rest of the ceremony is a
blur. The
watery dignitaries climb down from the blurry
dais, and with
solemn step proceed to the cathedral for a Te
Deum in honor of
Spain and Queen Isabela. The crowd thins.
I look back toward the
empty dais and see my father swimming inside my
tears.
"Papa!" I shout. And it is my father, leaning
against the dais,
talking to a soldier. He turns around and
spreads his arms, and I
run to him with all the fury of wanting to get away
from my
mother as well as all the desire of wanting to be
near him again.
Walking home, my mother's hand in mine, squeezing
gently,
asking forgiveness, my father's large hand enveloping
my other
hand, I feel a surge of happiness. It is the
first time I can remember us walking together as a
family. Perhaps yellow and red means that now all
Dominicans will be friends again, and husbands and
wives will live together, and children will have their fathers around
all the time, and girls will be allowed to write letters
and own
houses without having to explain themselves.
I want to ask my father if this is so, since he
always knows
everything, but I can tell by the tone of my parents"
voices that
now is not a good time to interrupt. My father is
explaining something
to my mother, but she is not convinced, for all she says
when he finishes is, "But why come back at this
most disgraceful
moment?"
"I'd rather be a colony than a cemetery,"
Papi replies. "I'd
rather be Spanish than Haitian. We are
not ready to bebe a patria
yet."
"Papa," I ask him when it is safe
to interrupt, "what is a patria?"
He looks down, all the answers draining from his
face. He
does not know what to say!
And I can tell a whole new time is beginning: not
Before
Nisidas and After Nisidas, but a grown-up
time, like Ramona
bleeding between her legs. I will have to figure out my
own answers
so that someday if I have a daughter I will know how
to answer
any question she might put to me.
ONE
Light
Poughkeepsie, New York,

SHE WOULD LIKE TO ASK her mother, "What should
I do now?"
But she has never had that luxury: a mother to turn
to at difficult
moments in her life, a hand on her brow,
a soothing voice in her
ear.
Marion claims these are cliches of motherhood that
Camila
believes in because she has never had the
opportunity to test
them. "Trust me," her friend has told her. "I
had a mother to turn
to, and guess what her advice always was:
Ask Jesus. How helpful
was that?"
These days she is feeling so unsettled that she
has started consulting
her mother's poems. But the game is getting out of
hand.
WHEN SHE TELLS THE school doctor what
she is doing, the
kindly old man takes off his glasses and
rubs his eyes. "You're engaged
in magical thinking," he explains, though
Camila is not
sure she has heard correctly. Even after
all these years, she has to
strain to understand and to make herself understood in
English.
Just last week, she found herself walking home
several blocks be-
32 "Julia Alvarez
cause the taxi driver had delivered her to the
wrong address. She
had been too embarrassed to inform him.
"Magical thinking?" she repeats the phrase.
That can't possibly
be something bad. She has come about her eyes. Her
vision is
blurring. Sometimes she feels as if there were a
light snow falling
between herself and the world out there.
"Cataracts," he guesses. "You're at that
magical age." He winks.
How nice of him to use that word again, magical, a
word she likes.
He is a kind man, retired from the navy, he
has said. His letter
opener is in the shape of a sword, His pen stand, a
submarine. Engravings
of ships sail upon his walls. Everyone has their
little
thing.
He is probing. What are her plans?
Does she have any family?
Is she upset with this nonsense about mandatory
retirement? Is
she worried about the future?
"Not exactly worried;" she says as evenly
as she can. After all,
she does not want to be locked away somewhere.
Who knows
what rules apply to a foreign woman who goes
mad in this country.
"But this is my last chance, and I don't want
to spoil it."
"Your last chance at what, Miss Henry?" he
asks softly. She has
told him to please call her Miss Henry.
He was having such a hard
time with her name, the r to rattle, the Spanish i
to negotiate.
"To start over," she says simply.
He waits a few minutes for her to elaborate
but when she says
nothing, he offers her a hand off the examining table.
"That a girl," he says as she climbs
heavily down.
SHE TOUCHES THE FADED cover,
closes her eyes, and parts the
pages, then glances down. The letters blur. No
matter. She knows
them all by heart. Her mother's poem about winter:
In our poor countries, rivers keep singing,
fields wear their flowers, light floods the sky
...
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI 33
No answers in that. But she does feel a
surge of silly, chauvinistic
pride in the tropics" claim to better
winters.
It is after six. She goes to the kitchen and pours
herself her
glass of wine. Every evening about this time, she
uncorks the bottle
she buys one town over. A deep-throated
burgundy. One glass
only. She felt ashamed to tell the doctor when
he said he was prescribing
a mild sedative and asked if she
drank. The last thing
she needs is a mild sedative. How about a
strong clarion call? she
should have asked him. One of those resurrection
angels who
wake up the dead when they blow their horns. How
about one of
those?
She takes her glass to the window. At each
streetlight, there is
a roiling cloud of white. The snowfall,
predicted for days, has arrived.
Odd how just now she opened on her mother's poem
about
winter.
Maybe the game is working. The answers are coming
at last.
She lifts her glass but can think of nothing she
wants to toast
just now.
ON THE TELEVISION SHE has turned on
for company, there is
a special report on Cuba, approaching the
anniversary of its revolution.
Castro's nationalization of land continues.
The King
Ranch has been converted into a cooperative for
schoolchildren.
What kind of a revolution is this? President
Eisenhower wants to
know.
Ours, she thinks. The kind we have in our poor
countries.
She has just gotten off the phone with Marion in
sunny Sarasota.
("Ha! Ha! We don't have a bit of snow!")
She is calling hurriedly:
the little cottage at the end of their block is up
for sale. "It
would be perfect for you. But you're going to have to make
up
your mind right away, Cam, this place will sell in
a day."
Is this a sign, she wonders, this sudden phone
call just when
she is beginning to feel at her wits' end? Her
life has come to a
Julia @alvarez
standstill. This year she has not sent out her
Christmas cards. Everyone
would wont to know her plans for the future--and the
idea
of increasing her uncertainty by sharing it is
appalling.
Down below, Vivian Lafleur is returning from
a faculty tea.
The wind has begun to whip the snowflakes
into whirls. From streetlight
to streetlight she watches her neighbor's
unsteady progress: Vivian is almost bent double,
holding down her Kelly-green hat with a
Kelly-green mitten. Camila's own most
recent set is in a
shade that Dot especially chose because it had a
Spanish-sounding
name, verde green. In her lighter moments this last
fall, Camila has
written under her PRO LEAVING VASSAR
COLLEGE column: No more of Dot's
hat-and-mitten sets.
When they next cross paths, Vivian will hint
that the faculty
missed her at afternoon tea, no doubt hoping that her
upstairs
neighbor will explain her recent
reclusiveness. "We missed our eminent
Hispanicist." For years, Camila used
to think that Vivian was
making fun of her. But no, this is the way
Vivian actually talks.
College Street is deserted at this hour. In
a few days the girls
will be returning to campus from their Christmas
break. It has
been a long holiday, waiting for her last
semester to start. Not that
she is looking forward to it. She has never been
good at endings.
Below, Vivian has looked up and caught sight
of Camila at
the window. She lets the curtain fall and sits
back down at her
desk as if she has been caught doing something
undignified.
SHE OPENS THE FOLDER she has labeled
THE FUTURE. Her
lists, should anyone else read them, are as
embarrassing as a diary.
The reasons for and against a decision seem so
petty. She remembers
Rodolfo, deciding to move to a neighborhood
because it was
closer to the one ice cream parlor in Havana that
sold pistachio
ice cream. She herself accepted the Vassar job
years ago because
when she came for the interview, her future
colleague Pilar gave
her a box of scented soaps shaped like
butterflies.
IN THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI
She takes out a clean page and writes,
BUYING THE COTTAGE
IN SARASOTA CLOSE TO MARION, then
draws a line
down the center. PRO and CON. Is close
to Marion pro or con?
she wonders.
But before she has even begun listing her reasons,
she puts the
page aside. None of her reasons are convincing
anymore. She
turns to her mother's poems again--closes her
eyes, takes a deep
breath. This time, she opens on one of her
favorites, "Luz," which
begins, "Where shall the uncertain heart attempt its
flight? Rumors
of another life awaken it."
She listens closely, but all she hears are
Vivian's steps at the
front door and Dot calling from her bedroom,
"Come quickly,
Viv." In the background, the television
drones, punctuated by
screams and raucous applause. A game show
has come on.
DR MARION, SHE WRITES, you must understand
... this is not
easy for me. When I put my reasons into words
they do not sound like
the truth. But we parted lives long ago, and I
know it will never do
for me to join you and your husband in my retirement.
Something has always been missing between them. She used
to
blame herself she was not committed enough
to Marion. Now she
suspects she was not committed enough to living in this
country.
And yet she has stayed on, almost twenty years,
long after
Marion departed for Florida, long after her
brothers stopped trying
to convince her to come home.
It is a mystery how the heart gets free.
And perhaps there is a kind of quiet courage
to waiting until
it does. But she does not want to make too much
of this. She has
never trusted the trumpet or the drums. She
prefers the background
piano, bearing the burden, plunking along with its
serviceable
tune.
I think it is time now to go back and be a part of
what my
mother started.
36 Julia Alvarez
She knows precisely what Marion will write
back.
"Nonsense, Camila! Look how your
mother ended up."
HER CHRISTMAS PLANS had been to go
to Cuba for the holidays
as usual. But given the chaos on the island, the
bombings
and imminent embargo, the airline had canceled all
flights. When
she phoned her nieces in Havana with the news,
they were terribly
disappointed. For years, their aunt Camila was
known as the
Santa Claus from Poughkeepsie, a name that
always made the
young girls laugh as they mispronounced it.
"It's just as well you stay quiet up there,"
Rodolfo advised
when he got on the line. The baby of the family
had grown up to
become a know-it-all at fifty-five. Now that
Camila's older brothers
were gone--Max was still alive but sadly ailing--
Rodolfo had
stepped in to boss her around. Families, it
seems, like nature, abhor
a vacuum.
"Things are happening, lots of things are happening.
Your
ambassador has been recalled," Rodolfo
continued.
She felt a flash of annoyance that made her
want to put the
phone back in its cradle. "Bonsai is not
my ambassador, Rodolfo. I
am as Cuban as you are." Dominican, really,
by birth. The family
had fled to Cuba years ago, only to find a
dictatorship there as
well. But they stayed on. Someone else's
dictator was never as difficult
as their own.
"Santa Claus has been outlawed,"
Rodolfo noted casually, the
way he might mention that he had decided to grow out
his mustache
or paint the house yellow. Perhaps he feared that his
phone
calls were being monitored. Had things gotten that
bad?
"Give it time, Rodolfo." Camila had
to raise her voice to be
heard. Connections from Poughkeepsie to Havana
were never very
good. Downstairs, she could hear the stillness of her
neighbors listening
in.
"Will you be coming in June?" he wanted to know.
IN THE NAME OF SALOMIST 37
I am waiting for a sign, she thought of saying, but
he would
assume he had misheard and start shouting again into the
receiver.
"I'll write, Rodolfo]]" she
promised. "This connection is terrible."
As if her saying so made it even worse, the
crackling of static
increased, and then the line went dead. And her
brother and the
brilliant light of the tropics and hundreds of
confiscated Santa
Clauses, their fake white beards dyed black
and used for Fidel
floats in celebration parades, and the smell of
cafecitos and her
three pretty nieces telling their girlfriends that
this year their old-maid
aunt would not be coming from the United States with her
suitcase full of nail polish and board
games--all vanished--and
she was alone again in this attic apartment in which she had
lived
and worked anonymously for close to twenty years.
All alone with
her indecision and fears.
Two TRUNKS ARRIVE FROM Max. The
return address wasn't as
funny as he meant it to be. From your brother
Max, one foot on the
other side of the grave. The tags are stamped with the
official seal
from the Cancilleria of the Dominican
Republic. Every time she
sees him, Max tries to talk her into leaving
Poughkeepsie and
coming down to work with him in the foreign office. "You
could
travel. You could use all your languages."
He does not go as far as
to say, though she knows he is thinking it, You might
meet somebody.
"I'll
never go back while Trujillo is alive!"
she has told him.
"You don't abandon your country because of one bad
mango]]"
Max replies, glancing away as if to avoid
her eyes. He himself has
accepted numerous posts from Trujillo. "Look
at Mam@a."
The thought of Max, comparing himself to their mother! Ten
years ago, at the centennial of their mother's
birth, Camila
stopped using her first name, Salom`e, considering it
an honor she
had not earned. "I'm just plain Camila," she
corrects those who
read her name from some official record.
As Julia Alvarez
"I know we have disagreed on many things over the
years,"
Max writes in the letter that accompanies the
trunks, "but despite
that, it is you and only you whom I know I can trust
with the
family papers." She is to sort out what
to give the archives and
what to destroy. The irony of his request is not
lost on her--she,
the nobody among them, will be the one editing the story
of her
famous family.
Meanwhile, the present is being reported in
dozens of recaps
of the year's small and big news on television.
Alaska and Hawaii
have become states. The Barbie doll has been
invented in imitation
of dolls handed out to patrons of a West Berlin
brothel.
Panty hose will now liberate women from
girdles. In Cuba the
peasants are singing, "With Fidel, with Fidel,
always with Fidel,"
to the tune of "Jingle Bells."
Camila sings along.
SHE IS GLAD WHEN the new semester
starts. She has missed
her girls. On the first day of class, she
greets them in a too bright
voice, "to Buenos dias, senoritas!" as if
Spanish were the language of
a heightened emotional state. The girls sit
back, wary of her enthusiasm.
She
has fifteen students in each class, all with
names like Joan
or Susan or Nancy, so it is difficult
to keep them straight. Her procedure
has always been to spend the first month reviewing
grammar,
and then move on to the literature, though she has
always
shied away from teaching the poetry of her mother. Perhaps
because
this is her last semester, she assigns five of
Salome's most famous
poems to the more advanced section.
She does not trust her voice to read them out loud
as she usually
does. Instead she chooses a volunteer.
"Wake from your sleep,
my Patria, throw off your shroud," one of three
Susans in the class
begins. After a poor rendition of "A la
Patria," Camila asks the
blond, pale girl what she thinks of the
poem.
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI
"It's too ... too ..." Susan wrinkles
her nose, as if the word
she is looking for might be found by its smell.
Camila stands by,
quietly, letting the young woman flounder.
Usually, she tries to
help students out with a ready supply of
vocabulary words. But
why should she help someone find a negative word
to describe her
mother's work?
Another student steps in. "They're too
bewailing, oh woe is
me and my poor suffering country. And martyrdom
beneath the
fecund palms'! Is this poet supposed to be
any good? I never heard
of her."
"As good as your Emily Dickinson, as
good as your Walt Whitman."
She feels surprised at her outburst. The
students look up,
alert and wide-eyed. She is a quiet woman
in quaint suits from the
forties and funny, colorful winter accessories
that they suppose are
meant to liven up her black coat. She is one
of their favorite professors,
soft-voiced and calm. She can see this in their
eyes, and as
usual when she adopts another's point of
view, her anger subsides.
Still, as she walks home, she cannot forget the
indifference in
their voices, the casualness of their dismissal.
Everything of ours
--from lives to literature--has always been so
disposable, she
thinks. It is as if a little stopper that has
contained years of bitterness
inside her has been pulled out. She smells
her anger--it has a
metallic smell mixed in with earth, a rusting
plow driven into the
ground.
That evening, she takes her glass of wine into the
back room
and opens the trunks.
"SHE HAS BEEN LISTENING intently for the
last half hour, and
then has forgotten to listen, so that the crunch of snow
on the
pathway surprises her. A brief pause as
the visitor reads the names
on the mailboxes, the squeak of the knob being
turned, the rush
of cold air as the downstairs door is opened,
the seventeen steps to
the attic apartment.
40 Julia Alvarez
"Sorry," the young woman says at the door.
"I was told 204
College Street, and it jumps from 202
to 210."
The face is open and eager. (what was it her mother
wrote in
her poem to schoolchildren? Their faces fresh with what
they do not
know ...) Atop the pale face there is
a burst of red hair.
"You're right on time," she lies. "They're in the
back room."
"Dr. Henriquez," the girl starts over.
"I'm Nancy, Nancy
Palmer."
She leads the young Nancy to the back of the apartment.
"I
suppose Pilar, or rather, Profesora
Madariaga explained what I'd
like you to help me with."
"I'm only a Spanish minor, you know?" the young
woman
says rather quickly. Perhaps she has spotted some
loose pages on
top of one of the trunks.
"But you read Spanish well enough to read to me?"
"I got an A in Miss Madariaga's
Spanish 220."
"Muy bien, muy muy bien. Shall we start?"
Camila explains the task at hand. She had
thought she could
do it all on her own, but this last year has been
a strain on her poor
eyes. The eye doctor has told her
that indeed she has cataracts,
which will have to be operated on.
"I think it is better if I introduce
everyone first," she explains
to the young woman. That way she will know in what box
to
place the different letters and documents. "I'll
start with Salome
Urefia, my mother--some of the letters might say 'la
poetisa nacional." She married Francisco
Henriquez, whom everyone calls Pancho or
Papancho, so she became Salome Urefia de
Henriquez.
We always keep our own last names."
Nancy looks up as if sensing a criticism.
"It is the custom in our poor countries." She
intends the
phrase ironically, but the girl nods earnestly
with that abstract
compassion for the downtrodden of the world.
"Pancho became President Pancho in 1916
--"
Nancy's mouth drops open.
IN THE NAME OF SALOM.
"It was actually a very brief
presidency," Camila notes, "not
unlike those small towns. What is it you say?
Don't blink as you
drive by or you will miss them."
"How long was he president?"
She counts the months out on her fingers to be
sure. "Four
months, I think it was. We were living in
Cuba when he heard. By
the time the family joined him in Santo Domingo,
we barely had
time to unpack before we were back in exile in
Cuba again." She
does not add that it was the American occupation that
forced Pancho
out.
"Gosh," Nancy says, shaking her her head.
"You should write
a memoir. Alice Roosevelt has. I
hear one of the Eisenhower kids
is writing one about his dad."
Camila waves the suggestion away. She has
been approached
before, by journalists and historians south of the
border. They
query her on the details of her life as First
Daughter. What details?
she asks. There was no time for details, no time
to plan an inauguration
ball, to have calling cards printed up.
"Well, I think it's pretty neat to have a
daddy who was president,
even if it was only for four months."
"I wish it had only been four months."
Camila sighs, and
when she notes the baffled look on Nancy's
face, she adds, "The
effects went on for a long time is what I
mean." Nine years spent
trying to reclaim his country. A president without
a country. Someone
(not her!) should write a book about it.
"How are we doing?" Camila asks the young
woman. She has
started drawing a family chart for herself on a
blank sheet of paper.
"So far, so good," Nancy says, nodding.
"Well then, Pancho and Salome had three
sons, Fran, the
oldest--I don't suspect there will be
much mail or papers from
him. Early on, he faded into the background, you
might say."
"Oh?" Nancy asks, cocking her head,
curious.
"A violent temper, an incident. ..." She
waves that past away.
"Then there was dear Pedro--he often signs
"PiMn."" The smile
42 Julia Alarez
on her face no doubt betrays he is her
favorite. And Maximiliano,
who is always Max, still alive, still causing
trouble." She laughs.
Nancy laughs, too, amiably. She will be
easy to work with, Camila
thinks. She had not wanted to employ one of her
own students,
someone whose judgments she would have to live with.
"And then, of course, there is me. But I won't
have much in
those trunks either." She smiles at the sunshine
pouring in
through the window. It is the main reason she has
never wanted to
give up the small apartment. On a sunny day,
it floods with light.
"That's pretty simple," Nancy says,
finishing her tree with a
flourish. "I thought it would be like on of those
complicated
Latin American families with oodles of
kids."
"You spoke too soon," Camila laughs.
"My mother died, and
my father remarried." She mentions her stepmother,
two half sisters,
both of whom died, her three half brothers.
Rodolfo, the
baby, now has three daughters of his own! She
spells out each
name. "There's also the Parisian family--"
"I guess I did speak too soon,"
Nancy sighs. Her sheet is now
dark with names and arrows and lines.
"And we mustn't forget Columbus, the bear; and the
monkeys,
One through Eight; and Paco, the parrot." She
decides
against mentioning Teddy Roosevelt, the
pig. The young woman
might get insulted.
"Paco and Columbus..." She is writing
down the names of
the pets! Oh dear. Humor does not always
translate well.
"Why don't we stop there," Camila suggests.
"I'll explain
other people as they come up."
Just introducing these ghosts by name has recalled them
so
vividly, they rise up before her, then shimmer and
fade in the shaft
of sunlight in which she is sitting. Maybe it is
a good thing to
finally face each one squarely. Maybe that is
the only way to exorcise
ghosts. To become them.
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOM * 43
IN THE FIRST TRUNK, the packets of letters
are all tied with red
ribbons.
"Whoever put these away did a neat job,"
Nancy notes.
"I think it was my aunt Mon--oh yes, you
better put Mon
down, short for "Ramona," Salome's
only sister. She became something
of the guardian of Mami's memory."
"Guardian of a memory?" The young woman
seems surprised
by Camila's choice of words.
Perhaps guardian does not mean the same in
English as it
does in Spanish? "I mean that my aunt took
charge of keeping my
mother's memory alive in me. My mother died when
I was quite
young. I hardly remember her."
She rises and walks to the window. How often has
she awakened
in the middle of the night, wandering the houses where
she lived, looking for something, anything, to fill up
the emptiness
inside her. And here she is sixty-six years
old, the need still
raw, the strategies breaking down. Maybe she
should take that
mild sedative? It is still too early in the afternoon
for a glass of
wine.
The phone rings. She would ignore it if the girl
were not
here. "Will you take that, Nancy, please? I'm
at work," she adds.
"It's someone called Marion," Nancy mouths,
holding her
hand over the receiver. "She says she has to talk
to you."
Camila shakes her head. At this moment, she
cannot bear to
be asked about the future. The past is too much with
her.
NANCY UNTIED THE first packet. "There's
a picture in this
one. What a pretty lady!" She holds up
the photograph. "Was this
your mother?"
Camila is tempted to say yes, as she would have
said in the
past when asked. In fact, as a young
woman she used to give away
this picture of her mother to her girlfriends. But the
photo is of a
painting, done after her mother's death on her father's
instructions.
44 "Julia 4lvarez
"Actually that pretty lady is my father's
creation. I have the
actual photograph somewhere."
The young woman looks at her, waiting for further
explanation,
as if she does not understand.
"He wanted my mother to look like the legend he was
creating,"
Camila adds. "He wanted her to be
prettier, whiter ..."
Something shifts in the young woman's eyes. She
looks at
Camila closely. "You mean, your mother was a
... a negro?"
"We call it mulatto. She was a mixture,"
Camila explains.
"That's amazing," the girl says finally, as if that
is the safest
thing to say.
Camila does not know if the young woman is
amazed by her
mother's color or by her father's touch-up. But it was
not just Pancho. Everyone in the family--yes,
including Mon!--touched up the legend of her mother.
Nancy has unfolded several letters. "I
don't have the best accent,"
she protests before she begins reading.
"You will do fine," Camila reassures the young
woman. "I just
need to get some idea of the content of each one.
We'll use those
two boxes to sort them:"
"You mean, they aren't all going to the archives?"
"They should all go to the archives, shouldn't they?" In
spite
of Max, in spite of the others, let the true
story be told!
But for now, she wants her mother just to herself.
"Shall I label them something?"
"What was that, Nancy?"
"Shall I label the two boxes so we don't
confuse them?"
"Label one 'Archives."" She thinks a
moment what the other
box should be called. "And just put my name on the
other one."
SHE STARTS TO GIVE away her own things as
if something inside
her already knows where she is going, what she will need.
She
presents Flo on the first floor with a copy of
Pedro's Literary Cur-
IN
THE NAME OF SALOMI 45
rents, which includes his Norton Lectures from
Harvard. To Vivian,
she gives her records of Italian operas,
Spanish zarzuelas.
"So, have you made up your mind where you are going?"
Vivian asks.
"Not yet," she says, and she repeats the same
thing to Marion,
who calls again to say she has received Camila's
last letter.
"Well, I want you to know that no matter what you
decide, I'll come in June to help you pack
up." Marion takes a deep, resigned breath,
which she is meant to hear. "By the way, who is that
young thing who always answers when I
call?"
"You mean Nancy?" Camila revels in the
pause that follows.
"She's my student helper."
"Tell her to get on the ball. I keep leaving
her my number and
you never call."
Thank goodness for student helpers one can blame
things on!
"We've been so busy, sorting through years and
years of papers."
"Be careful with your asthma," Marion reminds
her. She
sends a motherly kiss over the wires, then calls
back up a minute
later because she forgot one for the other cheek.
Nancy comes twice a week and on weekends.
Soon they finish
one trunk and start on the other. Every night she
pores over her
mother's box: notes to her children; a sachet with dried
purplish
flowers; a catechism book, Caten
cristiano, with a little girl's handwriting
on the back cover; silly poems from
someone named Nisi-
das; a lock of hair; a baby tooth tied up
in a handkerchief; a small
Dominican flag her mother must have sewn herself, its
stick
snapped off, no doubt from the weight of the other
packets upon
it. What these things mean, only the dead can tell.
But they are
details of Salome's story that increasingly
connect her mother's life
to her own.
As for the future, who knows what that will be. All
she knows
is that she wants to become Salome Camila,
living it.
46 Julia Alvarez
AMBASSADOR BONSAL IS BEING
interviewed by David Brinkley. What is
happening over in Cubar? Mr. Brinkley wants
to know. Cubar. Camila has noticed how
President Eisenhower, too,
mispronounces the name, adding an r at the end,
a little growl of
warning. Mr. Fidel Castro has
another think coming if he thinks
he can do what he wants so close to the United
States, Ambassador
Bonsal growls straight at the cameras.
Next, there is a clip of
Fidel standing in the plaza, hundreds of doves
circling and landing
around him as he speaks. He seems familiar with
his large,
pale face and a beard like a black bib under his
mouth.
Whom does he resemble? Camila wonders.
More and more,
there are so many ghosts. People now gone for years
reappear in
these brief resurrections! A few days ago
when Pilar had her over
to celebrate her last semester with one of her
paellas, Camila
could not take her eyes off Pilar's collie,
Kaiua. The sad face, the
soulful eyes, the quietude of his pose as he
stood guard by their
chairs--all of it reminded her of someone. And
then, she saw
him, fourteen years gone, her brother Pedro,
slowly surfacing in
the face of an old dog.
Fidel tilts his head, the doves fly off.
He looks like Pancho! The
same pouty mouth, the same intent face, something
fierce about
the eyes. The voice-over in English makes it
hard to understand
what he is saying. But it seems there has been
an exodus of professionals.
He is putting out a call for teachers and
doctors, dentists
and nurses. "Come join us," he says, looking
straight at Camila.
"I Hr-,ag "Of aVE retiring?"
She meets the young Nancy on her way home from
teaching
her classes. It is a brilliant winter day,
sun spangling the icicles
from the roofs of the buildings. A few weeks ago,
they finished
sorting through the trunks. The archival material
has been sent off
to Harvard and Minnesota, the
Dominican Republic, Cuba. Her
one trunk sits like a rock in the rooms she
has been dismantling.
IN
THE
NAME
OF SALOMI 47
Someday, it will join the others. For now, she wants
it with her,
part keepsake chest, part talisman.
"Not retiring exactly," she explains.
"Oh?" The young woman cocks her head. "Where
do you go
from here?" Weeks of working together have made her
bolder
than she would normally be with a professor.
Instead of the ambivalence she has felt in the past
when confronted
by this question, Camila feels a sense of release--
fiestd
wear their flowers, light floods the sky. She
knows exactly where she
wants to go. She wants to try saying it aloud,
to see the ghostly
breath the words leave in the air. "I'm
going to join a revolution."
"Are you feeling okay, Dr. Henriquez?" The
young woman
peers at her closely. Her red hair is
delightful--as if someone has
lit a flame on top of her head.
She is feeling more hopeful than she has in a
long time. Just
when she thought her life was over--when the rest of her
days
would be a succession of short trips from one safe
place to another,
pills in compartmentalized containers labeled with the
days
of the week, saving stamps pasted into booklets and
redeemed for
small appliances that are always falling apart, and
parts of her
body giving out, beginning with her bad eyes--just
when, in
short, she thought her story was over, epilogue,
coda, diminuendo,
she has happened upon a caravel with sails
filling with wind
(no Noah's ark, please, no
salvation for me at the expense of others),
she has happened upon a way home, a song in
her head from
childhood, In going to El Cabo to meet my
mother... The bay is
too shallow to float in today ... Just when she thought
...
All the heart wants is to be called again.
"Why do you ask?"
The young woman seems baffled as if she
doesn't know how
to explain what she has sensed in the older
woman's tone. "You *
just seem ..." She makes the motion of setting
something down,
"Happier," she finally says, though that is not the
word that goes
with the gesture.
48 Julia Alvarez
Camila throws her head back and laughs. The
young woman
gives her an uncertain smile, as if she is
not quite sure why her
remark is humorous". Reassuringly,
Camila adds, "I'm going
home, or as close as I can get. I guess
I've been homesick for a
while now."
"I bet," the young woman nods. She has a
talent for being
agreeable. Camila should send this young Nancy
south to work
with Max in diplomacy. "Warm weather'll be
nice," Nancy adds,
rolling her eyes, as if the piles of snow around
them had conspired
to ruin their lives. "But will it be safe?"
"All my people live there," Camila says
tartly, a not totally accurate
statement, as most of her people are actually one island
over.
"Vaya con Dios," Nancy says with
obvious pride to have
nailed down the correct colloquialism.
Camila feels a surge of tenderness toward the
young woman,
her hair springing up irrepressibly around her
pale face. This has
always been a handicap in her line of work. Every
semester she
falls in love with her babies, as she calls
them, and spoils them to
death, so Pilar claims. "It's a wonder they
know anything about
the subjunctive!"
Camila says her goodbyes and heads down the
path toward
her apartment. At Joss Gate, she turns--the
young woman is still
watching her--and lifts a purple mitten and
calls out, "Hasta
luego."
Upstairs, the sunny rooms make her feel a
giddy certainty
about what she is doing. She finds her folder of
lists, pros and
cons to this or that plan, and rolls the sheaf into a
cylinder that
looks amusingly official -- a scroll, a
diploma. Turning on her
stove, she sets fire to one end and drops the
burning pages in the
sink. The future goes up in flames. Although
it is only midafternoon,
she pours herself a glass of wine and
lifts it in celebration.
"To us," she toasts the radiant, smoky air.
DOS
CONTESTACION
Santo Domingo, 1865-1874
THE DAY I TURNED fifteen, I became a
woman, so Mama said.
We didn't have enough money for a quincea@nera party,
but I got
to choose the fabric for a new dress, a pale
violet muslin with a
black lace trim. I remember we were putting
the finishing touches
on the hem when Papi rushed in, out of breath.
"Mr. Lincoln has
been shot!"
We liked the bearded president of our neighbor
to the north.
He had struggled for the freedom of people our color.
"With so
many other worthier targets!" was all Mami said,
quickly making
the sign of the cross. Mami could be wicked, but
she always followed
her lapses with contrition, as if God
might not notice.
On my birthday, Ramona and I walked down
to the center of
town with Papa, one on each arm. I wore my
new gown and mantilla
with a silver comb, a gift from Papa. We meant
to stroll
around the central square, but when we got there and
looked up
at la fortaleza with its Spanish flag tossing
proudly, we turned
back. Under the laurel tree in his yard, Papa
toasted me, saying I
was now a grown-up young lady.
50 Julia Alvarez
It was my country that had gone back to being a
baby, having
to obey a mother country.
THAT DAY--MARCH 18, 1861--on the main
plaza, we had
been given back to Spain and became a colony
once again.
I dreamed of setting us free. My shield was
my paper, and my
swords were the words my father was teaching me
to wield.
I practiced on paper and I practiced in my
head: rhymes, refrains,
anthems, hymns. At night, I would lie in
bed, and instead
of sleeping I would think of what I would say if,
like Maria
Trinidad, I was bound and blindfolded before I was
shot dead. I
thought of what I would whisper into the ears of the
Spanish governor
if I had the chance. If I got scared, I'd
chant my brave name
over and over to myself, Herminia! Herminia!
Herminia!
I would free la patria with my sharp quill and
bottle of ink.
But I had to be very careful not to get my father in
trouble.
THE CONDITION UNDER WHICH Papa had been
allowed to return
to the country was that he not involve himself in
politics.
This must have been especially hard for him after the war
of restoration
broke out in the northern part of the country. By then,
I
think Papa was convinced it was better to be our own
patria than
somebody else's colony. But he had given his
word. He said nothing,
wrote nothing. Instead he drank and he kept a
sharp eye over
Ramona and me.
We had left off going to the sisters Bobadilla
after my father
quizzed us on a variety of subjects and found
that we didn't know
who Lope de Vega was or Dante or the
pistil and stamen in one of
the flowers he plucked for us, but we knew all
about fine fanning
(snapping closed: do not approach; opening slowly
while peeking
over the top: you may speak to me) and what
variety of flowers
went into a Queen Isabela bouquet and what
to wear to a formal
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI 51
dinner if there has been a recent death in the
family. Now that the
Spaniards were back, the sisters Bobadilla were
in their glory.
Mami finally agreed with Papa that we were wasting
our time
and withdrew us from school with the excuse that she needed
our
help at home with the sewing--which was true enough.
Afternoons,
Mami hired a tutor, and then in the cool part
of the
evening, we headed over to Papi's house where
we'd find him, in
his garden or his room, brooding over the
disappointments in his
life, and yes, drinking.
"Was your father drinking?" Mami would ask when we
returned.
Ramona and I would look at each other, and my
mother
would say, "Never mind, you need not
betray him."
"It helps preserve his vital organs,"
Ramona offered.
"Opens his appetite and increases the flow of the
blood to the
nervous centers of the
brain," Tia Ana recited.
Mama gave her sister that fierce look that could
make your
blood stop flowing. Pap always said that the rebels
should forget
all their elaborate plots and instead let
Mami loose in the governor's
palace. She could stare the Spanish Empire
to ruins and sizzle
the sycophants who were now all talking with lisps
to show
how purebred they were. Papa even started a
poem called "To
Gregoria's Eyes," but he never finished it.
IT WAS Papa who was all eyes. It seemed
he had transferred all
his worry and attention from la patria to Ramona
and me.
We began to see, at least I did,
how crucial it was that he have
a nation with which to occupy himself or we would not have a
moment's peace. When I mentioned this to Mami, it
must have
been one of the funniest things I had ever said, for
she repeated it
often, even to Papa, who gave me a scowl and
said, "So you want
to be free of me, eh?"
The drinking had done that. You made an innocent
remark,
52 "Julia @alvarez
and Papi would take offense, and then, the only thing
to do was
write him a verse to soothe whatever was hurting
inside him.
That was how I got him writing again. One day, after
I was
done reading one of my verses to him, he began
saying very clever,
pretty things, for my father had a silver tongue,
as my mother often
observed. I scribbled down what he said, and that
night, I set
everything in lines so they rhymed. Next
day, I read him his poem
out loud, not telling him it was his, and he looked
at me when I
was done and said, Not bad, Herminia, and I said,
Not bad, Nisidas,
and he said, Herminia, did I really write that?
and I said,
Nisidas, you did not write that, and he said, I
knew it, and I said,
you did not write it but you recited it, and
suddenly, which was
not unusual when he had been drinking, my father
began to sob,
and I had to remind him of what he had often
reminded me, tears
are the ink of a poet. Do not waste them on crying.
"I know, Herminia, I know," Papa said. "And
now, I won't be
wasting them anymore." He held his flask
upside down as if to
water the garden, but it must have been empty, for
only a few dark
drops fell out. "I was born poeta. The other
things were chance.
But if you don't do what you're born
to do, it destroys you. Come
here, let me show you something."
He took me by the hand and led me through the house,
past
his two somber sisters in their dark dresses,
rocking sadly in their
rocking chairs, the black-veiled pictures on
the wall, a votary candle
burning by the portrait of his parents and his brother
Lucas.
So many of the people Papa loved had died that I could
see why
he would be feeling poorly about being alive.
In the front parlor, Papi threw open the
street shutters and
pushed one of the rockers to one side. Spiders
scurried away, and
I saw the long, greasy tail of a rat as it
dashed under the keepsake
chest in a plume of dust. In their grief, the
sisters had let the
house go. There, scribbled on the wall in a child's
hand in black
charcoal were faint words that were hard to make out.
"What is it,
Papa?" I asked.
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMIST 53
"Your father's first poem--written when he was five
years
old!"
Papi's family had lived in this house from when
we were still
part of Spain the first time around. Even my
great-grandfather's
birth cord was buried in the backyard. As for my
father's first
poem, he told me the story. His grandmother, who
was in fine
health, had fallen sick suddenly one night after
eating a guava pastel.
The family sent for the famous Dr. Martinez,
whose fame
mostly derived from his having gone to school in
Paris, a fact advertised
on his shingle, Dr. Alfonso Martinez,
Paris Degree, and in
his numerous references to what the famous Bernard
or the renowned
Craveilhier had said about le cots humain.
Dr. Martinez examined the patient and
recommended
a vomitivo, which the family prepared, and said he
would be
back tomorrow in the morning after the second bell at
ten. That
night Papi's grandmother died. The next morning
when Dr.
Martinez arrived at the door, Papi's
family was in the bedroom,
laying out the body. Dr. Martinez was led into the
front parlor,
where he found himself facing the young grandson, charcoal
in
hand, just putting the finishing touches on his first
poem:
Doctor Martinez
used his Paris degree
to kill my grandmother
with his expertise.
"Did you get in trouble for writing on the wall?"
I asked. I
would have. Tia Ana would have smacked my hands the
way she
did her students' hands when she caught them doing
something
naughty.
Papa said he had not gotten punished, not at
all. He had
merely put into words what everyone else in the
whole capital had
been thinking. "Which is what a poet is supposed
to do," Papa
said, eyeing me in that Ten Commandments way he had
when
54 "Julia @alvarez
giving advice which I was meant to store away in the
category of
things-my-father-once-said-which-I-will-never-forget. "A
poet puts into words what everyone else is thinking and
hasn't the gumption or talent to say." Then he
added unnecessarily, "Remember
that."
I did remember it, but it was Papa who forgot.
For as I
learned to work my words better and better, I
became more fearless,
and Papi more fearful for me. Of course, no one
knew. That
was part of the fun: everyone talking about Herminia, and
nobody
but Papa and Ramona knowing it was me.
NOT THAT ALL MY productions were lofty.
One day, I received a commission from our farmer
to write a
poem for him. I call him "our" farmer only
because he stopped by
our house every few days with viveres from his farm out in
the
country. Don Eloy had heard me versifying,
as he called it, and so
he was wondering if I would write him a verse
or two for a young
girl whom he was courting.
"But you already have your mujer," I reminded him.
Maybe
Don Eloy had gotten so old that he had
forgotten he had a wife?
"You mean Caridad? Ay Dios, pero si
Caridad es una vieja."
"Caridad's not an old biddy, Don Eloy.
Caridad's your age.
You said so yourself. You said you were born within days of
each
other."
"Don't you know anything?" Don Eloy said,
leaning closer.
His breath smelled like Papi's breath when Papi
had been drinking.
"Women age from the bottom up, and men from the top
down."
Now there was a fact I had never heard at the
sisters Bobadilla.
"How's that?" I asked, putting my hand on my
hip like Mami
always did when we told fibs.
"You've heard it said men are fools. That's because
our brains
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI 55
get old sooner. But the rest of us is still intact
until a very old age.
Meanwhile women, well--just look at that old
one, that Ana of
yours, smart as clockwork, right? Brain all there,
but the rest of
her--" he motioned from the neck down, "dead as a
doorstop."
How odd of science to do that, I thought. But then,
science
could be very odd. Look at this whole business of a
flower carrying
around both stamen and pistil like it had no faith in
finding a
partner out there among the millions of flowers.
(there were
more flowers than human beings: Papi had confirmed
that for
me.) Finally, I agreed to write Don Eloy
his courting poem in exchange
for a basket of guavas from his farm. A few
weeks later he
reported that the young woman was coming around. "You have
to
write me another one. That one just shook the
tree, but now I
want the mangoes to fall."
But in those few weeks I had had a chance to make
some inquiries,
and Don Eloy's science of aging had been
wholly discredited
by Papi. As for the guavas he had brought me, they
were full
of worms, and recalling Papi's grandmother's
experience, I threw
them out.
IN THOSE DAYS of being a colony again, the
newspapers were
full of poetry. The Spanish censor let
anything in rhymed lines
pass, and so every patriot turned into a poet.
Daily, our friend Don
Eliseo Grullon or Papa would appear after
supper with one paper
or other for us to read. There were dozens of poems
about liberty.
It was the time for poetry, even if it was not the time
for liberty.
Sometimes I wondered if this didn't make sense
after all. The
spirit needed to soar when the body was in chains. I
even wrote an
ode about it, which I showed nobody, but added to the
growing
stack of poems under my mattress.
It was not just me who was writing. Ramona also
wrote, lots
of sweet poems which she liked to keep small and
to the point. I
tended to get carried away.
56 Julia Alvarez
"That's good," Papal kept saying. "You want
to go farther. You
want to fly all the way to Parnassus."
"Where's that?" I asked. But Papi was in the
middle of his
own poem. "Come here," he called me. He
read me one of the
lines. "Something doesn't sound right." He read
it a few times. I
offered him some suggestions that loosened up the way
the words
all flowed together. "Herminia, Herminia," he
winked, "soon I
will give you my trumpet and play only the
flute."
Sometimes, Ramona and I would catch Josefa
Perdomo walking
down the street, and say in awed voices
to each other, "She
writes verses!" When the third Spanish
governor arrived, Josefa
welcomed him with some verses in El Eco del
Ozarna.
Everyone exclaimed how lovely the verses were,
but I was not
so sure. I mean, the verses were lovely
verses, but they were doing
an unlovely thing. They were binding us to a country
that had
turned us into a colony. It was like the verses I
had written for
Don Eloy, funny and clever, but shaking
mangoes off the wrong
tree. Don Eloy should have been courting his old
wife and making
her feel like the young girl he was dreaming about in his
head.
That's what I should have said to him. I'll write a
verse you can
give to Caridad that will wake up every inch of her
half-dead
body.
"Salome, for heaven's sakes.
They're just verses." Ramona
could be fierce in her defense of the plump,
pretty poetess. It was
as if Josefa were a human version of her old
doll Alexandra, on
whose porcelain prettiness Ramona had doted.
"It's not her fault
we're back to being a colony. She's just being
polite."
But I wasn't convinced. It was one thing to be
polite and another
thing altogether to welcome intruders and say, "Please
make
yourself right at home." And some people were doing just that.
The sisters Bobadilla had gone overboard with
their hospitality:
holding teas for the Spanish soldiers and
dignitaries, flying a
Spanish flag from their roof--their fine,
Spanish-tile roof. Their
lisps had gotten so pronounced that you didn't
want to meet them
IN THE NAME OF SALOM 57
on the street, for they would sprinkle you with saliva
before you
ever got past talk of the weather.
Right then and there, I promised myself that I would
never
write verses out of politeness. Rather than write
something pretty
and useless, I would not write at all.
It was a high standard to set for myself just as I was
starting
out. But I suppose it was like me, as Mami would
have pointed
out, to give with all my heart or not at all.
It was an attitude that would not serve me well in
love.
OUR TUTOR, ALEJANDRO ROMA, brought his
younger brother,
Miguel, to class one day. By now I was
eighteen and had learned
everything Alejandro had to teach me, so I was glad
for a new
face. Miguel was an aspiring poet, and he
had heard from his
brother that the Urefia girls were none other than
the daughters of
Nicolas Urefia, and they were smart as
clockwork. Miguel was
hoping not only to meet us but to make the
acquaintance of the
poet himself at Mami's house.
"What kind of poetry do you write,
Miguel?" Ramona asked
him the first time he came to our house. How I
hated that question
--like pinning down a butterfly.
"The Noah's ark kind, a little of everything," he
answered, a
smile in his eyes as he glanced my way.
I tried not to smile. Recently, Mami had
begun reading to us
out of Dona Bernardita's Manual of
Instruction for Young Ladies,
and among the things that Dona Bernardita warned
against was
smiling at a man.
"Smiling is a gift of intimacy," Mami
explained. Nice young
ladies gave such tender responses only to their
husbands along
with--Mami hesitated--along with everything else.
About the
everything else Mami was not very
specific. Indeed, Dona
Bernardita counseled that too much of that kind of knowledge
might lead a young lady to solitary indulgence.
58 .julia Alvarez
Ramona and I looked at each other with just the
faintest lift
of the brows. Then Ramona, who as the oldest
usually went ahead
into unknown territory, asked, "What's that,
Mami?"
Mami colored prettily, the pink in her
cheeks making her
look younger. "It's a term that is used
to describe ... individual
transgression?"
"That explains a lot, Mami," Ramona said.
Mami closed Dona Bernardita's Manual
and looked straight
at my sister. "Are you being fresh with me, young
lady?"
"Non, non, Maman, pardonnez-moi,"
Ramona said fondly,
and she folded her arms around our mother. We would
slip into
French and English from time to time to show off
to Mami how
much we had learned from our tutor, Alejandro.
That first day, Miguel had come, as I said, tagging
along with
his older brother. Soon, he became a
regular, and Mami allowed
him to join our class. I think she felt sorry
for us, for we hardly
went out or entertained visitors. We became
fast friends, all four
of us, meeting for years. Mami later said that ours
were the
longest lessons she had ever heard of, but she
saw nothing wrong
at the time with such innocent scholarship.
What happened started innocently enough. One day,
Miguel
and I got into an impassioned discussion over a
poem by Lamartine.
At our next meeting, we discussed Lamartine
again, almost
as if the poem were now a door we had to go through
to get somewhere
else. The next time, Miguel said, speaking of
Lamartine,
here's a poem by Espronceda which I think you
might like, and
that was another door we opened, and Espronceda
led to Quintana,
and Quintana to our own Nicolas Urefia
("I understand he
is your father!")--and Urefia led to our poetess
Josefa Perdomo
("A pity she sells her poetry for a
smile"), which led to some poems
by an unknown poet Herminia that I showed
Miguel ("Excellent!
May I have copies?"), and then one day, we had
opened all
the doors and gone down all the corridors, and
we found ourselves
IN "THE
NAME
OF
SALOM dg59
sitting side by side, like Dante's lovers, in
a room with nobody else
in it.
That day Mami had gone down to the docks with
Ramona as
a ship had come in from St. Thomas that might be
selling notions
we needed. Miguel had stayed on to discuss
Herminia's latest production,
a poem on the glory of progress. My aunt
was just finishing
with her little girls, but as her charges were leaving, one
girl
fell down the steps and commenced crying. In the
commotion of
tears and a bloody knee, my aunt must have
forgotten that she
would be leaving two young people alone (an absolute
DO NOT
EVER DO! in Dona Bernardita's
Manual), for she decided to
walk the sniffling child down the street to the grandmother's
house.
It was only a matter of minutes. But in those
minutes, there
was time for a young man to say a verse or two; time
for a young
girl to let the color in her face die down;
time for her to murmur,
"Me, too"; time for him to say he had
not heard her, could she
speak up; time for her to stammer again; and then the
timeless
moment of his hand reaching over Lamartine, over
Espronceda
and Quintana, to give her hand a fervent
squeeze, before time ran
out, and there was Tia Ana out of breath in the
doorway, her long
shadow like old Father Time himself come to put an end
to lessons
from that day on.
"I should never have consented to this," Mami blamed
herself
when she heard from her sister about the scene that had
ensued.
My aunt had swooped down on the flabbergasted
Miguel and literally
picked him up by his collar (which had snapped
open) and
deposited him on the street outside. His torn
cravat had followed.
For days, Ramona would not talk to me. I
suspect she was not
only angry about my ruining her
lessons, but jealous that I, her
younger sister, had gone ahead of her in experience.
I had been
touched by a man.
As for Papi, he was furious. You'd think I
had done some
truly awful thing like gone over to the old Blue
party or supported
60 Julia Alvarez
the new Red party, which Papi no longer
supported, for its leader
Biez had become a dictator. "They all
break your heart," he said,
looking at me with that After-the-Ten-Commandments
look of
Moses coming down the mountain only to find the
Israelites
dancing in loose garments around a calf of
melted-down jewelry
and candelabras.
The worst outcome, of course, was that I was no
longer to
have any communication with either of the Romltn brothers.
Soon enough, our dictator Biez removed
all temptation from my
side--for the brothers were exiled to Haiti for
writing poems
against the new regime. We had left off being a
colony to become
a dictatorship with a censor who understood the power
of poetry.
It was as if I were back in my childhood again,
for just as I
had given all my heart to a charming man in a
frock coat who
rhymed his conversation, I now had given my heart
to a charming
young man in a short jacket and cap who had
declared his feelings
for me. My asthma reappeared. I wept for
days on end.
Before Miguel left the country, I had a gift
to give him. Night
after night, I had been copying over Herminia's
poems, which
Miguel had requested. It was my small act
of rebellion against the
foolish dictates of my elders. I had no
idea how I would get them
to him.
It was Ramona who came up with the solution:
Ramona, who
could never endure my weeping and would do anything
to stop
my tears. At Sunday mass, as Miguel
walked past our pew to communion,
Ramona slipped in behind him. They knelt side
by side
at the communion rail. As they waited for
Padre Billini to come
down the row with his chalice, Ramona slipped
Miguel a sheaf of
poems. Accompanying them was my letter, disclosing that
I was
Herminia. It seemed a much more intimate thing to do
than smiling,
to take off my disguise and let him know my
secret soul as I
had put it down on paper.
IN THE
NAME
OF
SALOMIST 61
A FEW WEEKS LATER Papa was at our
door with a copy of El
Nacional rolled up under one arm and a scared
look on his face.
When he unrolled the paper, and thrust it before me,
my mouth
fell open. There, on the front page, was my
poem, "Recuerdos a
un proscrito," which I had included in the
poems to Miguel. It
was signed "Herminia."
"Que pasa?" Mami asked, scouring the paper
up and down.
President Grant to our north was sending a
commission of American
senators to study the idea of buying off part of the
island and
shipping some of their own negro people to live here. A
group calling
itself the Ku Klux Klan was burning crosses in
front of these
negro people's houses, so maybe they wouldn't mind
coming. The
Clyde steamship was due in from Havana.
Senorita Trinidad Villeta
had been crowned Queen of May in Teatro
Republicano.
Papa looked at her impatiently, and then
glancing over his
shoulder and seeing that the top of the Dutch door was still
open,
he motioned for me to close it. After he had read
the poem out
loud, my father said, "This is seditious!"
My mother's face shone with fierce pride. "Good
for Herminia! She is saying what we all feel and
don't have the courage to speak."
Papa looked at her for a long moment, and you could
see that
he was just now realizing that I had never shared my pen
name
with my mother. It was our special secret.
Later that night in bed, Ramona and I figured
out what must
have happened. Miguel had given my poem to his
friends at El
Nacional to publish. All we could hope for was
that he had not betrayed
my true identity.
The next afternoon at his house, Papa warned me.
"You must
be careful, Herminia. Baez is not the
old Baez. He would not protect
his old friend if he were to find out my daughter was
sowing
seeds of sedition. No more publishing without my
permission!"
Of course, I promised not to do what I had
never done in the
first place. The following week another poem
by Herminia was
62 "Julia Alvarez
published in the paper. "Una lagrima" was not
out-and-out seditious,
but no dictator could have read those lines addressed
to an
exile without feeling challenged. Your patria still
in chains ... The
tears you shed for her have never dried ... Rumors
in the capital
were that El Nacional would be shut down within the
week. But
the paper continued publishing. It seemed Baez was
showing off
to the American senators how freedom-loving he
was.
For several weeks, poems by Herminia
appeared in the paper.
"Contestacion," "A un poeta," "Una
esperanza," "Ruego," "Un
gemido," and finally, "La gloria del
progreso," a poem that caused
an uproar. Our old friend Don Eliseo
Grullon, a statesman himself,
declared that whoever this Herminia was, she was going to
bring down the regime with pen and paper.
Papi was beside himself. Why was I bent on defying
him? Exile
would be the least of it. I was going to get us all
killed. Finally,
I had to confess that it was not my doing. I had
allowed some acquaintances
to have copies. "I'm sorry, Papa."
But secretly, I was glad. Poetry, my
poetry, was waking up the
body politic! Instead of letting my father's
fears hold me back, I
kept writing bolder poems.
Sometimes my hand would shake as I wrote.
Herminia, Herminia,
Herminia, I would whisper to myself. She was the
brave
one. She was not in thrall to her fears. She did
not quail at a harsh
word. Or cry over every little thing, wasting her tears.
Secretly, in the dark cover of the night,
Herminia worked at
setting la patria free.
And with every link she cracked open for la patria,
she was
also setting me free.
EACH TIME THERE WAS a new poem
by Herminia in the paper,
Mama would close the front shutters of the house
and read it in a
whisper to the rest of us. She was delighted with the
brave Herminia.
I felt guilty keeping this secret from her, but
I knew if I
IN
THE NAME OF
SALOM 63
told her, all her joy would turn to worry.
Her theory was that Herminia was really Josefa
Perdomo, but my aunt Ana disagreed. Josefa
had a more sentimental, ingratiating style. "This
Herminia
is a warrior," my aunt said proudly. "In
fact, my theory is that
Herminia is really a man, hiding behind a
woman's skirt."
"How interesting, tia," Ramona said, looking
directly at me.
"Herminia, a man. Somehow I don't quite see
it." My sister was
enjoying herself immensely. She claimed it was all
her doing that
Herminia had come to the notice of the public. I
knew the minute
Mami discovered our travesty, Ramona would be
the innocent accomplice, put up to this by her naughty
little sister, who had once let a man touch her.
In fact, we had both lit a fire that was raging
out of control.
"La patria has discovered her muse," read
one letter by an anonymous
writer reprinted in El Nacional.
Rebellions began erupting
everywhere. The American senators left the
country. Governor
Gonzalez of the north province of Puerto
Plata announced that
he was starting his very own party, the Green Party, and
he called
for all Dominicans to join with him in a public
meeting to protest
the tyranny of Baez. His proclamation inspired
a new poem I began
writing that very night, Wake from your sleep, my
Patria, throw
off your shroud...
It was because of this poem that Mami made her
discovery.
Our housekeeping habit was to air our
mattresses in the open
courtyard in back of the house. On airing days
I was always very
careful to transfer the stack of poems I kept
under my side of the
mattress to the bottom of the clothes chest.
That day, I had made the transfer, but it must have
been that
the ink on my latest revision of "A la
Patria" was still wet when I
had put the poem away on top of the stack the
night before. That
one page had stuck to the bottom of the
mattress, and as we upended
it, my mother was staring straight at my poem, or rather
Herminia's poem.
"y esto, que es?" My mother peeled the poem
away and read
54 "Julia Alvarez
enough of it to recognize the style. She looked
straight at me
"How could you, Salome?"
"You said you were proud of Herminia," I reminded
her.
"You said she had the courage to say what we all
thought but
wouldn't speak." My knees were shaking. I could
feel that tight-
ness in my chest that preceded my asthma
attacks.
My mother did not say a word. I expected her
to scold me as
she sometimes did Ramona for being impudent. But
she could see
how upset I was. She made a sign of the
cross and kept shaking
her head. "Dios santo, let this cup pass from
me."
"What are you talking about? What are you talking
about?"
Tia Ana had caught the hysteria in the air, but
she could not divine the cause of it.
My mother handed the paper to her sister, who read it
over
quickly. When she got to the signature at the
bottom of the page
a smile spread on her lips. "Now who--"
she said, with mock
ingenuousness--"who on earth could this Herminia be?
And what
are her poems doing under my dear niece's
mattress?"
With that, she set the approach we were all to take.
We didn't
know who Herminia was. We didn't know how her
poem had appeared in our house. And as the
revolution was erupting up north and the capital was
being bathed in blood, Mami sewed all
Herminia's poems inside the hem of an old
cape.
"What do you think?" the sisters Bobadilla would
ask my
aunt or my mother when they dropped in for a
visit. "Who could
this Herminia be?"
"Quien sabe," Mami would reply. "Ana
says Herminia's
probably a man." And I could see as she
spoke, her hands making
a small sign of the cross at her heart, in
penance for the lie she had
just told.
I WOULD HAVE KEPT our secret. I did not
sign my own name
to my poems, not during our glorious revolution
or the blood
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI 65
siege of the capital or the uncertain days of one
government toppling
another. But then one day in early February of
my twenty-third
year, we opened El Centinela, one of the
papers that had
been allowed to stay in print on account of
its innocuous content,
and there was a flowery little piece in prose about
winter and
white snowflakes, signed Herminia.
"Herminia has certainly come down a notch or
two," our old
friend Don Eliseo Grullon said when he came
by that evening
with a copy of the paper Papa had already brought us.
"Why do
our writers have to write about winter as if we were
North Americans.
It had become a fad to ape all things from up
north, even
to the extent of pretending we had snows in
December and had to
warm our hands at fireplaces. Don Eliseo
shook his head. "Our
Herminia, like our Josefa, has let us down.
Maybe these glorious
notes are just too much for a woman to maintain."
It made me feel
sick not to be able to defend myself.
"On the contrary, I think our Herminia is
heading towards
new horizons," the sisters Bobadilla
defended the piece. They had
begun dropping by, now that the respected
statesman Eliseo Grullon was a regular
visitor. According to Don Eliseo, ours was the only
household in the capital where he could talk to women
about
politics and poetry instead of hair ribbons and
fabrics. "I think
Herminia's piece is darling," the sisters
Bobadilla continued. It
seemed they spoke in chorus, though I'm sure
it was just that they
always agreed with each other, so their opinions were
interchangeable.
"'White snowflakes dancing in the frosty air,
as Mistress
Winter dusts the village square,"" they
quoted. I felt even sicker. If
ever I wrote a poem about winter, I would make
it accurate.
"Truly, Herminia has grown more feminine. But
what do you
think, Don Nicolas?" My father was also
visiting.
"I think it's not the same Herminia," Papa
stated.
"You sound very sure of this," Don Eliseo
observed. "But remember,
even Shakespeare had his lapses. Calderon
wrote some
clunkers. Espronceda has his insipid
moments. And Sor Juana can
66 Julia Alvarez
be insufferable." He gave a little bow of apology
for criticizing a
favorite of the ladies. "But Ramona and
Salome haven't said a
word,", he noted, at which point Ramona
stammered something
about it being possible that there were many Herminias just as
there were many Anas, Estelas, Filomenas, and
Salomes.
"Hmm," Don Eliseo considered. He let a
moment lapse so as
not to seem to have dismissed Ramona's comment too
readily.
Then, he turned to me. "And you, Salome?"
I could feel that shortness of breath I would always
experience
when I was forced to speak up. Mami claimed that with
each
year, both my asthma and my timidity were getting
worse. Often,
she would have to step in and answer for me.
"Herminia hasn't been feeling well--" My
mother stopped,
her face scarlet. Quickly, she corrected
herself. "What am I saying?"
she asked the assembled gathering, smiling lamely.
"I mean
Salome. Forgive me. All this talk of
Herminia." She went on to tell
in detail about my latest attacks of asthma.
It was embarrassing
how my mother would talk of my maladies as if I
were still a babe
in her arms whose body functions could be broadcast
to the
world.
The sisters Bobadilla chatted on, but Don
Eliseo kept eyeing
me closely. "Poets must be brave," was all
he said as he bid me
goodbye later that night.
I DON'T KNOW IF it was the thought that
Miguel would soon
be returning, and I wanted to do something to make him
proud
of me. Or if it was simply that I had finished
my new poem, "A
la Patria," the one Mami had found stuck to the
bottom of the
mattress, and I wanted to redeem the name of
Herminia. But
one morning, not long afterward, I woke up early,
dressed in my
lavender muslin and buttoned boots, put on
my bonnet and tied
the ribbons tight. Then, as Mami and Tia
Ana were out back
fussing over the coffee water and the mashed
plantains, and as
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI
my sister Ramona slept on, I let myself out
of the house, pulling
the door so that it appeared shut, and I walked
down the 19th of
March until I got to the Street of Martyrs,
and I turned right and
then left down Separation Street to the center of the
city. Under
the door of the owners of El Centinela, I
slipped my new sub-
mission.
The very next issue, Don Eliseo arrived
early with a rolled-up
paper and a bouquet of gardenias, my
favorites. "I got one of the
first copies," he said holding up the paper. And
then, handing me
the flowers, he added, "Let me be the first to say,
It is your best so
far, Herminia!" he winked. And then, he added,
"There is a crowd
headed in this direction."
"Ay, Dios mio, ay, Dios mio," Mama
wailed. Even after Don
Eliseo had explained that he meant a crowd of
admirers, she was
not convinced that we would be safe. My
aunt Ana took the paper
from her, and when she had finished, very solemnly she
handed it
to Ramona, who read it and then passed it on
to me.
But I had no need to read what I had written.
I had been
working on that poem for months. Finally, after toiling
over every
single word, line by line, I concluded with the two
hardest words
of all.
"Salome Urefia," I signed.
TWO
The Arrival of Winter
Mid February, Vermont, 1950
"i CAN'T BELIEVE YOU came all the way
to Middlebury to see
more snow!" Marion jokes.
It is the kind of remark Camila might hear a
half dozen
times a winter in Poughkeepsie. But somehow it
disappoints her
coming from the mouth of her dear friend. She wants more from
Marion. A melodious phrase, an
arresting remark, her mother's
poem to winter:
In other places you are much harsher,
stripping the fields of their glorious dress,
hushing the gossiping waters of rivers ...
She keeps her head bowed as she struggles down
the street beside
her friend. The snow is blowing in swirls all about
them, as if
it were not just snow but snow in a tantrum, snow
angry at being
used for too many pretty winter scenes in
postcards and poems,
snow proving it can be mean and deadly serious. Had
she been
smart instead of vain, she would have worn the red cap
her downstairs
neighbor knit her for Valentine's Day.
Instead she has on a
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI 69
silk scarf tied loosely around her
head and her unlined leather
gloves. Her fingers are numb. But it has always
seemed silly to
stock herself with winter wear. Every year will be her last
year in
the United States.
"It's one of the snowiest Februaries on
record," Marion continues,
puffing out white breaths in protest. "Poor
Camila, seven
hours on a bus." It is not like Marion to be so
solicitous. She wonders
what is up.
SHE SET OUT FROM Poughkeepsie early this
morning--a six-
hour ride, but as they headed north, the storm
started, and the
driver slowed to a crawl; the window presented a
pointillist study
in white. She kept checking her watch. There was
time to spare.
Her afternoon class visit was scheduled for four. The
presentation
itself wouldn't take place until evening.
The talk she has prepared is one she
will be delivering countless
times this year, the centennial of her mother's birth.
It is academic,
and uninspiring, and she knows it is. Other scholars
can
talk about Salome's poetry and her pedagogy,
but she, Camila, the
only daughter, is supposed to shed a different
light on the woman.
She wants her speech to be rousing, an
inspiration to noble
feeling. (can one still talk this way in the middle
of the twentieth
century? Russia has just set off an atomic
bomb. In Washington,
Senator McCarthy is launching a purge not
unlike those of Batista's
secret police. In her own Dominican
Republic, a small invasion
force of rebels has been slaughtered
by Trujillo's henchmen, her
own cousin Gugtl, among them.) This is her first
public pronouncement
as a member of her famous family. She has
been surprised
to receive so many invitations to speak about her mother
this year. She is, after all, the anonymous one,
the one who has
done nothing remarkable. But--and this annoys her--
she is in
demand for sentimental reasons, the daughter who
lost her
mother, the orphan marched out in her starched party
dress to re-
70 "Julia Alvarez
cite her mother's poem, "El ave y el
nido," to the sobs of old au
and family friends.
Perhaps that is precisely what she should do, throw
away the
uninspiring hour she has typed onto twenty
pages--a review of
the history of Hispaniola, Gallego and
Quintana as prosodic influences on her mother's
patriotic poems, her mother's pseudonym (the
practice of pseudonyms, purpose and outcome
in a caudillo state), one short anecdote about
a jealous rival stealing
her mother's pseudonym thrown in like the rattle one
shakes at
a fussy child to distract it from bursting out in shrieks
in front
of company one is trying to impress. And instead,
put on my
mother's black dress, hang the beribboned national
medal over my
head, and come out in a spotlight like a butterfly
pinned to a
swatch of bright fabric, and recite the old
favorites ("Ruina,"
"Sombras," "Amor y anhelo," and of
course, "Mi Pedro") for
college audiences.
At least this speech is only her debut
performance. Maybe her
talk will get better with practice? Next
week, she will be giving it
at Columbia and at the end of the month at
Harvard, where Pedro is still remembered and revered.
Then, she has agreed to go to Wellesley for Cinco
de Mayo, even though of course, Salome had
no connection with Mexico's independence day. "It
doesn't matter," her friend Jorge Guillen, who
is teaching there, assured her. "It's a 'Latin
American holiday," so even if you come
and talk
about Carmen Miranda, the deans will think the campus
is international."
"Jorge can be wicked," Camila has
admitted to Marion.
"Jorge is sweet on you," Marion keeps
hinting. The Spanish
poet was widowed two years ago, and you'd think from
Marion's
comments that some torrid romance is going on between
Camila
and her summer school colleague. But all that
has been going on
is that Guillen has been sending Camila his
new poems, which
are, as Camila has explained to Marion,
"all about losing were
maine."
IN
THE NAME OF SALOMI. 71
On Salome's actual birthday, October
21, Camila has been
invited to come speak at the instituto her mother founded
in the
Dominican Republic. It is the first
of many events in a weeklong
festival honoring her mother. Camila is
to judge the Salome
Urefia Poetry Contest and put into circulation
the first complete
edition of her mother's poems. The festival will
conclude with a
memorial service at her tomb, and Max has
written that el Jefe
will attend and unveil a new fifty-cent coin with
"Mother's pretty
portrait on it."
It is enough to make Camila feel like smacking
him, even if
he is her distinguished older brother. If Pedro
were still alive he
would not permit his mother's name to be used in this way
by the
dictator. Even Pancho would not have been swayed
--though
Max's silver tongue always had a way with their
father. As for
Camila, she has never been able to talk sense
into Max, indeed
into any of the men in the family, once they
latched on to one of
their causes. The best she can do is stay out of their
way. But, she
does not want to disappoint those six hundred
girls at the instituto,
whose class representatives have penned pleading
notes. "Esteemed
Senorita Salom`e Camila. We do
implore you to honor us
with your gracious presence." The Dominican
penchant for frilly
rhetoric has increased astronomically since the
advent of the dictatorship.
"Hddla will. AV.!" Marion announces.
Perhaps her friend
thinks that in this weather, Camila might have lost
sight of where she is. But she has always been good with
directions, adept at strategies of survival.
As a child, when she was first told the Hansel
and Gretel story, she pointed out that those bread
crumbs were a
bad idea. "What if an animal should eat them
--then what?"
"Have you read this story before?" her stepmother asked
her, closing the storybook. In her
eyes there was that funny look
again--a kind of multiple choice look in which the
correct answer
72 "Julia Alvarez
was not (a) suspicion, (b) concern, (c)
desire to please, (d) desire
to banish, but the ecumenical, (e) all the above--
so hard to
live with.
Marion clomps upstairs, the doors at each
landing decorated
variously with floral wreaths, little paper pads with
pencils on
thumb-tacked strings, a blue-and-white college
pennant (the other
physical education teacher), and a poster from the
language
schools. This is a much larger faculty house
than her own in
Poughkeepsie. "Our nuthouse," Marion
jokes, rather loudly,
stomping the remaining snow from her boots. Camila
wonders if
Marion's neighbors complain. She thinks about
her own housemates,
Vivian and Dot. "Sometimes we don't even
know you are
up there," they have noted. She supposes they mean
this as a compliment.
Marion's
own door is bare--though Camila remembers a
succession of ornaments in the past: a Life
photograph of Martha
Graham tilted to one side with her leg in the
air like a fan unfolding;
the state flag of North Dakota--really quite
pretty, turquoise
blue with gold fringe, a flag more appropriate
to a showy, tropical
dictatorship than a drab, midwestern state
full of Germans and
Swedes; a photo of the two friends on a roller
coaster, Camila
with her eyes closed, holding her hat down, and
Marion, wide-eyed,
her mouth open in a scream, her short hair
blown out as if
she has just had a bad scare. Now, not even
Marion's name card
hangs on her door. Inside, the
living room is crammed with boxes.
The apartment is being dismantled, the walls are
bare, except for
the prominent oil painting of a silver-haired,
prosperous-looking
man holding court over the living room--a
portrait obviously intended
for a boardroom with its identifying brass
plaque, John
Reed, Regional Manager, North
American Life Insurance Company.
"Daddy," Marion's father, has been dead four
years. He would be
the last thing Marion packs, of course.
"What's going on?"
"I'm leaving," Marion announces, and then, as
if the shocked
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI
look on Camila's face were concern about her
visit, Marion adds,
"Don't worry. I'm coming to your talk
first."
ON THE WALK UP to Munroe Hall,
Marion explains--if the
giggling confession she is making can be termed an
explanation.
With each year, as Camila has become more
respectable--full
professor and chair of her department at
Vassar, president of the
Modern Language Association's Northeast
Division--her friend
Marion has gotten more eccentric. Her
wardrobe looks as if she
has broken into the costume shop at the college.
Her hair is cut in
a short bob with bangs and encircled by bright
scarves that flow
behind her dramatically. It's as if Marion
wants attention, and
rather than perform responsibly, she is--like an
adolescent--
showing off to get it.
"I'm moving to Florida."
"Why on earth?"
"Lesley," Marion says, watching
her carefully.
Camila feels a pang of jealousy. She
averts her face, not wanting
Marion to guess at her feelings. For the last
twenty-five years,
she has been keeping Marion at bay in one
way or another. Why
should it distress her that Marion has finally found
what she always
wanted, a woman to love and live with?
"Who is she?" Camila asks quietly.
"Lesley is a he," Marion says with a
smirk.
Camila cannot help but think that Marion has
laid this little
trap, a male lover with a feminine name in order
to get a rise out
of her. She must not get riled up. Her class
visit begins in a few
minutes. She will have to face a group of
undergraduates and talk
to them about her mother's poetry. Afterward, she has
agreed to
meet with a talented Dominican student who is
going through a
difficult adjustment period.
"It's an old Scottish name," Marion
concedes. "You know, like
Leslie Howard.;" (who is Leslie
Howard? Camila wonders.) "His
74 .julia Alvarez
whole name's Lesley Frederick Richards the
third. Actually, he
goes by Fred, but I prefer Lesley." (of
course!) "He's got a summer
home on Lake Champlain, and this year he
stayed on. But the
winter is too much for him, so he's heading back
to his place in
Florida, and he wants me to join him."
"Are you to be married then?"
"Married?!" Marion says, horrified. "Who
mentioned marriage?"
Camila feels exasperated, as if she were
talking to one of her
uncooperative students, the ones she encourages
to take French or
German. "Please talk sense, Marion!"
All around them, the snow
is falling. She feels suddenly very
bridal herself, as if she were being
pelted by handfuls of rice at a wedding. "What
about your
job?"
"Ah, Cam, come on. This place doesn't
take dance seriously.
They have me posing the girls in tableaus like
they're so many cabbages
for sale!" For a moment, Marion's own bitterness
seems to
have swallowed up her earlier playfulness. But she
rallies, Marion
always rallies. "Anyhow, they're glad to be
rid of me, believe me.
Especially after fall recital." Camila
has heard all about it--dancers
presenting the ages of a woman's life, including
a writhing birth
scene.
We're both too old for all this, Camila is
feeling. Too old to
still be knocking around the hemisphere, motherless,
daughterless,
fatherless souls. "Ay, Marion, Marion."
"You don't have to feel sorry for me.
Lesley is quite well-off."
Marion is gloating!
She shakes her head and strides ahead. There is
nothing to say
to Marion when she is in one of her moods.
"Well, don't walk off mad," Marion
says, catching up with
her. "You've got your own little thing going with
Guillen."
"Marion, don't start that, please." Camila
hears that tone of
know-it-all in her voice. She tones it down.
"I'm trying to simplify,
not complicate, what is left of the rest of my
life."
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOM 75
"You've been trying to do that since you were born!"
Marion
says smartly. Oh dear, Camila thinks, why
did she accept this invitation?
When Chairman Graziano of the
Spanish Department
invited her on campus to talk about her mother, she
accepted in
large part because it was a chance to see Marion.
"Come on, Cam," Marion says winningly,
hooking her arm in
Camila's. "Think of how pleased Daddy would
be.. Remember
how he always worried that I didn't cotton
to young fellows?"
Marion does a perfect imitation of the Mr.
Reed Camila remembers.
"Anyhow, why not congratulate your old friend on
her new
adventure. Remember you and I are in our
prime. Didn't you read
that article in Life about women in their fifties?
Kick your heels
up, honey, the funs about to start!"
On the campus walk, with students coming toward
them,
Marion executes one of her dance leaps and then
collapses laughing
against her best friend's shoulder. The students
smile, pleased
to catch a teacher being flamboyant. They turn
into Munroe Hall
--no doubt these are members of the class
Camila will be visiting.
One of them, a tense young man, with her own tawny
skin
color, eyes her dolefully, as if trying
to make up his mind about
her.
SHE SHOULD BE USED to this. Periodically,
throughout their
friendship, Marion will rip up her roots and do
something unexpected.
Years ago she dropped out of the university and
followed
Camila to Cuba. Camila remembers opening
the front door to
find her handsome, dark-haired friend with a suitcase
in either
hand. "Howdy!" Marion said, in a voice
Camila could tell was
straining for bravado. The paleness was more than
Marion's naturally
pale color, it was the color of full-blown
terror. "Remember
how you said, mi casa su casa?" she had said,
her voice breaking.
Camila had felt a rush of warm emotion that
made her want
to weep with gratitude. She had missed Marion
horribly, more
76 Julia Alvarez
than she cared to admit. She had assumed when she
headed south
that she would never see her beloved friend again. And here
she
was, Marion! as faithful and devoted as any
lover in a storybook.
Marion announced that she had come to teach modern
dance
in Cuba. "Excelente! We need a modern
dance school in Cuba,"
Pancho had said, without the least irony in his
voice. Probably, if
Marion had said that she had come to open a
baton-twirling
school, Pancho would have said, "How nice! We
need to learn
to twirl batons in Cuba." Poor Pancho,
always too caught up in
his own preoccupations to pay much attention to anyone
else's
craziness.
But Marion soon grew impatient with
Camila's family and
Cuban society in general. Somebody had
to tell these women that
they were now living in the twentieth century! And that
somebody
was Marion. She would hem her dresses above the
calf and
cut her hair in a short bob, if she felt like
it. She would go out
without a chaperone and smoke and swear like a
sailor. (damn it!
Hell's bells! Stick it where the sun never
shines, so there!) Nobody
blinked an eye. Nobody was surprised.
Miss Marion was American,
after all; they did not expect her to behave herself.
But as for Senorita Camila ...
It was a constant tug of war for Camila, caught
as she was between
her wild friend and her family, trying to keep the
peace in
a household in which she seemed the only neutral
being. There
were two stepaunts, the cranky Mon, three
half brothers going off
like firecrackers, Regina (who spoke only
Spanish) and the cook
from Martinique (who only spoke French), and a
menagerie of
animals, who at Pancho's insistence received
all their commands
in English--and then, as if she could balance them
all with her
splashy, incomparable presence, Marion, or,
la Miss Marion.
Camila might have been in love, but what she
remembers is being
in a state of constant exhaustion. No wonder
her voice gave out,
and her teacher, Dona Gertrudis, told her she
must give up her
dream of singing opera.
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOM
When Camila and her father left for a month's stay
in Washington,
Marion decided to accompany them as far as New
York
and then go to visit her family in North
Dakota. Camila hoped
that, once there, Marion would not come back. She
had her own
plans. She was almost thirty. She still had a chance
of happiness if
she finally made the correct choices.
But at the end of the summer, Marion was back at
Camila's
door. "I'll never let go!" Marion had
sworn, even the final time,
when she climbed aboard the train that would take her
to Havana,
and thence, by ferry, to Key West and a job teaching
dance up
north. Over the years, on and off, the two friends
have stayed
close, finding each other again and again, especially
when their
lives are beginning to fall apart.
Most recently, as they are both crossing the
half-century
mark, Marion has been hinting that the two friends
might "end
up together after all." Especially now that their
parents are all gone
and they don't have to worry about awkward
explanations. But
they are not gone for me, Camila thinks. No
doubt her ambivalence
is driving Marion away again. But in fact,
Marion's recent
lapses in writing and calling have been much more
depressing
than Camila would have thought.
Especially given this whole centennial business,
bringing
back, as she knew it would, that hollowed-out feeling
of original
loss. And then, the newer losses! Pedro, dear
Pedro is gone. And
fast upon this grief, another: her cousin Gugtl
shot down on a
beach this past summer.
Winter upon winter. Stripping the land of
its glorious young. ...
Camila is not above improvising on her mother's
poems.
"BUENAS TARDES," SHE SMILES at the
room of entirely strange
young faces. (their faces fresh with what they do not
know...) In
honor of the season, she takes the class through a
close textual
reading of her mother's poem, "The Arrival of
Winter."
78 "Julia Alvarez
"Excelente!" Chairman Graziano
congratulates her after class.
Tall and effusive with the broad shoulders of a
football player, he
seems out of place in the scholarly confines of the
classroom. Beside
him stands a young man, brooding and thin, a dusting of
cinnamon in his skin. No doubt this is the
Dominican student,
who has been having some sort of trouble--she can't
quite remember
what. He cradles a small parcel in his arms
possessively.
Her mother's poems, she thinks. He wants her
to sign his copy.
The chairman introduces him as Manuelito
Calderon, a
name that sounds vaguely familiar. "Why don't
you two visit right
here?" The chairman rearranges two
classroom chairs so they face
each other, then nods at Marion. "We'll be
back in about twenty
minutes." There is a slight lift of his
eyebrows as if to ask, or
sooner? Camila understands: the guest speaker must
be protected
against the eager student or colleague. "Twenty
minutes is fine,"
she agrees, smiling at the student. "Don't you
think, Manuelito?"
"As you wish," he says, quietly in
Spanish. In the too-large
winter coat he has not taken off, he seems
ill at ease. Camila wonders if this is the
way her colleagues and students at Vassar view
her. Perhaps that is why her neighbors are constantly
trying to
dress her warmly and acclimate her to a place
they can see she does
not cotton to, as Daddy Reed might have said.
"DON'T YOU RECOGNIZE MY name?" the
young man confronts
her as soon as the chairman and Marion have left
the room. He is
scanning her face for some hint of recognition he
seems to feel he
deserves. Difficult time adjusting, Camila
remembers the chairman's
phrase. She should think so with this rude
attitude.
It turns out he is, in fact, the son of
Manuel Calderon, who
was killed last summer in the Luperon invasion.
He knows of
Gugfi. Before she can express her sympathy,
Manuelito continues,
testing her. "I understand your brother works for the
government."
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOM was 79
"Max is in foreign relations," she says,
trying to minimize her
brother's participation. In fact, Trujillo
offered posts to the whole
family--the Henriquez Urefia name would lend
prestige to his
regime. Even Pedro had served briefly as
secretary of education,
only to resign before a year was up. But Max
has stayed on.
"So you can go back when you want?" Manuelito
asks. His
look is fierce, but his eyes, she notices,
are a boy's eyes, full of
tears.
She sighs, her glance falling on her hands. They
have aged,
grown spotted and rough. Recently, her body
is full of these kinds
of surprises. She looks in the mirror, and
an aging woman blinks
back at her. Meanwhile, a girl waits in the
wings of her heart for
all the important things she was
promised that have not yet happened:
a great love, a settled home, a free
country. "I have not
been back since the massacre," she explains.
The slaughter of
Haitians had disturbed her profoundly. What
was it Trujillo finally
paid for the twenty thousand dead, twenty pesos a
head?
"But you mentioned in class that you will be going back in
October for your mother's centennial?"
She hesitates. She had said so. ("There will be
a procession of
six hundred students, wearing black armbands.
We will make one
stop so we can each lay a gardenia, my mother's
favorite flower, in
front of the house where she was born. The fragrance
will be apparent
for miles.") It was as if she were creating that
future day, a
touch of this, a touch of that, filling in the gaps
left behind by her
mother.
The young man sets down his parcel on the
small desk that
projects from her armrest. The wood is full of
carvings, sets of initials
connected with plus signs, declarations of love,
and indictments
of teachers: Peguero is a pill, then a quote
ascribed to Marti
but which sounds rather biblical, Whoever gives himself
to others
lives among the doves.
"What is it?" she asks, nodding at the
package.
"My submission to the contest," he says. He
is watching her
80 "Julia @alvarez
with a look she used to call a thermometer look,
when she saw it
on her stepmother's face, eyes probing, gauging
her reaction. "I
am Dominican. I can submit?"
"Of course, you can. But you must submit it to the
instituto
directly. Why not send it by mail?"
"It would not pass the censors."
Her hands burrow in her lap as if
away from his scrutiny.
"Manuelito, there is a good chance I will not be
going down at all.
I still have not decided. But remember, if I do,
my luggage will be
checked, too."
"I see," he says, giving her little nods as
if confirming a suspicion
he has about her. "You come here, you get ahead, you
forget
your country." He is speaking to someone he has
created in his
head.
She could defend herself. She could say that she came
here
just as he did, because there was no place left to go.
La patria
still in chains ... The tears I've shed for her have
never dried ...
Or she could try to calm him by agreeing to do
whatever he
asks. Pancho always used to say that the best
prescription for
dealing with the mad was not to contradict them. But this boy
is
not crazy. He is the voice of her own heart
if she were prepared
to obey it.
Instead, she stands, weary. A long evening
awaits her: the lecture
she does not feel confident about, a reception with
colleagues
she has not seen since last summer, a talk with
Marion. She gathers
together her scarf, her leather gloves, the
briefcase with her
initials imprinted in gold letters
(s.c.h.u.), feeling suddenly
ashamed of owning fine things.
"If I can be of some other useful help to you,
let me know."
The words sound empty. What can she possibly
offer him? A
recommendation for graduate school? A letter of
introduction
to a colleague? He wants more of her. Whoever
gives himself to
others lives among the doves. It is the same
old story everywhere
she turns.
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOM) was 81
He says nothing, watching her, his eyes narrowed.
As she is
stepping out the door, he calls after her, "Long
live Salome Urefia!"
MARION IS BESIDE HERSELF. They are sitting
in her kitchen,
drinking hot chocolate before getting dressed for the
evening.
"The nerve! You should tell Graziano. Who
does he think he is?"
It is a great solace to feel such unquestioning
loyalty. One can
leave one's defense to friends and instead try to understand
the
point of view of the enemy.
"Remember, he is heartbroken. He has
lost his father. He has
lost his country."
"And you lost your mother; you lost your country. But are
you taking it out on somebody?" Marion
challenges.
Only myself, she thinks.
"Anyhow, if I see him tonight, I'm going
to box his ears,"
Marion declares. Then, having performed her righteous
anger, she
lets her curiosity get the better of her. "So
what were his poems
like?"
"A lot like Mami's," Camila admits.
She feels suddenly anxious.
Marion, especially, will not like the dry dutifulness
of her
speech. "My precaution got the best of me."
"Well, your mother's poems were subversive,"
Marion reminds
her. Dear Marion, still bent on defending her.
They should be getting ready for the evening. But neither
wants to end this moment of intimacy. Soon enough,
their lives
will draw them worlds apart. They sit in the warm
kitchen, sipping
their hot drink, exchanging the little news of the last
few
months. Periodically, one or the other
goes to the window to
check on the progress of the snow. It is still coming
down hard.
"You suppose they really have a hundred words for
it?"
Marion asks. Then, in her usual non
sequitur way, she takes
both Camila's hands in hers. "I know I
sprung this on you. I'm
sorry ...
82 "Julia @alvarez
"I just want to know that you're happy," Camila
cuts her off.
She knows if she gives her friend any indication
of the sadness she
is feeling, Marion will begin to feel
ambivalent. Let one of them
finally be at peace with the future she has chosen.
"I just don't want to grow old alone. I
don't have your resources,
Camila."
Resources? she wonders. "Now, Marion, I
thought this was
our prime. Weren't you advising me this afternoon
to kick up my
heels and have a good time?"
Her friend suddenly looks old, the dyed hair
depressing in its
too black glossiness, the skin around her eyes
puffy with lack of
sleep. "Maybe you're having a good time," she
accuses. She looks
like she might cry.
"Maybe," Camila says vaguely. In his
last letter, Guillen confessed
his loneliness. "Perhaps when you come in May, we
may
dine together?" She had felt a queasy feeling
reading those words,
a sudden repulsion, just as when Domingo used to touch
her.
Poor Domingo. She has written him, asking
his pardon, but he
has never answered her.
"But do you love him, Marion?"
A look of sadness washes over her friend's
face. "This is an alliance,
Camila, an alliance, not a romance. You always
say, there's
more to life than black or white."
Does she really say that? Her pronouncements in
the mouths
of others always sound so facile. "I only ask
because you have always
...
"Preferred women?" Marion finishes the
awkward phrase
Camila finds difficult to say. It is not
squeamishness, as Marion
thinks. She hates labels that pin the self down
to only one set of
choices.
"Who says that's changed?" Marion challenges.
She reaches
across the table and takes hold of Camila's
hands. "You know all
you have to do--"
IN THE NAME OF SALOM be 83
"Marion, por favor," she says quickly before the
thought fans
into a hope.
"But we could try." Marion has begun to cry.
"No, we couldn't." She speaks soothingly.
What can she say?
That she knows the life waiting for her in the
wings is not one she
can live out with Marion. That Marion already played
the best
part, the glorious first love forever preserved in her
memory. But
Marion has outlived her role and become an
endearing, bossy,
and slightly tedious friend. A woman who no
longer commands
Camila's imagination, but who takes over
everything else. "You're
going to be all right, Marion," she consoles her.
"He sounds like a
good companion."
"Cammie, Cammie," Marion sobs, "how
come I feel like I'm
deserting you? Where will you end up?"
Dear Marion, wanting to know the ending before the story
is done! "I have a good job, a nice pension
building up. I have
dozens of nieces and nephews." The thought of
Gugtl comes to
mind. May he rest in peace, she thinks,
E.p.d., En Paz Descanse.
You have to make a special request of the
stonecutter at home if
you do not want those initials inscribed on the stone
you order.
The way you must ask the midwife not to pierce your
baby's ears
if she is a girl. (even her modest,
unadorned mother in her one
photograph is wearing two large, disquieting
Chiquita Banana
hoops.)
Beyond them in the living room, Camila can see the
portrait
of Mr. Reed. Marion has finally brought him
down off the wall,
and he leans against the sofa, looking down the hall
at Camila.
Every once in a while, Daddy would take
Camila aside to talk
about his Marion, as if she were one of his thorny
actuarial tables
whose predictions were not panning out for the company. He
had
encouraged the friendship, believing that such an
elegant young
lady, the daughter of a president, was
bound to be a fine influence
on his recalcitrant daughter. Every summer
while she was at the
84 .julia Alvarez
university, she had stayed with the Reed family.
She remembers the
first summer when some locals left a burning
cross on the lawn. Mr.
Reed had gone out with a shotgun and fired it in the
air to disperse
the cars gathered in his driveway. From then on,
nobody bothered
Camila on her summer visits to LaMoure,
North Dakota.
Our Marion, she thinks, looking back fondly
at the portrait.
"Promise me something," Marion is saying.
"Promise me nothing
is going to change between us."
To avoid having to lie again, she leans across the
table and
kisses her friend chastely on the lips, a mother's
kiss. By the time
she says, "I promise," she is not quite sure
what vow she has sworn
to keep.
WHAT WILL BECOME OF HER?
As she dresses for the evening, Marion's question
keeps popping
out at her, like a cuckoo bird that will not stay
lodged in its
tiny house even after the pendulum of the Swiss
clock he lives in
has been stopped. Where did she hear some odd
anecdote about
someone cutting off the pendulum of a clock, thinking
it was
unnecessary?
What will become of her?
She has lived long enough to realize that unlike her
dear
friend, great escapes have never worked for her. Tomorrow she
will
return to Poughkeepsie. The snows will have
abated, the arborvitae
bushes in front of the college house will be
covered in fresh
white caps, as if Dot has kept busy in the
days Camila has been
gone. She will teach her classes,
explaining the pluperfect for the
umpteenth time, assigning favorite poems
(youth, divine treasure,
you are leaving, never to return), and perhaps she will
change one
small point of view after another and be changed
by them: her leap
accomplished step by Small step What could be
wrong with that?
IN
THE NAME OF SALOM 85
IN The Name OF THE Father, and of the Son, and of my
mother. She
says the old charm, taking deep breaths to calm
herself as she sits
in the wings at Middlebury's McCullough
Auditorium, waiting to
go on, listening to the chairman intone his rococo
introduction.
He is making up a character she does not know, an
eminent Hispanicist,
a woman with two doctorates, a tenured
professor at Vassar.
She hears the polite clapping that signals she
is to come on
stage. In the front row Marion sits in her
earth-colored
tunic, which does nothing for her looks. She
reminds
Camila, in fact, of her old aunt Mon in
her acres of shapeless fabric.
But the choice of a tunic is not totally
misguided. It does confer
on Marion the authority of a robed seer in a
Greek play. If she were
to give a standing ovation, everyone behind her would follow
suit.
Sitting beside her is the young man. He seems
subdued, as if
Marion has actually boxed his ears. But he must
have had second
thoughts himself about his outburst. Why else would he be
here?
The houselights dim. The chairman turns on
the podium
light for her to read by and exits the stage. She
stares down at the
speech she has written. It is a dull
combination of duty and fact
that no one will feel inspired by. She
cannot do this to her mother.
She cannot do this to Marion or to the young man. She
cannot do
this to herself! She closes the folder.
"I have accepted this invitation in error," she
begins, her voice
breaking with tension. "I cannot celebrate my mother's
work when
her country is in shambles." She brings up the
recent disappearances,
the murders, the massacre of the Haitians she
has never
mentioned publicly before. All her life she has
had to think first of
her words" effect on the important roles her
father and brothers
and uncles and cousins were playing in the world. Her
own opinions
were reserved for texts, for roundtables on women's
contributions
to the colonies, for curriculum committees
implementing
one theory of language learning over another.
"But if I remain quiet, then I lose my
mother completely, for
the only way I really know her is through the things
she stood for."
86 Julia @alvarez
To keep her dreams from dying
Was all the monument she dreamed of having.
She finishes with a quote she improvises from her
mother,
then looks around for a way off the stage. In the
wings, a young
girl managing the houselights gives a signal
and the room explodes
with light and loud clapping. From the front row, she
hears
the young man shouting, "Salome, Salome!" And
beside him,
Marion has sprung to her feet and is cheering
her on as always,
"Camila!" His
TRES
La fe en el porvenir
Santo Domingo, 1874-1877
SUDDENLY EVERYONE WAS LOOKING at me.
I studied my face in the mirror: the same
eyes, mouth, big
ears (oh, how I hated them!), the
nose I wished were a little less
broad, the springy hair I couldn't tamp down
--in short, I was the
very same Salome Urefia, but now everyone
seemed to point, to
make a low bow at the waist, or dip down in a
schoolgirl curtsy,
and say, "Buenos dias, poetisa."
IT'S AS IF I had on a disguise, a
famous face, behind which I
watched people who just a few months ago would not have said
good day to me on the street suddenly smile with
deference and
ask, "And what do you think of the weather we're
having,
Senorita Poetisa?"
"Hot," I would say in my terse way. But
then, because I could
see they were waiting for me to say more, I would add,
"To be expected
in the summer."
"Salome says we should expect more heat this
summer," I
heard myself misquoted.
88 "Julia Alvarez
"Did you hear the wonderful tone of irony when
she said, 'To
be expected in the summer"?"
This is the way beauties must feel, I thought
to myself.
NIGHTS WHEN I LAY in bed, I ached for the
kind of love I had
read about in other people's poems. I was twenty-four
years old,
and only once had a young man squeezed my hand
and whispered
poetry in my ear.
"That's one more time than me," Ramona noted
sullenly
when I voiced my heart's yearning to her. "And you
certainly
stopped any chances of the same thing happening to me."
My
older sister was turning more and more into a younger version of
our cranky tia Ana.
Miguel and Alejandro, our former tutors, were
back with
their pretty Puerto Rican brides in tow.
"They go out as exiles and
come back as grooms," Ramona
complained. She was right. Gruff,
manly patriots whom we remembered in torn,
bloody shirts with
firearms over their shoulders, their hair matted with
blood, returned
in long frock coats with silk cravats tied in
complicated
French knots and haircuts that made their ears
pop out and their
faces look sweeter and plumper.
"Your day will come, girls, if it is meant
to come," Mami
would say from time to time. "Meanwhile you are lucky
to have
each other."
But if I was to remain by my sister's side for the
rest of my
life, I wanted at least one brief excursion
into love. Long enough
to feel a man's arms around my waist, to see the
look of worship
falling away from his face, the look of fame
falling away from
mine, that hushed and holy moment that all poems
aspire to
when the word becomes flesh.
Was that too much to ask?
IN THE NAME OF SALOMI" 89
EVERY EVENING, IT SEEMED, the house filled
with visitors.
There was our regular Don Eliseo Grullon,
and Papi with his
heart full of pride and his rum-flushed face,
and the poet Jose
Joaquin Prez, just back from exile, and the
sainted Father Billini,
who had founded a school for boys as well as an
insane asylum
("Some mornings, I find myself at one and I
think I'm at the
other," he joked fondly), and Archbishop
Merifio, also back from
exile, an imposing, broad-shouldered man with a
thunderous
voice and a shock of white hair. "I thought you'd
be older," he said
when he met me.
I think I disappointed them. In fact, what
Archbishop Merifio
had probably meant to say was that he
thought I would be
bolder. But the more wonder I saw in their eyes,
the more expectation
in their voices, the more obsequies in honor of
my honor,
the more I withdrew.
So I would sit there as Archbishop Merifio
expounded on last
Sunday's gospel, or the good wines of
Extremadura, or the fine
women of St. Thomas, or as Jose Joaquin
extemporized about the
new trend of indigenous literature, or as
Papi responded to questions
about his own poetry by saying how he was leaving me the
trumpet and he was going to play the flute from now
on, and if I
had something to say and there was enough silence for me to say
it,
I would speak up. But not enough, I suppose,
to impress anyone.
And so the rumor spread, or so I heard from
Ramona, that
Salome Urefia was a woman who hardly
talks.
Meanwhile, poor Mama was beside herself trying
to make
polite conversation and keep everyone in
refreshments. Now she
worried that the house was too dark, the zinc roof
too rusty, the
rockers too creaky, the portrait of her father
at the gates of the city
accepting surrender from the Haitian invaders
hanging in the
wrong place.
"What can I offer you?" Mami asked
visitors. We had as little
money as ever, but now we had important guests
to entertain.
Of course, the polite thing would have been for our
important
90 Julia Alarez
guests to take note of the worn-out rockers, the
dark house moldy
from lack of paint, the portrait of the liberators
at the gate framed
in cheap palm-wood and say, "We are fine.
Please do not disturb
yourself, Dona Gregoria. There is
ample refreshment in fine conversation."
Instead they would ask for a sherry or a shot of
rum, or whatever
there was to drink in the house, and I would watch poor
Mami grow flustered, as she hurried to the back
of the house, and
soon I would see Ramona letting herself out the
side door to race
across the street to the bodega to purchase by the
glass what we
could not afford to stock in our pantry.
"Don't these ministers and ambassadors and that
husband of
yours realize that rum costs money?" Tia Ana
complained when
everyone had left. She was a step away from
putting a small basket
at the door with a mexicano or two inside it
and a little hand
printed card beside it saying, AGRADECIMIENTOS,
but my
mother said that she would die if Ana did any such
thing, as if we
were a church with an alms box. I think our
bodega neighbor
must have heard this oft-repeated argument between the two
sisters,
for when Ramona was next there purchasing a glass
of Spanish
sherry that Archbishop Merifio said he had been
hankering for
since his days in Sevilla, our neighbor handed
her a full bottle,
saying, "With gratitude to the musa of our
country."
A FRESH, HOPEFUL ENERGY Was at work in
la patria. Everyone
was writing poems and essays, offering their help
to Gonzalez, our
handsome young president, with his dashing mustache and
beard
and his aquiline nose and green waistcoat in
honor of his party.
The Green Party he had started was supposed
to unite all parties
under the color of growth and resurrection. At
last, we were becoming
a nation of citizens in service to one another.
He even signed a treaty of peace and friendship with
Haiti instead
of using the threat of an invasion by our neighbor as
a bogeyman
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI 91
to make us behave. "As Salome says," I
heard our presi-
said, ""Give to the past your blindness. Look
ahead!"" Once
or twice, the president came in person
to gather inspiration from
la musa de la patria. "Don't rest in your
labors, Salome," he urged
me. "The fight continues!"
I didn't. That year, 1874, was probably
one of my best. I
wrote seven poems I was proud enough to publish.
I wrote countless
more we used to light the fogon fires or put under
the side
table so it wouldn't wobble when Archbishop Merifio
leaned his
considerable bulk against it.
Everyone was curious as to how I wrote and where my
ideas
came from. There were rumors that I heard voices
or that the angel
Gabriel came to me in dreams. Other stories
had it that it was
really my father writing the poems for me.
"Let's tell everyone that it is the angel
Gabriel that comes to
you at night," Ramona suggested. "I'll say
I see him, too, but he
will only squeeze your hand." It was wonderful when
instead of
turning her remarks into weapons to hurt me or
herself, Ramona
used them to make us both laugh.
One time, Ramona grew serious. "How do you do
it, Herminia?"
"Come on, Marfi. You write, too. I do it
the same as you."
But in actual fact, Ramona was not writing
anymore. One
day, soon after Mother's Day, when we had each
written Mami
and Tia Ana, second mother of the
household, as she insisted we
call her, their poems, Ramona had turned
to me and said, "That's
my last poem. I pass you my trumpet, as
Papi would say. You're
the poet from now on."
Still Ramona insisted, "I want to know how you do
it."
So I explained how random phrases would sometimes
pop
into my head, and I would go over them and over them in
my
mind so that if Mami or Tia Ana or she,
Ramona, called me,
sometimes I really wouldn't even hear them. All
day, for days, I
would work those lines over in my head, and then one
night, after
92 "Julia Alvarez
we had swept the parlor and put the chairs back
in their places
and cleared off the glasses and cups, and everyone
had fallen
asleep, I would get up and write down the
entire poem, and when
I was done, I would dream that now he would come, the
great
love that would fill the vacant space left
inside me by this creation
I had made of love.
Ramona had begun to cry.
"What's wrong?" I asked, feeling guilty for
getting carried
away with my description.
"That's just how I feel, but I can't make something
that makes
people love me."
"They don't love me, Ramona. They love
la poetisa, if you can
even call it love."
Ramona looked at me a moment, then shook her
head. "At
least it's something, Salome. At least you're not
the one getting
passed over so that they can come sit beside your sister and
ask her
what she thinks of this hot weather we're having."
"I suppose," I agreed, squeezing her hand,
for I could see that
she didn't understand how lonely I was in
the midst of all this attention.
How much I, too, longed for a love that would go beyond
the poems into the wild silence of my heart.
ONE AFTERNOON JOSE CASTELLANOS came
by. He was putting
together the first anthology ever of Dominican
poets, and
he wanted to include some of my poems. He
brought along his
friend, Federico Henriquez y Carvajal, son
of one of the Sephardic
families that had settled in the capital back
when we were still occupied
by the Haitians.
Federico had a favor to ask. Would I read his
new drama, The
Hebrew Girl, and tell him what I thought of
it?
"I would very much like to," I said, and I meant it.
I was always
eager for something to read. We were not a country rich
in
books; the few collections of this or that author
circulated among
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI
a group of readers who all knew of each other.
Eliseo Grullon
owned Victor Hugo; Merifio had a
collection of Shakespeare and La historia de
la literatura espanola; Billini had loaned
me his Quintana and Gallego; and several people had
Lamartine; only Jose Joaquin Prez had
Espronceda and Sor Juana Ines de la
Cruz. Federico was patting his jacket as if the
manuscript had disappeared
inside it. "Ay, Dios mio! Pancho took
the satchel. Un
momentico," he said, walking quickly to the door.
Down the
street, I saw a boy, no more than fifteen,
a recent arrival into long
pants, with a satchel slung over his shoulder.
At the sound of his
brother's whistle, he turned and waved. He had
a sweet, young
face (one of those random phrases
popped in my head: his young
face fresh with what he does not know); his eyes
were dark and intense;
his black hair coarse like an Indian
cacique's. He did not see
me, for I had ducked behind the door.
Federico was back, packet in hand. "That little
brother of
mine ..." Federico shook his head,
indulgently. "He's off to see a
new girlfriend, always in love."
The truth is that boy had seemed too young to have a
novia.
But boys could start out seeking love at a young
age and continue
through old age--I recalled Don Eloy and his
secret--and their
brio was applauded. Meanwhile we girls had
to conduct our frantic
search, while seeming not to do so, in that narrow
corridor between
old enough and old maid.
"That Pancho is going to break hearts," Jose
observed.
"Yes, indeed," Federico agreed.
"What can I offer you, young jovenes," my mother had
come
into the parlor.
Jose looked as if he were considering the food that
might fill
the particular hunger inside him. But Federico
spoke up, "Not a
thing, Dona Gregoria. This conversation is
refreshment enough."
That afternoon I had no trouble speaking.
94 Julia @alvarez
IT WAS EVENING WHEN the two men got up
to leave. Tia Ana
had already come into the room several times to see if
these guests
had departed yet. The front parlor had always
been her special
province, as she used it for her little school.
Now, every evening, it
turned into Salome's salon, as Ramona
called it, and it was never
in order for its transformation back to a
classroom the following
morning.
As he was finally leaving, Federico
remarked, "I don't know
where this rumor comes from that Salome Urefia is
a woman who
doesn't talk. I can't recall when I've
had a more interesting evening.".
He bowed gallantly. I could smell the
perfumed ointment in his
hair as his head dipped down before me.
I felt my face burning, and looked away.
Had I talked too
much? I wondered. Or was he hinting that he felt
attraction toward
my person and conversation? I glanced up, catching
his eye
again. But the look I saw there was the glazed one of
an admirer.
He was seeing the famous poetisa who had agreed
to read The Hebrew
Girl and whom he hoped would write a poem in
the paper in
praise of it. He was not seeing me, Salom`e,
of the funny nose and
big ears with hunger in her eyes and Africa in
her skin and hair.
BUT PERHAPS I HAD been too hasty
in judging Federico's
look? A few days later, a poem was slipped
under the door, "Garland,"
dedicated "to my distinguished friend, the inspired
poetisa
Senorita Salome Urefia." It was signed
"Federico Henriquez y Carvajal."
I
ran to the front window, opened it just a crack,
expecting to
see the tall, slender Federico, but instead it was
his errand boy, the
little brother, swinging his arms and whistling a tune from
a popular
zarzuela, as he walked away.
Ramona came to the window. "There goes the young
gallant,"
she quipped, imitating his swagger. We giggled,
and the boy turned
around, just as we quickly pulled the window shut.
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI
Ramona saw the envelope in my hand and snatched
it away.
"Give that back," I ordered, but I was still
giggling about the
cocky, younger brother, and so Ramona did not
take my order in
earnest.
She read the first stanza with all the embellishments
her voice
could give it. Federico was weaving a garland of
friendship flowers
from his heart for me. Or so he said. I came
to Ramona's side and
kept reading where her voice had fallen silent.
When I finished, I
looked at my sister to see her reaction.
She was scowling as if she'd just had a taste of
something
sour. "Usually at the end they say they're going
to die if you don't
return their love. This forever-friendship garland is
puzzling."
"Maybe he's being original," I said, taking
the letter from her
hand. I had had the same uneasy
feeling, but I did not want to
hear it voiced.
"Original? Weren't you telling me just last
night that his Hebrew
Girl drama was very derivative and a little
tedious?"
I had said that, but now it seemed that I had spoken
too
quickly. In fact, I went back and reread the
drama that very night.
The Hebrew girl still exhaled sighs of sweet
sorrow and dreary despair,
but the prose did seem less facile and the
conception a little
more inspired now that it was written by someone who might
be
interested in me.
I wrote Federico a poem, in answer. As
I did with all my productions,
I showed it to Ramona, who simply handed it
back and
said, "Salome, that's the worst poem you ever
wrote."
My sister was known for her bluntness, but this was
downright
harsh. Perhaps I had gotten out of the habit of
taking criticism
after months of hearing myself praised so much. "What
do
you mean?" I challenged her back.
"Salome, you've never before in your life used this
kind of
silly language, for heaven's sake. "I
languish under the cruelty of
my implacable fate." It sounds as bad as
... as Josefa on a bad day."
My older sister had been an avid follower of the
beloved poetisa
96 Julia Alvarez
Josefa Perdomo, but in the last years her
admiration had cooled.
Now that she was older, Ramona said she wanted
poems with
peso-- substance-- not just prettiness.
I took the poem back and felt close
to tears. What if I were
losing my talent? Lately, I had been
writing so many occasional
poems for graduations and birthdays and burials that
people were
requesting of me that I had no time to consult my
heart to know
what I must write. I remembered the promise
I had made years
back after scribbling that foolish poem for Don
Eloy: I would
write poems with all my heart, or not at
all.
"But what do I know?" Ramona added, seeing that
I was upset.
"I'm not the poet. Here comes the other poet in the
family,
ask him."
Papi was at our door before I could put the poem
away. Even
so, I should not have shown it to him. I should have realized
that
Papi would not appreciate any poem, no
matter how good, if it
concerned a young man. But I wanted approval so
much that I
handed the paper over.
Ramona and I sat down, one on either side of
him. Papi
started by reading out loud, but as he
progressed, he fell silent.
The furrow deepened on his brow. Finally, when he
was done, he
crunched the paper up until it was a small
ball in his fist.
"This is the kind of thing Herminia of the white
snowflakes
would write," he said in a low, disappointed
voice. "You, Salome
Urefia, can do better than that."
I stood up, my breath coming short as it always
did when I
was upset, and ran down the hall, backing around the
corner
where Mami and Tia Ana were scooping cakes of
lye soap out of
a wooden mold and out the side door. I had no
bonnet, no shawl,
or cape. My face was wet with tears. I was a
sight all right, but I
did not care if the sisters Bobadilla or the
president himself saw
me in this condition.
Where does a distraught woman go in a small
city inhabited
by people who know her or know of her? I headed north
on Street
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOM. 97
of Studies with no idea where I was going. I was
almost to the
gates of San Antonio, when I saw the
ruins of the old monastery
of San Francisco looming before me. Billini
had recently rebuilt
one wing as an asylum for the mad. It seemed I
was headed in the
right direction, after all.
I slipped through the side door on the stone wall
and found
myself in an inner yard of rock ruins and a few
shade trees. The
place was deserted. It was late afternoon, and no
doubt the nuns
were in the chapel, saying the six o'clock angelus.
Under a shade
tree in the distance, I caught sight of a
pile of rags, which suddenly
shifted, rose up like the snake charmer's snake
I had read
about in The Amazing Travels of Marco Polo,
and became a human
creature. Her hair was a mass of tangles;
her shift soiled and torn
in great rips here and there so I could see her
body's alarming
nakedness beneath it. Slowly, I began backing myself
toward the
door, afraid to startle her with too abrupt a
movement.
Perhaps because she was unencumbered by petticoat or
buttoned
bodice or long overskirt tied back at the
sides or buckle
shoes with light cotton stockings, in short because
she was not
dressed as I was, even in my unpreparedness
for the street, she was
at my side in a few jerky moves before I was
even five steps closer
to the door. She grabbed me at the shoulders, and
though I tried
pulling away, she was strong--my height, but
stouter--and I
could not get loose. She reeked of urine and
sweat.
But she was looking at me in a way no one had
looked at me
in a while. She was seeing me; with a wild,
probing desire to know
who I was. I tried looking away but her
eyes held me.
We stared at each other, and I only tore myself
away when she
opened her rotted mouth to scream.
I could not get very angry at my father, for he was not
well.
Constantly, he complained about a shot of pain, which
he said
was like an arrow piercing his chest. The broad,
dimpled face be
98 .julia @alvarez
came thin and haggard. He lost his flamboyant,
swashbuckling
manner. Often we found him in bed, unable to get
up. Finally, we
overcame Papi's reluctance and fear
of doctors, and Dr. Alfonseca
came to see him.
The young doctor sat by the bed timing Papi's
pulse. His
black frock coat made him look like a
black bird perched on my
father's bedside, something I did not want to think
about, for
black birds were supposed to be omens of bad
luck.
"So what's your verdict, doctor?" Papi
asked when the young
man had finished his examination. "Am I going
to die?" He was
trying to be jovial, but I could see the fear in his
eyes.
"Die!" the doctor said, as if it were out of the question.
"You
have to live long enough to see these girls married,
Don Nicolas."
He waited to elaborate upon my father's condition
until we were
downstairs in the parlor.
"Prepare yourselves for the end," he said quietly
to Ramona
and me and Papi's sister, Altagracia, the
only sister left. "Don
Nicolas has a cancer. It has already invaded
the lungs and intestines."
I
felt as if that arrow that Papi often said went through
his
heart had pierced right through mine as well.
"I know this is a shock," the doctor continued.
"But we must
give him hope. Don Nicolas is very
impressionable. He is a poet
after all." The doctor gave me an acknowledging
nod. "I will be by
daily with his dose of laudanum. We will keep
him comfortable."
I don't know how we got through that day, for after
weeping
with Altagracia in the parlor, then going
upstairs with bright faces
and lying to Papi, saying that Dr. Alfonseca
had said he would be
dancing a waltz by summer, we went home
to tell Mama.
It was then that I realized that my mother was a
woman still
deeply in love with the man who had broken her
heart. But the
years had softened that blow of disillusionment, and his
love for
his daughters had rounded the sharp edges of her
anger, and his
recent decline had glued the pieces of her
heart back together. She
IN THE
NAME
OF
SALOM
spent many days and nights, spelling Ramona and
me, helping
out Altagracia with my father's meal preparations and
needs. She
had become his faithful bride again.
"He's going to suspect something with you coming all the
time now," Ramona noted one day as all three
of us walked toward
Papi's house.
My mother held her head high--her black
bonnet shielding
her face except when she turned
to address us. "I have ways of
convincing your father. Besides, God is going to work one
of his
miracles, I know he will." It was not just Papi
who needed hope to
keep from falling apart.
But this was not to be one of God's miracles.
Papi worsened
and toward the end of March he was too feeble to walk
to his garden
or turn the pages of a book. I read to him for
long hours, often
looking up to find his eyes closed, his head to one
side on his
pillow. With a sinking heart, I would rush to his
side and hold my
hand close to his mouth to make sure he was still
breathing.
One day I had been reading to him from Jose
Castellanos's
anthology that had been published late the last
year. He had included
four of Papi's poems and six of mine.
"Whatever happened to that friend of yours, Federico?"
my
father asked. I had to shudder, thinking of how the dying
are said
to be sentient, for just that moment I had turned
to Federico's poems.
When I received a copy of the book, I had been
surprised to
find included the poem he had sent me. It's as
if he wanted to
broadcast our great friendship, which, in fact, had not
come
to much. Federico had been quite preoccupied
elsewhere.
"He is to be married soon, to Carmita
Garcia," I answered my
father. When I had heard the news a few weeks
before, I had not
been surprised. Right beside Federico's friendship
poem to me in
Castellanos's anthology was a poem
dedicated to Carmita with all
the languishing sighs and vows of adoration that had
been missing
from mine. Obviously, I had correctly
judged that first look I
had seen on Federico's face.
100 .julia @alvarez
"That poem you wrote him, the one I destroyed,
pardon me,
mi'ja. I was trying to protect you." He
allowed himself a moment
to catch his breath, closing his eyes, as if stopping
one sense could
increase the capacity of the others.
"I remember the day you ran off," he continued.
"When you
came back, you looked like ... you had seen ...
the devil himself.
Then I understood you had feelings for this young man."
I bowed my head. The ache of disappointment was again
upon me.
"Years ago, I left you my trumpet ...
now I leave you my
flute," he added.
This was too much like a parting to suit me. "Ay,
Papi. Come
now, you're a young man. The Bible says
Methusalah lived to be
nine hundred and sixty-nine. You can do better
than fifty-three."
We were quiet for a while, and then, he
opened his eyes and
looked at me. "Tell me," he said, and I
already guessed what he
was going to ask me, for I always had a way of knowing
what was
on my father's mind. "No one will tell me. Am
I dying?"
"Come, come, Papi," I said in my best
imitation of Dr. Alfonseca.
I tried to keep the knowledge from my eyes, but I know
he saw it there. "The doctor says you are having
a very bad bout
with an intestinal catarrh," I lied, looking
away quickly from his
probing eyes. "If you take care of yourself and
listen to what
your daughters tell you, you should be dancing a
waltz by the
summer."
He let his head fall back on the pillow, his
hands on his chest,
as if mocking the pose of the dead. And then, as I
came to his
side, afraid, ready to check his breath, he
spoke, very softly, as if
from the dead. "I will be gone by summer."
"Papi please," I sobbed, unable to hold
back any longer,
"please don't leave me."
"I leave you my flute as well as my
trumpet," he reminded me.
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI 101
PAPI DIED ON THE third of April.
If I were to try and describe the pain, I would
have to com-
pare it to those moments after a great blow or a bad
fall. You lie on
the ground, dazed and in pain, not knowing what harm you
have
done to yourself.
I watched as Mami and Altagracia prepared
Papi's body,
dressing him in his black gown and Chinaman hat
from his days
on the Supreme Court, Tia Ana scenting the
pockets with petals
from the gardenia bush by the door, packing his mouth with
anise
seeds to sweeten the escaping noxious fumes. I
remember the wake
in the old house on Mercy Street, the dark
dresses, the sobs stifled
in handkerchiefs, and then what might have been a
shock if I had
not already been too stunned to feel anything: the other
woman,
Felipa Mufioz, and her two daughters, who
looked about the same
age as Ramona and I.
The summer came and went with only the interruption
of
a single outing in the country near Banf where we
had distant
cousins on my mother's side. And then the rains
came, and the
government we were all so hopeful about fell apart,
and we had
wars again, the Greens against the Reds and the Reds
against the
Blues, until it was all a muddle of
politics, the only dominant
color being the red of spilled blood. Up
north, the United States
celebrated its one hundredth birthday. Their
president Grant
threw a big party for everyone, but our new
president Espaillat
had too many revolutions on his hands to go. By the
end of that
year the public clock made by a Swiss
watchmaker who had gone
blind making it was delivered to the cathedral, but the
pendulums
were too long and the sacristan in a fit of
impatience cut them off,
thinking they were only decorative, so time stopped
and it was
quarter to seven for months on end. And this was somehow
mixed
in with the seven governments we had before the next year
was
out, and Mister McCurtney's Zoo Circus
coming to town and the
lion tamer Herr Langer being eaten up by his
own lion while
hundreds of people watched in horror. And
all that time, even as I
102 "Julia @alvarez
heard or observed all these happenings, and wrote
a few vague
lines now and then, all that time, I was lying back,
waiting for the
pain to pass.
A period of national calm ensued, and visitors
once again
came to our door. But Mami turned them away.
She did write
down their names in a book, which she said she would
keep for
posterity, which Ramona pointed out would not come via
her
daughters, unless Mami let us get out of our
black dresses and
accept the many invitations we were now receiving to attend
evenings of readings or lectures or music. A
half dozen literary
and art societies had sprouted up throughout the
city.
But the truth is, I didn't care to go. I
didn't care to get out of
my black dress, or be a famous
poet, or look into the faces of
young men, wondering if this might be the one who would
see
past the lauds and laurels and the broad nose and
unadorned character
to the grieving daughter who had once brought
delight to
the doting heart of her father.
I lay there, numb, as if my body had already
died, but hearing
myself breathe the way I had listened for my father's
breathing by
his bedside. In truth, I cannot account for how two
years went by,
cannot say how it was I even wrote the few poems
I did write, cannot
say how I tied my bonnet or buttoned my
shoes or how early
one morning in my twenty-seventh year I was
walking to mass
with my sister Ramona and looked up toward the
heavy, wooden
doors of the church where two young men were standing.
My first thought was how stylishly they were dressed--
in
silvery-gray morning coats with shiny silk
cravats--to be coming
to six o'clock mass. One was long and thin like a
stringbean with
round eyes and a droopy mustache like a small
fish hanging from
a cat's mouth, and the other was instantly striking,
both in his
manly beauty and in the familiarity of his
features: the fresh, open
face; the intense, dark eyes; the coarse black
hair like an Indian
cacique's. I was left puzzling who this young
man might be as Ramona
and I walked inside past them, concluding it must not
be
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI * 103
anyone I knew for I heard him distinctly ask
his friend, "So,
which one is Salome?"
I glanced over at Ramona, and thank
goodness she had not
heard the question, or she would have flashed me one of her
see-
what-I-mean looks. All the time we knelt
at our pew, then stood
and genuflected, I was wondering where I had seen
this young
man before. Recently, in the oddness I had
inhabited for over two
years, Papi had been coming back into my life,
once in the shape
beneath my iron as I pressed out the wrinkles from
my dimity
shift; once in the pained cries of our bodega
neighbor giving birth
to her first child; once in the satisfied smile of that
same baby
fallen asleep while nursing at her mother's
breast; and now in the
probing eyes of this young man whom I had encountered
before
and who had been sent back into my life as my
father's ghost.
The mass was over. We walked back home, the
rising sun
flashing on the zinc roofs as if delivering
greetings from the dead.
But my ghost was nowhere in sight. Soon, I
forgot, caught up in
my day-to-day tasks with an ache still in my heart
and silence in
my head in place of the phrases, rhyming lines
I used to hear all
the time.
"You've got to try, Salome," Ramona
urged me from time to
time. She had recovered more quickly and was making every
attempt
to shake me out of my stupor. "For all of us,
especially for
Mami."
"I am trying," I said. My voice sounded
small and distant as
if it were coming from the bottom of the old revolutionary
hole
in the crawl space under the house.
"I know you are, I know, Herminia," Ramona
said, coming
and sitting down beside me. I winced in pain, for I
could no
longer bear hearing myself called by the pet name my
father once
gave me. She untied the bundle on her lap,
full of the invitations
that had been streaming in. "Look at this," she
said. "All these
people are waiting. All of them inviting you here and there.
And
now Mami has said we can accept."
104 .julia @alvarez
Just then, we heard the knock at the front
door. Ramona and
I looked at each other. It was too early in the
day for visitors. Perhaps
a student had come to fetch the Caten cristiana
she forgot in
the parlor-classroom? We hurried from our
room to the front of
the house to see who it might be.
The two young men standing before us were the very same
ones who had been at the church door a few days
ago: the tall,
droll-looking one, who seemed always about to burst
into laughter,
and the younger, handsome one, whose face was so
oddly familiar,
whose eyes belonged to my father. He was wearing a red
cravat and a gardenia bloom in his boutonniere.
He was the one
who spoke up.
"Senorita Salome Urefia," he began,
looking from one to the
other as if not sure which one of us was Salome.
"She is my sister, Salome, and I am
Ramona," my sister said
holding back her giggles, for the young man seemed
overly officious
and too nervous.
The gallant explained the purpose of the call.
He and his
socio, Pablo Pumarol, had come to personally
invite us to a
soiree in honor of poetry to be hosted by the
Friends of the
Country. Other young ladies would be present, as
well as many
mothers of the members; in other words, a gathering
decently
chaperoned.
I barely heard what was being said, for
slowly, it was surfacing,
who this young man was: the little brother of Federico,
who
had been off in search of love the day his brother
had come calling!
I wondered if he was the same Henriquez
brother who had
recently been apprehended writing my poem,
"A la Patria," on the
walls of the fortaleza. Old Don Noel had
had to pay a fine, and
the whole clan of Henriquez men had turned out
one Sunday afternoon
with buckets of lime and rags to touch up the old
mural,
bringing along the Henriquez women, wives and
sisters, with baskets
of cornmeal candy and cane sugar caramelos
to give away to
the children. The sisters Bobadilla had come back
with the full re-
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI * 105
port of how these Jewish people had behaved themselves as
nicely
as Christians.
"We would be profoundly honored if you would
accept our
invitation." The young man was now looking directly
to me.
I tried looking away, but his eyes were like
Papi's eyes and like
the madwoman's eyes, probing. I could not
resist. I thought,
Doesn't this young man know better than to look
at a woman directly
in that fashion?
I wanted to respond to the look by saying, Come
in, young
man, come in and see just how awkward and shy
Salome Urefia
truly is; how her face has gotten thin and
hollow-cheeked with
grief, how her ears are as big as ever and her
hair still has its unruly
kink; how her stack of poems is gathering dust and
her heart
is haunted by her father's ghost who will not give her
a sign that
she can go on without him.
But I had been living in a numb silence for two
years, and I
could not find the words I wanted to say to him. All
I could manage
is, "You may count on me."
He waited for more, but there was no more to say. He
bowed,
Pablo bowed, and before they turned away, the
gallant, who had
introduced himself as Francisco Henriquez y
Carvajal ("Everyone
calls me Pancho"), took the gardenia from his
buttonhole and offered
it to me. Then, they headed down the street, the
sweet,
young fellow plunging his hands in his pockets, the
way men do
when they are unsure of themselves and need to hear the
consoling
jingle of coins. Ramona shut the top door and
threw her arms
around me in gratitude. "My
wonderful, brave, charming, talented
sister!" She hurried off to the back of the house
to inform our
mother how she, Ramona, had finally managed to bring
me out of
my griefs-stricken condition.
As soon as she left the room, I pushed open
the small side
window and watched as the two men neared the end of the
street,
pausing to let the water donkey go by with its sweating
tinaja of
drinking water. That bit of swagger had returned
to the young
106 .julia ,bledfuleaarez
man's step and his hands were now out of his pockets,
and he was
swinging them like a boy who had accomplished a hard
task and
was proud of himself.
And I felt myself slowly rising from where I had
lain for so
long. I felt life spiraling up my legs,
stirring awake the aching dullness
in my brain. I smelled bread baking
in the nearby ovens of
the panaderia, the salty smell in the breeze from
the sea. The curfew
bell rang down at la fortaleza. I stood with
my head poking
out of that window, like the bodega neighbor's baby
at her birth,
her head popped out, the rest of her still unborn, just
taking a
look out there at the world she was about to come into.
Then, as if
it had been my father's blessing finally reaching me, I
heard the
neighborhood band beginning its practice in
preparation for
the Corpus Cristi procession the next day: the
roll of the drum,
the the trill of the flute, the waking call of the
trumpet.
THREE
Ruins
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1941
SHE LOVES RIDING ON trains. She
feels like a heroine, suspended
between lives, suspended between destinations.
A line from her
mother's poems pops in her head and is repeated and
repeated--
until it is nonsense--by the clacking of the train
on its tracks. Which of my many dreams shall claim
my heart? Or did she herself write that?
But inevitably, the heroine arrives at a station.
People are
there to pick her up, important characters who
expect too much
of her. Perhaps Domingo himself will be there, still
furious, demanding
further explanations.
Before she knows it, she is on her feet, pacing
down the rocking
aisle of the New York-Boston Yankee
Clipper Express.
THERE HE IS! Her dear brother Pedro!
He looks so elegant, in a tan, belted
coat, the collar turned
up, no hat on his head even though it is a
chilly March day. A
band starts up somewhere, trumpets and drums,
maybe some
108 "Julia @alvarez
dignitary is on the train. She imagines the
music is for her, a band her
brother has hired to celebrate her escape.
She has escaped. She remembers an old
engraving in a picture
book of myths in her father's library: a girl
running away to avoid
a dark cloud of what looked like gnats pursuing
her. But no one
is after her: Papancho is dead, Mon is
dead, Marion is now teaching
in Vermont, "happy as a lark," and Domingo
has left, infuriated
to be--as he phrased it--"an experiment." She
is free of that
little graveyard of the past she has been tending, which
has been
filling up with her personal dead, her failed
loves, as well as all the
new Cuban casualties of the Batista
dictatorship.
"Pibin!" she calls out, rapping the window, but
Pedro has not
seen her. She struggles to open the train window but
it will not
budge. Quickly, she puts her notebook away
in her purse and collects
her things. She hurries down the long aisle with
her bag,
then hesitates before she shows herself at the top of the
stairs.
HE MIGHT NOT recognize her. Twenty
years have passed. She
is forty-six years old. He himself looks so
much older and more
worldly than the intense young man of her memory,
who followed
her around the University of Minnesota like a
spy. This
Pedro has an air of accomplishment, his
slicked-back hair liberally
sprinkled with gray. He is famous now, she
reminds herself,
more famous than their mother ever was.
And she has changed. Everyone says so. She is
thinner, the
strong bones of her face more pronounced. She
looks, well, famous
too.
Perhaps her face knows what is coming! In
the last few
months, she has been writing poems
feverishly. For weeks she will
be in a daze, lines going round and round in her
head. Sometimes
she thinks of this as utter foolishness--at her age
--to become a
poet. Her own mother blossomed early. By the time
she was
thirty, all her significant work had been
written. But Camila could
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI was 109
end up being the child who inherited her mother's gift,
her own
blossoming coming later in life.
Pedro catches sight of her, and his face opens
up with pleasure
and emotion. She is relieved. Over the years,
he has been very
concerned about her "personal life;" as he terms
it in his letters, as
if he already knows that in the future his
correspondence will be
published (he is that famous), and this phrase is
the safest way to
refer to his sister's perverseness. In fact, when
he heard that
Marion had followed Camila to Santiago,
he wrote their father--
Camila found the letter as a bookmark in her father's
copy of
Lamartine--saying that the American woman should not
be allowed
in the house. "Una influencia malisima.
Camila es demasiado
impresionable..." A bad influence. Camila
is too impressionable ...
But all that is behind them now. They have gotten
close again
through letters. In fact, when she wrote telling
Pedro about
Domingo--holding up her new beau as if he were
some sort of
trophy, never mind that he was poor, a
sculptor, darker-skinned
than anyone in the family, with that
exasperating stutter, never
mind--Pedro wrote back congratulating her as
if she had announced
that she had finally recovered from a long illness.
He is carrying two small flags--the
Dominican flag and the
Cuban one of her adopted country. As she comes
down the steps,
he lifts them and waves a hearty welcome.
She can see the soft
look of pride and love in his eyes. Pedro is
the one who is supposed
to most resemble their mother, down to the darker color of
his skin, and when he looks at her in that sweet
way, she thinks,
that is the way Mami would have looked at me had
she been alive
today.
They fall into each other's arms. When they pull
away, she is
surprised to see tears in her brother's eyes.
As she reaches up to
wipe them away, his own hands mirror hers,
wiping the tears running
down her face.
110 Julia @alvarez
THEY WALK THROUGH THE campus to the guest
house where
Pedro has reserved a room for her.
Cambridge is still in the grip of
winter. The trees are bare, the drab brick
buildings also seem in a
dormant state. Across a tree-lined yard, a
group of young men in
uniform march in formation.
"What is going on?" she asks Pedro in a
whisper. She remembers
this detail from Minnesota: how breath becomes
visible in
cold air, betraying she has spoken.
"Americans practicing for war. We have so many
we never get
out of practice," he says bitterly.
"Thirty-one just in Mami's lifetime.
I added them up for my last lecture."
She has also counted them up in the past,
disbelieving that
there really could have been so many. Recently, Max
wrote her
from the newly named Ciudad
Trujillo. He had discovered a deep
hole under Mami's childhood house--she
remembers it!--where
the terrified women used to hide during wars. They
must have
spent a lot of time underground.
Just ahead of the soldiers, a group of men brandish
placards,
PROTECT OUR PEACE, and shout slogans.
"Not a peaceful
thing to do," Pedro mutters under his breath as they
pass by.
"What have you got there?" One of them has broken
from
the group and is standing directly in front of them.
He has the
bright, empty eyes of a cat. He jerks his head
down toward the
flags poking out of disthe bag Pedro is carrying.
Camila feels her
shoulders tensing and her breath coming short. She
wonders if
she should introduce her brother. This is the
Norton Lecturer in
Latin American Studies at
Harvard for the year. Would that give
them safe passage?
Two young men come forward and hook their arms through
the protestor's arms, murmuring in his ear. Perhaps
they are reminding
him that they are peacemakers trying to save the world.
Pedro stands by patiently as if waiting for an
impediment to
be removed from his path. He has never been a
fighter. My Pedro
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI. 111
is not a soldier, no Caesar or Alexander
storms his heart, Salom`e's final
poem begins.
Camila quickens her own step, tugging at her
brother's arm.
"What are they protesting?" she asks when they are
safely out of
earshot. Her own university in Havana has
always been a hotbed
of revolution, and Batista keeps
closing it down.
"They don't want to go to war," Pedro
explains. "El presidente
Roosevelt has promised that not one American
boy will die in this
European war. But the feeling on this campus is
that this country
will be at war by the end of the year."
She glances nervously at Pedro's flags,
poking from the side
pocket of her bag. Given the rumors of
upcoming war, carrying
strange flags is probably not a wise move
on her brother's part. It
does not help, of course, that he looks
foreign.
"The whole world is starting to feel like our little
countries,"
Pedro adds, shaking his head sadly. He slips
her bag's strap over
one shoulder. His hands disappear in his coat as if
he were looking
for something consoling in his pockets.
"WE'RE GOING TO A special place
to meet everyone," Pedro
says, offering her his arm. She has deposited
her things upstairs in
the guest house and gathered up her hair in a
fresh chignon with
a silver comb, once her mother's.
The place turns out to be a brisk walk through the
university
gates and down several twisting, narrow streets.
The protestors
have dispersed. Camila glances tenderly at her
brother, thinking of
all he must have endured these last nine months here
by himself.
He has gotten old. His face is lined: a
parenthesis has formed
around the mouth; the brow is furrowed even when he
is not
scowling. He is fifty-six years old, but it
is not just his age that
shows. He seems tired, a sad, perplexed
look on his face. He
would not complain, of course, but in one of his essays
that she
112 .julia Alvarez
found in a recent journal, she was
surprised to read about "the terrible
moral disinheritance of exile." She felt a
pang to learn so impersonally
of her brother's sadness, to know what a terrible
toll his
wandering life has taken. Unlike their brother
Max, Pedro refused
to stay on in Trujillo's government and instead
transplanted his
family to Argentina, where he has been scraping
out a living with
two or three simultaneous teaching jobs. The
Norton lectureship
has been a godsend, but it is only a
nine-month post. He is saving
every penny for the dearth ahead.
They stop before a set of double doors with the dark
silhouette
of a bull on each half door. The place,
known as El Toro
Triste, the Sad Bull, is owned by a
Republicano who was forced
into exile when civil war exploded in Spain
five years ago. Pedro's
friends and colleagues are gathering here, some
from as far as New
York and Princeton, for Pedro's final
lecture tomorrow evening.
Since travel is becoming increasingly
difficult, quite a few have
taken the precaution of arriving a day early.
A lively, dark-haired woman comes forward and
gives Pedro a
warm embrace, exclaiming over how handsome and
distinguished
he looks. She is short and plump, with a
countrywoman look, but
with the expressive eyes of someone who has seen more
of the
world. "I am Germaine," she introduces herself,
taking both
Camila's hands in hers. She is French, which
piques Camila's interest.
Ever since she learned about her father's other
family in
Paris, she cannot meet a French woman of a
certain age without
wondering about the half sister and nieces she has
never known.
Do they look like Pancho? Do they look
like her?
"Come meet my Jorge." Germaine takes her
by the arm. Her
husband turns out to be Jorge Guillen, the
poet, whose book of
poems, C@antico, is one of the few books
Camila has carried with
her from Havana.
Jorge stands, tall, slender, with the distracted
air of a
scholar in his thick glasses. Actually, she is
not sure yet that he is
distracted, but she has already assigned him that
quality. Now
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOM * 113
that she is writing, she is developing the bad
habits of writers,
creating the world rather than inhabiting it. Perhaps that is
why
her mother's good friend Hostos banished poets from his
rational
republic.
"It is a pleasure," he is saying, as he
gives her a quaint bow. "I
hear you have just come from the killing fields of
Cuba?"
"Jorge, Jorge," Germaine scolds. She
seems much younger
than he, her high voice like a little bell tinkling
in the autumn of
his years. "Don't ruin the mood of the gathering."
The chastised Jorge sits down obediently,
offering Camila the
chair beside him. He seems as shy as she, but
somehow the miracle
that sometimes happens between the shy does happen: they
can be garrulous together. They speak of Cuba, the
growing repression,
and suddenly she finds herself confessing what she has
told no one else, not even her brother.
"I've run away."
His eyes quicken with interest. She has a story
to tell him.
"And where is our heroine headed?" he asks.
She feels the color rising to her face, as if
she were a young girl
receiving attention from a man for the first time. But the sad
truth
injects a sudden sobriety into their banter.
"I'm not so much
headed somewhere as I am leaving the place I came
from."
"We are the new Israelites." Jorge
nods, his long, sad face
adding to the gloom of his observation. "What will
become of us?
We die if we forget. We die if we
remember." This time Germaine
touches his shoulder softly. "But I shall leave the
solutions to your
brother. Quite a David that brother of yours, taking
on such
questions in Goliath's own country!"
"Yes," she says, smiling fondly toward where
her brother is
seated, at the center of a group of colleagues
engaged in some
heated discussion. She is so proud of Pedro, not
because of his
honors, but because of the quality of his mind. Thoughtful

serious, wise beyond his years, even as a child.
"I've given birth to
an old man," their mother was supposed to have said about
him.
This is precisely why she has brought, bound and
ready at the
114 .julia @alvarez
bottom of her suitcase, the poems she has
been writing. She has
already sent them to Max, who has written back
saying that they
are "fabulous." He wants to publish them in the
Dominican
papers with a headline, SALOME LIVES
AGAIN, but she has
begged him not to, for she is not yet sure of them.
She has also
sent a handful to an old family friend, the poet
Juan Ramon
Jimenez, and he has been more circumspect.
"Fine line," he has
written here and there, but the pages are riddled with
tiny, penciled
suggestions. She knows from her teaching that this is not a
good sign, the use of pencil intended
to soften the indignity of
the corrections. Still, his overall evaluation is
encouraging: "You
have your mother's gift. Keep working at it."
As Pedro's friends stream in, Germaine brings
them over to
meet "Pedro's little sister, Camila."
Salinas up from Princeton, the
del Rios from Columbia, Casalduero over
from Smith. Here are
the best minds and writers of Spain, now living in
exile, gathered
to celebrate her brother. Perhaps, she, too, will
some day create
something of value that allows her a place in this
illustrious company,
and not just as Pedro's sister or Salome's
daughter either.
"Your brother tells me you work as a teacher,"
Jorge says, resuming
their conversation.
"I used to," she corrects him. She
explains that her university
has again been shut down. She herself is out of a
job.
Jorge lifts his eyebrows in sympathy. She
has noticed how he
uses his brows like a mime, for punctuation. "So,
in fact, you are
running away from the burning building."
"Actually, I helped set fire to it." But
saying so feels too much
like boasting, so she adds, "Or rather, my students
did." In fact, in
her black teaching gown with chalk marks down the
front, she
came outside and joined them.
He smiles, nodding approval. "But can you also
teach the pluperfect
as well as work the guillotine?" One eyebrow
lifts interrogatively.
"I ask because there is an opening at Vassar. I
have a friend
there, Pilar. I could give her a call."
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI6 115
Camila hesitates. She is not so
sure she wants to return to the
rigors of full-time teaching. She has spent the
last twenty years in
classrooms. It is time to spread her wings:
to devote herself to her
writing. She has a little money coming in. Pancho
died penniless,
but--no doubt Max's doing--Camila has been
receiving a small
pension from the Dominican government as the unmarried
daughter of a former president. She does not
feel altogether comfortable
collecting money from the dictatorship, but it i
one of
the compromises she is making for her art.
"My sister is here to enjoy herself and, I hope,
to enjoy my
lecture," Pedro says, coming to the rescue.
"Maybe I'll take her
back with me to Argentina," he adds. She is
surprised to hear him
say so. A few months ago, she wrote him
about that possibility,
but Pedro wrote back explaining that life in
Buenos Aires has become
very expensive and his own situation there quite
difficult.
The country is flooded with European
immigrants, fleeing the
war. That is why he has decided to come north for a
year to Harvard
and is leaving Isabel and the girls behind to save
money. "Join
me in Boston," he had invited Camila.
"We can talk of the future
then. Perhaps we will even invent the future there."
The proprietor of the Sad Bull, a crusty
old man with a
day's growth of beard and a beret, hobbles from table
to table
filling glasses. He has a pronounced
limp, perhaps an injury incurred
in the war. Camila has a sudden sense of all
of them in
the room as survivors of national catastrophes
that have sent
them scattering across the globe. She imagines a
future historian
coming upon a photograph of the assembled group. The
great
poets of suffering Spain gather in Boston
to celebrate Pedro Henriquez
Urefia's final Norton lecture, the
caption might read, names
listed from left to right. (but who is the woman
sitting in the
corner next to Guillen? Ah yes! Salome
Camila Henriquez
Urefia, the poet.) She feels a guilty
thrill, giving herself a title
she has not yet earned.
Pedro calls the room to silence. "In honor
of our gathering,"
116 Julia @alvarez
he begins, "I would like to welcome you with some
verses." When
Pedro finishes reciting Marti's words of longing
for his country,
there is a hush in the room, as if the Liberator
himself had just
pushed open the doors, parting the butting bulls, and
sat himself
down among them.
Salinas follows, his body swaying to the rhythm
of a lilting
romancero, his voice breaking with emotion. He
finishes with one
of his own poems, a eulogy to the fallen poet
Lorca, a curse on the
Falangists who murdered him and sent all of them
into exile! One
by one colleagues rise and recite, and the chilly
room fills with
bright presences.
"It is your turn," Jorge urges her after
giving his recitation.
"Your brother has told us you are a marvelous
reciter."
Shy as she is, she does love to recite. In
the classroom, she often
surprises her students, by being able to call up
any poem and
recite several stanzas, if not the whole poem,
off the top of her
head. She goes through a mental index of her
mother's poems,
wondering which one will have the most effect.
"Sombras" would
be too grim, and "Contestacion," though about
exile, a theme
present in all their hearts, is not among
Salome's best. Camila
glances toward Pedro, hoping for a suggestion, and
sees the tension
on his face. He does not want her to recite
one of their
mother's poems. Modernism is upon them.
Salome's neoclassical
style is out of favor. And the disapproval or
even inattention of
these eminences would hurt.
"Somebody from your part of the world," Jorge insists.
"I shall recite a little-known poet," she says,
taking a deep
breath. Among her poems, one particularly has
received a positive
response from Juan Ramon, an underlined
FINE POEM scribbled
across the bottom of the page, and only one penciled
suggestion
in the margin. "La raiz," it is called, a
root probing in the dark
earth for water, dreaming of flowers. She has
practiced saying it
out loud many times to herself, but now, she is
too nervous, and
her voice keeps giving out.
IN THE NAME OF SALOM "117
When she is done, she sits down hurriedly,
feeling the familiar
tightness in her chest. These attacks first started
when she was a
child: a sense of panic and breathlessness would
overtake her. At
one point, Pancho had moved the whole family
out of Santiago
into the nearby hills, for he was convinced that
Camila had inherited
her mother's weak lungs and would grow consumptive in
the
hot lowlands of the coastal city.
There is a moment of silence before Jorge calls
out, "Bravo,
bravo!" Others join in. Who is this poet?
they want to know. A
young Dominican, she replies vaguely,
avoiding Pedro's eyes, fearful
of finding judgment there.
Later, as they walk back to the guest house, he
says, "Camila,
do you have any more of that poet's verses?"
"A whole manuscript," she admits. They
often speak in this
way, indirectly, tentatively, trusting the
depths of their love for each
other. "I would like you to read it and give me your
considered
opinion," she adds. It is as close as she can
come to an admission.
"Yes, I would very much like to," he says.
Night has already fallen, and the air has grown
chillier. She
hooks her arm through his and smells the surprisingly
perfumey
scent of cologne on his coat. A touch of
Isabel, no doubt. Camila
finds herself resenting this intrusion of her
sister-in-law. But this
is silly, she has her brother all to herself for
now. When people
turn to watch, she pulls close to him as if they
are a couple out for
a stroll on this crisp winter evening.
She glances up at the stars and is surprised
by how easily she
can make them out: Orion's belt, the dipper,
Cassiopeia in her
chair. What an odd world, she is thinking. An
ocean away, the sky
is lit up with the fire of bombs exploding over
London. In their
part of the world, Batista's thugs are in the thick of
some grim
deed that needs the cover of darkness. And here they
are, she and
Pedro, in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
walking happily under these
same stars in the month of March, the month that their
mother
died. Surely such privilege requires
something of them.
118 .julia Alvarez
She leans against her brother, feeling the rough
caress of his
overcoat on her cheek, and thinks about their mother.
SHE WAS THINKING, in fact, of the last poem
their mother
ever wrote.
They had gone up to the north coast, hoping the
fresh sea air
might save Salome's life. Their father was still
keeping it a secret
that his wife had tuberculosis, so a country
retreat was well advised.
As for the immediate family, they were all to use every
precaution,
and the baby, Camila, especially was to be kept
at a
distance. But of course, any chance she got,
Camila wanted to be
with her mother.
One siesta time, she was awakened by the familiar
sound of
coughing. Camila crawled out of her little cot and
went in search of
her mother. She found her in her room at the small
desk she kept by
the window, facing the sea. Her mother was crying. It
was a dangerous
thing for her to do, for crying always brought on the coughing.
Her emaciated frame shook horribly, and she
gasped for air.
"Mami! Mami! what's wrong?" Camila
remembers asking,
on the verge of tears herself.
Supposedly, she had gone from
baby gurgles and smiles to full sentences--no
in-between phases
of temper tantrums or nonsense syllables.
Raised by a sick,
dying woman, maybe she knew there was not much time
for
dillydallying.
"Nada, nada," Mami reassured her, bringing
her kerchief to
her mouth. She patted the bench beside her, and
Camila climbed
up on her own, for her mother could no longer lift
her. From that
height, she could see that her mother had been writing.
"What is
it?" she asked.
"A poem for your big brother, Pibin, my
love."
"I want a poem for me, Mami."
"It is also for you, but I've already begun it and
shown it to
your brother, so I'll leave the title as is."
IN THE NAME OF SALOMI 119
"Read it to me then."
Her mother read the poem, pausing here and there to catch
her breath, but also as if to reconsider what she
had written. No
doubt, since the poem was now being addressed
to Camila, her
mother was having to improvise some quick rhyme
changes and
feminine endings. But them was also a desperation in her
voice, as
if she had very little time to get something important
said.
When she got to the ending, she broke out in a fit
of coughing.
Tivisita, whom Pancho had moved in to take
care of his wife,
came into the room.
"What are you doing here, Camila?" she began.
"I really don't
think you should be--"
"We're fine, Tivisita, thank you." Her
mother watched as
Tivisita closed the door.
Camila leaned into her mother's side. "What
does it say,
Mama?" She had heard the big words,
but didn't quite know what
her mother was telling her with this poem she had just read
her.
"It says that I love you very, very much." She was
looking intently
at Camila as if she were trying to make out the
woman her
daughter would become in the young face gazing up at
her.
Of course, Camila has questioned herself, as to whether
she
could possibly have remembered all this. The truth
is: she remembers
spots. And the rest is the story she has made
up to connect
those few dim memories so she does not lose
her mother completely.
But the next thing her mother said, she is very sure she
has
not made up. Her mother took her hands and tightened
her grip.
"Stay close to Pibin. Trust what he tells
you."
"Not Papancho?"
Her mother looked doubtful a moment. "Of
course, Papancho."
"And Fran?"
"Yes, Fran." They went through the whole list of
family members,
but again, her mother returned to Pedro. "Most of
all stay
close to Pibin."
"Why?" she insisted.
120 .julia ,bledfulvarez
But that is as far as the memory goes. Try as
she might Camila
cannot reconstruct what her mother might have replied.
Probably
the conversation did not go on much longer. Her mother
tired
easily those last days, and she could not keep up
with the pace of
her young daughter's questions.
Years later, when she was ten, Camila had found
the poem
again in a collection of her mother's work in her father's
library.
With a pencil, line by line, she had changed all the
pronouns and
masculine endings--her first poetic
endeavor!--so the poem was
addressed to her, not Pedro.
Desecrating books was a serious crime in their
household of
book lovers, and she had been punished in what
her father considered
a harsh way. She was made to copy over her
mother's
whole book of poems by hand. That, in fact, was
how she began
to commit all of Salome's poems to memory.
She had tried explaining to her father why she had
done this,
but Pancho dismissed her memory as a
"fabrication." It was Pedro
who had rescued this memory for her years later,
when they were
living together in Minnesota (before Marion, before
things had
fallen apart between them). Late one night, Pedro
related a memory
of their mother, not unlike Camila's.
"She called me into her bedroom," Pedro
explained. "She had
started a poem for me three years before but
she was so sick she
abandoned it. Or so I thought. But a few months
before she died,
she said she had a surprise. She read me the
finished poem, and
when she was done, she said the most curious thing."
Even before Pedro said it, Camila knew
exactly what their
mother had said.
"I've asked the future to take care of you.
Now you take care
of your little sister."
THE FOLLOWING EVENING AT the Fogg,
Camila joins the
crowd filing into the auditorium. Many of
Harvard's eminences
IN
THE
NAME OF
SALOMI 121
are here: endowed chairs, dons, dignitaries--
Jorge points them
out to her. There is a rumor that the president of the
college has
arrived, but in fact, Pedro has told
her that President Conant has
sent his excuses. He is just this moment on a
mission from President
Roosevelt, winging his way to England for talks with
Mr.
Churchill.
"This really is quite special," Jorge
explains. "One of our own
invited by Harvard! Not since Santayana at the
beginning of the
century." His eyebrows lift to impress upon
her the significance of
the evening.
She is sitting beside him and Germaine in the front
row,
which Pedro has reserved for his friends and
colleagues. When she
turns to speak to them, she catches sight of a sea
of dark tweeds
and somber wools behind her. It looks like nothing so
much as a
gathering of undertakers.
She is herself wearing black, a dress that belonged
to her
mother and that she has never worn before--or,
rather she had
tried wearing it once, very long ago, and her father,
or maybe it
was her stepmother, did not allow it. As she was
packing and deciding
what to take, she tried it on again, and the dress
fit perfectly.
It is odd to think that her body conforms exactly
to her
mother's body, as if she were somehow resurrecting
her mother in
her own flesh.
As she sits in the audience, listening to her
brother, she feels
the same sense of excitement that she felt earlier
at the Sad Bull
hearing the poets recite their sad poems. "We
must pledge ourselves
to our America," Pedro is saying, "the
America our poor, little
countries are struggling to create."
She, too, wants to be part of that national
self-creation. Her
mother's poems inspired a generation. Her own, she
knows, are
not clarion calls, but subdued oboes,
background piano music, a
groundswell of cellos bearing the burden of a
melody. Every revolution
surely needs a chorus.
"We cannot be mere bookworm redeemers,"
Pedro stumbles
122 .julia Alvarez
over the words. She knows the effort it is for him
to speak in English-as
all Norton Lecturers are required to do.
"Whoever gives
himself to others lives among the doves." (where
has she heard
that phrase before?)
"Let us not forget the most important factor,
especially important
for us to remember on the eve of war, what our
apostle
Marti once remarked before he was cut down in the
mountains of
eastern Cuba, 'Only love creates!""
Pedro's quote from Marti
brings the house to its feet. As he comes out from behind

podium to the front of the stage and acknowledges his
audience's
tribute, Camila can see his face, glistening
with sweat and tired
from the strain. How high a price he has paid for
being the one
who received their mother's legacy.
But now, she is here to help him carry it.
From her front row seat, just like a little sister, she
blows him
a kiss.
LATER THAT NIGHT, after everyone has left the
Sad Bull, singing
Republicano songs, Camila finally gets a
chance to tell her brother
how very proud she is of him.
"It's not just the speech," she tells him, averting
her eyes, for
it is not their habit to speak so openly with each
other. "I'm proud
of how you did not stay with that job. How you would not go
along with Trujillo's schemes. If only you
could convince Max."
This is probably not the best time to bring up their
brother, but
Pedro's words this evening have fired her up.
"Our Max is extremely cabeza dura,"
Pedro admits, "not unlike
the rest of us." Pedro raps his head with his
knuckles to show
how hardheaded they all are.
"It's more than hardheadedness. That Haitian
business was a
disgrace. Twenty pesos for each dead soul
..." She shakes her
head. "History will never forgive him." Not
to mention his little
sister, Camila thinks.
IN THE NAME OF SALOM. 123
Pedro shifts in his chair uneasily. "Let's
put Max aside right
now." He lowers his head and looks up at her as
if over the rim of
an invisible pair of glasses. Camila
believes he can see all the way
back to the mess she has left behind her in
Cuba. An irate lover, a
house hurriedly packed up, boxes and trunks
of valuable family
papers left behind with friends.
"You need to be more careful, Camila."
"I am careful," she protests. "You need not
worry about me."
No doubt Max has filled him in on her
escapade in a Cuban jail.
Max had to come from the Dominican Republic and
use his
diplomatic immunity to get her released.
"How is your friend?" he asks, gazing steadily
at her. "The
sculptor," he adds, though they both know he was
also thinking of
Marion.
She wishes now she had never mentioned Domingo in
her
letters to him. "Things did not quite work out." She
looks down
at her hands, knowing Pedro is waiting to hear why.
What can she
say? She could no longer bear to deceive Domingo as
well as herself.
The night she returned from her two weeks in
jail, she had
ended with him, using as her pretext the fact that he
had deserted
the welcome committee at the dock when the
guardia arrived with
their dogs. "You left us," she blamed him.
It was Camila who had left him long before that
incident,
Domingo had corrected her.
"Did Jorge speak to you?" Pedro asks
suddenly. She nods. As
they waited for Pedro's lecture, Jorge had
delivered his good
news. He had called his colleague Pilar
Madariaga at Vassar that
afternoon. The glowing report he had given "Pedro
Henriquez
Urefia's sister"--she could just imagine--had so
impressed Pilar,
she had virtually guaranteed Camila a job
on the spot.
"Vassar is a very prestigious university, you
know," Pedro continues
when she says nothing.
Of course she knows that, but there are more important
things than prestige, she wants to remind him.
The room feels
124 "Julia Alvarez
suddenly cold. Perhaps the owner has turned the
heat down to let
them know he wants to close up for the night. They
should go.
"Have you grown to dislike pedagogy? Is it that?"
Pedro asks.
His voice is intimate, coaxing. He might be
asking one of his little
daughters why she will not give her papi a kiss.
"It's not that," Camila says, wondering if now
is the moment
to ask him about her poems.
"You wanted time, I heard you talking
to Jorge." Pedro lifts
his coat from the back of his chair and drapes it
over her shoulders.
In a quiet, careful voice, he says, "I
had a chance to read
those poems this morning."
She hugs the coat tighter around her. She cannot
say anything.
Her voice would betray her.
"They are skilled, well written. Some, in
fact, remind me of
Mami's poems." He stops as if
to let that sink in. She can feel his
gaze on her. "My favorite, in fact, was the
one you recited for us
yesterday afternoon, "La raiz." I thought the theme
fully achieved,
but the rhymes in the last stanza were a little forced."
Dear Pibin, she thinks. The rhymes can be
fixed. There are
more important conclusions to be drawn. "Would you
have any
advice to give the author?" she asks as evenly
as she can. She has
begun lining up the salt and pepper shakers on the
long table,
wondering why the owner has bothered to put out these
condiments.
Both times the group has been there, no food
has been
served, except olives and oily peanuts with
too much salt, in
fact.
"Yes, I do have some advice," Pedro says.
Every word is measured
out. "I think the poet should keep writing for her
own pleasure.
But I think she should take the job at Vassar,
if it is offered."
His voice is almost a whisper, as if he has
discovered a secret she
needs to keep and which he does not want to take
away from her.
"I see," she says, clearing her throat of the
sadness lodged
there. She does not dare look up, or the tears
that are welling up
will fall out of her eyes. "What about what you said
about helping
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOM 125
build our America. What about your words tonight?"
It's as if she
is deliberately turning the argument into something
else--a job
in the United States in contrast to service at
home--in order to
avoid facing Pedro's judgment on her poems.
Or perhaps the two
issues are not so unrelated after all.
"Pibin, answer me. What of your advice
to all of us tonight
to keep fighting?"
"You can fight from Poughkeepsie," Pedro says,
stumbling
over the name of the town. Those consonant clusters are
impossible
on their Spanish tongues.
"What fight would that be?"
"It's all the same fight, Camila, don't
you see? Marti fought
Cuba from New York, Maximo Gomez fought
Lills from Cuba,
Hostos came to us from Puerto Rico. Right now
the safest place
for you is Vassar."
"And you and Isabel are fighting from Argentina, and
Max
from within the regime, I suppose?" She hears the
disappointment
in her voice. She has always looked upon
Pedro's marriage as a surrender
of his highest goals. The struggle to provide
Isabel and his
girls with nice clothes, summer homes,
private schools has consumed
his energies in low-paying hack jobs.
He has bowed his head as if accepting her
judgment. My Pedro
is not a soldier, no Caesar or Alexander
storms his heart. After a
moment of thought, he adds, "I am continuing the
fight. I am defending
the last outpost."
"And what would that be?" she challenges him.
"Poetry," he says. He has taken up her
activity of lining up the
condiments on the table, as if they are playing an
odd game, akin
to chess, but with fewer pieces, a game for the
bold, easily lost,
quickly won. "I am defending it with my pen. It
is a small thing,
I know, but those are the arms I was given.
Defending it because it
encodes our purest soul, the blueprint for the new
man, the new
woman. Defending it against the bought pens, the
dictators, the
impersonators, the well-meaning but lacking in
talent."
126 Julia ,bledfulvare
Her eloquent brother. How beautifully he can
seal her doom.
"I'm sorry," he says in a voice so
nakedly sad that she feels momentarily
sorry for him. She reminds herself that he himself
gave
up writing poems because he did not feel he was
good enough.
"Mami would not forgive me if I didn't tell
you what I think.
Others may disagree."
Yes, she feels like telling him. Max
disagrees. Juan Ramon
Jimenez disagrees. But it is his opinion that
counts, she knows
that. And she suspects he is right, for what she
is feeling is not sadness,
but immense relief. Vassar is not so far from
Vermont, where
Marion has started teaching. Perhaps now without the
pressures
of family or the hopes raised
by Domingo, she and Marion will
work out their differences.
"I appreciate your honesty," she says at
last, gathering her
things. She has begun feeling the stirrings of her
self-respect. She
does not want his pity. That would be awful. There
are other
women she can be besides the heroine of a story.
"Will you at least go look?"
The way his voice rises in a plea is like a
hand lifting her chin.
She looks up at him. What she sees is an
old man's face--weary
and spent, the eyes full of longing, the terrible
moral disinheritance
of exile, which he is now urging her to partake of.
What a way to
take care of me, she feels like saying, but they have
said too much
to each other already.
"I'll have to think about it," she says, standing up
to go.
CUATRO
Amor y anhelo
Santo Domingo, 1878-1879
A NOTICE APPEARED IN all the papers.
We are now collecting sums for the national medal
for poetry to
be awarded to Salome Urefia. Once we reach
our goal of two hundred
pesos, the time and place of the decoration will be
announced.
Signed, "Semper Vigilans."
"WHO IS THIS SEMPER Vigilans?" my
mother wanted to
know.
"Always Watchful," Tia Ana translated.
"I believe that's Jose
Joaquin's pseudonym."
Ramona and I knew better. She looked at
me, her eyes narrowed,
before she swept out of the room. She could not understand
how I, a grown woman of twenty-eight, had
taken leave of
my senses. How could I allow a
nineteen-year-old boy, hiding behind
that silly pen name, to carry on with this public
auction of
my talent?
She was right. Normally, I would have been
embarrassed with
so much attention. But instead I was bemused and charmed
by
128 Julia ,bledavarez
this young man's antics. All I can compare it
to is the puppy my
Bani cousins gave me to distract me from my
grief when I stayed
with them soon after Papa's death. I would watch
Coco chew on
my shoe or stuff his mouth with the satin ribbon on
my bonnet or
drool all over my Amazing Travels of
Marco Polo, and I would
chase him with a whipping branch, but then he would
stop, look
up at me, wagging his tail, his pink tongue
lolling from his mouth,
his little black eyes rolling up at me in adoring
eagerness, and I
would drop the branch and instead scoop Coco in
my arms and
bury my face in his side.
That is exactly the way I felt about
Pancho, at first. I stood by,
watching this young gallant outdo himself with articles,
letters,
subscriptions, events in my honor. I was
indulging him, of course,
thinking he would soon get over this.
THE FIRST POETRY SOIRIE Poncho
invited us to attend was
hosted by Friends of the Country. Many of these clubs
had sprung
up in the capital: they organized courses and
concerts and political
campaigns--in fact, they kept the spirit of
liberty alive at a
time when our leaders were mostly looking out for themselves.
Among the most prestigious, because it was one of the
oldest, was
Friends of the Country.
I had dressed in half-mourning, a gray
dress trimmed with
black crepe, and a black bombazine cap and
cape that Ramona
thought made me look grim and too thin. The
event was held at
Don Noel Henriquez's house on
Hope Street, the subject for discussion
having been announced in the papers that Wednesday:
In
what consists the greatness of poetry? Meanwhile,
Society of Youth
would be discussing, What is the future of
fatalism? La Republicana,
Is Haiti our true enemy? And Ramona's
favorite, to be addressed
at the Dawn of the People Society, Is love the
crowning
glory of the human species?
Of course, women guests were not allowed
to participate in
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOM- 129
the discussions. "I've been told we keep our
mouths shut," Ramona
told me, "unless the master of memories should
turn to us
and say, "And what does the fair sex have to say
about the future of
fatalism?"'"
Don Noel lived in a handsome, two-story
house with a
Spanish-tile roof and a balcony of iron
grillwork that matched the
lampposts on each side of the front door.
Ramona and I were
greeted first by Federico with such warmth I could see
why I had
mistaken his earlier attentions and then by numerous
other Henriquez
brothers, all with the same dark-eyed good looks as
Pancho's.
The white-haired father, Don Nol, looking every
inch the
paterfamilias, offered us each an arm, but at just
that moment, the
minister of culture and his wife arrived, and he was
forced to excuse
himself to welcome them properly.
So, Ramona and I entered the crowded, noisy
room, clutching
each other's hands, without anyone noticing us. We
were shy
to begin withand unpracticed in the art of
circulating from one
polite conversation to another. In our plain, dark
gowns, the two
of us, in our late twenties with some color to our
skin, must have
looked like somebody's chaperones. We found our
way to the spot
where some of the older ladies seemed to be
congregating, and sat
down wordlessly.
From my post in the corner, I was able to observe
Pancho as
he moved here and there around the room, greeting
members and
newcomers. He had a strong voice that carried.
I heard him introduce
a half dozen of his friends as his very closest friend like
no
other; every writer had written the best essay on
Cuba's independence
or the best drama on the massacre of the
Indians.
When he took the podium at one end of the large
drawing
room, it was clear he was in command. He
had just turned nineteen--there
had been several congratulatory birthday odes
in the
papers, but young as he was, the Friends of the Country
had
elected him as their president. After a few words
of welcome, he
introduced some of his honored guests. It turned
out the room
was full of luminaries. He asked the great
general Maximo Gomez
to rise and take a bow. Ulises Espaillat,
frail and spent from his
nine months trying to rule us, was applauded
incessantly. Then,
Jose Joaquin Prez, our celebrated
poet, stood and put his hand to
his heart to show how much it meant for him to be here.
"Now, I will introduce our guest of honor this
evening." And
then, leaving the podium, he walked across the room
toward me.
Ramona said later I was like one of those hermit
crabs that
pulls in every appendage and refuses
to move. In fact, I could not
move. It was as if someone had tied me up
inside my own body
using my own muscles for ropes.
But if I was a hermit crab, this young man was a
barnacle
stuck to my side.
"Por favor, Senorita Salome, do me the
honor."
I made the mistake of glancing up at that
pleading face, and it
was as if the neighbor's child were reaching toward the
caramelito
I had been about to put in my mouth. How could I
refuse? I felt
myself rising up out of that chair, taking his arm, and
walking toward
the front of the room.
As we passed by, people stood up to applaud me.
I wished my
mourning veil were still fastened to my cap, so I could
hide my
face.
At the podium, Pancho leaned over and asked
if I would recite
something. I gave him a look of terror. "I shall
do it for you,"
he offered.
I must say, Pancho recited "The Glory of
Progress" beautifully,
without consulting the text, his voice as full of
passion
as if he had written the poem himself. In fact,
when I next sat
down to work on a new poem, it was his voice I
imagined intoning
the lines.
After reciting the poem, Pancho and several other
members
read speeches in which the greatness of poetry consisted
of nobility
of spirit and passionate commitment to la patria, as
exemplified
in the poetry of Salome Urefia.
IN THE NAME OF SALOMI 131
"Do any of our guests, including those of the fair
sex, have
anything to add to these remarks?" Pancho asked after
the speeches
were over.
Trinidad Villeta stood, creating that stir that
always accompanies
the pronouncements of a pretty girl. "I
agree with all our illustrious
speakers. And I am an exhaustive lover of
Salome's
poetry." (i could see Ramona beside her
wince.) "But I would like
to acknowledge two other poets in the room tonight whose
work
also exemplifies the greatness of poetry, Jose
Joaquin Prez and
our very own Josefa Perdomo."
I felt like a fool to have let myself be shown off as
a prize at
the expense of others.
"She was just jealous," Ramona noted as we were
getting
ready for bed that night. "The truth is,
Herminia, Papi would
have been so proud of you!" She threw her arms around
me. It
was the first time since his death that I had heard my
father mentioned
without feeling heartsick.
SOON AFTERWARD, RAMONA AND I were inducted
as honorary
members of Friends of the Country. Despite the
new round of
revolutions, we continued to meet regularly.
I admit I really went to these meetings so I
could see Pancho.
Whenever I entered the room, he hurried to my
side. On one occasion,
however, he did not see me arrive, and I
spotted him, talking
to Trini Villeta. Have I described
Trinidad Villeta? She might
have been Pancho's sister, with the same rosy skin
and dark eyes
and black hair, which she wore in silky ringlets
at her ears. Every
time I saw her, I had to remind myself that God
had given me
other, special talents. The angle of
Pancho's body, his hand on the
wall beside where Trini was standing, his other hand at his
hip,
gave a clear signal that this was a tete-a-tete
one should not intrude
upon.
I sat down beside Jose Joaquin Perez, who
had stood and
132 .julia Alvarez
nodded to the vacant chair by his side. Later
he said that it was that
night he urged me to begin my long poem,
"Anacaona," and so
take up the indigenous theme that all our young
poets were writing
about. But in truth, I cannot remember a word
Jose said, except,
when he looked over my shoulder and announced,
"And
here comes our president, Pancho!"
RAMONA, OF COURSE, NOTICED my
distraction.
"Just remember," she warned me the day after we had
both
seen Pancho flirting with Trini, "this won't be
the first Henriquez
man to mislead you."
"What do you mean?" I asked crossly.
"You know what I mean, Salome. Don't
play the crazy goat
with me. Pancho's in love with your poetry, not with
you. Even if
he mistakes the two, you should not."
I had so little confidence in my charms that I was
convinced
she was right. Pancho was too handsome and young a man
to be
interested in me. The next invitation we received from
Friends of
the Country to a gathering to welcome the great
educator Hostos,
I declined.
One missed meeting was not unusual. But the next
event
hosted by Friends of the Country in which Hostos was going
to
discourse on the future of mankind, I also did
not attend. Several
missed meetings went by, and not a word from
Pancho. I began to
think my sister had been right about him.
Then, one day a package arrived. I tore
open the wrapper to
find Jose Joaquin Perez's new book of
poems with a touching dedication,
Salome Urefia, whose lyre makes me want
to silence mine.
Something about reading those words was like a wake-up
call.
I thought of how I had been squandering my time and
talent by
letting my heart distract me from my true
calling of writing.
Sadly, I remembered what Dona
Bernardita had written in her Manual
"Peque@niuelas," she advised young girls,
"fill yourselves
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOM was 133
with the beauty of the world before you are met by love. For
after
that, you will see nothing but love in the world." Back
then, I had
thought this would be. a wonderful thing, but now I saw
what a
waste it was, to turn the world into a book of
signs, to pluck a
flower and only think, He loves me, he
loves me not, instead of
noticing the radiant sun and white petals of the
margarita.
And so I resolved to do my work, which was to write
poems
that would keep the love of liberty alive in the
hearts of my countrymen
and women during these hard times. I wrote Jose
a poem
of sincere thanks for reminding us with his Indian
poems of our
tragic past. He must have submitted my poem
to El Estudio, for a
couple of days later, it appeared in that paper.
As if I had set out a bowl of cream for a
puppy, Pancho came
calling.
RAMONA WOULD NOT LET him in.
"Salome is busy," she declared,
holding the top half of the door ajar. "She is
working on a
new poem."
"Do not disturb her," he said quickly. "I will
wait out here until
she is done."
"How could you, Ramona?" I scolded her the
minute the top
door was closed.
"Where has he been for the last month that you've been
crying
into your pillow. Don't tell me I don't
hear you!"
But I was already unlatching the door, and poking my
head
out. He was crouched by the sidewalk with his back
against the
wall of the house. When he stood, there was a
chalky streak down
the back of his jacket.
"Pancho, come in, please." I had to raise
my voice. Our little
dog Coco was barking wildly. "You'll scare
our guest away!" I
scolded him.
"Not at all, not at all," Pancho protested,
crouching at the
door to give Coco a treat. Pancho carried
bits of jerky in a pouch
134 .julia @alvarez
at his belt. "I love animals," he
explained. I had heard a rumor that
Pancho had tried to buy Herr Langer's
lion, but the Ayuntamiento
ordered the lion killed after it had devoured its
owner.
Ramona was not about to let Pancho make a
second conquest
in the household. She scooped Coco up in her
arms and strode
out of the room.
Pancho took the first seat I offered him.
"Salome," he confessed,
"I haven't dared come ... I thought I might have
offended
you."
"Why on earth did you think that?" I asked. This
possibility
had never occurred to me those nights I tossed in
bed with my
heart in pieces.
"You haven't come to any of our meetings since
Hostos joined
us. I thought perhaps you, too, were of the group that thought
all
positivists were atheists."
Sancho Pancho, I thought, Ramona's
nickname for him, after
Sancho Panza, the bumpkin attendant of
Don Quijote de la Mancha. Where did he
ever get the idea that I would have nothing to do with him?
"Pancho, what on earth is a positivist?"
"Salome Urefia," he said, dropping every other
concern, "you
don't know what a positivist is?"
He settled in his chair and gladly began to inform
me. Hostos,
the great Puerto Rican educator, believed in
something called
positivism, which held that mankind was evolving
toward a
higher, perfect state. Positivists all over
the world were fighting a
peaceful evolutionary battle to replace the dark
cloud of unreason
and violence and religion with reason and progress
and science.
"The one revolution we have not tried is the
peaceful one of education,"
Pancho proclaimed, his voice as
ardent as when he recited
my poems to the members of his club.
Seeing that bright look in his eye, I began
to understand that
Pancho was a man easily possessed by grand and
noble ideas. A
few months ago it had been Salome
Urefia, la musa de la patria;
now it was Hostos and the education of the positivist
man.
IN "THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI. 135
"So will you start coming to our meetings again?" Pancho
wanted to know. "Hostos so much wants to make your
acquaintance.
He's a great admirer of your poems. He
says you're a natural
positivist."
I was not surprised to hear this, as quite a few of the people
who read my work told me things I had not known
about myself.
"You may count on me," I teased, repeating the
first words I had
ever said to him. But Pancho did not smile. He
seemed preoccupied,
shifting in his chair. Finally, he blurted out what
was on his
* mind. "I read the poem you wrote
to Jose."
I could not tell if Pancho was jealous--but how
could he be?
The poem was so obviously about my regard for the
venerable
poet, not about my feelings for the respectable,
married man.
"May I read that poem at our next gathering?"
Pancho asked.
"You may, of course. But I am finishing a new
one that might
be more suitable. I will bring it along."
It was as if I had mentioned water to a man dying
of thirst.
Pancho could not thank me enough for my generosity, my
intelligence,
my talent.
I saw that if I wanted this man, all I had
to do was keep
writing.
ON THE FIRST DAY of the new year, I received
a letter from
Pancho.
I opened it with trembling fingers for it had the heft
and feel
of a love letter--fine linen paper and black looping
letters tossed
out to capture the beloved in ropes of words.
Reading it through a first, and then a second time, I
admit
that I felt disappointed. The letter was three pages
long, and not
once was love or anything approximating love
mentioned. He was
writing, Pancho explained, because after our talk
about positivism,
he had come to realize how little foundation I had in the
sciences. I was the one poet of our nation who
stood a chance of
136 "Julia Alvarez
becoming a great poet for all times. But I had
never received the
light of scientific truth. And since he,
Pancho, had devoted himself
to the sciences (arithmetic, algebra,
geometry, trigonometry,
mineralogy, astronomy, philosophy--just
to mention a few), he
would like to offer, with all due respect, to transfer
all the scientific
knowledge in his mind to mine.
"What arrogance!" Ramona had come up behind me
and had
been reading the letter over my shoulder. I disagreed
with her. In
fact, what I had concluded was that Pancho had
great faith in my
abilities.
One thing we both agreed on: this study plan could
last a lifetime.
So,
was this a proposal of sorts? I was not about to ask
Ramona,
and so I decided to approach Mami. I would have
to ask
her permission anyway to allow me to enter into a
course of study
again with a man.
Mami smiled fondly as she read the letter, shaking
her head
every now and then, as she had at the little puppy in
Banf. For
the moment, she seemed to have shed two of her three
score years,
the white in her hair glinting like highlights of the
sun rather than
the mark of the years. When she had finished, she
folded the letter
carefully along its folds and handed it back
to me. "I think you
should accept his proposal."
"Ramona says it is inappropriate," I
explained.
Mami walked across her bedroom and shut the
door. Then,
she turned to me and in a low voice said, "I
want to tell you something
that I don't want repeated outside this room.
Do you hear
me?" I nodded.
"Once long ago, another sister interfered with the
matters of
her younger sister's life. And that younger sister is still
living out
the pain of allowing that interference.
Salome, mi'ja," she took me
by the shoulders, "you are beloved by the whole country.
Your poetry
is memorized by your countrymen, young and old. But
there
is nothing, nothing, I don't care what it is,
that compares with the
IN THE NAME OF SALOM 137
love of a man. Don't give up your chance to have
that. I'll stand
by you when the storms start to blow, for there will be
criticism."
"Because he's so much younger?" I asked.
"That, and he is white and we are mixed. His
family has
money and we have none." She had been counting these
reasons,
and now she made a fist, as if to crush such
silly opposition. "Then,
of course, there is his Jewish religion ..."
I could tell even Mami was concerned about this. "But
the
family has converted," I protested. Pancho
had told me how his
Sephardic grandfather had married a
Dominican woman and
agreed to raise the children as Catholics.
"We'll never convince your aunt," Mami
trailed off. Then,
nodding at the letter in my hand, she added, "Be that as
it may,
you must accept."
"But Mami," I said, dropping all pretense
that I was talking
about the lessons. "What if he finds out he
doesn't love me?"
I was a grown woman, but the way I looked up
at her, Mami
must have thought I was her little girl again. She brushed
the hair
away and planted a kiss on my forehead. "That
is always the risk
we take. But love is worth that risk. And should
you fall, you have
a great net to catch you."
I thought she would say, "My arms," when I
asked, "What net
is that?" But my mother said, "The poems you have
written and
the ones you will write."
TOWARD THE END OF that year, the papers
reported that a Mr.
Bell from the United States had invented a way
to talk to someone
who wasn't there. This news brought on one of
Tia Ana's endless
tirades. "That's fooling with God's creation!"
"Don't worry, Ana," Mami tried to soothe
her. "It will be
many years before that telephone finds its way down
here. God's
creation might not even be here by then."
That eighteen-hundred-and-seventy-eighth year--"of
our
138 .julia Alvarez
Lord, and don't you forget it," Tia Ana
scolded--we had eight
governments and as many battles. Each toppled
government
headed for exile in Haiti. "Soon there will be more
Dominican
politicians in Haiti than here," Don
Eliseo noted. "All the better
for us," Mami said under her breath.
In the midst of all this turbulence,
Semper Vigilans managed
to collect the requisite sum of two hundred
pesos. The announcement
appeared in the papers: the decoration would take
place on
Saturday night, December 22, at seven
o'clock at the National Library
established by Friends of the Country.
I didn't know if Pancho was, in fact,
Semper Vigilans, but I
did know that he and the Friends of the Country were behind this
campaign on behalf of my getting this medal.
And so, I protested
directly to Pancho. Our country was in no
condition to be spending
money on a gold medal when we were just beginning
to recover
from a year of fighting.
We had been poring over the structure of
flowers, Pancho
slicing open the long white lilies with a small
knife on a board on
his knees. He had asked my permission
to remove his jacket for
our dissection lesson. Watching him working
in his shirtsleeves, I
was reminded of those long-ago afternoon lessons in my
father's
garden. Back then, I had thought my father the most
handsome
man in all the world. But in fact, Papi was not
handsome as much
as he was engaging, with his broad face and
infectious smile and
eyes full of naughtiness. Pancho, on the other
hand, was out-and-out
lovely to behold. Even Ramona called him
Absalom, after the
handsome lad of the Old Testament. She was full of
nicknames
for him. But Pancho never cracked a smile.
He was the opposite of
Pfipfi in that regard: he had no sense of
humor at all. But this gravity
appealed to me, for it made him seem older than
his nineteen
years.
"Salom`e, don't you see? This is
precisely what la patria needs,
to focus on excellence and nobility and
progress." Pancho gestured
with his small knife. Recently, he had begun
to talk like all
IN THE NAME OF SALOMI.. 139
positivists, as if he were delivering speeches
even in private
conversation.
"They can focus on those things without spending on such
vanity."
Pancho laid down his knife on the board. In
the last few
months of daily lessons, we had raced through
mathematics ("You
have a remarkably quick mind," Pancho kept
observing) and were
presently studying the inorganics. Next
week, Pancho had promised,
we would start in on astronomy. "Your modesty
becomes
you, Salome," Pancho said.
There was a softness to his voice, as if it were coming
from inside
the silky center of the flower he had just cut open.
I stared down at the paper on which I had been
taking notes.
I could not help but glance over at Pancho's
arm, strong and bare,
with a tangle of blue veins at the wrist. How
I yearned to touch
him! But I had been raised in a country where
national heroines
tied their skirts down as they were about to be
executed. I did not
know that it was possible for a woman to reach over and
touch a
man's arm of her own accord.
"Salome, I have a confession to make." Pancho
had lowered
his voice. "I gave my solemn promise
to scale the heights of
knowledge with you, did I not?"
"Yes," I said, reminding myself to breathe
calmly.
"I must break that promise," he said, pausing
dramatically.
Sometimes I wondered if Pancho had read one
too many romances.
"Hostos has asked me to accompany him around the
country for several months, studying schools,
seeing what can be
done."
These, of course, were goals that all of us
patriots had been
working toward, but it was upsetting to hear that I would have
to
make a personal sacrifice.
"I know you can find any number of admirers, much
more
qualified, who would consider it an honor to take
my place. What
I ask," he hesitated, taking up the dissecting
board on his knees as
140 "Julia @alvarez
if to occupy his restless hands, "is if you would do
me the honor
of waiting until I return to resume your
studies."
I looked at those dark eyes, that handsome, ardent
face, and I
could not believe the man did not see I was in
love with him. "I
will happily wait until you return,
Pancho."
He had cut open another flower and was poking at
it nervously
with his knife. He had explained how the whole
mechanism
of its propagation worked. The pistil at the center,
with its sticky
opening, waiting for the pollen from the stamen. As he
toyed
with the flower, I felt my breath coming short with
wonder and
desperation.
THE NIGHT OF THE decoration went by in a
blur. Mami, who
never went anywhere anymore, made a concession
to the occasion.
("One of your own to be named a national poet! You
must
go," our old friend Don Eliseo Grullon
urged her.) Ramona had
surprised me with a posy of gardenias she had
gathered from the
bush outside Papi's old house. I touched
her hand in gratitude,
for I could not trust myself not to start crying.
The library at the center of the capital was lit
up as if for an
inauguration. Rumors spread that several
ex-presidents were present,
but given the many governments we had had, I did
not consider
this fact so flattering. Pancho had set up a
receiving line, and
as new guests arrived, he introduced them to me.
All I could think
to say was, You are too kind, You are too
kind, You are too kind. Beside
me, Pancho was full of extravagant praise
for everyone. By
the end of the line, I felt as if I had shaken the
hand of every great
man and every lovely woman on the island.
Except one. Trini was absent. When I had a
free moment with
Mami just before the program got started, I asked
if she had seen
the Villeta family. "Why of course not,
Salome. The father died
yesterday." I felt a pang of shame at my
gladness that my rival was
not there to take Pancho's attention away from me.
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOM`E. 141
It was when the crowd stood to applaud me as the
medal on
its satin ribbon was slipped over my head that I
finally realized
that my life was changed forever. I read my short
speech of thank
you, everyone leaning forward, straining to hear me, for
my voice
kept giving out. But when Pancho read my new
poem in his full,
expressive voice, the crowd came to its feet
again, Salome! Salome! Salome! Lines from the
poem were recited back to me. I bowed my head,
acknowledging the applause, and after it had
died down, and rose again, and died down, like a
series of waves
coming to shore, a man's voice cried out, "What
a man that woman
is!" It was meant to be a compliment, I
suppose.
THE NEXT DAY, MAMA, Ramona, and I
went to pay our respects
to the Villetas.
"I am so sorry I missed your coronation,"
Trini said, after we
had sat for a while, talking about her father's loss.
I had to wonder if Trini intended to hurt me with
her mistaken
word choices and mistimed comments or if she really
was
not in command of her language. Perhaps she was just not very
smart--though I did not want to think so and add
one more example
to the theory that women were not very intelligent and education
should not be wasted on us.
"It was a decoration," I corrected her.
Ramona reached in her
reticule and gave Trini the medal to hold.
We had brought it along
to show the Villetas, whose contribution of two
pesos had been
listed in the papers.
"I would have liked to have been there," Trini said
wistfully.
"Pancho was here this morning and told me how well
the evening
went. You know, he leaves right after
Noche Buena with that odd
man Hostos."
Of course, I knew all about Pancho's
trip, but the fact that he
had come first thing in the morning to tell Trini about
our special
evening together was painful to hear. Ramona saw my
disappointment,
142 .julia @alvarez
and as Trini chatted on, she reached over and
squeezed my
hand, as I had wanted to squeeze Pancho's,
had I known I was
allowed.
THE NIGHT BEFORE HE left, Pancho
stopped by to say good-
bye.
"I will miss our lessons terribly," he
declared, trying to catch
my eye.
Remembering his visit to Trini, I did not
betray any feeling
about his departure. I spoke only of my work.
"I am almost finished
with my poem for Emiliano Tejera."
It was as if I had mentioned positivism to a
priest. Pancho's jaw tightened. "Emiliano?
You're writing him a poem now?"
Over a year ago, Columbus's bones had
been found by a
caretaker as he cleaned a vault in la
catedral. The eminent historian
Don Emiliano had asked me for a poem
to commemorate
the occasion. "I can be tardy with assignments, as you
well
know."
"You write poems for everybody," Pancho said,
pouting. "You
even wrote one for my brother."
"That's because Federico wrote me one."
Pancho reached in his waistcoast and pulled out a
folded-up
sheaf of papers. "There you go," he said with a proud
look. "I've
written you one, too."
""Epistle to Salome Urefia,"" I read
out the title. Epistle! I
thought. Why not a sonnet, a love ballad, a
lover's acrostic using
the letters of my name?
"Shall I read it to you?" Pancho offered, taking the
pages
back. I think Pancho loved the sound of his
voice as much as the
poems he was always reciting.
"What do you think?" he asked when he was done.
He himself
seemed quite pleased with it.
IN
THE
NAME
OF .salomi 143
"It's a lovely epistle, Pancho," I
assured him. And it was, rousing
and martial.
"So now, it is your turn," he proposed. "You
must write me a
poem."
I forced a smile. I was not about to commit myself.
I rtAvr ao sA" that I surprised myself when
I wrote "Quejas."
It was as if by lifting my pen, I had released the
woman inside me
and let her free on paper. But even as
I wrote, I knew such frank
passions in a woman were not permissible. In
fact, if poor Papi
had not already been dead, he would have died all over
again
upon reading my poem to Pancho.
Not that I mentioned his name. To precede that poem with a
dedication would have amounted to a proposal of
marriage on my
part.
Listen to my desiring!
Answer the wild longing in my heart!
Put out my ardent fire with your kisses!
"My goodness, Salome!" Ramona said when she
read it. Her
hand was at her throat. "Remember Don
Eloy? This is enough to
rouse every woman believed dead from the waist down.
Who is
this about, by the way?" Since she had not seen
Pancho around,
she assumed that I had broken with him after my
visit to the Villeta's
house. But there were dozens of other young men stopping
by the house with bouquets and pledges
to serve la poetisa nacional in any way.
"It's not about any one person. It's about what
we women feel
when we fall in love."
"That's all well and good, Salome. But you can't
publish this.
You're la musa de la patria, for heaven's
sake," she reminded me,
144 Julia @alvarez
waving her hand above her head. "Nobody thinks you
have a real
body."
"It's time they found out," I declared.
I REALLY HAD NO intention of publishing
"Quejas." In fact, at
night, as I lay in bed and thought of the poem hidden
under the
mattress, I felt as if a fire had been
lit beneath me and I should do
everything in my power to put it out.
One month and a second month went by and still no word
from Pancho. He had planned to be gone three
whole months,
but still I had expected to hear something from him in that
time.
I reasoned with myself that he had taken the Clyde
steamboat
east, around the the island, to the north coast--the land
trails being
too dangerous. Where was he supposed to mail a
letter? But
still, I don't care what the positivists say,
does a person in love ever
listen to reason?
What convinced me to publish that poem was not
Pancho's
silence, but a little-known event that occurred in our
neighborhood.
I do not want to mention names or go into too much
detail,
as the poor girl has suffered enough. She was
barely fifteen, a
child really, from a humble family. When her parents
discovered
her swelling belly, they threw her out on the
street. She was one of
Tia Ana's former charges, and so, not knowing what
to do, the
distraught girl appeared on our doorstep with her
tearful story.
The man in question refused to acknowledge the relation.
We
contacted our relatives in Banf, who agreed
to take her in until the
birth of the baby. The whole matter was settled
quickly and discreetly,
but the event made a great impression on me.
It seemed unjust that this young woman's life should
be ruined,
whereas the rogue man went on with his engagement to a
girl from a fine family with no seeming
consequences to be paid.
For the first time, I recalled my father's second
family and felt a
pang of resentment toward him. Why was it all right
for a man to
IN THE NAME OF SALOM 145
satisfy his passion, but for a woman to do so was as
good as signing
her death warrant?
There was another revolution to be fought if our
patria was to
be truly free.
I took up my pen and directed the poem to the
editors of El
Estudio.
THE POEM CAUSED QUITE a stir. Some
readers insisted that it
was the work of an impostor, just as years ago,
another poet had
tried to pass herself off as the real Herminia with a
silly poem
about snowflakes. For how could the noble, high-minded
Salome
Urefia write such a poem to a man? Several
ladies demanded that
if the poem were indeed mine, the national medal should
be
taken away from me. But quite a few women confided
that I had
written down exactly what they felt when they were
in love.
Soon, shock at the poem's content turned
into curiosity about
the life of the writer: who was the poem written
to? It had no dedication,
and since Salome Urefia had never been
engaged to anyone,
and the only young man constantly around her was that
youngster Pancho who had not been seen in
her vicinity lately,
then the only conclusion was that Salome Urefia
had written this
poem to a married man whose name she had to keep
secret.
So began the guessing game of who Salome's
secret lover
might be.
IN THE MIDST OF this ruckus, Pancho
returned. He was met
at the dock by his group of friends from Friends of the
Country.
No doubt they filled him in on the scandalous
poem Salome had
written. They were taking bets on who the lover
might be. Jose
Joaquin Perez was in the lead.
That very evening, Pancho appeared at our front
door, El Estudio
in hand. He was a sight: his hair wild and
windblown, his
146 Julia Alvarez
beard growing out. Coco, who by now adored
Pancho, growled at
this stranger. I don't think he had
even washed off the dust from
the road and the salt and sand from the sea. For a moment
I did
not know whether to bar the door or let him in.
But Mami knew, with that unerring sense of mothers, that
this was the moment we had been waiting for. She asked
Ramona
to please come help her finish hemming Trini
Villeta's new mourning
frock. "How is Trini?" I expected
Pancho to ask. But he seemed
not to have heard the name at all. He was looking
directly at me as
if no one else were in the room.
"Did your journey go well?" I began. I
wanted to talk trivialities:
the steamboat's rocking, Hostos's snoring, the
delicious crabs
in Puerto Plata. I had never been looked
at so nakedly by a man. It
was unsettling.
But Pancho did not want to talk about his
journey. He stared
at me, his eyes like the knife blade with which he
had dissected
those lilies, cutting through my composure.
"Salome," he finally spoke, holding up the
newspaper in his
hand, "I just need to know who you wrote this poem
for."
"Someone I love," I said simply.
"But you promised me a poem," he went on
peevishly. He
had lost weight; his face was leaner. He had an
older, more manly
look. "I can't bear thinking you would feel this way
about another
man."
"I don't," I said, looking directly at
him.
Slowly, like a liquid spilling, I saw the
realization spreading
across his face, his mouth falling open with
surprise. "This poem
is for me?" he whispered.
I took the newspaper from him and laid it on the
table. I
moved toward him with a confidence that surprised me.
Perhaps
by writing my poem, I had discovered that
I had a body. Then as
if it were the most natural thing in the world for a
woman to do
to the man she loves, I reached for his hands and
touched my lips
first to one palm and then to the other one.
FOUR
Shadows
Havana, Cuba,

SHE IS IN THE conference room, printing up
placards for a
demonstration, when Nora comes to the door.
"There's a man to
see you," she says in a careful voice as if
she suspects she is being
overheard. Over Nora's shoulder, Camila
sees the shadow of
someone waiting in the hall.
Her group of women exchange glances. "Shall we
go with
you?" several of them whisper.
"Keep working, ladies," she says, trying
to control the quaver
in her voice. Years of studying opera
and she still can't master that
simple art. "I'll be back soon," she
promises so whoever is waiting
for her will know she is expected to return. As if
such a simple
ruse would work on Batista's thugs!
Dusting off her smock, she surveys the room:
fellow Lyceum
ladies are working away in small groups,
hammering sticks, stitching
banners, handprinting slogans. They are fighting
the monster
with toy swords, bright banners that announce,
GIVE US THE
VOTE! FREE CUBA! MARTI'S
AMERICA NOW! But what
else have they to fight with? she wonders. Even her
heroine mother
could only come up with poems.
148 .julia Alvarez
Out in the hall, she is surprised to find it almost
deserted. No
guardias in their shiny black boots and corded
caps wait to hurry
her away to one of Batista's
interrogation centers. Instead, a large
mulatto with a handsome, big-featured face and a
body that,
because she has been printing placards, she
instantly thinks of as
"all in capital letters" comes forward and
introduces himself.
"Domingo," he says in a voice that could sing a
beautiful Otello, rich and full, "I'm here
tcomment-to sculpt your father."
"My father is dead," she tells him simply.
Perhaps he is a
Batista thug, after all, a rookie undercover
agent who hasn't done
his research. "He died a month ago."
"I can w-w-wait if this is an intrusion, he
offers. The white
shirt is rumpled; the string tie is undoubtedly
an attempt at formality.
"Tcomment-tell m-m-me when it would be
c-c-convenient."
A stammer--a pity with such a beautiful, throaty
voice. She
feels a rush of tenderness as she would for a
stagestruck student
who cannot answer a simple question. "Is there something
I can
help you with, Don Domingo."
"Domingo," he corrects her, "plain
Domingo." It turns out he
is a Cuban sculptor who has been hired
by some historical committee
to sculpt a bust of Don Pancho. "It is
to be a g-g-gift to
ow-w-w-er neighbor c-c-country."
"I see," she says, wondering what this is all
about. No doubt,
Max has arranged some tribute without letting
her know about it.
Perhaps he doubted that his sister would go along with
anything
involving Trujillo's dictatorship at home
or Batista's virtual dictatorship
here. At any rate, the question still stands. "And so,
what
can I help you with, Don Domingo?"
"Domingo," he says again, smiling, as if he
has caught her at
a petty error, as if they are playing a silly
board game and he has
just rolled the dice with the winning number.
Let him have his little triumph, since the next thing
he tries to
say will defeat him with a tricky diphthong or
consonant. She has
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI 149
not yet figured out what specific combination of
sounds causes
him trouble.
"I have photographs your b-br-brother sent
this-this-this--" He
has stumbled upon a word he cannot possibly say.
A helpless look
comes on his face. She provides several
suggestions, but none of
them is right.
He waves off the word and continues. As far as she
can make
out, Max has sent some of Pancho's
photographs to whatever
foreign government office has commissioned
this bust as a gift
from Cuba to the Dominican Republic. But
Domingo needs
more to accomplish the job. "I would like for you to pose
... if
p-p-possible."
This is certainly peculiar. "The bust is not of
me," she reminds
him curtly.
"Your b-br-brother wrote that you
r-r-resemble your father.
The minute I s-s-saw you, I could
s-s-see Don Pancho."
Years ago; of course, she did not like to be
told that she
looked like Pancho. She wanted to look like her
mother, the beautiful
fantasy mother made up by a London painter.
This sculptor
is at least trying to be accurate. Still, why
does he need her to sit
for this bust--he's got pictures, many
pictures. Pancho was a
public man, and he liked being photographed.
"I need to capture the living
f-f-force inside the s-s-stone."
She is taken aback by this simple description.
It's as if one of
her less-talented students had surprised her
with a highly original
answer. She rebukes herself for taking this man so
lightly.
"It would only be a s-s-session or two.
My studio is ... close.
Would you consent?" His stutter is becoming less
pronounced.
Maybe it gets worse when he is nervous, and
he has begun to relax
with her. Even so, each time he opens his mouth, she
tenses
up, holding her breath, as if that might help
him. He is a lucky
man, she thinks. I'll do anything he asks just
to spare him having
to convince me.
150 .julia Alvarez
"You may count on me," she says, turning to go.
The words
have popped out, unbidden. Her mother's first words to her
father.
How very strange.
As she joins her ladies, she realizes her
hands are perspiring.
The back of her neck is wet. Perhaps the effort
of helping
the sculptor talk has worn her out. Her mind
wanders while she
works. She finds herself picturing the man she has
just met, his
powerful presence, itself like a form carved roughly out of
stone.
The fantasy is so vivid that when she looks
down at her placard,
she realizes she has written his name DOMINGO
in large, black
capital letters.
IT IS A NUISANCE to be adding yet another
compromiso to her
tight schedule. They have just received notice that a
delegation of
American journalists will be arriving at the end
of the month. A
committee must be organized to welcome them and
apprise them
of the situation. Batista is in full
control of the army and clamping
down on civil liberties. This must be brought
to President
Roosevelt's attention. In his fireside
chats, the calm, confident president
has promised to help the downtrodden and poor in
his own
country. Perhaps he will extend the same consideration
to his
neighbors to the south.
There are also visits to schedule with different party
leaders to
put in that last push so that the women's vote comes
through. The
students want their university reopened, and a
group of Lyceum
ladies will be hosting an afternoon garden party for
Mendieta and
Batista, hoping that the puppet president and his
puppeteer can
be swayed over meringues and Mary Pickfords.
And in the midst of all this, she has agreed to go
sit for two
hours at a time so this sculptor can capture the
likeness of her father.
Even in death, her father makes so many demands on
her!
Marion used to accuse her of purposely piling
on responsibilities
like a child adding one more card to her castle of cards
to see
IN THE NAME OF SALOMI 151
if it will hold. "How strong do you have to be?"
she'd asked. At
least as strong as Mami, Camila would think. But
unlike her
mother's broad shoulders, which carried the future of
her nation,
Camila's are mostly used to give piggyback
rides. It is she who has
been tending to the old people, soothing ruffled tempers,
paying
the bills. It is she who is making sure her
half brothers get some
kind of education. There has never been much time for
work that
interests her.
Even before her father's death, when the family was still
living
in Santiago, it was her teacher's
salary that provided the backbone
of the family finances. Marion had left Cuba
"for good," frustrated
with Camila's devotion to her family and
homesick for her
own country. It had been a painful separation, but
slowly, Camila
had come to understand that Marion's own demanding
personality
had occupied whatever was left over of her time and
energy.
With Marion's departure, Camila began her
trips to Havana.
A week at a time, whenever there were vacations,
recesses, or the
increasing school shutdowns, she would take off.
She told Pancho
and the old tias that she wanted to see her half
brothers and to
catch up on some theater and on her beloved opera.
But mostly
she just wanted to get away and be a part of a larger
world.
She always stayed at the university barrio with her
"baby"
brother Rodolfo, who was still as devoted to his
older sister as he
had been as a child. She was not surprised to discover
that he was
a popular student leader, charming as he was and
dashingly handsome.
(un martillo, the girls called him--a
hammer, because he
could knock them out "with the blow of one smile.")
It was Rodolfo who had gotten her involved in
his rallies and
gatherings, where she met other women, many of them
professionals
and unmarried like her. Sometimes she had to smile at
herself. Here she was--enslaved to her family's
smallest demands
and fighting for these larger freedoms. But it sort
of made sense.
Hadn't it always been easier for her to live
abstractly rather than
in the flesh?
152 "Julia @alvarez
Camila and her new friends decided to found their own
group. To avoid harassment, they came up with the
idea of giving
themselves a name that would make them sound like one of the
prestigious social clubs of Havana.
Lyceum Lawn and Tennis Club
read the gold-lettered sign above the door of the stucco
house
they rented as their center. In the backyard, a
single seedy tennis
court gave some truth to the lie that theirs was really
a ladies'
sporting club.
Soon, Camila had a secret life going on
in the capital. She
lived in fear of her picture getting in the
papers, LYCEUM
LADIES STORM THE PRESIDENTIAL
PALACE DEMANDING
VOTE FOR WOMEN. (she could imagine the
headlines
and had often composed whole articles in her head as
she
marched: "Don Pancho Henriquez, the
peace-loving former president
of the Dominican Republic, who presently
resides as our
guest in Santiago de Cuba,
expresses deepest regrets at the behavior
of his rebel daughter.")
Pancho was always threatening to die if his children
disobeyed
his wishes. It was to keep her secret from her
ailing father
that she began to wear her trademark hat at
protests, a black
cloche with a veil she could let down to muffle her
face in photos.
Of course, all the Lyceum ladies wore
hats and gloves in keeping
with their Lyceum policy that they look the part of
se@noras and
senoritas even as they stormed the palacio or the
policia.
And so, for her first session with Domingo, she
appears at his
door dressed up in her protest hat and
gloves and wearing the
black suit she has been alternating with her
other dark clothes this
last month. She is surprised at her own
boldness. She knows nothing
about him. Plain Domingo, he had said,
smiling--not triumphantly,
no, she had got that wrong--smiling irreverently,
as
if he were refusing to cover some private part of
himself by not
availing himself of the polite title of senor when
she addressed
him.
The truth is, it makes no sense that Domingo
should ask her
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI * 153
to pose, and even less sense for her to agree.
Handsome Rodolfo
is the spitting image of their young father. All one
has to do is
look at the photograph Pancho had taken of
himself his first year
in Paris. Of course, Max might not have told
the bust committee
about Rodolfo, favoring as he always does his own
"first family," as
he calls them.
But Camila could have told Domingo from the start, the
one
you want is my half brother. Instead she has
accepted this invitation
because, plain and simple she wants to. She has
not felt this
intrigued by a man since Scott Andrews over
a decade ago, and
that attraction was so tangled up with the politics of
her father's
situation that she cannot say what she actually felt
for the man
himself. But these feelings are as clear and shocking as
sunlight at
high noon, all shadowy ambiguities
banished. In fact, recently,
when her thoughts stray at meetings and marches, she
is thinking
about Domingo, but not just the innocent replay she
entertained
after their first meeting, but vividly sensual thoughts
that make
the color rise in her face and her hands sweat
inside her gloves.
"You have come dressed for a funeral," he notes as
he lets her
in the door. The sentence slips out in such an
easy, flowing way
she doubts he has a stammer after all.
"I am still in mourning clothes," she reminds him,
trying not
to sound annoyed. Not that she believes in the
morbid practice,
but she has complied to assuage her aunts.
"Anyhow, it is my face
you are after for a bust, is it not?"
She has put him on the spot, and the stammer
starts up.
"y-y-yes, of c-c-course. Please
c-c-come and s-s-sit down." He
helps her off with her suit jacket, and then, as
if she were no more
than one of his piles of clay, he positions her
in a chair, taking her
face in his large hands and tilting it here and there as
if to make a
resemblance come to the surface.
Finally, he gives up. Something is not working.
He sits down
on a stool and folds his arms across his broad
chest, studying her.
"Your f-f-father will not appear."
154 .julia Alvarez
She is about to lose patience with him. "Of course
not, my father
is dead."
"No, he is not," Domingo says, shaking his
big head.
THE AFTERNOON HER FATHER died, she was teaching a
geography
class across the street. With the frequent school
closings, she
was having to give private lessons to make ends
meet. She had just
taken out the globe to show little Ricardo
Repilado where her
brothers and half brothers were all now living--
Pedro in Buenos
Aires; Rodolfo and Eduardo in Havana
("I know where that is!");
Cottl studying in France (where Pancho's other
family lives--
three petites filles pen notes to grand-pere
Papancho with baisers
for their tante Camille); Fran and Max in
Santo Domingo (where
her family is from).
"Then why do you live here?" the bright boy was asking
her.
She was wondering how to explain (briefly) that they
hid
originally come to Santiago in exile; that now and
then, her father
had returned to serve in one new government or
another, leaving
his family safely here, once even serving as
president; that during
the U.s. occupation the whole family had more or
less settled in
Cuba; that they had stayed on because a
dictatorship had sprung
up back home--although a dictatorship soon
sprung up here as
well! Camila had finally just said, "That is a
good question, Ricardo,
which we will take up at another time," when she saw
her
old nanny Regina at the door.
"Your father has a pain." Regina was
breathless, clutching her
side as if she had her own pain. Regina was
too old and fat to be
put into such a state of alarm. Camila felt a
flash of annoyance at
Pancho's histrionics. Pedro once told
her that he could not open a
letter from their father without experiencing tremors in his
hands.
No doubt, this was just another one of Pancho's
episodes. Perhaps
an argument with Mon had brought it on. "Tell
Pancho, I'll be
over when I'm done," she said, dismissing the old
woman.
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI * 155
But something about the docile Regina's refusal
to leave, her
stance by the door, casting a long shadow across the
nursery floor,
made Camila go out to the hall to listen
to the full report. "Your
father was standing on his chair to get down one of his
books, and
he fell ... We found him on the floor,
Dona Ramona and I ..."
Camila was out of the house and at the front gate
before she
realized she was carrying the globe in her hands.
Marion used to
say that nothing could make Camila hurry. But
she knew if Pancho
had fallen off a chair at seventy-six years
old, she had better
rush to the rescue.
In fact, she had a scolding already prepared
once he recovered.
How many times had she begged him to please not
climb on
chairs to get books down? He could ask
Regina or ask her for
whatever he wanted. But Pancho complained that she
was always
in Havana or giving classes or lectures,
and Regina had gotten too
old herself to be getting up on a ladder.
Besides, Regina's eyes were
so bad that she always brought down the wrong book.
One day recently,
he found himself reading Dante when what he had
wanted
was some lighthearted Cervantes.
Their Santiago house was a rental, a pale
yellow adobe with
four white columns that today reminded her of nothing
else but
a mausoleum. She shuddered as she entered the
front parlor that
served as her father's consultorio and saw one of the
pet monkeys
sulking in a corner. The room did not give the
impression of a
doctor's office. Instead of diagrams of
bones or muscles in the
human body, the walls were lined with books.
Atop the bust of
Cervantes rested Columbus's ruffled
collar. A few weeks ago, the
old pet bear had died. Pancho had been
inconsolable. He had always
loved animals.
She found him sitting in his soft chair, Mon and
Pimpa beside
him, each reporting to the other what might be the
matter
with their brother-in-law. Soon, Camila thought,
they will be arguing
about it.
Pancho was deathly pale. "Camila," he said
gratefully when he
156 Julia @alvarez
saw her enter the room, shifting his hand on the
armrest. He did
not seem to have the strength to lift it in greeting.
She knew the instant she saw him that this was no
attack of
imaginary illness on his part. Some large,
incontrovertible thing
had entered his body, and it was not going to leave without
him.
She knelt down in front of his chair and looked
up at him. "This
is my last illness," he said, uncertainly, as
if he wanted her to talk
him out of it.
"Nonsense, Pancho," Ramona
scolded. "I'm eleven years older
than you, and look at me." Ramona was hefty,
her legs so large
that, Rodolfo once joked, seeing her standing at
the entrance, it
looked like the house had two extra columns.
"Have you called the doctor?" Camila asked her
aunts. Dr.
Latorre lived two blocks away.
Ramona nodded. "He is on his way." And as
if the words had
the power to summon him, Dr. Latorre entered the
room. One
look at his patient, and the younger man's cheerful
look vanished.
He seemed to see what Camila had seen in her
father's face.
"What happened, Don Pancho?" Dr.
Latorre asked, hurriedly
unbuttoning the old man's collar. Before
Pancho could answer,
Dr. Latorre silenced him with a dip of his
head, so he could listen
closely to the stethoscope's report.
It turned out that Pancho had indeed
climbed a chair in
search of a book, but the fall had come when he was
walking back
to his chair to read it. He was about to sit down when
he felt as if
someone had struck him in the chest. "With every intention
of
knocking me over," her father said peevishly as if
reporting some
bully's misbehavior.
Dr. Latorre had filled a syringe from a
small vial. After the
injection of morphine, Pancho seemed to relax
and some color
returned to his face. Pimpa and Mon left
the room to make the
phone calls Pancho insisted they make to his
sons in Havana
with the news. For a few minutes, the doctor and
patient discussed
his symptoms. Suddenly, Pancho put his hand
to his
IN THE NAME OF SALOM 157
heart with a look of surprise on his face, as
if that bully had
belted him again!
Dr. Latorre rushed forward, listening again for a
heartbeat. He
leaned closer and closer as if he were hearing a
sound withdrawing
further and further from him. Finally, he took his
stethoscope away
from his ears and looked down at Camila. "I'm
sorry," he said simply,
as if he could not bring himself to tell her that her father
was dead.
She did not react at all. She felt numb,
as if she herself had
been dealt a great blow and was unsure whether she
would be able
to get up. She was still kneeling when Dr.
Latorre left the room.
She heard her aunts sobbing as they redialed the
numbers they
had just dialed to reinform their nephews in
Havana. She looked
up at Pancho, thinking how odd it was that she had
lost her father
and felt nothing. He seemed alive, the eyes
half opened, the lips
still moist with saliva, the white hair on his head
blowing a little
from a breeze coming through the window. "Papancho?"
she
whispered, shaking his arm to wake him.
She looked around the room as if for help, and that
was when
she saw the book that her father had retrieved from the
shelf before
feeling ill. It was a copy of her mother's
poems, fallen face
down, so that several pages were folded over, making
it impossible
to tell which of her mother's poems her father had sought
on
his last afternoon in this world.
She picked up the book and straightened the
pages. Before
putting it back up on the shelf, she turned to the
last poem. She
could still make out the erased pencil marks where she
had once
adjusted her mother's words. Then she turned to the
poem her
mother had written when her own father died,
"Padre mio!" and
her numbness broke, and her eyes filled with
tears.
BY THEIR THIRD SESSION, Domingo reports
that he has begun
work on the bust. He has explained how he
sculpts from sketches,
not from the live model. "If someone is in the
room, I cannot gg
give myself to the s-s-stone? He makes
sculpting sound like some
private act of lovemaking.
"But I will n-n-need s-s-some more sessions with
you," he explains.
It has taken a while for her father's face to come
through.
"I am very busy with my own work right now," she
hesitates. Work is how she describes her
Lyceum activities to her old aunts when they
ask where she is going as she leaves the house. After
the
funeral, she gave up the rental in Santiago
and moved the whole
household with her to Havana, leaving the animals
behind. Two
monkeys, a parrot, a pony, and a dozen
ducks were gifts to the local
park. Little Ricardo Repilado talked his mother
into letting
him keep Coco's great-great-great-granddaughter.
The move has not been easy on the old aunts.
They are still
dazed by the change. They cling to her at the door.
They have been
listening to the radio. There are raids and roundups
and
all kinds of horrible things going on out there.
Can't she stay?
Camila thinks of them as family sirens, luring
her back to the greater
danger, a closed-down life at home.
"I'll be fine," she promises.
"Just a f-f-few more sittings, please! I
w-w-would be eternally
grateful," Domingo pleads. The flowery
phrase coming from the
usually plainspoken man makes her laugh. He
joins in, his head
thrown back, his mouth opened, the dark, moist
muscle of his
tongue showing. He is straddling a stool,
sketching her, now from
this angle, now from another, his hand moving over the
white
paper as if it had a life of its own.
She can't help noticing his glances straying from her
face. Her
own fantasies have not abated with increased contact:
Sometimes
after a session she is not sure if he has touched
her or if she has
just imagined it. Often she feels a light-headed,
nauseated feeling
she attributes to the stuffy air in the hot
studio.
She has told him about her Lyceum work: the
campaign for
the vote, the literacy classes, the visits
to politicians. He watches
her closely, his hand recording minute changes
in her expression,
as if he is not really listening. It is annoying.
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOM 159
"And now, the American writers are coming," she
adds. The
Lyceum ladies are joining other civil
liberties groups that will
meet the ship at the dock in a show of
solidarity.
"Let me know how I c-c-can help," he
offers. He can easily
make any number of placards in his studio.
"I w-w-would like to
join you."
It takes her a moment to understand that he is
actually offering
to take part in the demonstration itself, not just the
preparation
sessions. "It will be dangerous," she explains.
"Batista has
already announced he'll round up anyone who shows
up. You
could lose your commission."
He waves away the threat as if it were an
insignificance. Just
over his shoulder, on its high stool, she
can see the bulge of her
father's bust under its dust cloth. He has told
her that he works on it
at night after she is gone. He will not show it to her
until he is done.
"And you could l-l-lose the university
p-p-post you applied
for," he points out.
"There is no job. There is no university."
It has been closed
down again. Besides, her Lyceum work is her work
right now. He,
on the other hand, seems devoted only to his
art. Why risk a good
commission for a cause he has only now heard
about?
He looks at her so pointedly that she is the one
to break the
glance. "There is more to m-m-my life this-this-than
art, Camila."
She has asked him to call her Camila. If
she is to call him
plain Domingo, certainly he can't be addressing
her as Senorita
Henriquez Urefia. She has
noticed with a little thrill that he
never stumbles over her name. Camila, he ,says
it clearly each
time, like cracking open a shell without ever bruising
the enclosed
almond.
She tries to appear calm, to not show her agitation
on her
face. But she feels as if she were running through a
garden, tearing
off leaves in her excitement.
160 Julia Alvarez
SHE HAS BEEN COMING every day now for two
weeks. Sometimes
on very hot days, they sit in the front room with the
windows
open, just talking. Other times, they stray into the
studio,
exchanging stories, as they cut and hammer
placards onto boards
or print slogans in the English she learned in
Minnesota years ago.
Mostly, she talks about her mother. She has
told him Salome's
story, and he joins in, as if he
knew the national poet, who at
thirty married a young white man from a prominent
family. Back
and forth they go, conversing and weaving the imagined
fabric of
Salome's life from what Camila already knows and
what he is discovering
by talking openly with him about her mother.
"I can see more of her in your f-f-face now,"
he tells her. She
has shown him the only photo of Salome, the
sad eyes, the dark
oval of the face, the full-lipped mouth, and
broad nose that the
London artist filed down to aquiline, the
discernible kink at the
hairline in her tightly gathered hair.
It is so good to be able to talk about these things!
Even her
outspoken friend Marion has always avoided the
subject of
Camila's race. As if to mention it were to bring
up the unmentionable.
"I don't care what you are," Marion has
often Said to
her. But she wants Marion to care about who she
is. She wants to
be apprehended fully, rather than be seen only through
the narrow
lens of a few adjectives the other person finds
acceptable.
And having been fully apprehended, she wants
to be loved. Perhaps
it is too much to ask of anyone? Mon once
told her only
God and mothers (and, she added, "some aunts") were
capable of
doing this.
Marion! Since Pancho's death, her old friend
has been writing
regularly, sweet, anecdotal letters of
sympathy and news from the
Dakotas. But lately, condolence has been
turning to counsel. "You
must come and stay here with me," she has written.
"Nothing is
holding you back now."
Camila feels annoyed at Marion's easy
disposal of her life.
What do I do with my aunts? What do
I do with my Lyceum
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOM was 161
work? What do I do with my teaching? All these
challenges push
forward and then the one she finds the hardest to voice:
What do
I do about Domingo? Isn't he proof that her
feelings for Marion
were an anomaly? She feels a sense of
release thinking that this
might be so. Life will be so much easier. There will
be the chance
of children, a family, all the things that come to the
happy heroines
of love stories.
"There is always a r-r-ich conversation
g-g-going on in there,"
Domingo notes, touching the top of her head with the
tip of his
large fingers. He is a big man so that he
seems taller than she, but
in fact they are of a height. When she looks at
him, there is no escaping
his dark, penetrating eyes.
"Can't I hear a l-l-little of what is
b-b-being said?"
"Only if you let me see what you have so far."
He shakes his head. "I c-c-can't. Your
h-h-harsh judgment
would k-k-kill it."
"I wouldn't be looking at it as a judge," she
argues. But in fact,
she understands how he feels. Several times in the
last few weeks,
upon leaving these sessions, she has felt the urge
to write verses.
She would be mortified if her aunts or anyone
else should read
these confessions. Roots plunging in the earth that
turn into
Domingo reaching for her. Oh dear! How could her
mother ever
allow her private poems to be published, she
wonders. In fact, in
the posthumous edition of her mother's work, Pedro
omitted
many of these "intimate verses." But these are
precisely the poems
Camila, has been poring over lately,
relieved to know that her
mother once felt what she is now feeling. Put
out my ardent fire
with your kisses! Answer the wild longing in my
heart!
Outside, the taxi has returned to pick her
up at the end of the
afternoon. As she comes out the front door with
Domingo, a man
in a dark fedora and big-shouldered suit who has
been talking to
the driver returns to a car in which two other men
wait. Was the
driver merely asking for directions, or are they
being watched? But
she hasn't done anything yet, she feels like
telling them, either
162 .julia @alvarez
with her ladies at the dock or with Domingo in the
large bed where
he sleeps under a mosquito net like a sultan
under his silken tent.
(he has given her a tour of the house, lingering in
the back bedroom,
having her try out the springs of the bed he made
himself.)
As they drive off, she has a sudden impulse
to turn and look
behind her. The idling car is pulling away from the
curb. But this
is not the danger that catches her eye. On the
sidewalk, Domingo
stands, waving before he turns back to the house.
She feels a little
breathless to think that she is leaving behind a part of herself
in
that most precarious of all places, somebody
else's heart.
THE DAY BEFORE THE dockside demonstration,
she comes
home from a session with Domingo to find an
embassy car parked
in front of their new rental house. In the
parlor, in Pancho's old
chair, his feet up on the coffee table, sits
her brother Max. He is
on his way from the Dominican
Republic to London, having just
been named ambassador to Britain
by Trujillo. She has not seen
him since before their father's death--Max had been on
assignment
in Argentina when it happened--and the memory of this
sad event, which they have not yet shared, makes them
both linger
in an embrace.
"Let me look at you," Max says, holding
her at arm's length.
"You're going to break every heart in Havana,
isn't she, Mon?" The
old woman scowls, not sure she is pleased
to hear that her niece is
capable of such things. Max has grown
extravagant in his compliments,
no doubt a valuable skill in a regime staffed
by sycophants.
"The truth is, Camilita, you are looking
lovely. Maybe a little too
thin."
"Too, too thin;" the aunts take up the
litany. Camila flashes
him a look which means, Don't get them
started, please.
"Let's have a talk out on the patio," he
suggests after they visit
for a while with Mon and Pimpa. The two old
women are thrown
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI 163
into a flurry of activity. The patio must be
swept off and two
chairs dusted. Poor Regina is breathless from
trying to follow the
sometimes contradictory orders to do this or that
immediately.
"What brings you here?" Camila asks when they
are finally
alone. Max is too busy a man to be
dropping by for a casual visit
on his way to London. He looks tired.
Camila has heard from
Pib@in, who saw a lot of Max in
Argentina, that Max is thinking of
quitting the regime. There are too many
things over which he cannot
see eye to eye with Trujillo: the lack of
civil liberties, the trouble
brewing with Haiti, the return of rote learning
to the public
schools. "Is something worrying you, Max?"
"You have met with Domingo?" he asks. "The
sculptor doing
the bust," he adds, as if she needs to be
reminded. She wonders if
this might be it--her brother has heard reports
that she is seeing
too much of this bohemian fellow. "It's really
quite an honor for
the Cuban people to donate a bust of Father to our
hall of presidents.
I hope you have been helpful."
"I think he would not complain," she says in her
wry manner.
Her brother looks at her a moment as if
to make sure she is not
making fun of him. She and Pedro are said to have
inherited their
mother's dry humor, which often baffles their
garrulous, expansive
brother, who prefers overstatement. He is going
to have a hard
time in England.
"And so, Camilita, you can see that it would not do for
you to
be impolite to hosts who have been so kind to our
family."
"Some things are more important than politeness."
She is annoyed
at how Max is trying to control her with
disdiminutives that
reduce her to the status of a child. "Besides I was
never given the
opportunity to accept or decline this honor."
She says the word
honor as if it has a bad taste. In fact,
she is sick of the honors one
regime or another keeps piling on the
family. "I believe in what I
am doing."
"Don't think I don't know who is in back of
all this," Max
164 "Julia @alvarez
says, the color rising on his face. "If
Rodolfo and Eduardo want to
get themselves killed--"
"It's not them," Camila defends her brothers.
"I'm a grown
woman, Max." But of course, he is not
convinced. How else to explain
why his shy, withdrawn sister who has always stayed out
of
everyone's way would suddenly become so brazen, so
political.
"I'm taking you with me," he announces.
"I've already been
talking to Mon and Pimpa about moving. They're
all for it."
She stands up, indignant that he should be arranging
her life
with her old aunts behind her back. The quick
movement sends
the blood spiraling to her head, and for a moment she
feels she
might faint on the spot. "You can take them if
they want to go,
but I am not going with you. I have my own life
here." Her voice
has begun to quaver. She is not in the habit of
making firm statements
to her family.
"This isn't even your country, Camila."
She has applied for her Cuban citizenship--
something she
has not told Max, for fear he would oppose it.
If she is to struggle
for freedom here, she might as well join her
fate to this country.
And as Marti once said to their uncle Federico,
why speak of
Cuba and Santo Domingo, when even the underwater
cordillera
that runs from island to island knows they belong together.
"I can have you extradited."
She looks at him. The eyes are full of that
crazed conviction
she remembers in her father's eyes those years she
trailed him
to Washington. She wonders how far Max would go
in his loyalty
to Trujillo. He seems a stranger, capable
of anything. "You can do
any number of things to me, I know."
The pained look on his face surprises her:
he is her brother
again, the big talker in the family, the young
musician who once
played piano in a bar in New York City,
the gallant who married
her best girlfriend, Guarina, the boy who once
put a lizard in her
underclothes drawer.
IN THE NAME OF SALOMI 165
"I don't want you to go on this march tomorrow," he
says simply. "I'm asking you as a favor to me
if nothing else--"
"No," she interrupts him. This appeal has
almost always had
its desired effect on her: Do this for me.
"No, Max," she tells him.
She does not say what is also in her thoughts:
I've given all of you
all of me for too long.
And then, because she cannot bear to see his perplexed,
unhappy
look, she goes to her room and gathers up her
things. She
will spend the night at Rodolfo's. She does
not put it beyond Max
to devise some way to stop her--perhaps even
having Mon stage
a sudden attack of nerves that would require
Camila's assistance.
How little faith she has left in him! This is the
way brothers and
sisters get divorced, she suddenly thinks.
As she goes out the front door, she feels a
pang of guilt to be
deserting her aunts, and quickly she scribbles a
note explaining
where she is going. But once outside, she finds
herself walking
in the opposite direction of where she would catch a
taxi to
Rodolfo's apartment. Tonight, she needs the comfort a
brother
can't give. When a taxi picks her up, it is
Domingo's address that
she gives.
SHE DOESN'T KNOW WHAT to say when he
opens the door, surprise
followed by pleasure dawning in his eyes. She
forgets that
these moments between a man and a woman have their own
encoded
meanings, and he will assume he knows what she
wants,
showing up at his doorstep at eight o'clock in the
evening.
But she does not know what she wants, not as he
takes off her
suit jacket for the second time today, or fixes
her a mojito such as
she has never had before. He is right. She rarely
drinks--afraid, in
fact, that she might like such numbing escapes too
much. She is
watching herself as she tells him about her meeting with
her
brother Max, as he brushes back the hair
fallen from her chignon,
166 Julia @alvarez
and then without warning, pulls the hairpin that
releases the dark,
curly mass down her back.
His mouth closes on hers, large and wet and
frighteningly
alive. She stiffens and pushes him away.
"W-w-what?" He is looking straight at
her. He has always
been able to read the state of her soul from the
muscles on her
face, a necessary skill for a sculptor he has
told her. But she does
not want him to see the cloud of doubt that is
descending upon
her. She buries her face in his shoulder and
lets him stand her up,
touching the whole length of her body. She is
revolted by his big
hands, his hardness pressing against her thigh. The word
become
flesh is not always an appealing creature.
"Are you sure you w-w-want this?" he is
whispering in her ear.
It could be Max asking her about her march tomorrow.
"Yes," she says as he begins unbuttoning the
back buttons of
her blouse, slipping his hands underneath, "but not
here." Over
his shoulder she can see the car from this afternoon parked again
at the curb, the brief flicker of a cigarette
being tossed by the
driver on the lawn. Cuba is closing down.
Batista's boys have
taken over. It is madness to think that her
Lyceum ladies can
march down to the docks and change anything, madness
to be
here with this man when every time he touches her she
cringes.
But she has already broken free from the old life
and there is no
going back to it. In the studio they walk through on
their way to
the back room, she catches a glimpse of the
bust he has left
uncovered. Her own face stares back at her,
fierce and almost
finished.
CINCO
Sombras
Santo Domingo, 1880-1886
IN THE SPACE OF A few years, my life
got so full, I couldn't put my
arms around it!
If I were to write down all the things that made it
full, the list
would be as long as the index in the back of my
poetry book. Yes,
that was one of the things I finished that year I got
married: a poetry
book. In fact, I didn't really finish it.
Up to the last moment,
I was still working on my long poem,
"Anacaona."
But Pancho insisted my book had to come out. The
country
was enjoying peace again, and my patriotic poems
would inspire
my readers. Besides, Friends of the Country had already
made the
announcement of its publication in May.
"But we need to get settled first, Pancho," I
argued. I was sitting
at my small desk, among bundles of our
things ready for our
move in a few days. Given Ramona's
sullenness and Tia Ana's continuing
disapproval, we didn't feel at ease at
Mami's, and so we
had rented a small house a few streets
away.
"Poetry comes first!" Pancho pronounced. He
was working
on our bed, which was the bed I had shared with
Ramona, who
o. Julia @alvarez
was now sharing a room with Tia Ana. Needless
to say, this rearrangement
did not help matters.
While I sat at the desk, working on the long
poem, Pancho
was busy editing the packet of my poems for the
Friends of the
Country edition. "Salome, are you really sure
you want to say
brilliant palms? How about fecund palms?
It goes better with the
meter, don't you think: "And martyrdom beneath the
fecund
palms"?"
My young husband, who had once worshiped at the
feet of
my muse, was now polishing her rough edges.
"No," I said firmly.
"It does not sound better."
Pancho looked up, disapproving of my tone.
Since our marriage,
my young husband had grown more
self-assured. "That's
because you've heard it so many times that you can't hear it
anymore.
Trust me, Salome, I have your future in
mind."
"My future" was that magical phrase marched out
whenever
he wanted his way. Pancho had vision, and he
could see where I
was going. Didn't I see that? And if I
didn't see that, then I was
proving his point, that I wasn't seeing well at
all, and I should trust
him to show me where I was going.
When he spoke like this, I would get so tangled
up in what he
was saying, I couldn't think straight. Finally, I
just wanted to free
myself of his web of words and I'd let go my end.
"Go ahead,
then," I'd say.
But this is the mystery of love, the more you empty your
cup,
the more it fills up. Besides, he was right. I
wasn't seeing where I
was going, for my gaze had fallen on the future
right before my
eyes. I am speaking of the man I met shortly
after my marriage.
I HAD HEARD PANCHO and the Friends of the
Country talk
about Hostos until I was weary with the man even
before I met
him. "The apostle says this, the apostle says
that."
"Apostle?" Tia Ana asked crossly. She
had been going through
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI 171
her stack of tablets, correcting the sums of her
young charges.
Pancho had been explaining to us how the apostle
wanted students
to think for themselves instead of relying on memorization.
"The Bible mentions twelve apostles. I
wasn't aware that there was
a thirteenth one." Tia Ana was so
religious that at three o'clock
every day, the hour at which Christ was supposed to have
expired,
she made the sign of the cross in order to grieve
his loss. "Besides,"
Tia Ana added. "I'm sure if God had a
thirteenth apostle, he
would not be Puerto Rican."
"Hostos is our intellectual apostle,
Dona Ana," Pancho explained.
"We don't mean the title religiously--"
"Precisely, you Jews don't mean anything
religiously."
"We're not Jews," Pancho said. The patience
in his voice was
so obvious, like a too-bright sash on a mourning
dress. Tia Ana
would not be convinced that the Henriquez were now as
Christian
as she was. "We are positivists. We
believe God created us
with reason, and education is our way to develop
it."
"Religion is the way to develop it. I've
been teaching for fifty
years, young man. I was teaching long before you were even
born.
I taught Salome there everything she knows."
This wasn't exactly true, but I let it go.
"With all due respect," Pancho began,
"religion has its place
in our lives, but so does reason." Pancho could
argue until the next
day in order to win his point. Tia Ana was the
same way. Many
times, I'd excuse myself, thinking Pancho would
follow suit, and
I'd lie in bed or, more likely, sit at my
desk where I'd push myself
to finish up a few more lines of the long epic I was
writing on our
tragic Indian princess. And I'd hear them
out in the parlor, their
voices rising.
And so the first time I myself spoke with Hostos after
a meeting
of the Friends of the Country I said to him, "You have been
the cause of many an argument in my house."
He bowed his handsome head and smiled sadly. "I
seem to
cause trouble wherever I go." I had heard he
had been run out of
172 Julia @alvarez
Puerto Rico, Peru, Spain, Venezuela--
for promulgating his radical
ideas. But, of course, that had been before he
turned from political
revolution to educational reform. I knew the whole
story,
backward and forward, as if it were my own.
"You, on the other hand, have stirred many of us to higher
goals with your poems," Hostos went on.
Oh no, I thought, here we go. I was weary of the
moral
throne everyone wanted me to sit on. After I had
scandalized half
the city with my poem "Quejas," I had come
to understand the
danger of being crowned queen of people's hearts. I
wanted to be
queen in only one heart, Pancho's, but I'm
afraid he was not satisfied
with operating in such a small domain. "I have
merely written
down what we all know to be true," I
finally said.
"Exactly," Hostos agreed. He had a
long, bony face with a
broad forehead topped by a head of boyish black
curls threaded
with silver. He seemed both ancient and young.
Pancho had told
me that Hostos had just celebrated two score and
one. "That is
precisely our struggle. To make rational the
only living being who
is gifted with reason."
I had heard people say amusing things, clever things,
romantic
things, but never before had anyone spoken so simply
and with
such moral authority that inside myself I felt the
rightness and
goodness of what he was saying. I must have looked
stunned.
"You seem surprised that I should say so?" His
eyes were light
gray, deep set, and half-lidded. They were the
saddest eyes in the
world, contemplative and melancholy.
"Not at all, Apostle," I said before I could
think that my aunt
would boil me in her sancocho if she heard me
so address a living
being, no less a Puerto Rican.
AND SO I, TOO, began to listen closely
to what Hostos had to
say. I was in moral love--does that make
sense? A moral love
that took over my senses and lightly touched my
whole body
IN *THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI
with an exquisite excitement whenever the apostle
was in the
room!
Soon after we moved to our home, he came
by daily. Pancho
had opened a small school in our parlor with his
friend Jose Pantaleon. They were preparing young
boys to enter the Normal School that Hostos had
set up for older boys. The new president,
none other than our old friend Archbishop
Merifio, was especially
committed to education.
And so mornings, from eight to twelve, or afternoons,
from
two to five, Hostos would drop in to give the
boys lessons on some subject Pancho and
Jose didn't know enough about. El maestro, as he was
also called, would ask questions, and using everyday
objects
--the handle of a grinder, the spring on a top, the
gyrating fall of
a blossom from my jar of jacarandas--he would
slowly lead them
(though they seemed to be leading themselves) forward to some
moment of understanding that would make their little mouths
drop and their eyes blink with the light of reason, as
I suppose
Hostos would have described it. Pancho and Jose
looked on. Passing
by the doorway in the middle of peeling plantains
for the
midday meal, I would stop to watch, filled with
wonder at the
kind genius of the man.
And each time, I'd be struck by a thought,
which I tried to arrest
mid-motion so it would not spin out of control: Here was
a
true companion for my soul!
But another thought soon followed. I had met
Hostos's
lovely, young bride Belinda. Even if we had
not pledged ourselves
to others, I was not beautiful enough to attract a man
like Hostos.
I was like the branch of purple jacarandas that
Hostos shook from
his hand while the boys sketched the path of the
downward spiraling
blossoms.
I served as an example. I stirred my
readers to noble actions.
I would sigh, wipe my hands on my apron, and
go back to
peeling my plantains.
174 Julia @alvarez
NOT THAT I GAVE any of this positivist
consideration. In fact,
if anything, what I felt was a deepening passion
for Pancho. I
marveled at his youthful body: his strong, pale
arms; his thick hair
full of cowlicks. He was tender and eager, which
put me at my
ease in our marriage bed. But it was his soul I
missed in our encounters.
He was so preoccupied with all his projects.
I said my life was full, but Pancho's life
was bursting at the
seams. He was involved in half a dozen things:
studying law at
night at the Instituto Profesional that Hostos
had opened, running
his own newspaper El Maestro, presiding over
the Friends of
the Country, directing the school in our living
room, editing my
book of poems. On top of all this, when
Merifio was inaugurated,
he asked Pancho to be his personal secretary.
This meant a lot of
travel, for as President Merifio explained,
Pancho was to serve as
his eyes around the country.
I cried when Pancho told me about this
great honor conferred
on him. Honor! I was beginning to hate the word.
I remembered
those three, long months before our engagement when he
had
been on the road, how terribly I had missed
him. Back then, I was
living with Mami and Ramona and Tia Ana, and
now I was all
alone in a dark house with a parlor full of boys
knocking over my
jars of flowers with the excuse that they wanted to watch
the blossoms
spiral.
"But aren't you proud, Salome?"
"Of course, I am, Pancho," I said,
burying my face on his
shoulder so he would not see my tears. He was
holding me in that
absent way of his. Already he was far away,
sitting on a veranda in
a small village talking to local leaders about
the glorious future of
la patria. "It's just that we are hardly together
anymore."
He pulled back and lifted my chin to make me
face him. My
eyes felt puffy and my nose was running. For the
hundredth time
I wished for one of those pretty faces that soften
men's hearts. "Salome,
our patria is just barely standing again on its shaky
legs. We
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI 175
have to roll up our sleeves, as el maestro
says, and work hard, side
by side, to bring about that future we both dream
about."
"Ay, Pancho," I wailed. "I know that."
"We have to create a new man for a new nation,"
he went on
lecturing me. Sometimes, I felt like taking a
big heavy olla to all of
el maestro's preachings. "I know how you feel,"
he said, softening.
"But Salome," he added, his eyes
tender in a way that made my
own heart swell with love and self-abnegation,
"who will do this
work if we don't? I know I am asking you
to take on so much, so
very much. But I thought these were goals we shared?"
"They are goals we share, Pancho;" I said,
recalled to my better
self. It was something Pancho was good at doing,
recalling me
to my better self.
BECAUS-EVERY HE WAS AWAY, Pancho asked
me to fill in for him in
the classroom. This was unusual: a woman
teaching boys. But I
was la musa de la patria. An exception could
be made. Sometimes,
during my lessons, Hostos would drop by.
"El maestro has arrived," I'd say to my
students.
Hostos would sit down on the back bench
to observe me.
"Please continue."
He might as well have said, "Hush now," forwith his
eyes on
me, I would fall silent. A few times, he
slipped in so quietly that
he caught me by surprise. I suppose it was
from those observations
that he decided I was a natural teacher, and I
should open the first
secondary school for girls that would also train them
as teachers.
Pancho loved the idea. "We'll hold
classes for the boys in the
mornings and for the young girls in the afternoons. Salome
has a
wonderful background in the sciences as well as
literature. Don't
you, dear?"
"Thanks to you," I said, knowing what he wanted
to hear.
"I've often felt this deplorable gap,"
Hostos went on to ex-
176 Julia @alvarez
plain. "We are forging the new man but not the new
woman. In
fact, without one we can't possibly accomplish
the other." Hostos
studied me with his sad eyes. "It must be
difficult for you, Salome,
to feel the lack of true companions among your
own sex." Again,
the joy of talking to a man who understood me!
"But, maestro, I don't have any training to be
a teacher. I myself
only went to one of our little schools."
"You have a soul deep enough to hold your whole
country."
His words betrayed that he knew me in a way which
Pancho, intent
on the future, was so far incapable of doing. But
he is young,
I thought. El maestro is twenty years his
senior. I had to make
some allowances for a husband who was only a few
years out of
short pants when I began falling in love with
him.
"El maestro is right, Salome. You know more
than you think.
And wherever you feel a lack, I will fill in,
I promise."
"But you are away half the time, Pancho!"
Hostos had stood up and was pacing our
parlor. He stopped
before a jar of scattered blossoms; he seemed
suddenly to notice
their litter on the table. Slowly, he picked them
up, one by one,
and put them in his pocket. I wondered what on
earth he meant
to do with them. "I can think of no one better than the
first
woman of the island to lead us in this regard,"
Hostos said, turning
and giving me one of the luminous smiles that too
seldom lit
up his long, somber face.
"We shall see," I said, worrying my hands in the
lap of my
skirt.
"Duty is the highest virtue," Pancho
reminded me, quoting
the master to the master's face.
Uvo PANCHO'S RETURN FROM a trip
north, I had a new
poem to show him, "Vespertina." It was all about
missing him
with a desperation that made me afraid for
my sanity.
"These personal poems are very tender." He
leaned forward
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOM 177
and kissed my forehead gratefully. "But you must not
squander
away your talent by singing in a minor key,
Salome. You must
think of your future as the bard of our nation. We
want the songs
of la patria, we need anthems to lead us out of the
morass of our
past and into our glorious destiny as the Athens of the
Americas."
"Pancho!" I said sharply, snapping the spell
he seemed to be
casting on himself. "I am a woman as well as a
poet."
"That tone of voice is not becoming, Salome,"
he said, one
hand tucked inside his vest in the manner
of a statesman making
a pronouncement.
"I don't care!" I had started crying. With the
last few poems,
I had begun writing in a voice that came from
deep inside me. It
was not a public voice. It was my own voice
expressing my secret
desires that Pancho was dismissing.
"I did not think that aligning your life to mine would
be an
incentive to shirk your duties," Pancho
continued.
I wiped my tears with my apron. "I thought I
was pleasing
you by writing this. But perhaps you should list my duties
so that
I will not forget them."
In a small, hurt voice I was unaccustomed
to hearing, he said,
"You're right, Salome. I sometimes confuse my
muse with my wife."
"I want to be both," I said fiercely.
"You are both," he reassured me.
OFTEN NOW, HOSTOS WOULD bring up
the idea of a school
for senoritas. I suppose with the birth of his little
girl, Maria, the
abstract had become specific. It was touching
how involved Hostos
was with the care of his children. Belinda told me how every
night our maestro crawled into bed with each one and
sang the
special lullaby he had composed just for that child.
"Have you thought further of my suggestion,
Salome?"
I was not yet convinced. I suppose I still felt
my first duty--
after my wifely duties, of course--was to my
writing. After all, I
178 Julia @alvarez
had received a national medal. People had bought up all
the
copies of my poems that Friends of the Country had
published
and were already asking for more. Now, too, the new
voice was
compelling me to listen. How then could I also open a
school that
would absorb what little time I had left
over for my writing?
"But, maestro," as I spoke, I leaned in
toward him as if my
whole body were speaking to him, "poetry is also a
necessary part
of our being."
Hostos looked down at the bundle in his arms and
smiled.
Maria babbled on as if she already had opinions
on these weighty
matters. "We southern peoples have an
overabundance of poetry."
I knew that Hostos held my work apart from his
general condemnation
of the arts. After all, my poems had inspired
noble
sentiments and encouraged progress and freedom.
Had he read
"Quejas" or "Amor y anhelo" or
"Vespertina," he would have urged
me to open a school for the health of my rational soul
no less than
for the good of the women in my country.
I must say that I had never felt drawn to the
profession of
teaching. I could not help but think of my aunt's
scolding voice,
the thwack of her whipping branch, the sniffling of a
poor student
with a palm-leaf dunce tail hanging down the
back of her
dress. Early on, I vowed I would never be a
teacher. I suppose it
was the same aversion some daughters who have had
dreadful
mothers feel toward having a child.
"We shall see," I said, reaching for little Maria
to turn the conversation
away from this big sacrifice Hostos was asking of
me.
I WAS WITH CHILD, or so it seemed, since I
had missed my
monthly. I decided to wait another month before
I told Pancho
because I wanted to be sure. My husband was like a
child himself
if you promised him something and then withheld it. He
was still
waiting for the grand new poem to la patria that he
thought I was
writing.
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOM 179
When I missed a second monthly and the morning
sickness
began, I decided to tell him. He had just
returned from a short
trip west to Banf where some old caudillos were
on the verge of
revolution.
"Pancho, I have some happy news which will throw a
little
light on all this gloom."
Although he was worried and weary from the trip, his
face
brightened. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, and
I was
kneeling beside him, helping him off with this boots and
massaging
his legs to work the tiredness out of them.
"So where is it, Salome?" Pancho asked,
eyeing my desk.
I lost heart. I did not want my child to be
second to anything,
even one of my own poems. And so I did not
give him the news.
Instead I brought up the other matter I had been
thinking about
now that la patria was on the verge of collapse
again. "Perhaps el
maestro is right. We need a school of
senoritas, especially with the
way things are."
"I knew you would not disappoint me, Salome,"
Pancho said,
smiling down at me and dissolving the thought just forming in
my head about who was the disappointed one.
PANCHO DID FINALLY GET his wish for a
poem to la patria
from me. But I think even he would have preferred my
silence to
the atrocities that occurred that June that stirred
me to write
"Sombras."
By then we had moved back with Mami and Ramona
and
Tia Ana. With Pancho gone so often,
I was too lonely all by myself
in our small, dark house.
At first I had feared that Pancho would refuse
to live with my
family again. Neither Ramona or my Tia
Ana were easy on him,
but Pancho, I must say, loved a challenge.
"They are coming
around," he kept telling me, though I, who had
known them all
my life, saw no signs of it.

180 "Julia st1lvarez
There were good reasons to move--besides the company and
care I would receive from my family. We could not
continue paying
rent on a house. None of the many enterprises in
which Pancho
was engaged seemed to bring in money. Even his job
as a
president's secretary paid mostly in honor rather
than pesos.
Soon after I moved in, Tia Ana decided
to close down the little
school she had run for fifty years.
The house suddenly grew
to twice its size. Mami offered me the front
parlor my aunt had
vacated for my own school, and Ramona offered
to help me. She
was the only one who knew I was pregnant, and
she worried
about my starting a school by myself at the same time that
I
would be giving birth to a child as well as taking care
of a grown
one disguised as a husband.
"Now, Ramona," I reminded her, for she had
promised me
that she would try to get along with Pancho.
"I want you to have some time for your writing,
Salome," she
reminded me. Unlike Pancho who was always
holding up my glorious
future, Ramona wanted to see me writing because
she knew
it brought me deep pleasure and satisfaction.
"And you know," she added, lowering her voice.
"Though I
was the first to scold you when you wrote
'Quejas," these new poems
are among my favorites."
"Pancho says--" But the look on her face
stopped me.
"When you move in, I will make sure you find
time to write.
Even if I have to poison all distractions."
She gave me one of
those cross smiles that had become habitual
whenever she spoke
of Pancho.
I laughed uneasily, wondering to what lengths
my sister
would go to get rid of my husband.
THE AYUNTAMIENTO VOTED TO ALLOT me
sixty pesos a month
for each pupil, which, with a minimum of ten pupils,
would be
enough to buy all our supplies and pay my teachers
besides. Every
,IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOM 181
time el maestro came over to discuss the school,
my aunt would
stand at the door to offer her "word of advice after a
lifetime of
teaching." Once, when Pancho suggested that we would
be following
the apostle's positivist model, which was different
from my
aunt's old-fashioned, religious, rote
style, my aunt lit into Hostos.
"You, sir, are starting schools without God,
schools without
morals!"
"No, not at all, Dona Ana." Hostos
stood up and offered the
old woman his chair. "An ethical education is
my first concern.
Let me explain what we are trying to do here.
Please join us."
And before we knew it, that forbidding old woman was
sitting
in a rocker, eating right out of Hostos's hand.
At the end of our meeting as we walked el
maestro to the
door, Pancho apologized for the
intrusion. "You were very kind to
include her."
"It's not kindness. She has been exercising this
profession
most of her life. We will learn a thing or two
from her if we listen
carefully."
"But, maestro, how can you listen to someone who says
that
you don't learn anything without a little bleeding?"
Hostos bowed his head and smiled. "Most new
mothers
would agree with her, wouldn't they, Salome?"
IN MAY 1881, THE rebellion Pancho
had tried to stave off finally
erupted in the southwest. Merifio abolished all
civil rights
and issued a decree that anyone caught bearing
arms would be
shot on the spot. The army prepared for war.
"It's just to calm things down," Pancho
explained. "Merifio
will never enforce it. I promise you."
"Merifio might not," Hostos agreed, "but
he's got a bloodthirsty
general of the army who will. Lills would love the
excuse to
get rid of all his enemies under the banner of
"calming things
down" and "protecting la patria.""
182 Julia Alvarez
A patrol came door to door to collect any
firearms. By the
time they got to our neighborhood, the weary
soldiers were asking
only at the first house on each block to vouch for the
disarmament
of all the neighbors. When they knocked at our
corner house, Tia
Ana opened the top of the Dutch door and told
them we had all
the weapons we needed: Salome's poems and
Christ, our Lord. Of
course, the lieutenant in charge immediately discharged
two soldiers
to each house on the block, and he and two
subalterns
scoured every inch of ours, Coco behind them, barking
wildly.
Suddenly, several shots rang out. One
of our neighbors, caught
with a small revolver he had hidden in his boot,
had been taken
out on the street and shot. I think that is when we
all realized that
Merifio and his general, Lills, were deadly
serious. From that day
on, Tia Ana seldom said a word. I
believe she felt responsible for
a martyrdom she might have prevented.
That we were heading back to our old warring state
made me
feel sicker than I already was. All our hard
work the last two years
had come to nothing: the new schools that Hostos had
started,
the hopeful sacrifices of so many young people, many like
Pancho,
willing to work for nothing. For the first time, I began
to
wonder if we were capable of freedom.
"We must not lose faith," Hostos urged me
when he stopped
by one day to review my instituto plans. Now that
Pancho and
Jose had moved their school to a building beside the
Normal for
older boys, I did not see the maestro daily
as I had when the
school was in our house. I wondered if my
growing eagerness to
start my own instituto was because it meant I would
see Hostos
more often. Our conversations were a balm for my weary
spirit.
We were pacing the front parlor to see how many
small chairs
we might fit in there. A globe already stood at
one end of the
room, a donation from Don Eliseo. Stacks of
books sat on a long
bench, gifts from friends who had heard we were starting
a school.
There were hopeful souls out there who believed in our
peaceful
revolution.
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOM * 183
Hostos was scribbling down numbers on a scrap
of paper as
he paced the room again. I sat down, tired out
with the effort. I
had not been feeling well for several days, and I
had begun to suspect
that something had gone wrong with my pregnancy.
Hostos stopped pacing and looked directly at
me. The windows
were shuttered to keep out the dust of the street, and so the
air was dusky, which gave our meeting a
secretive feeling. "When
are you going to tell Pancho?" he asked me.
"About what?"
"How many other things are you keeping from him?"
"Pancho is preoccupied these days," I
defended him.
"Your husband is putting every other duty before you."
Hush, I told myself, for I was tempted
to confess my loneliness
and disappointment. It was an enormous comfort just to know
Hostos understood these things.
"You are a natural teacher on many fronts,
Salome. Pancho
will learn from you how to make a fine husband. But as
your aunt
suggested, you might have to draw blood."
"What on earth do you mean?" I said, standing.
Visions of
Ramona poisoning Pancho's water glass were
racing through my
mind. But immediately I sat down overcome with
dizziness.
"I mean that it will take some effort," Hostos
added. Suddenly,
he seemed to notice my distress. "Are you all
right, Salome?"
I
could feel the blood coursing down my legs,
confirming my
fears. "I think you better call Ramona,"
I said, holding back tears.
THEY BROUGHT BACK BODIES in heaps on
carts and laid them
out in the square. They said it was so relatives could
identify their
dead, but we all knew it was as a warning to us. The
stench in the
center of the city was so bad that Hostos
closed the nearby Normal
School for the rest of the month. It was just as well.
Merifio
had declared himself dictator and had turned against the
positivists.
184 Julia @alvarez
They were free thinkers, who cared more about the
hypotenuse
of a triangle than about the number of angels on
the head
of a pin.
The world seemed to be falling apart. That summer the
American president Garfield was shot by a
man who had been
caught stealing stationery inside the White House.
Mr. Garfield
had been trying to reform his government, and this petty
thief
had been refused a job earlier. Good men were being
killed off.
Meanwhile the rich and greedy were in control. Our
papers reported
that the richest man in the world, a Mr. Vanderbilt,
had
said, "Everybody but me and mine be
damned." When he died, he
was buried in a three-hundred-thousand-dollar
mausoleum where
a watchman looked into his crypt every fifteen
minutes to make
sure his corpse had not been kidnapped. Tia
Ana rolled that edition
up and put it out in the latrine, where it belonged.
Dark thoughts shadowed me day and night. I felt
as if we had
failed, not just as a nation, but as God's creation.
Whenever Pancho took off to the presidential
palace, I grew frantic with fears of what
might happen to him. I offered up every word in every one
of my poems, every accolade I would ever receive and every
mention
of my work to posterity--everything--for the sight of my
beloved returning unharmed at the end of the day. The
problem
was that the more I became a positivist, the less
faith I had in God
or in poetry.
Meanwhile, the Ayuntamiento informed me that it
had reduced
our allotment to half. At this rate we
would be able to buy
lumber, but would have to wait to build the desks.
Hire teachers,
but delay purchasing books. We were forced to put
off the day of
our opening.
Not that I was in any condition to open a school,
anyway. I
was in and out of the fever that attacked me soon after
I lost the
child. I had begged Ramona not to tell Pancho
about the miscarriage,
as what could be gained by hurting him with information
he need not know? "Maybe he will grow up,"
Ramona said
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI 185
angrily. But I think she kept her promise,
for Pancho never said a
word about it.
Even in my dazed, feverish state, I realized
Pancho was debating
what to do about his post in the Merifio government.
El maestro
would stop by, and I would hear them talking in the now
abandoned schoolroom. "You must resign,"
Hostos urged Pancho.
"I know you think you can do more good if you have
Merifio's
ear, but your reputation will be tarnished from being near
him."
"Someone needs to balance the evil influence of
Lills," Pancho argued back. He knew the
general from having served' with him these last two years.
In fact, Lills had made Pancho the godfather
to his firstborn, and Pancho, in his trusting way,
had not
seen through the general's wiliness'. A compadre was
not supposed
to lift a hand against his godchild's family, so
now Pancho's hands
were tied. "Merifio is letting himself be duped by this
fellow."
"Merifio is a grown man," I heard
Hostos replying. "He stood
up to Santana, he stood up to the Spaniards,
he stood up to Baez.
He can stand up to Lills if he wants to."
Did I really hear this conversation or was I
imagining it along
with other conversations in my head? Did I really
wake one afternoon
in that shuttered room to hear the rain pounding on the
zinc roof and find, sitting beside me, el maestro
reading a book,
keeping vigil at my sickbed?
"What are you doing here?" I wanted to ask, but
my breath
could not fill the sails of so many words.
The book was put aside. A cloth soaked in a
bowl of water
was squeezed ever so gently into my mouth. And then it
was
soaked again and placed upon my hot forehead.
"You must not be in here, maestro," I managed,
refreshed.
"Your children, Belinda. What if it is the
typhoid?"
"You and I know it is not the typhoid." Again I
heard the
sound of water and felt the blessing of the wet cloth
on my burning
lips.
"What did Pancho decide?" I asked after a
while of silence.
186 Julia Alvarez
"He has resigned," Hostos explained. "But
we thought it best
that he go into hiding for the next few days. Nothing
to worry
about," Hostos added when he saw the worry on
my face. "It is
merely a precaution. As a matter of fact,
I am hiding out as well."
"Here?"
"In your old revolutionary hole under the house.
I just came
up here for a visit."
A little while later, I heard him slip out of
my room. Then, I
heard the sound of Belinda's voice. She had come
over to see Hostos
under the guise of visiting a sick friend. And here
I had thought
Hostos had come upstairs only to see me!
Later that night, when I felt stronger, I
reached over to soak
my cloth in water. On the bedside table, I
saw the book Hostos
must have forgotten. My book of poems! Inside
its pages, I found
some dried petals and remembered the jacaranda
blossoms I had
seen Hostos putting in his pocket.
PANCHO WAS LEANING OVER the bed, his face
tight with tension,
his eyes wet and worried. Another dream? I
thought. But my
fever was lifting. I was feeling better. I
closed my eyes and opened
them again.
"I was afraid, Salome," he whispered.
"Life without you would
be meaningless."
I reached up and touched his dark, unruly hair.
Later in the long hours of lying in that bed, waiting
for the
fevers to pass, I recalled Pancho's words
over and over, as if they
were that cloth soaked in water, soothing my feverish
heart. Perhaps
el maestro was right, and Pancho would
learn to be a husband
to the woman he had married.
I WROTE "SOMBRAS" IN that sickbed.
Now that it was clear that I did not have the typhoid
fever,
visitors were stopping at the house to ask after me.
I heard them
IN THE NAME OF SALOMININ 187
talking in the parlor. Hushed voices alarmed at
the state of things.
The casualties. The repression of newspapers
and individuals.
Many wished that Salome would get better and
write one of her
poems that would stir patriots to rise up against this
renewed wave
of bloodshed.
But I had lost heart in the ability of words
to transform us
into a patria of brothers and sisters. Hadn't I
heard that Lills himself
liked to recite passages of my patriotic
poems to his troops before
battle? I found myself converted to Hostos's way
of thinking.
He was right. The last thing our country needed was more
poems.
We needed schools. We needed to bring up a
generation of young
people who would think in new ways and stop the cycle of
suffering
on our island. It was time to put away my
childish toys and
roll up my sleeves. Money or no money,
as soon as I felt stronger
I was opening up my school, even if we had
to sit on our haunches
and write our sums with sticks on the dirt
floor.
But first, I needed to say farewell to poetry.
No more anthems,
no more hymns to the republic. I had other
important
work to do.
Hush now, my song,
the storm has taken over,
with its din of waves and its crash of thunder.
When I read the new poem to Pancho, he shook
his head
sadly. "Ay, but the thought of your not
writing breaks my heart.
What will fill its place in our lives,
Salome?"
"The children," I said, thinking of the school.
Pancho misunderstood my remark and came forward
in his
chair. "Are you with child?" he asked. I felt a
pang, thinking of the
child I had lost, whom I would always mourn by myself.
"Soon," I promised Pancho, as if I had
control over nature as
well as over the words I wrote down on paper.
188 Julia Alvarez
SOON, MY LIFE FILLED up so full
I could not hold all of it in
my single pair of arms. Thank goodness I had
Ramona and Mami
and Tia Ana to burp one of my sons when the
other cried for his
food and the third one wanted me to button his shoe
or when a
young student approached with an insurmountable problem
in
geometry she wanted me to help her solve.
Pancho, of course, still
had a knack for filling every free moment with some
project. "It's
not just nature that abhors a vacuum," I always
teased him. But he
did make good on his promise, and besides his own
school, which
he was running with Jose, and the medical school he
started attending
at night after he had finished law school, he
helped me
run my instituto those first few years of no
money and increasing
enrollments.
Every once in a while, when I had a minute
to myself, I would
sit down and close my eyes and hear an old
call from deep inside.
It was not one of my babies, or one of my
charges, or Coco barking,
or my mother or aunt or sister, or my husband
asking for his
supper.
Hush now, I would whisper.
FIVE
Love and Yearning
Washington, D.c., 1923
SHE DECIDES TO TRY OUT-T a new
life by writing to Marion about it.
If nothing else, perhaps the story of what is
happening will begin
to make sense to her.
Dear Marion,
Here we are finally settled in! We are staying
in a townhouse
in Georgetown, an elegant address that
Pancho can
give out at the White House and the State
Department.
Her father's calling card reads Francisco
Henriquez y Carvajal,
President, Dominican Republic, though of
course there is some debate
about whether he can still claim that title. The house
is a
loan, which Camila has begged from her father's former
friend
and protege, Peynado.
Pancho knows nothing of this transaction. He
believes the
house is a lease left over from the
years when Peynado was his ambassador
to the United States. But now Peynado has
gone over to
the other side and is negotiating with the Americans
on his own.
Pancho has come to Washington to let the State
Department
know that the Dominicans already have a president, and
that neither
Peynado nor any of the other turncoats have a
right to negotiate
without his approval.
"They won't listen," Camila kept telling
her father when he
proposed the trip back in Cuba. She tried
to convince him to give
it up, to stay quietly in exile, seeing the
occasional patient. They
have been through so much already!
Ay, Marion, what a saga this has been ...
I still remember
that July, 1916 (was it already seven years
ago?), when the
Dominican delegation arrived at our door in
Cuba. I
know I've told you how surprised we all were
to hear that
Papancho had been elected president in
absentia! And the
greater surprise, after living in exile for so many
years, he
accepted! I remember telling you that I stayed
behind
with the little boys in Cuba since Tivisita had
rot been
dead a year, and I wanted to be sure this
presidency would
"take" before I put the whole family through the
ordeal of
a move. Two months later, we joined
Papancho in Santo
Domingo. I remember the boys were still wearing
black
armbands for their mother. But this is the part I've never
told you, as I know how proud you are of my father's
being
president. Marion, Papancho was president
for only
four months. The family hadn't been reunited
a month--
twenty-seven days!--when Papancho came to our
living
quarters in the presidential palace one afternoon
with the
news that the Americans had invaded the island.
"I refuse
to be their puppet!" he pronounced for the
reporters who
had followed him upstairs. We went back
to Cuba, cabinet
in tow--yes, even Peynado came along--
to establish
a government in exile. So began our saga.
Seven years later, the cabinet has disbanded, but
Pancho still
persists in his claim to the presidency. Camila
has tried to talk
IN THE NAME OF SALOMI. 191
sense into him. He cannot save a country that does
not want to be
saved in the way he wants to save it. But if
she has not fully
known him in this incarnation before, she is now encountering
her father as a Force of History, and when that kind of
idea gets in
the heads of the Henriquez men, there is no way--
short of the
paralysis that did temporarily strike Pancho
down last year--no
way on earth to stop them.
"But where are we to stay in Washington?" Camila
finally
turned from protest to practicalities.
Max came up with a solution, and at his urging,
Camila
wrote to Peynado, who replied that, of course,
he would be "more
than honored to have the former president of our island
stay in
my house?" He will not be using it during the month
of May, and
in any case, if he does happen to be in town
a night or two, there
is plenty of space: four bedrooms on the
second floor as well as an
attic room with a daybed, where Camila sometimes
sits now, in
one of her moods, daydreaming about Scott
Andrews.
She has been mulling over the
proposal of marriage he made
in his last letter. Since she allowed the question to go
unanswered,
and Scott Andrews is a shy man, he is not
likely to bring it up
again. In fact, one of the reasons she finally
agreed to accompany
her father this May on what she considers a
humiliating mission
and a risky one for his health, is to find out if the
proposal is still
in the offing, as Scott Andrews himself might put
it. Then, of
course, she will have to decide if she loves him.
SHE MET MAJOR ANDREWS at a
reception in the White House
over two years ago. It was during one of their
numerous trips north
in quest of Pancho's post. Camila had wandered
off in the direction
of the powder room but took a wrong turn, and ended
up in a
stately, lamplit sitting room presided over
by a portrait that made
her stop in her tracks. The face
was, of course, a man's face, but
Lincoln's eyes were the same sad, heavy-lidded
ones as her mother's!
192 Julia Alvarez
Behind her, Camila heard footsteps, turned,
and was surprised
to find a guard, as she believed him to be, coming
to apprehend
her. Scott Andrews was on detail at the
White House that
night, and his job was to keep guests within the
reception area.
Ever since Mrs. Harding had opened the White
House to the public,
small knickknacks had been disappearing:
ashtrays in which
Teddy Roosevelt had tapped the ashes of his
cigar, tassels from
Martha Washington's time torn off lampshades.
Scott Andrews
told her this later, one of those bits of information that
he liked to
offer her, knowing she delighted in the harmless
gossip that made
her feel in the know. And although he had not
meant for her to
draw this conclusion, Camila understood that his first
impression
of her--a tall, serene woman from a
Spanish-speaking country--
was that she was engaged in petty thievery.
And now, this May of the borrowed elegant
address, this
month of May with the heat of summer already creeping
about
the edges of the nation's capital, Camila
dresses herself in her least
shabby outfit to go begging again for her father. She has
set up a
rendezvous with Scott Andrews to ask if there is
anything he can
do about arranging one last meeting with the president for
Pancho.
In the course of her conversation she hopes to touch
upon the
Other Matter, as she likes to think of it so as not
to scare herself.
She must not keep ignoring her own interests in
order to take care
of her father. Besides, she is weary with his
anger. Some days she
does not want to get up from bed. Mon has
told her how her
mother suffered as a young girl from depression, which was
called
melancholy then. Camila feels it, lapping
at her knees, and rising.
This is her twenty-ninth spring: it is time for her
to be happy.
"DEAR MARION," CAMILA WRITES:
Washington is worse than ever I remember it.
The heat
here is as oppressive as Santiago de
Cuba. Certainly not as
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOM * 193
pleasant as Havana with its sea breezes.
How can one believe
in a nation that built its capital in a swamp?
She is almost sure she can say these things
to Marion about her
country, as Marion is the first
to criticize this "nutty nation," as
she calls it. Marion, after all, followed
Camila home to Cuba from
the University of Minnesota. For the past two
years, Marion has
been busy, opening the first modern dance school in
Santiago,
teaching "shopping English" to the wealthy daughters of
sugar
barons, learning to ride horseback, shoot,
play tennis, croquet,
and to drink Mary Pickfords, a combination of rum,
pineapple
juice, grenadine, and ice, which despite its name
Marion would
not be allowed to drink in her "dry" United
States.
When Camila and her father left for Washington,
Marion accompanied
them as far as New York, then took a train
west to
spend the summer in North Dakota with her
recently widowed
father, who is worried sick about her. How can she
of her own free
will choose to live in a savage country like Cuba
instead of in the
best country on God's earth? Marion counters
with news of her
dance academy, the antics of the Henriquez
household with its
numerous unusual pets, among them a bear, a
monkey, and a
small pink pig called Teddy Roosevelt
(which is, her father writes
back, "downright disrespectful").
I think often of how strange it must be for you,
Marion,
going home after two years away. Speaking of
sagas,
yours has been an odyssey! I'm sure the
last thing Daddy
Reed expected when he sent you east to college
in Minnesota
from North Dakota was that you would end up in
Cuba! He must be so happy to have you back.
Marion is planning to return to Santiago at
the end of the
summer, and as soon as their Washington mission is
over, Camila
and her father will return there also. Unless something
happens,
194 Julia Alarez
Camila thinks, as she kisses her friend goodbye
at Grand Central
Station. Although Camila has mentioned Scott
Andrews to Marion,
he has never seemed a threat. He is a
vague figure, even to her,
like the mother she has made up and the brothers she
talks to in
her head since the real ones are never around.
Do you remember my bringing up S.a.8ness name
from time
to time? The young marine who was so kind to us during
our last trip here? The one who kept writing me
those letters
you were always so curious about! Anyhow, we had
dinner together last night. We went to the Madison
Club,
which is supposed to have a speakeasy in back where you
can get alcohol. Of course, we ate in the
formal dining
room in front. Twice during the meal,
S.a. excused himself,
saying he had to use the facilities. He came
back to
the table, flushed and red-faced, so I can imagine
what facilities
he meant! I am glad he wears civilian
clothes when
we go out. I could not bear sitting across from someone
dressed in the uniform of our occupying force.
Because of the three years she spent in Minnesota,
Camila
writes quite well in English. But she always
writes to her best
friend in Spanish so that Marion can keep up her
espa@nol. Otherwise,
she will lose her fluency in North Dakota where
no one (underlined
three times--Camila calls Marion "the
passionate
punctuator"), not even the Spanish teachers at
the land grant
colleges, speak it or write it well. In
part, too, Camila suspects,
Marion prefers her mail in Spanish to ensure
privacy in their communications,
as her father, Daddy Reed, has been
known to open
Marion's mail "by mistake."
Now, for a description. Tall, slender, with the
fair complexion
of his English ancestors--a Douglas
Fairbanks
look-alike. Truly, people have stopped him on the
street
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI was 195
and asked him if he is any relation. I've
always wondered
why such a good-looking man is a bachelor. But
there is
a timidity to him which I think he meant to throw off
by
joining the Marines. Now he is a military
aide at the
White House, a position which suits him
better. His people
are from New Hampshire. Early abolitionists,
he
makes a point of telling me. He is a kind
if timid man. I
think you will like him.
His timidity has impeded any progress on the
romantic front.
And yet when they are apart, Scott Andrews
writes Camila fond
letters that arrive in Santiago de Cuba with the
White House crest
on the envelope. Camila has to be on the
lookout. Should her father
spot the return address, he would tear open the
letter, thinking
that President Harding or Secretary Hughes
is finally
conceding that the United States is in the wrong,
having invaded
another country and forced its president to live in
exile on a
neighboring island. As for Marion, should she read
the letters, she
would throw one of her jealous tantrums.
But in person, Scott Andrews withdraws into a
correctness
that baffles Camila. Perhaps it is a
handicap of his profession, immersed
as he is in protocol. She wishes he would come
boldly forward
and champion her father's cause, use his connections
to get
them close to the power he is always gossiping to her
about. But
all Scott does is bring her "souvenir
gifts" from the Harding White
House: a little ashtray meant as a joke after their
first meeting; a
deck of cards with Laddie Boy, the First Dog,
posed before the
American flag; a lady's watch in a gift
box inscribed--so Scott
Andrews claims--in Mrs. Harding's hand,
77me for Normalcy,
77me for Harding.
Time is running out! Her father sinks deeper
into his theory
that there is a plot afoot between the United
States and the Peynado
group to annex the island. His health is worse every
day. It
is difficult to ask Scott for help.
His timidity brings out her own
196 Julia Alvarez
shyness. On one of her earlier visits in the
winter, he grazed her
breasts as he was helping her with her old
Minnesota coat, and he
blushed, yes, blushed. In fact, during this
trip, she is surprised to
discover that he is breaking the prohibition law and
drinking. But
then, as he has told her himself, President
Harding throws late
night parties all the time, with trays full of
bottles containing
every conceivable brand of whiskey. When Scott
Andrews is on
White House detail, he drives many a
drunk senator or Supreme
Court justice home.
I explained to S.a. about Papancho and how we
must
have an interview with Mr. Harding before this
Hughes-Peynado
plan is put through, and S.a. said the usual, that
there is nothing he can do, we must go through the
proper
channels. Proper channels! We have to go through
proper
channels to protest this country's outlaw actions
toward
US!,
Enough! she tells herself. She is starting to sound like
her father:
every thought, every remark going back to the same angry
place. It is what caused his breakdown last
year. What has made
him crazy with worry and overwrought with constant
indignation.
In fact, she is not sure she would grant him
an interview were
she the president of the United States. She
herself cannot live like
this. Nights, in the attic room, she paces,
then goes downstairs to
the front door, opens the spyglass panel,
looks out.
Anyhow, Marion, dear, I imagine you are
enjoying the
peace and quiet of your golden prairies.
Remember that
summer I spent with you and Daddy Reed and Mother
--you must miss her so! Perhaps Daddy Reed is
right,
and you should stay put in North Dakota. Paste
snapshots
of your years at the University of Minnesota in
an
IN THE NAME OF SALOM 197
album. One day your little girl will ask, And who
is that?
And you will say, She was my Spanish teacher. I
followed
her to Cuba. I lived there with her and her family
for two
years. Periodically, I would throw tantrums
to get her attention.
I would threaten to leave. One day I did leave
and never went back.
Ay, Marion, is this then the end of our story?
But she must not say so, or the next thing she knows,
Marion
will be on a train headed east. Now that they are
apart, Camila
must use this opportunity to make it clear that
Marion should not
come back. She must get free of their special
connection. But she
cannot think of a way to tell her dear friend except
by writing
these letters that outline a new situation for both of
them.
"About the Other Matter," Camila writes,
trying to finish this
interminable letter of longing and complaint.
It did not come up. I thought at one point
S.a. was about
to say something, but instead he excused himself a
second
time and was gone a good five minutes. When he
came back, more flushed than ever, he seemed
to fall into
a study of my face, but then quickly, he brought
up Papancho's
interview and said he would do what he could.
He then confided that Washington is very tight right
now. Some big scandal is breaking that might go
all the
way to the top. The president is distraught and
has scheduled
a trip to Alaska to relax. "Why not
encourage him to
go to the Caribbean?" I asked curtly. "He
practically
owns all of it now ..." I enumerated all the
occupied or
supervised islands: Cuba, Haiti, Puerto
Rico, as well as
the Dominican Republic. I am afraid I
am becoming as
shrill as Papancho, Marion, and this nice man
will run
hard and fast in the other direction.
198 Julia @alvarez
But Scott Andrews does not run off. A few
days later, he invites
Camila to accompany him to the Paradise Jazz
Club. Jazz!
She thought jazz was the sassy music of white
flappers with
boyfriends in fur coats and Model Ts. But
jazz belongs to us, she
thinks, colored people, as they are called here, and it
is the saddest
music in the world. Of course, the only
apparently colored people
in the room are up on the stage, and no one would
guess that
Camila, pale-skinned with her wavy, marcelled
hair, is one of
them. She throws her head back, eyes closed,
and lets herself be
summoned by the braying saxophone. She can sense
Scott Andrews's
eyes on her long, bare neck.
Between numbers, he announces that he has thought
of a way
to get her into the White House: one of Mrs.
Harding's garden
parties! If Camila can get the ear of Mrs.
Harding, the president
will consent to a meeting with Pancho. "Everyone says
she runs the
country anyway," Scott Andrews confides.
"In fact, the president
calls her the Duchess, and the public calls them
the Chief Executive
and Mr. Harding."
"I don't know," Camila says, looking down
at her hands hidden
under the table on her lap, keeping time with the
musician
playing the piano on stage. She should tell him
that she can no
longer afford to buy outfits for these fancy
parties, that she is shy
and mortified whenever she finds herself tongue-tied
at large social
gatherings.
Before she can voice her reluctance, he reaches
across the table
for her hand. Quickly, she brings it up from her lap
to be kissed.
He seems relieved that he has successfully
completed his mission
and grins. "I've been waiting a long time to do
that," he admits.
"That makes two of us."
The wail of the saxophone has made her brave
and the slimslamy
way the large negro is playing the piano.
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOM was 199
PEDRO ARRIVES FROM MEXICO the next day
with his pretty
young bride, Isabel Maria Lombardo
Toledano. He has brought
her north so she can meet some members of his
scattered family.
In a few days, Max will arrive with his wife,
Guarina, and their
two young boys. Tio Federico is due in as
well, white-haired and
flinty-eyed, a fierce old warrior. The whole
family is assembling,
not just to meet Pedro's bride, but in answer
to Camila's wires.
Something must be done with Papancho. The brothers have
come
to help. Camila is not sure what Tio
Federico is coming for, as he
is the ole who is always urging his brother Pancho
to fight to the
death. The death of what? Camila wants to ask.
The first night of Pedro's visit, before the others
arrive, she
chats with the happy couple in the sitting room.
Pancho, who usually
excuses himself about this time to go up to bed, lingers,
flirting
with his new daughter-in-law as if he, too, must
make a conquest.
"I am trying to arrange a meeting for
Papancho," Camila explains
when Pedro asks how matters stand, meaning only
one
matter, which has obsessed their father for the last seven
years of
his life. Camila goes on to explain that she
has a friend in the State
Department.
"What friend?" Pedro wants to know.
"The sailor," Pancho pipes up. This is
what her father calls
Scott Andrews when he is not calling him
Camila's puppy dog.
"My friend, Scott Andrews. He has invited
me to a White
House garden party where I will try to speak with
Mrs. Harding."
"What?" Pancho challenges. This is the first he
has heard of
this plan. "We must not beg!" he thunders
as the young Isabel
looks on, shocked at this sudden change in her
new father-in-law.
"We will not go in the back door!" he continues,
his voice
trembling with rage. "We do things with honor or
we leave them
alone!"
Camila falls silent. She cannot reason with him
when he gets
this angry.
200 Julia Alvarez
When Pancho has finally climbed the stairs
to bed, Camila
explains to Pedro and Isabel how every morning,
she accompanies
her father--protest and proposal in hand--to the outer
offices of
the State Department's Latin American
division. A minor official
always greets them, takes Papancho's calling
card, and goes away
for a long time. Finally, he comes back with
regrets. Secretary
Hughes cannot receive them today.
"We have got to stop this," Camila tells
Pedro. "He's just going
to make himself sick again."
But Camila is surprised by her brother's
reaction. "Papancho
has every right in the world," Pedro says, his voice
rising, his
hands closing into fists. Beside him, Isabel
seems startled for a second
time this evening. Who is this stranger she has
married? What a
worked-up family of fervent idealists! "Look
at what the Yanquis
have done in Mexico, Panama, Nicaragua
Haiti, Cuba, Puerto
Rico. Who is going to stop them?"
Not Papancho, Camila thinks.
"As for you, my little sister," Pedro changes the
subject, reaching
for her hands and giving one to Isabel to hold as if
he is sharing
a prize with his young wife. They sit there,
sweetly, holding
hands as if they were at a seance. (scott
Andrews has told her how
Mrs. Harding frequents a clairvoyant on
R Street!) It is rare for her
brother to be so outwardly affectionate. But
Camila has noticed a
warming in his manner since he heard of Marion's
departure from
Cuba. "Let me give you some advice, since
I am your older
brother and I have already made all the mistakes you
are headed
for. Don't let Papancho's politics take
over your personal life. This
friend you mentioned, just enjoy getting to know him. He
is
American?"
"Yes," she says quickly. Why does she
suddenly feel she should
apologize for Scott's nationality? She knows
her brother is glad she
is seeing any man at all. Ever since he
surprised them in Minnesota,
Pedro has worried about Camila's friendship with
la norteamericana.
"Scott Andrews's people are from New
Hampshire.
IN THE NAME OF SALOMI. 201
They were early abolitionists," Camila adds,
trying to make the
Marine major sound appealing to her brother.
"Does he know about Mami?" Pedro asks,
casting a knowing
glance in Isabel's direction. Back home,
everyone expects these
mixtures. Isabel herself obviously has a
little Indian in her golden
skin, and a lot in her black hair and dark,
almond-shaped eyes.
"Things have not progressed that far," Camila
answers quietly.
"When he meets me, he will know right away."
Despite his effort
to speak lightly, Pedro's voice is edged with
bitterness. Camila
remembers hard moments in Minneapolis for her
brother, rentals
suddenly unavailable, entry refused into certain
clubs. Pedro and
Max have turned out to be the sons who look most
like Salome's
side of the family, darker-skinned, a
kink in their hair, all the
telling features. Camila thinks of the
musicians on stage at the
jazz club; how they came in a separate
door; how she saw them sitting
on crates and eating outdoors when she and
Scott left during
a break in the music. They could have been her
brothers, especially
the light-skinned saxophone player. She
recalls how Max
once earned his living playing the piano in New
York. Where do
they eat in the winter? she wonders.
"When will we meet him, Camila?" Isabel
asks after several
moments of silence. This is the first time she has
spoken. She is
nineteen years younger than Pedro; perhaps she
believes she has to
ask permission of her elders to speak up!
If Pedro should say anything about Scott
Andrews, Camila
will say, You of all people should know the heart chooses
strangely
if it chooses at all. Look at you, the old
man in the family, picking
a child bride; or Max, a talented musician,
with his deaf Guarina;
or Mami choosing a boy obsessed with her
talent and great causes.
But better the heart that chooses, she thinks, than
the heart
that keeps itself aloof, safely, in indecision.
"Dear Marion," Camila writes her friend that
night. "I think I
am in love."
202 Julia @alvarez
SHE HAS TURNED THE attic room into her
bedroom, now that
Max and his family have arrived. She draws the
ground plan of
the house for Marion, the formal entryway, the
door with its curious
spyglass ("You pull a wooden slot and look
out at your visitors,
but they cannot see you!"), the formal parlor to one
side, the
dining room to the other, the sitting room with the grand
piano
on which Camila plays the pretty Debussy
pieces that please and
soothe her father, and in back, the large kitchen where
Isabel
spends much of her time cooking up meals
to impress her new inlaws.
We
are bursting at the seams, dear Marion. I've
put initials
by each room so you can see how I've arranged
everyone. Papancho and Tio Federico sleep in
the southwest
bedroom. Beside them to the east: Pedro and
Isabel.
In the larger front bedroom: Max and Guarina,
with the
boys in cots in the alcove. The other bedroom,
Peynado's,
should have been mine, but how can I sleep in the
quarters
of a man my father rants about all day long? I have
moved myself upstairs to the attic, which gives me
a little
more privacy, but it is getting hotter and hotter
as the
summer progresses. I am not sure how long
I can stand it.
She stays up late, stripped down to a slip,
writing Marion
daily letters she does not send. Sometimes she stands
to stretch her
back and look down at the quiet, residential
street below. When a
car approaches, she moves back from view,
though her perch is
hidden by the branches of the huge sycamore in the
front yard.
We went out today, Sunday, for a stroll to see the
Lincoln
Memorial that there's been all the fuss about.
Max and
Guarina walked ahead with their noisy boys. (i
think
those boys, and not the influenza everyone blames,
are
what have made Guarina's deafness worse!)
Pedro and
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI 203
Isabel and I trailed, talking about Mr.
Lincoln, whose
speeches and writings my brother, of course,
quotes from
memory--you know our Pedro! Papancho and
Federico
stayed home, plotting the overthrow, no doubt.
It was
one of those beautiful breezy days of early
summer, when
you look up at the sky and want to cry.
But then, looking at the sky has always brought
tears to her eyes.
Somehow that blank, blue expanse fills with the
ghostly features
of her mother. The summer she spent with Marion's
family in
LaMoure five years ago, it was difficult not
to gaze up. Half the
world was sky! No wonder she was constantly on the
verge of
tears, sentimental and emotional, taking offense every
time Daddy
Reed tried to set her straight on Woodrow
Wilson and the Monroe
Doctrine.
Suddenly, there he was ahead of us, S.a. in
uniform,
walking with an attractive young lady, as fair
as he, her
arm slipped in his. He was pointing out this and that as
if he were giving her a tour. I pulled down my
hat at an
angle, hoping he would not notice me. But here
comes
one of Max's boys, the little one Leonardo,
screaming,
TIA CAMILA, I CAN COUNT MR.
LINCOLN'S
FINGERS, and of course S.a. turns and takes
in the
whole family at a glance. I thought maybe he
would
tighten his hold on his young white goddess, and
walk
off, but no. He hurried over. "So it is you,
Camila! What
a surprise!"
Why? she has asked herself over and over as she
writes, why
does she not send these letters to her friend? Or if she
fears losing
Marion, then why not just keep a diary as any
countless number
of ladies are doing? (scott Andrews has
told her Mrs. Harding
204 Julia @alvarez
keeps a little red one in which she writes down every
grievance.)
But why this pretense that all she is doing is
reporting her summer
to someone who will listen?
As she writes pages and pages of unsent
letters, she thinks, I
don't want anyone, not even Marion, to see
me this upset.
My suspicions were all wrong. The fair
companion was
his sister Franny, visiting from Concord. When
we finished
the round of introductions, we all went and stood
at Mr. Lincoln's feet and listened while little
Leo counted
the huge marble fingers in English and Spanish.
Then,
S.a. invited us all for refreshments at an
elegant cafe
nearby. Ay, Marion, what a painful moment.
The establishment
would not serve us. They said they did not have
enough room for such a large party, but there were many
empty tables, and we all guessed the reason.
Pedro immediately
turned on his heels and took Isabel home.
But the
boys insisted on their promised ice cream
sundae, and so
we found a nearby stand and sat on park benches,
S.a.
beside me, silent and shaken. Before we parted, he
turned
to me and said in the most feeling way, "Camila,
I am so
sorry." I cannot tell you how moved I am by this
demonstration
of S.a.'s support.
"I think I am in love," she writes again.
But this time, reviewing
what she has written, she crosses off the first
two words just to
see the bold pronouncement in print. I am in
love. Has she ever
said this about anybody before?
She stands, turning off the desk lamp so that the
attic is suffused
in the soft light coming up from the hall below. She
walks to
the window, watching her full reflection. She is
supposed to be
taller than her mother, more attractive, though she
has never
known if this compliment is a euphemism for
"whiter, paler, more
Caucasian" in her looks. According to Mon,
Salome was a plain
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI 205
mulatto woman. In the posthumous portrait
her father commissioned,
Salome is pale, pretty, with a
black neck band and a full
rosebud mouth, a beautifying and whitening of the
Great Salome,
another one of her father's campaigns.
NIGHTS, CAMILA LIKES TO ROAM the
yard. The house is surrounded
by a high hedge, and so she feels at ease,
sitting on a lawn
chair in her slip with only a light shawl
to pull about her in case
anyone from the house should surprise her, smoking
her cigarette.
She doesn't know if anyone suspects she
smokes. Of course, Marion
knows. After all, it was Marion who introduced
her to this
vice as well as to skinny-dipping in the James
River, and fast rides
in her daddy's "speeding machine." But unlike
her bold, boastful
friend, Camila does not like to call attention to her
transgressions.
Why on earth invite judgment? She has enough of that
in her
own head, thank you.
At night, she can sit back and look at disthe
sky, and not feel
weepy. Contrary to the behavior of most ghosts,
her mother's face
never appears in the darkness. Camila gazes
up, and, like a schoolgirl
assigned a problem at the blackboard, she
begins connecting
the stars into the shape of the future everyone expects
of her. She
will live in a house, not unlike this one. She will
bear children, not
unlike her little nephews. She will kiss her
kind husband, a man
not unlike Scott Andrews ...
Already she feels bored with this version of what is
coming.
ONE AFTERNOON, HOME FROM their call at the
outer offices
of the State Department, she is sitting in the
backyard reading
when she is summoned to the front door
by Isabel. Pedro is at the
Library of Congress, doing research, and Max
and Guarina have
taken the boys sightseeing for a few days in
Philadelphia. Upstairs,
the two eminences grises are snoring away at
their siesta,
206 Julia Alvarez
and Isabel, dear heart, has been making
meringues in the kitchen
in this heat. Blessed be the young brides. They shall
fatten the
earth.
"I looked through the hole as you showed me,"
Isabel explains,
"But it is no one I recognize."
Camila feels a slight twinge of
disappointment. She had
thought it might be Scott Andrews with news of a
granted interview.
But of course, if Isabel does not
recognize the stranger, then
it cannot be Scott. For several restless days, she
has waited, but
there has been no word from him since their last
stormy meeting.
It baffles her how they have come to this impasse.
She had never
meant to deliver an ultimatum.
We had just ordered dessert when S.a. leaned
close and
asked if I had given any thought to his
proposal. He had
undoubtedly had too much to drink. Before we went
any
further, I decided to tell S.a. that it is
absolutely necessary
to arrange an interview between Papancho and
President
Harding. Absolutely necessary. My father must
close
this chapter of his life, and without that final
interview,
he will stay in that horrible limbo that almost killed
him
last year. And there is a chance, a small chance,
that Mr.
Harding will listen. Next year is an election
year, and the
presidents in this country always dust off their noble
aspirations
about this time. "But what if I can't line up an
interview?" S.a. asked. So I
looked him straight in the
eye and said, "If you want a future for us, you
will not refuse me." He was quite upset, but I held
firm, and just so I wouldn't soften, I left my
dessert untouched, put on my
stole, and hailed a motorcab home.
"I'll be right there, Isabel," she tells her
sister-in-law, closing
the new Willa Cather novel Marion has
sent her, A Lost Lady, a title
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOM 207
she takes personally. She goes up the back
steps, tucking stray
hairs into the net she is wearing to hold the
marcelling in place.
She is long overdue for a wave, but the salons
in Washington are"
so expensive. She considers taking off the net,
making herself
more presentable, perhaps stopping quickly in the bathroom
to
check her appearance in the mirror. As the first
daughter and official
hostess, she has had to pay attention to these
details for the
last seven years. Her stepmother was spared. Eight
years dead, just
in time. Worn out from being the wife of
private-citizen Pancho,
she would not have lasted a season as President
Pancho's first lady.
But Camila has not had a convenient alibi
since she left her job in
Minnesota.
Marion, I don't know what Fury possessed
me at that
restaurant. But then, in the backseat of the
motorcab,
when I reflected on the opportunity I had just
lost, I felt
sick to my stomach. I calmed myself, breathing
slowly,
sitting on my hands. And I swear I heard my
mother
speaking to me in a voice very low, but firm: This
is what
it means to love your country. Duty is the
highest virtue.
What an oppressive ghost my mother has
become! I, too,
am an occupied territory. I had to tell the
driver to stop
the car. We were just then crossing Rock Creek
Park; so
he pulled over, I paid him quickly, stumbled out
onto the
grass, and threw up.
In the bathroom she decides that the hairnet is
unobtrusive as
it is the same color as her dark brown hair.
She pats her cheeks.
Her brothers are right: she is looking too thin.
"It is the style now
to be slender," she tells them, waving their
worries away. The
Cheerful Front. "If you could bottle it," as
Marion says, "you
could make a million bucks." Guaranteed
to promote tractability
and smiles. She saves her breakdowns for late
at night under the
205 Julia Alvarez
stars, when the family has gone to sleep, for
secluded parks with
strangers coming up to her as she leans against a
tree, asking is she
all right, can they be of any assistance.
"Leave me alone," she wants to say. "But if
you would, just
get out of my country."
At the front door, she pulls the slot and is
shocked by what
she sees. Peynado had mentioned that he might be
using the house
for an occasional visit during the summer. But it
is May, campaigning
is going strong back on the island, and Peynado
is running
for president. In fact, Camila had
purposely planned her
father's trip so that they would be departing just when their
host
might be returning to Washington.
But what shocks her even more is to catch sight of the
tall,
blond escort, standing behind the short,
flocked man. Scott Andrews
in uniform! What on earth is he doing here?
Camila considers ignoring the guests, but then of
course,
Francisco Peynado is not a guest. This is
his house. In the front
bedroom that Camila has refused to occupy, she
has found ear
plugs, a tin of lozenges, a stack of cards with
pictures of sassy
ladies, half-clothed, their bosoms bursting out
of their corsets like
leavened bread rising in a warm oven.
"Quien es?" Isabel whispers. Camila
jumps, startled at the
sound of her sister-in-law standing beside her. She
looks frightened.
The poor dear probably thinks officials have
come to extradite
the whole clan. "Do you know them?"
Isabel must not have recognized, beyond
Peynado's shoulder,
the face of the handsome major they met several
weeks ago at the
monument. "Yes, I know them,"
Camila says calmly to allay her
sister-in-law's fears. "But I do not want
to disturb Papancho," she
adds. "Keep him inside, all right?"
The girl gazes warily toward the stairs and
nods. Camila turns
the lock, opens the door, and slips outside.
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI 209
SHE LEADS THE TWO men to a dainty
wrought-iron bench
that looks merely ornamental under the sycamore
tree. During
the anxious interview, she is, of course,
constantly checking to see
if Pancho or worse, his eagle-eyed brother,
Federico, is at the window,
or if Pedro might be coming down the street,
returning on
foot with his book bag full of the free
literature he has picked up
in one of the many museums on his walk
home. And of course,
the whole time, she is wondering and worrying about
what Scott
Andrews is doing accompanying her father's rival
to her front
door.
By the time this trip is over I will have a new
degree: master's
in intrigue. Even when I was choosing where to sit
on the bench with Peynado (s.a. insisted on
standing), I
was thinking of which side would be best for watching
both the street and the house. Meanwhile, I am
quickly
losing my degree in manners. I didn't even
greet our visitors.
In fact, I told Peynado in no uncertain
terms that if
he came in the house, Papancho would die of
apoplexy.
He seemed baffled. "But why, Camila?
We're old friends.
He is using my house." And so I had
to explain that Papancho had no idea whose house he
was using, that he thought it a long-term lease
of the Dominican government,
that he felt he had a right to use the house as he
was the president when the island was invaded. I could
see the whole sad situation slowly dawning on
Peynado.
"I understand," he said at last. "I will stay at
the Portland.
But you must reason with your father." That is when
he looked toward S.a., who had given us his
back, and
was plucking leaves from a nearby hedge like a
nervous
schoolboy.
"General," he calls out. Camila has
noticed how Peynado flatters
officers, addressing them by a higher rank. "Perhaps
you can
explain to Miss Camila that we have turned a
corner and we cannot
possibly go back.
"The election campaigns are proceeding
beautifully," Peynado
goes on. And all Camila can think to reply
to this is, "So what are
you doing here?"
He laughs at her brusqueness, and she sees
he is not offended.
Sometimes she wonders if she is incapable of
offending. If every
angry emotion is filtered through the memory of her
noble mother
and her suffering nation and comes out as a muted,
mannerly remark.
She knows it is supposed to be one of her
womanly accomplishments:
her anger does not show; her fingers will only play
a
jazz number on her lap under the tablecloth, not
on the grand piano
in the parlor.
"I received a phone call," Peynado is
explaining.
Scott Andrews, who has turned to face them,
stiffens. She can
see it in his handsome jaw, in the epaulettes at
his shoulders suddenly
jutting out like knees. What on earth has frightened
him?
Quickly, she looks up to make sure her father
has not spotted
them through the window on the stair landing.
"General Andrews called to inform me that you found it
absolutely
necessary for your father to meet with someone in the
State Department. But you must understand, Camila.
We are at a
delicate moment historically. Your father must not
ruin our
chances. I have come to escort him home."
She feels her breath coming short and fears that she
will faint
right here in front of the two men. So, Scott
Andrews has indulged
her, has made her think an interview might be
possible,
and then when she has confronted him, he has
called in Peynado
to come help get her father off everybody's hands.
Now, when
they have become close, when she is falling in
love, when it will
hurt to lose him.
She does not know how she finally finds her legs
and stands
up. "I am going to have to ask you both
to leave," she says quietly.
IN THE NAME OF SALOMI 211
Then turning to Peynado, she adds, "We will be
out of here by
the end of the week."
"Please, Camila," her father's old friend is
at her side. "You
have to understand."
She brushes past him, heading for the latched gate
as if she
needs to show them both the way out. She tries
to control the fury
rising in her throat. In her head she commences
playing the tune
of the jazz band of several weeks ago. The piano
drowns out her
mother's voice, Peynado's explanations, the
whirring of the cicadas,
the call of the robins in the trees above.
Only when Scott Andrews delays a moment
to have a private
word with her does the music stop--
Where is the music? She needs the sassy sadness
of those ivory
keys to keep going. She lifts her hand
as if she were playing that
piano and has momentarily paused, causing this
gap in the music,
this hiatus in the love story she has been
fabricating in her letters
to Marion. And then, because she cannot hold in the fury
any
longer, she brings her hand down hard on the
major's pale face.
SEIS
Ruinas
Santo Domingo, 1887-1891
Lunes, 6 junio 1887
Beloved Pancho:
We just bid you goodbye, and I thought I would not
make it
back to the house before the tears burst forth. But I
had to control
myself for our children's sake: they kept looking toward
the
boat, then back to me, as if something whole had
been halved. (it
has, oh it has!)
Young as they are, our sons feel your loss. As
we were walking
back from the dock, Fran looked up at the
sun, and said--It was
brighter before Papancho was gone. Who knows how children
come
up with such things? Hostos is right: there is a
gold mine there.
(imagine him, tapping his forehead, smiling that
smile of his.)
They are fast asleep now, dreaming, no doubt of
their father
on his way to Paris. I promise, dearest,
to keep my vow and present
you with your sons, healthy and happy, upon your
return.
Your Salome
IN THE NAME OF SALOM 213
Martes, 7 junio 1887
Pancho, dearest:
Today I feel only desperation. We are mad,
you and I, to take
on this sacrifice: two years of separation! I
know this is such an
opportunity for you: to study medicine with the
acclaimed Dieulafoy.
(i hear all your arguments in my
head.) But every day I find
myself agreeing more with Hostos's belief that our dear
"president"
Lills wants you out of here. Why else offer you
a foreign
scholarship in medicine when you already have your medical
degree
from our Instituto Profesional?
Pib@in caught cold coming home from the dock.
That child
catches everything. I hear him now coughing from the
bedroom.
How I worry that I will not be able to keep my vow
to you!
Your Salome
Miercoles, 8 junio 1887
Mi querido Pancho:
I could write you every day of the week, but I will not
even
try. The steamboat now comes only once a
month. Besides, what I
write this morning, no longer applies tonight. The
patience and
hope of dawn turn into desperation by dark.
I have started a poem about our son's
remark on the dimming
of the sun after his father left. But this poem, I warn
you, will not
be like those old declamations of mine, which you prefer.
I know
you are still harboring the hope that--as you said the night
before
you left--I will "create something of lasting value
for the generations
to come." I have, Pancho: our three sons!
Your Salome
214 Julia @alvarez
Domingo, 16 agosto 1887, Restoration Day
Pancho, love:
Celebrations are going on throughout the city. The children
are pleading with me to let them go out and follow the
marching
band. But--and I don't want to worry you--some
cases of croup
have been reported in the capital, and I am
sick to death thinking
of the danger to our little ones. I give them their
pills of Clorato
as they are all too young to gargle, and
pobrecitos--I keep
them inside.
I myself have not felt well in a while now, as you
know. The
move to this damp, dark house has not helped. But
Mami could
no longer accommodate our instituto. (i already
have sixty-seven
registered when classes start up again.) I wake
up nights unable to
breathe. I have been following Alfonseca's
prescription and drink
the Estramonio tea at supper along with a
small dose of Ipecacuana.
I am also trying to follow the regimen you set out
for us
before you left: we take the first streetcar out
to Gtiibia Beach and
are back by seven-thirty in time for me to open the
school doors
downstairs by eight. The sea air is good for the
boys. So far I have
not noticed any improvement in my own health.
The Ayuntamiento has still not paid the promised
funds for
last year. Federico says he will take
the matter up with Lills himself.
But Federico and Hostos have enough trouble on their
hands.
I had better say no more. As we know, no
flies can enter a closed
mouth.
--Que viva la patria! I hear the shouts
outside my window.
And our dear Pib@in asks me--Que es
patria, Mami?--I don't
have the heart to answer him: there is no patria with
Lilis in power.
A fly buzzes in my mouth. I am glad
Don Eliseo is carrying
this letter by hand.
Your Salome
IN "THE NAME OF SALOMI 215
S@abado, 3 diciembre 1887
Pancho:
Today is our Fran's birthday: five years
old. He holds up all
the fingers of his right hand and writes his name FRAN
for good
luck on a little paper to put under la
virgencita's statue. (tia Ana
insists.) He is so proud of himself!
Hostos brought over his four boys and little Maria
to celebrate.
And you know how the apostle turns everything into a
lesson. He taught Fran his numbers by asking
him the ages of
everyone present: How old is Max? Two
fingers! And Pedro? Three!
And Mami? Here he gets very stumped as he
hasn't enough fingers
to hold up. Hostos, by the way, was quite
surprised. He did not
know that I am nine years your senior.
You ask after the croup--we are all bracing ourselves
for the
rainy season--as there do seem to be increased
instances. But I
beg you, Pancho, do not threaten me as you did!
I know you entrusted
this treasure to me. I will do everything in my power
to
keep my vow to present our sons to you, happy and
healthy, upon
your return. But if, oh if, God forbid,
something should happen
to any one of them, you must not turn a desperate
hand on yourself.
What of our other sons? What of me?
(Mutilada)
Viernes, 9 diciembre 1887
Pancho, dear:
Yesterday I received several of your letters, dated
October 3,
October 21 (thank you for your birthday wishes:
thirty-seven
nails in my coffin, as Don Eloy used
to say), and November 3. I do wonder if some of
your letters (or mine) are not getting lost. You refer
to your instructions to me in an earlier letter about get-
216 Julia Alvarez
ting the Ayuntamiento to pay their debt to me.
No such earlier
letter ever arrived.
I must be more careful than ever what I say,
unless a trusted
individual is carrying the letters by hand--as the
Homparts are,
in this instance.
Federico comes by often and unannounced. He
cautions me
what I should write so that you can continue in your
studies without
preoccupations. I wonder if some of my letters have
not been
held back? This one should get by the family
censor, at any rate.
Matilde Hompart promised not to say a word about
it. She sews all
correspondence into the bodice of her dress,
afraid of Lills's spies.
Trust only the letters that come from me to you in the hands
of friends.
Your Salome
Domingo, 1 enero 1888
Pancho, dearest:
How many hopes and fears for this new year ahead of
us! I
tell myself: I must be strong. This whole one, and
half of another
one, and then you will be back.
I send you my new year's gift:
"Tristezas." Perchance if I put
my sadness in poetic form, you will allow me to say
how much I
miss you? It is unkind of you to chide
me for complaining. Why
should I not complain when you are so far away from me?
I feel
so alone, Pancho, so alone. Had I not made
my vow to you, I believe
I would succumb to melancholy.
The croup is now an epidemic. I do not let
the children out of
my sight. Every time they wail and I am on the
point of giving in
to their pleas, I recall my vow, and I remain
firm.
My asthma is no better. If your theory is
correct that the affliction
is nervous, then I will not expect any
improvement until
you return.
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI 217
6 enero (Continuacion)
Today, for Three Kings, I had nothing to give the
children.
With the Ayuntamiento debt outstanding andwiththe stipend
I
am sending you, there is nothing left for
frivolities. So, I invented
a game: each one was allowed one wish. Hostos
stopped by with
his children and thought of an ingenious (and educational)
refinement
to the game: each one was to make a wish with the letter
of the alphabet he called out.
--It will teach them spelling, quick thinking,
vocabulary--
he explained to me. I asked what wish he would
want.
--It depends on the letter, he said, falling
silent.
As you know, the campaign against him continues in the
papers. Your brother Federico has undertaken our
maestro's defense in El Mensajero. But this
merely serves to incite Lills's suspicions
against our apostle and his are against your brother.
Lilis has announced that he will hold elections
this summer.
Between the croup and the rebellions always attendant
on our
elections, I expect a year of trouble.
Your sons remain well. Pib@in and Max
suffer often from
coughs. Dr. Pietri has examined them as
well as Dr. Arvelo and
they concur with Dr. Alfonseca, the boys are in
good health. But
the doctors all noted that I seem overwrought
with the boys" well
being. They do not know the vow I have made to you.
My one wish: that you were here.
Your Salome
Miercoles, 11 julio 1888
Pancho, dear:
Some days the heart is lighter. Who can explain
the mystery?
Even Hostos, who is always emphasizing the
rational side of
things, agrees that we cannot begin to understand the deep
springs
of our being.
218 Julia Alvarez
It seems your brother Federico showed him my
poem "Tristezas."
Must your brother read all our
correspondence? Even what
I manage to get past him here, you return for his
perusal.
Some good came of your brother's indiscretion: el
maestro
was so concerned about my state of mind, he came
by for a talk.
I must admit that I have felt uplifted the rest
of this day. The work
we are doing, el maestro reminded me, is a
seed in the ground, invisible
until it flowers--unlike a poem I can hold
in my hands.
You accuse me of being bold in what I write--
that is not a
new proclivity of mine, as you well know.
El maestro sends his regards. So do these three
little grackles
who must make their mark here:
Papancho, come home soon! Your son, Fran
Papancho, bring me wood letters to complete my
set, PiMn
XXXXXXXX (max says he has written his
"big name," Maximiliano, I suppose)
And finally, your Salome
Jueves, 6 septiembre 1888
How dare you doubt my integrity! I cannot
believe your
brother, who does not allow any worrisome letter of
mine to get
through for fear it might preoccupy you (so that I, who
hate subterfuge,
have had to devise this scheme of sending what letters I
can in the hands of friends and acquaintances), then
turns around
to disturb your peace of mind with this insulting rumor.
NO MAN VISITS THE HOUSE except
Federico and your
countless brothers and our honorable friend Hostos.
How dare
you call me to account after all my sacrifices!
(Original INCOMPLETO)
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI 219
Domingo, 21 octubre 1888
My beloved husband:
We received your poem, which Federico
kindly read to my
students without telling them who had written it. But
they all
guessed you as the writer! Very pretty verses.
There wasn't a dry
eye in the room.
I also received the lovely silk gown you purchased
in Nantes.
But Pancho, dearest, where am I to wear such a
dress when I go
out nowhere without you here? Please recall for the next
time that I asked that the boys' socks not be white as
they are little ones and I have dismissed the laundry
woman in order to save funds. Max,
by the way, is already as large as Pibin--but these
small ones will
fit any number of our little nephews.
Hostos's schools are under serious attack.
My instituto, being
for females, has so far escaped the blows. But
Hostos's students are
harassed on their way to class. We have had to line
the route with
supporters. True to his Henriquez name, your
brother is first
among them. He stands by me as I write this and
protests that I
must not praise him so highly.
We are all well. My asthma is improved.
Elections in August
were peaceful--how could they not be? Only eleven
thousand voted
out of one hundred thousand franchised men, and all
those were in
favor of Lilts. His opponents flee
to Haiti, where, we hear, they are
planning an invasion. Our old enemy now
harbors the seeds of our
future! But it remains to be seen whether our
patria shall ever flower.
We are working day and night to be able to graduate
the next
class by the time Hostos leaves in December.
Yes, el maestro has
accepted an invitation from Chile to organize
schools there. We
lose our best men. It seems they have only two
choices: destierro
or entierro, exile or death. The girls come
at seven and they do not
leave until six. If you are wondering when I
take the boys for their
seaside excursion--as you ordered--the croup
epidemic is at
such proportions that I no longer feel safe
riding the streetcar.
220 Julia @alvarez
Only Mimi is allowed out. Can the croup be
transmitted by
cats? Please confer with Dieulafoy.
Federico says not to worry you, to repeat that the
boys are well, that
my asthma is better, and your first poem in eight
years is quite fine.
25 octubre (Continuaciqn)
Such a touching scene, Pancho. I wished you had
been a witness.
Imagine my six oldest girls, bent over their
diagrams of the insides
of flowers (such memories, Pancho, such
memories). They stay after
school to finish their botany lessons so that they can
graduate
before el maestro leaves. Every once in a while,
a sigh of weariness
or wonder escapes their lips.
Suddenly, I look up to find them gathered around
me, their
pretty eyes moist, their faces downcast.
Eva speaks up and says,
--Maestra, we all feel so sad to think you have
given up your
poetry to teach us.
Poor girls. For years they have been harboring this
feeling of
culpability.
I explain that my silence has had nothing to do with
them.
My country's sufferings, its falls, and lapses
are the primary cause.
--You cannot know yet--I distell them--young as you
are,
how deeply one can love one's country.
To Salome
Lunes, 10 diciembre 1888
Pancho, dearest:
I am sending this with the Grullons who depart next
week.
Your brother is insufferable. He shows up at
all hours, even at
week's end when I close off the bottom of the
house. It would
seem a kindness if it were not for his suspicions.
Yesterday evening,
Hostos dropped by to examine the girls and say
goodbye. Along
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMGGk 221
came Federico, snooping. Today (i had
to laugh!) he heard Mimi
with her new litter under my bed and insisted on
checking the
room, "for my own protection."
You say you require more news of your sons. But
what am I
to do when your brother will not permit more frequent
transmissions? He says we cannot afford to be
sending correspondence as
often as I like.
I understand that you have passed your courses, but now there
is
some controversy between me and Federico about
when you are to
come home. My understanding is that you will be back in
June once
you have written your thesis: a two-year separation,
remember? But
no, Federico says, shaking his head with
assurance. The medical degree
from the University of Paris is granted after six
levels and you
have passed only your first two. There is at least
a year or two to go.
I have felt at the point of madness hearing this.
(Original INCOMPLETO)
Lunes, 17 diciembre 1888
Pancho:
Last Saturday we graduated my second
set of teachers. It
would have been a joyous occasion if it were not that we
all knew
that this was also a farewell to Hostos.
Lills's spies were as thick as flies.
And now our apostle is gone, On Thursday, a
crowd of his
followers accompanied him and Belinda and the four
boys and little
Maria to the docks. It might have been you leaving
again--I
felt such desperation--
Ay, Pancho, Pancho, life without you frightens
me!
I hear Pib@in calling--
Your Salome
222 Julia @alvarez
Lunes, 24 diciembre 1888
Noche Buena, dearest! and a good night it is, for
your brother
allows me an extra letter for our last packet
of the year.
My gift has already come. Pib@in is fully
recovered! Yes, I tell
you the news now, for your brother would not allow me
to
breathe a word of this in my earlier letter: our son
succumbed to
the croup and for days he was between life and death. I have
aged
years in this one month: Pib@in's illness,
Hostos's departure. The
poem I am sending you, "Angustias," speaks
for itself.
My vow remains unbroken.
Your Salome
Viernes, 1 marzo 1889
Pancho:
How did you catch the measles? Is there an
epidemic there? I
understand from your letter to Federico that you have been
named our delegate to the Americanist congress and
will prepare a
paper on how the bones of Columbus reside
here.
How unkind of you, Pancho, not to mention this to me.
Every thing that affects you, affects me. And
remember, such secrets
always come out. The packets and letters, addressed
to Federico, are as often as not delivered here. And you
really don't expect me to wait until your
brother comes by to open them.
Of course, this news is upsetting to me. You have
explained
about the six levels that you only found out about after you
got
there. I have resigned myself to another year of
waiting. But if the
time is so short, why fill it with other
distractions?
I cannot comprehend why you must move from rue
Jacob,
which seemed adequate, to Mazarine, where the board
is more expensive,
as you yourself admit. Surely not just to be close
to Cafe
Procope where Moliere and Voltaire drank
coffee!
(Original ROTO)
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI 223
S@abado, 7 abril 1889
Pancho, dear:
Are you quite serious about my sending Fran?
We had a conference about it--all of us--and I'm
afraid
we're evenly divided as to what to do. Tia
Ana and Federico both
think it would be a fortifying experience for our young
son to go.
His bad behavior, his tantrums, his
violence are cause for alarm.
Ramona and Mami ("Mon and Manina"--the
boys rename
everyone!) both say that it is unpardonable to ship
a six-year-old
child across an ocean, even if he will be accompanied
by our good
friend Don Eugenio.
I myself vacillate horribly.
The child is quite determined that he wants to go to Paris
and
see his father and the bears. Why he thinks that there are
bears in
Paris, I don't know. The things of children! But just
his saying so
reminds me that he is a child. He has been
behaving much better
so as not to ruin his chances of getting to go on a ship.
He no
longer hits my little girls or disrupts my
classes with his violent
Achillean tantrums.
Pancho, I will let myself be guided by your
opinion.
Your Salome
Lunes, 17 junio 1889
Dearest Pancho:
This missive goes pinned to the coat of our dear
one as amulet
and admission that I am sending him, our love child,
to keep myself
in your heart. On my darkest nights I have
feared that another
muse has captured your imagination and that is why
you delay
your return and write so seldom. I know I
must not trouble you as
you have so much on your mind. But my own imagination
works
on your absence as if it were a blank sheet of
paper.
224 Julia @alvarez
Fran leaves tomorrow. Don Eugenio promises
me that he will
not let our boy out of his sight during the crossing.
Twenty-four
days at sea! I try to anticipate the
desperation I will feel when I see
his beribboned sailor cap grow smaller and
smaller as the ship
leaves the dock.
Did I tell you I have a reverie I allow
myself in low moments?
I picture myself sailing across the sky until
I am above you in Paris
as you walk to your dissection classes or your
hospital rounds at
Necker. I hope Doctor Dieulafoy will like
the cigars I am sending
with our Fran. Please tell him that I have
appreciated all his consejos about how to treat my
asthma. But between us, my dear, I will gladly drink
all the papaya juice I can get my hands on, but
I
draw the line on enemas of sulphur gas.
Where, for one thing, am
I to get sulphur gas in our little capital?
Por Dios, Pancho, this is
not Paris!
Do take into account our oldest's violent
temper, which has
only grown worse since your departure. The
attention of a father
will no doubt improve his character. He prefers
cafe con leche to
water with chocolate as he wants to be a little
man. (i prepare
mostly hot milk with a dash of coffee.) He
does wet his bed on occasion,
so be sure to remind him to empty his bladder, and
if perchance,
you share a bed with him, take precautions.
I am relieved to hear that Mlle. Chrittia
is willing to take
care of our little one, How convenient that she lives
in the same
pension and has already been doing your cleaning. Your
move
to Mazarine was a wise decision, after all. (how
quaint of her
to Say: "For another franc, why not add
Fran!") I enclose two
silk handkerchiefs Mami embroidered. We cannot
afford more,
but we felt we must send the kind mademoiselle
a gift of some
sort.
I also include the photograph Julio Pou
took of our three
grackles, and one of a lady you might not
recognize with her tired
face and weary look. But perchance, you will recall
the little cross
you gave her?
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI 225
Take good care of my treasure. Now I
entrust his health and
happiness to you.
Your Salome
Mi@ercoles, 24 julio 1889
Dearest:
Thank you for letting me know by cable about our son's
safe
arrival in Paris. Please do not be too hard
on him. Remember
there are bound to be lapses. He is only six
years old, and you have
been gone two years, which is one third of his
existence.
You cannot believe everything the child says. The scar on

forehead is the result of his banging himself on a
door during a
temper tantrum. His brother Pibin did not
push him. (pibin has a
wonderfully peaceable nature.) As for his fears
of the Haitian
cuco, I would never terrify my children into good
behavior. Besides,
I have never thought our bogeymen live anywhere but in
our own country.
In your last letter, you ask what I have been
writing. Dearest,
I lack the tranquility of mind to be able
to read, no less write.
Nights are spent preparing tomorrow's classes and
burning azufre
to disinfect the house. I see no improvement with
my asthma, but
the boys no longer suffer from as many colds as before.
They flourish. You will not know them upon your return.
I
have surpassed my promise. Your Pibin knows his
numbers to a
thousand--and drives me quite to distraction reciting
them--
and Max is so cari@noso. In the midst of a
game, he will drop
everything and run to my side to give me an
abrazo. At those
times, I tell myself, he is being seized by his
father's spirit, and it
is you, all the way over in France, desiring
to hold me.
Tell Fran, his Mimi has had a second
litter of kittens! I wish
Federico would supervise her a little better.
To Salome
226 Julia Alarez
Jueves, 15 agosto 1889, eve of
Restoration Day
Nothing for our family to celebrate tomorrow. Your
brother
Manuel has been deported and leaves in a
few hours for St.
Thomas. He will send this and the note for three
hundred francs
you requested. Federico has been thrown in la
fortaleza for a "seditious
article" he wrote against Lills's latest
issue of paper money.
He was given the chance to join his older brother, but
you know
Federico. "I will fight to the death!" he
announced to Lilis, who
instantly rescinded his offer of exile and threw
him in jail.
As for that scandalous article about you in El Eco
de la Opinion,
I confess I have heard similar remarks. But
those who criticize
you for accepting a government scholarship confuse our
country with our tyrant. Our country has awarded
you this
opportunity so you can partake of the most advanced
medical
research being conducted in the world and return
to benefit
your countrymen. (how kind of Dieulafoy
to mention you in a
footnote in the sixth volume of his
Pathologie.) And think of
this, Pancho: were you home, you would no doubt be with
your
brother Federico in prison. What good would you be
to any of
us there?
So, ignore the article, my love. Hold your
head high. You have
nothing to be ashamed of. The enclosed should give you
encouragement,
a poem in the old mode of mine you like so well,
"Adelante!"
Pibin and Max are at my side. Pibin reads
to Max from a little
newspaper for children, La Edad de Oro,
published by Marti exiled
in Nueva York. Betweenances in Brooklyn,
Hostos in Chile, Penson on
his way north. Our whole Caribbean is living
elsewhere!
We hear news of a first Pan American conference
being convened
in Washington, D.c., by President
Harrison. (federico
had planned on going.) Mr Harrison has
been quoted as saying
that the United States wants to be a friendly
neighbor. Friendly
indeed--they come and help themselves to what they need!
One
IN THE NAME OF SALOMI 227
day there will be an American ruling us instead of the
Spanish
governor of earlier days, if we are not careful.
Meanwhile, they are devouring their own continent.
Did you
hear that they have acquired four new states (each
one larger than
our little patria)? I can't remember all their
names--I'm sure
Pibin would, but he is over at his Manina's
house.
The boys are just now coming in and insist on greeting
their
father. They grab my pen out of my hands--
Hola, Papancho. They are Montana,
Washington, North Dakota,
South Dakota.
Hola Fran. Hola Mademoiselle.
Pibin and XXXXXX
and your Salome
Domingo, 1 diciembre 1889
Pancho:
I have only moments to write down stray thoughts.
Federico
is still in prison, so all matters fall on
me. After I complained so
much about his supervision, now I confess, I miss
him. I feel more
alone than ever.
Please do not torture me with your observations of
men's
needs. You hold up your faithfulness as a
sacrifice but expect mine
as your due. Have you learned nothing from Hostos?
You say I should save all my complaints until
you get home
when you will be able to listen to them with more equanimity.
But
don't you see, Pancho? The minute you come
home, I will forget
what I have suffered, in the same way, after
laboring for hours, I lost
all memory of pain when I looked at the
faces of our newborn sons.
I will send the hundred francs, but obviously,
I will have to
borrow from Cosme Batlle's firm, as no one
we know has that
kind of money.
228 Julia @alvarez
My instituto is fine. The one endeavor that
gives me hope in
these dark times.
Your sons ask after you and their brother. I no
longer know
what to promise them.
Your Salome
Domingo, 15 april 1890
Pancho, dear:
Our old friend Billini will be buried this afternoon in a
state
funeral. My girls all went home early,
although of course, they are
not allowed to march, only the boys. But I
instructed them to line
the sidewalks and wave a black handkerchief or
swatch of black
fabric. It cannot be that even our right to grieve is
denied us.
After the early dismissal, I locked up
downstairs. As we were
lying down to siesta, we heard a knock on the
door. Pibin ran to
the balcony and reported that there were
soldiers down below. My
blood ran cold. I thought we would soon be
joining Federico in
the dungeon.
Minutes later, the man himself was in my parlor!
He is tall
and agile, very dark as you know, with bright eyes that are
quite
splendid and a magnetism that cannot be denied.
It seems Lilis had read the poem I wrote
for Billini in Bolet@in
Eclesi@astico (enclosed) and was stopping
by to tell me how moved
he was by my elegy and how he planned to read it
at the funeral.
He then had the gall to stand in my parlor--with your
own
brother lying in his dungeon--and recite it.
To keep his dreams from dying
is all the monument he dreamed of having...
Has poetry no power at all, as Hostos
claims?
As he turned to go, I brought up Federico's
name and that
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOM- 229
other sore point of the last few years, the sums
the Ayuntamiento
owes US.
--You are a woman of few words, Dona
Salome, but you get
right to the point, he observed.
Right then and there, he promised the outstanding sums
would be paid the next day. (he said nothing about
Federico.)
True to his word (for once), the following
morning, the delivery
was made: three hundred papeletas--his new
paper money no
one believes in. I am trying to convert them.
into mexicanos or
francs at the first opportunity in order to send
you some portion
of the funds you need to purchase your medical
equipment.
(why is it so costly for you to live in Paris this
year, my love?)
How is my son? Please do not think that any little
thing about
him is beneath my interest. Does he ask after us?
Has his temper
improved? Is he still getting on well with
Mlle. Chrittia? Tell me
what if anything I can send her when the Marchenas
again sail for
France. Their trips will now be even more frequent,
as Don Eugenio has been named minister in Paris
Your Salome
Viernes, 10 mayo 1890
Ay, Pancho:
Tragedy has struck in Ciudad Nueva: the
worst fire in history,
according to our historian Don Emiliano. The
capital was wrapped
in dark fumes for several days. You can imagine
how bad this has
been for my asthma. But nothing compared to the losses
others
have suffered. I am worried about Federico--no
word of him yet.
Pibin--you know his compassionate nature--asked
if there was
anything we could do to help the victims. In
fact, Trini and her
mother are hosting a fund-raiser, and I've put in
my little bit, "Mi
obolo," copy enclosed.
230 Julia Alvarez
Trini stops by at least once a month--when she
hears the
mail boat has come--to ask after you and Fran.
I have told her
that you want her to write you, but I don't think
Trini is much for
writing letters or for writing of any kind.
Remember that she
went to the sisters Bobadilla where writing was
discouraged. She
always does say to include her fond regards.
I include her fond regards.
Salome
Martes, 8 julio 1890
Dearest:
I am beside myself thinking of your fatigue and
illness. If
Dieulafoy advises a three-month rest at
Cabourg Beach, of course,
I can wait. I can wait ages if it means your
health will not be compromised.
Perhaps, dearest, this rest will last less than three
months
if you take good care of yourself? How I hope so!
We are past the
third year mark and you still have two more levels to go.
Of
course, from time to time, I despair. But your
health must not be
sacrificed at any cost.
I am glad to know you have convinced Mlle.
Chrittia to accompany
you and Fran to Cabourg. Otherwise, you will not be
getting a rest, for well I know our Fran is
certainly "gifted with a
strong character," as Mlle. Chrittia says. In
your next letter, let me
know her measurements as Mamil insists on making
her a walking
jacket. (ask her if she already has one.) You
know Mami--she
thanks everyone with her needle and thread.
Your sons are well, asking after you.
Federico's situation is still the same.
Your Salome
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI 231
Mi@ercoles, 3 septiembre 1890
Querido Pancho:
I have received no letters since you left Paris. You
have become
poco comunicativo. I dread that illness be the
cause of your
silence. You began the year with bronchitis, then
pleurisy this
summer. What am I to think? Por Dios:
send me a cable to let me
know you are doing all right. I have asked you for nothing
in your
three years of absence. I beg you to indulge me
this once.
Here, continuing sad news. Federico is still in
prison. After
Lills's show of helping out my instituto, his
congreso refused to
designate us as a public institution.
So we can receive no further
funds to supplement the pittance from el
Ayuntamiento.
Teachers and students have lost animo. Many
absences.
But your sons are thriving. You will not believe how
tall and
smart they both are. Pibin now wants to be
called Pedro instead of
his baby name, but I tell him he will always be my
Pibin. Max has
turned into a talker--yak, yak, yak, all day
long. Half the words,
I don't understand, but he says he is
practicing his French so he
can talk to his father upon his return from Paris.
To Salome
Francisco Henriquez y Carvajal:
Martes, 18 noviembre 1890
I have received the disillusionment of my life. After
all my
compromisos, this is how I am to be rewarded.
And under the
very nose of our son, with his own nursemaid!
How do I know? The letter you wrote
to Federico was delivered
to me here. Nice condition you have put her in. Now
I understand
your delays. All that hard work in Paris.
You have broken my heart. Stay as long as you like,
but send
232 Julia Alvarez
me my son, or I will come and fetch him myself.
I swear, you do
not know what I am capable of.
I do not care to ever hear from you again.
(Mutilada)
Doctor Francisco Henriquez y
Carvajal
60 rue de Mazarine
Viernes, 5 junio 1891
Awaiting return Olinda line departing Havre
12th June. Congratulations
medical degree. Federico freed. Sons
healthy and
happy.
I have kept my promise.
Salome
SIX
Faith in the Future
Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1918
CAMILA CANNOT BE SURE who it is, but
someone is following her
around the campus of the University of Minnesota.
It is not so much an actual sighting as it is a
feeling, a feeling
she tries to dismiss as part of the tension in a country
at war. Vigilante
groups are sprouting everywhere. Mostly they are after
the
Germans, but all foreigners are suspect.
Pedro, who is particularly
dark, and Camila, with her heavy accent, have been
questioned
twice already by the local branch of the Boy
Spies of America.
In her purse is a copy of the letter certifying that
Camila is
earning a master's degree and teaching
introductory Spanish
courses; that Pedro is a doctoral candidate
with a full teaching
load; that the two aforementioned have pledged to defend
the
Constitution of the United States, if
need be. ("And who will defend
ours?" Pedro muttered in front of the dean,
Camila coughing
to drown out his mutterings.) These documents have
reduced
the number of incidents, but even so, they are
obvious foreigners,
and that is reason enough to be stopped and asked
to explain
themselves.
Of course, she has other reasons to feel spied
upon. It all
234 Julia @alvarez
began quite innocently, lying back together on the bed
--where else
in Marion's small boarding-house room were they
to sit?--reading
out loud, first Marion reading a paragraph, and then
Camila
the next. "So you can practice your English."
Her student had become
her teacher. That is how it started.
It is early June, the walks are crowded with
students hurrying
to and from classes or sitting back in
benches enjoying the warm
weather after the long and bitter winter. For a moment the
examinations
starting in two weeks are forgotten, the war going
on in
Europe, the doughboys off in the trenches of
France. The young
students bask in the sun like creatures regaining
consciousness after
a long hibernation.
She herself cannot help but feel hopeful about what
lies
ahead. There is the invitation from Marion to spend the
summer
with her family in LaMoure and the offer from her
chairman,
Olmsted, for next year. All of this, of course,
hinges on her standing
her ground with her family. It is one of the
worrisome things
on her mind right now: how to inform Papancho that she
will not
be coming back to Santiago de Cuba at the end
of the school year
as planned.
Of course, the person to start with is her brother
Pedro, who
is at home now in their small apartment,
recuperating from an
operation on his sinuses. Pedro himself is leaving
Minnesota.
Maybe Mexico, or if the war is over,
Spain, where his best friend
Alfonso Reyes is now living. He cannot bear
another winter, he
says to his colleagues. But privately, he
has admitted to Camila
that the difficulties he has encountered because of his
color and
accent have soured him toward the place. And every day the
patriotism
grows fiercer, tinged with cruelty. "We better
get out of
here while we can," he has joked bitterly. Of
course, he assumes,
Camila will come along.
She has not yet found an opportune time
to tell him of her
new plans. Between his bouts of pain and her own
hectic schedule
trying to finish her thesis, prepare for her
qualifying exams, teach
IN THE NAME OF SALOM 235
her own and cover her brother's classes, she
has let several weeks
go by. Yesterday, Olmsted reminded her that he will
be needing
her decision about the fall job by the end of exams.
Now, as she heads toward Pedro's classes--
to collect workbooks--she
knows that today will not be a good day to talk either.
At the bottom of her bag is a copy of the
Minneapolis
Journal that he has not seen. She should
probably keep it from
him, weak as he still is, but they must respond to the
accusation or
their silence will be taken as agreement. They are,
after all, not just
two anonymous foreign instructors from an
insignificant country
working toward advanced degrees, but also, as
Marion likes to
brag, the son and daughter of the president of a
country a stone's
throw away from Florida.
"He actually doesn't have a country right now,"
Camila has reminded
Marion. President Pancho has been ousted
by the Marines
and is waiting in exile in Santiago de
Cuba for the war to be over.
Then he plans to go to Washington and point out
to President Wilson
the injustice of the occupation. How he is going to do
this,
Camila does not know, but by then she will be far
away, and Pancho's
campaigns and enthusiasms won't be her
responsibility. Still,
she worries--about his health: he has already had
one stroke; about
her querulous old aunts; and most especially,
she worries about her
three half brothers, running wild without any
supervision.
Just thinking about their deplorable state can start up
those
old voices in her head. She should go back.
She cannot abandon
them as well. In fact, when Pedro had written
home with the news
that he had obtained a teaching assistantship for her
to earn a
master's degree at the university where he was
earning his doctorate,
she first decided that she could not go. Strangely
enough, it
was Pancho who encouraged her. She would have an
American
degree and be able to return in less than a year
and help the family
in its straitened circumstances. Her improved
English would
also be of immense help later when negotiating with
President
Wilson.
236 Julia Alvarez
Up until the last moment at the dock at
Santiago de Cuba,
Camila had kept changing her mind. Even now,
on certain lonesome
afternoons, especially when Marion is not around, she
will
hear those voices in her head, calling
her back with phrases that
come straight out of her mother's poems: Duty is
the highest virtue.
The best lives involve surrender. Whoever
gives himself to others lives
among the doves.
According to Marion, these voices are nothing but
figures
from her childhood taking over her adult life and
telling her un-
conscious what to do. "You have to free yourself from their
control!"
Marion urges. Freud is all the rage now,
and Marion and her
dance friends are, of course, swept up in all the
latest theories.
Marion sees an analyst four times a week,
and then imparts all her
knowledge to her friend, "for free."
The hatted figure in the dark, bulky coat is
keeping a respectful
distance. It crosses Camila's mind that her
pursuer might well
be a reporter from the Journal. To test her
hunch, she slips behind
the outdoor stairwell of Folwell Hall, where
she can watch the entrance
and not be seen.
It cannot be! Pedro? Her brother is home lying
on the couch,
convalescing from his operation. But in this campus of
mostly
pale Finns, Swedes, Germans (though they must
not be called
Germans anymore), her brother's dark skin and
black hair stand
out.
If it were not that she has to go meet his classes
right now, she
would rush home to check that he is where he is
supposed to be.
SHE PUTS HER EAR to the door before opening
it. The click of
typewriter keys. Of course, he is typing his
doctoral thesis. Between his sessions, she has been
using the rented machine to type her own master's
thesis. Shepherds' in the Pastoras of Lope de
Vega,
Olmsted's suggestion. She had wanted to write
about Hostos, her
mother's dear friend and mentor. But Professor
Olmsted, tall,
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMBLEA 237
tow-headed, with his thick mustache and his sad
walrus expression,
had suggested someone a bit more classical.
Pedro glances up when the door opens. Her
poor brother
looks as if he has been in a fist fight: his
nose is swollen from the
doctor's having had to break the bone and realign
it. Every time
Pedro explains the operation to a well-wisher,
Camila cringes.
"Poor Camila," Pedro has said. "She
has had all the suffering and
none of the pain." She laughs when he says this,
even though he
has said it a half dozen times.
Camila sets the heavy book bag down on the
kitchen table.
The place is only one large room with a
curtain strung across an
alcove behind which Camila sleeps and dresses.
The rental was advertised
as an efficiency and never had truer words been
written.
But the landlord, an old German who had no doubt
been feeling
the bite of discrimination himself, was willing to rent
to foreigners
who were members of the university community.
"How is my hardworking sister?" Pedro grins.
He looks even
worse when he grins. "How is the Mecca of
Minnesota?", The
Mecca of Minnesota is how Pedro refers
to their department,
when he is being kindly.
"Your classes all sent their get-well
wishes." Camila is stacking
his students' workbooks on the table. From the
bottom of the
bag, the headline stares up at her.
"Anything interesting happen?" he asks, eager for
news.
"Why do you ask?"
He seems surprised at her sharp rejoinder.
Usually, when they
come home, they sit chatting about the events of the day
over a
simple supper. "Did something happen? You
seem upset."
"Actually something interesting did happen," she
begins,
watching him closely to see how he will react.
"I think I saw you."
"What are you talking about, Camila?" He is
sitting in his
dressing gown, his face puffy and swollen, working
on his thesis
on irregular versification in Spanish
poetry, and from time to
time, taking a break to pour himself a glass of
bottled tea she
238 Julia @alvarez
makes for him and take two more aspirin for pain.
He has actually
gotten a lot done in the last week of
convalescing: his thesis is almost
typed and he has made headway in his
compilation of their
mother's "best work," which he means to publish in a
new edition
that his best friend Alfonso Reyes has arranged
with a publisher
friend in Madrid. Since Friends of the Country
published that
first book in 1880, there has not been another
collection of Salome's
poems. "This is how poets really die,"
Pedro has observed.
"So you didn't go out at all?"
"Por favor, Camila." He lifts his hands
as if to say, Look at me,
I am a sick man.
"Maybe I was so upset I was seeing double."
She pulls out the
paper from her bag and stands by him as he reads
aloud: CHILDREN
OF FORMER PRESIDENT OF SAN DOMINGO
PREFER THE USA.
"Hijos de la gran puta," Pedro
mutters.
Camila has never heard her brother swear in this
ugly way.
But instead of shock, she feels relieved to have him
express the
feelings she has kept locked inside her all
day.
Her brother rips the page he has been typing
out of the machine
and inserts a clean sheet. His fingers hit the
keys, one by
one, fast and hard.
"Be careful what you say," she cautions. She
does not need to
remind Pedro of the stories they have both been
reading in the paper:
the young man hanged for mentioning the Kaiser's name in
Wyoming, the speaking of German forbidden on
streetcars by the
governor of Iowa, menu entries for hamburgers
all over town
pasted over with the correction, liberty sandwich.
Olmsted now
refers to his dachshund as a "liberty pup."
"We have to defend ourselves against these lies," Pedro
says,
striking furiously at the keys. But he is so
angry, he keeps making
mistakes.
"Let me do it, Pibin," Camila says,
touching his shoulder to
calm him. "You dictate."
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOM
He holds his head in his hands--obviously the
pain is returning--and
lets her have his seat. He lies down on the
couch,
which doubles as his bed, and composes the letter out loud as
she
types it. "Our father was ousted by the Americans because
he
would not agree to their demands ... We are here because
the occupation
of our country does not permit us to return ...
That last afternoon of Pancho's presidency, after he
had informed
the family that they would be going back into exile,
Camila
remembers wandering from room to room of the
elegant
colonial palace. In a stripped-down
bedroom on the second floor,
she had opened a casement window. It was
November. The tropical
winter was coming on. Waves hurled themselves against the
sea wall with an abandon that frightened her. She had
imagined
her homecoming, in triumph, Salome's
grown-up daughter, returning
with her father to help her struggling country ... Now,
two months later, she saw the vanity of the
fantasy she had carried
around in her head as a measure of how she must
act. But unlike
her mother, she would not let this disappointment consume
her.
She would not throw herself away on a country that could
not
keep faith with the dreams in her heart.
Pedro pauses, and then in a tired voice she
knows is not
meant for the letter, he says, "I am so glad we
are leaving this crazy
place in a few weeks."
She feels the heavy weight of this conclusion. There
is no way
that she can stay with Marion over the summer or
accept Olmsted's
offer without seeming to betray her country and her
beloved brother.
That night she goes on her customary walk--
"to get fresh
air," as she explains to Pedro. But when she
comes to Marion's
rooming house, she does not go in as she usually
does. Instead, she
turns just in time to see the familiar, dark
figure hurrying back in
the direction of their apartment house. It is
Pedro, she is sure of
it. With a pang of embarrassment, she wonders just
how much he
knows about her and Marion.
240 Julia Alvarez
MARION REED WAS ONE of the easier names
to pronounce on
the roster the first day of her Spanish conversation
class. The consonants
and vowels of her students' names (hough,
Steichner,
Thompson) kept snagging Camila's tongue,
and the girls--there
was a preponderance of them with so many young men off to
war--giggled mercilessly.
But the young woman with short, black hair in the
first row
seemed absorbed by whatever Camila had to say.
She looked older
than the other students, perhaps the same age as
Camila. She was
wearing a sports coat, and when she crossed her
long legs, it became
clear she was wearing trousers! Camila had never
seen a
woman dressed in this way except in magazines
or on the musical
stage back home.
She was going around the room, asking each student in
English
why he or she had chosen to study Spanish.
When she got to the young woman, she replied in
Spanish.
"Amo la lengua."
I love the language.
Camila felt the thrill of the foreigner hearing her
native
tongue praised.
That afternoon, she was informed by Olmsted that she must
sign up for a physical education class in order
to fulfill the requirements
for graduate study.
"Physical education?" she asked, leaning forward
in her chair.
These first few weeks in English, she never knew
if she was hearing
correctly or if one language could be so
different from another.
"Field
hockey, preliminary hygiene, personal
hygiene, elementary,
intermediate or advanced physical training."
He was
reading from the catalog. "Rhythmic expression."
"Rhythmic expression?"
"I think that means dance," Olmsted guessed.
For her first class Camila dressed
appropriately in her party
dress and short-heeled slippers that would make it
easier to master
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOM 241
the waltz, the two-step, the fox-trot. She had
always loved to
dance.
There in the class was her student, Miss Reed.
But rather than
street clothes, she and the other students wore
loose-fitting tunics.
They leapt across the room, throwing their arms and
legs about in
an embarrassing way,. like girls acting silly
at an overnight party.
Camila turned to leave.
"Hey there!" Marion swept across the room
toward her.
"Don't I know you?" The dark eyes searched her
face boldly, without
trying to disguise the rudeness of staring. Camila
looked down
at the floor and was surprised by the sight of the young
woman's
toes. She was dancing barefoot.
"I know! You're my Spanish teacher. Are you
taking P.e.?"
She was staring at Camila's cream-colored,
lace dress as if trying to
decide whether it was edible. Years ago, the
front of the dress had
been stained at a birthday party. Her stepmother had
scoured it
clean, but even so, every time Camila put it on and
and people
looked at her, she thought, Oh no, the stain is
showing after all.
"It's a great class," the young woman was saying.
Her long,
slender body was visible through the deep armholes of
her tunic.
"We're starting off with Delsarte exercises and
then moving on to
Fuller and St. Denis, freeing the body from the
solar plexus out."
She began to breathe deeply and spread her arms.
Camila stepped back.
The gesture snapped the young woman out of her
trance. She
looked at Camila quizzically. "What's
wrong?"
"Nothing is wrong," Camila answered, trying
not to sound
annoyed. American students were known to be
casual with their
teachers, but she had yet to get used to this new
style.
Marion held her eyes a moment. And then, she
carried
through with the gesture she had started and spread her arms
as
wide as she could get them.
Camila watched, wondering what was required of
her.
"What did you mean by that gesture?" she asked
Marion
242 Julia @alvarez
months later when they had become friends.
"Spreading your
arms like that."
"I was actually doing the Delsarte movement for
welcome. I
wanted you to know you could trust me," Marion
explained. "Seriously.
From the beginning, I was drawn to you. It was like
putting
a face on love."
In her notebook that night, Camila wrote
down the phrase
that had caught her fancy, putting a face on
love. She had always
imagined a man's face or her mother's face
pinned on that big
heart, but ever since her encounters with her first beau,
Primitivo,
had left her curiously cold, she has
wondered if she is capable of
that kind of love at all. Since then there have been
plenty of admirers,
but no one whom she has admired. "You are
looking for a
hero in a novel," Pedro has accused her. But
no, she has often
thought. It is my mother I am looking for.
"I see you with the eyes of love," Marion has
said, turning on
her stomach to look into Camila's eyes. The
Song of the Lark, the
new Cather novel they have been reading,
is forgotten, tossed at
the foot of the bed. "And I see you seeing me,"
Camila smiles
back:
Sometimes Camila wonders if her American
friend truly sees
her. When Marion first suggested spending the summer
together,
Camila worried about her reception in
LaMoure, North Dakota.
After all, if she and Pedro have been heckled in
the big cities of
Minneapolis and St. Paul, will she be safe
visiting a small village?
Marion laughed. "Camila, hon, we don't
have villages in North
America. And come on, you're about as much of a
negro as I am
a German." Several generations ago, Marion's
great-grandfather
had emigrated from Germany. The family name has
since been
changed from Reidenbach to Reed. This is one of the
many secrets
they have shared, which cannot be repeated. Daddy
Reed has
an important position in his company and needs
to be careful.
"That doesn't make me German. That was way
back. That'd be
like saying we're monkeys because we're descended
from apes."
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOM 243
"I don't care what you are," Marion added,
kissing first the
palm of one hand, then the other, pronouncing
Camila's full
name slowly as if it were a tongue twister she was
trying to master.
It has occurred to Camila how silly love
talk would sound to
someone who is not a participant. But who would be
listening?
No doubt, that old ghost that her aunt Mon
once showed her how
to summon when she was a child: "In the name
of the Father, and
of the Son, and of Salome, my mother." But it is not
just her
mother, but her own father and brothers and aunts have
gotten
inside her head. Even at twenty-four, it is
difficult to break this old
habit of seeing herself through their eyes.
And now, those eyes are real: the eyes of her
favorite brother,
following her, trying to catch her at something--but
what? She
feels angry at this invasion of her privacy.
Angry enough to find
the first opportunity to retaliate by invading his.
HE s AT THE doctor's for his final
postoperative appointment.
Then he intends to stop by the head offices of the
Journal and deliver
their letter. Normally, she would accompany him, but
she
begs off. She needs to finish typing her thesis and
to write final exams
for her classes.
She watches him from the front window and
as soon as he is
out of sight, she kneels beside the old trunk in which
Pedro stores
his manuscripts and packets of
correspondence. Her brother is an
inveterate writer: everything he thinks, knows,
questions, Pedro
writes down, mostly in long letters to Alfonso
Reyes, who suffers
from the same affliction. Whatever Pedro
suspects, he will have
written to Alfonso about it, and no doubt,
Alfonso will mention
the matter in his own replies.
The trunk also doubles as their coffee and typing
table. Lifting
the stacks of paper she notes the table of- contents
Pedro has
typed out for the new edition of their mother's poems.
Many of
Camila's favorites are missing.
"Personal poems," Pedro calls them
244 Julia @alvarez
as if that diminishes their value. At the center of
her brother's personality
there is a deep conservatism that astonishes her in
a man
who thinks of himself as rational and modern.
Inside the trunk, she is overwhelmed by what she
finds: not
just Pedro's correspondence but letters addressed from
her mother
to her father, a diary Pedro kept as a young boy
with a biography
of their mother's life, copies of a little newspaper
that Pedro and
Max used to publish as children with their mother listed as
director,
even a clipping from the Dominican papers
Camila has seen
before, reporting Fran's acquittal in the
murder of a young man. It
was judged to be self-defense, though, knowing her
brother's violent
temper, Camila is not sure she would have
acquitted him.
She could spend hours reading these and no doubt
uncovering
many secrets in her family's past, but she must
work quickly.
The packet of letters from Alfonso is close to the
top. Near the
end of the third letter, she spots her name.
About this worrisome matter of Camila. It is
best, Pedro,
if you have ocular proof and then there will be no doubt
in your mind and no arguments on her part to sway you
from what you must do. You and I both know how
Americans are much more free in their ways. And
these
young Yanks (believe me, I have seen them over
here) feel
much more license with a foreign woman of
indeterminate
race. Once you have the evidence, you must confront
her and insist she break off the relation and
immediately upon graduation send her back to the safety
of your family.
What Camila feels, at first, is relief:
her brother suspects her
of a secret love affair with a man! As
grievous as that would be, it
is nothing compared to a liaison with a woman. But the
relief soon
passes. In its wake she feels the
sadness of the trust they have betrayed
in each other. Why couldn't Pedro just ask her
straight out
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOM 245
if she is interested in anyone? She recalls
how he has been dropping
hints, mentioning the name of this or that instructor. But
so
little is her interest in any of these young men that
Camila has assumed
Pedro's comments are merely part of the daily news
they
share when they both come home and talk long hours
into the
night with each other.
Several nights ago, in fact, Camila asked
Pedro about a dim
memory she had of their mother, which Pancho always
claimed
Camila had made up to avoid a childhood
punishment.
"You didn't make it up," Pedro assured
her. "I'll always remember
when Mami gave me that poem, she made me vow
to
take good care of you. Mamfi would never forgive
me if any harm
should come your way." Pedro was looking pointedly
at her.
She glanced away uneasily.
"Is there something wrong, Camila? You've
seemed preoccupied."
She had thought then of telling him of her plans for the
summer
and fall, and even more pointedly, of her feelings for
Marion.
But without the face of love, as Marion might
put it, any passion
would seem preposterous. Even her own beloved
Pibin, if she did
not love him, even he would seem slightly
repugnant, with his animal sounds and smells, his
grievances, the dark soft hair curling on the back
of his hands.
She shook her head, no. She had nothing
to confess to
him yet.
THEY SIT ACROSS FROM Olmsted, who is
cracking his big pink
knuckles like a nervous schoolboy.
Periodically, he scoops up his
dachshund, an odd little animal with a body of
pulled taffy and
the unlikely name of Dona Lola. Dona
Lola accompanies him
everywhere--a droll pair: a large,
diffident-looking man and the
shortest dog in the world. Brother and sister have been
asked to
the chairman's office to discuss their rebuttal
letter printed in the
246 Julia @alvarez
Journal that has caused a ripple of
unpleasant reaction from the
administration.
"I am behind you both, I hope you know that,"
Olmsted is
saying. He scratches at his fine, colorless
hair. The friction makes
it stand on end, a prickly halo.
"We have nothing to apologize for."
Pedro has drawn himself
up in his chair. It pains Camila to see him in
such a state of readiness,
as if any minute now he will dash out the door and
make a
run for the border. What border, she wonders?
They are surrounded
by the United States. "Lies were put in our
mouths," Pedro
adds.
"The apology should come from the paper," the chairman
agrees. He stands and walks to the window, Dona
Lola at his
heels. The click of the dog's nails on the
wood floor is unnerving.
"But let's face it. There's a war going on.
Patriotism is the law of
the land, and any breath of a criticism ..." His
voice trails off.
Perhaps he has seen something out the window on the
campus
green that keeps him from continuing.
Though the fact has not been mentioned, Camila
knows
what is on the line, the degrees they
are both scheduled to receive
in a week. She herself would only be sacrificing
a year of work,
but Pedro, in fact, has been here two years,
and he is due to receive
his doctorate in Spanish.
"What do you advise?" Camila asks.
"You both might write a letter, explaining that you
intended no
disrespect to this great nation, et cetera, et
cetera." Olmsted sighs
and lifts his arms, then lets them drop. Now more
than ever, he looks
like a walrus, stranded, landlocked, waving his
flippers desperately.
Camila has pulled out her notebook and is
jotting down the
chairman's phrases.
"We will write no such letter," Pedro stands and
crosses his
arms, ready for martyrdom. Dona Lola
growls at the sudden
movement, but Olmsted reaches down and calms her
with a
stroke of his big hand against the sleek,
sausagelike body. "If the
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOM dg247
school decides not to award us our degrees, we
will protest that action,"
Pedro declares.
Looking up at him, Camila notices how much
her brother
resembles their father. The same stubbornness that has
made
Papancho unbearable at times. She says
nothing. It is useless to try
to reason with an Henriquez man who has dug his
heels in moral
ground.
"I am not worried about your degrees," Olmsted
says. He
stops a moment and surveys them both, as if he
is about to hatch
a plot and wants to be sure of their loyalty.
"But as you know,
Miss Henriquez, I've offered you a
job this fall." He nods toward
Camila, who can feel her brother's eyes
fixed on her face as if to
say, You knew this all along and did not tell
me!
"And as for you, Pedro," Olmsted continues, "with so
many of
our colleagues going off to the front, I am
prepared to offer you a
two-year contract with a considerable raise in
salary. But, of
course, both offers must be approved by the
administration--"
"I have already made plans," Pedro cuts him
off. This is an
outright lie, as Camila knows. Pedro has
made a decision about
leaving, but he has no plans. Spain is out of the
question. Mexico
is still reeling from civil war and American
intervention. Their
own country is occupied, and so is their neighbor
Haiti. Puerto
Rico is now owned by the United States, and
Cuba is headed for
the same compromised situation. Where can they go that
isn't enemy
territory anymore?
An audible sigh escapes from the chairman's
mouth, accompanied
by a slumping of the shoulders--the performed emotion
of a veteran professor who needs to project his
disappointment to
the class. Dona Lola's ears have perked up,
on the alert for trouble.
The chairman turns to Camila. "I suppose
then, Miss Henriquez,
that you won't be back either."
She takes a deep breath, but her voice still
comes out as a
whisper. "I have decided to accept your offer," she
tells the sad,
walrus face.
248 Julia @alvarez
She picks up her book and rises to meet her
brother's furious
gaze.
Dona Lola rises, too, barking excitedly.
PEDRO IS PACING. Given the size of the
efficiency, he does not
have far to go before he has turned around to face her.
"Papancho
entrusted you to my care."
She says nothing, holding her hands to keep them from
shaking.
She could say any number of things. That she is
twenty-four
years old. She has her own life to live. That
she now has a job, a
way to take care of herself.
Their degrees have been approved. They heard
earlier this
morning from Olmsted. The chairman also handed
Camila her
new contract. "To sign at your convenience."
Camila slipped the
envelope in her bag to avoid a confrontation with
her brother in
public. They have already had several scenes since
she accepted the
offer in Olmsted's office. Every time he starts up
with his arguments,
Camila merely responds, "I will certainly
take your feelings
into consideration, Pedro." She cannot call
him Pibin when she is
so angry at him.
As for a letter of explanation to the papers, it has
proved to
be unnecessary. Olmsted got around the whole matter
by inviting
a friendly reporter from the competing paper, the
Minneapolis
Tribune, over to his house to meet Camila
and Pedro. The reporter
asked them a few questions and wrote up a
heartwarming
article about these two bright emissaries from south
of the border.
Pedro was quoted correctly as saying, "I
don't like to compare
countries, which one is better, which one is more right.
I am
interested in people, in individuals." Camila's
appearance in print
was brief and uncontroversial as always. "His
lovely sister nodded
in agreement."
If that reporter could see us now, Camila is
thinking, as her
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOM 249
brother halts directly in front of her,
frowning. "I am not going to
leave you here by yourself."
"But I am not staying here by myself. I'm spending the
summer
with Marion and her family."
Pedro's mouth drops in surprise. His nose
has healed and only
a slight puffiness around the eyes recalls the
pain and trouble of
a few weeks ago. "You don't know who these people
are," Pedro
begins.
"Her parents have sent a kind invitation. Mr.
Reed is a manager
of the North American Life Insurance
Company." She offers
this detail as proof of the respectability of
Marion's family, but of
course, that is not the point.
She heads for her alcove to retrieve the letter of
invitation.
With her back turned, she feels brave enough
to add, "In the fall,
I will be moving with Marion and some friends into our own
apartment. So you see, I will not be alone." She
finds the letter
where she has kept it, hidden out of sight for
weeks, under her
mattress, where her aunt Ramona told her
Salome used to store
her packet of poems.
When she returns, Pedro is sitting in the
chair she has vacated,
as if brought down by the shock of all this news. But
in actual
fact, he does not seem shocked anymore or
even angry, just
weary. It is a lot to take in, she thinks, a
little sister growing up, finally.
THAT
NIGHT, SHE IS late going out for her
customary walk.
Pedro and she sit in the living room, sipping
tea, and talking.
They have turned a corner in their standoff, and now
Pedro is
considering accepting Olmsted's offer and staying two
more years.
"Pibin," she says, touching his hand, "it will be
fine if you decide
to go, really." Her anger has receded, and she
feels only tenderness
toward him. She has never been able to hold a
grudge for
250 Julia @alvarez
long. Inevitably, she ends up seeing the other
person's point of
view. It is a habit she has developed from
reading too many books,
perhaps; or from always having those voices in her head
telling her
what to do. She remembers how Pedro described
her in one of his
letters to Alfonso. "My sister has a perfect
character." (she felt a
pang of guilt reading this in the midst of her
snooping.) "She
lives by continual little realignments that look
to all the world like
indecisiveness. But they are, I believe, the
quivering of her moral
compass toward its true north--which I think she
believes is our
mother, but is really her own soul. She is strong but
without violence."
She
did not recognize herself in the description but
loved her
brother's effort to see her with such respect.
Often, she has wondered
if destiny has not played a trick and given her
a perfect
companion as a brother instead of a lover.
"Maybe it is I who will miss you too much if
we are apart,"
Pedro notes. She is not sure she believes
this. Pedro has always
been the solitary wanderer.
As they talk, he rests his feet on the trunk
she can no longer
look at without feeling ashamed. Once or
twice during their conversation,
she has been on the point of confessing to him. But
let
him have his ocular evidence, as Alfonso has
advised. Spare herself
the mortification of trying to explain what she herself
does not
understand.
Now, on her walk, she waits for him to catch
up with her. She
looks up at the night sky: so many stars in odd
places. It has taken
a while to get used to finding the familiar where she
did. not expect
it. Like this passion she has been feeling, a
passion she always
yearned for, but did not expect to feel toward a
woman.
She waits a few minutes, but tonight Pedro
does not appear.
She feels a pang of that old loneliness she
felt as a young girl
when she would sink into depression and want
to disappear. In
fact, she had written at that time to Pedro, who
was away in Mexico,
explaining that a friend's friend was contemplating
suicide.
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOIII 251
What should she do? He had written back
promptly, suggesting
that Camila come live with him. Of course, their
father had not
allowed it.
Pedro has been the dearest, closest person
to her in this
world. What if by getting free of her family,
she were to lose him
as well? She hurries down the street,
pursued by her worries, like
the girl in her book of Greek myths beset by the
trunkful of sorrows
and plagues she has let loose on the world.
WHEN MARION OPENS THE door, Camila
falls into her arms.
"Is everything okay?" Marion asks, holding
her, as if Camila were
a child in need of comfort. "You're out of breath. Come
sit down
before you get an attack of asthma."
Camila cannot bear to be still and let her dark thoughts
catch
up with her. She paces as she recounts what she
has told her
brother.
"You told him!" Marion hoots. "Good for you!"
Camila hushes her. "Remember there are people
around."
"People" are other young women students and Miss
Tucker, who
lives downstairs, but is going deaf, and so
leaves the front door unlocked
until the stroke of nine, when she "brings up the
drawbridge
and floods the moat." Before her present incarnation
as
boarding-house mother, Miss Tucker taught
history at a private
school for girls near Boston.
"Salome ... Camila... Henriquez ...
Urefia ..." Marion
murmurs each name as if it were an endearment.
Each one merits
a kiss, each kiss lingers a minute
longer.
When the door opens on them, Camila is not
surprised
to see her brother standing in the hallway, a baffled
look in
his eyes. "How dare you!" Marion descends on
him, a mother
bird defending her chicks against a predator.
He backs away,
embarrassed.
There is something in his face that takes Camila
back to that
252 Julia @alvarez
first memory of her mother, looking up from the poem
she has
just finished to say, "Stay close to your brother."
He has turned on his heel and is running down
the upstairs
hall.
"Pibin," she calls after him, hoping the name will
recall him
to the vow he made their mother.
SIETE
La llegada del invierno
Santo Domingo, 1891-1892
THE DAY FINALLY CAME when Pancho came
home. Four years had
gone by.
I was utterly changed. Everyone told me so.
I was so thin that
even Max could put his little hands around my wrists.
I could
barely catch my breath. My hair had turned
gray. The lines on my
face were deep, almost as if all the writing I
had not done on paper,
I had done on my skin.
The last thing I wanted to do was go down to the dock
and
watch his boat come in.
IT WAS SUNDOWN, I remember, and
Federico had come for the
two boys. A welcome party of Pancho's
family and friends had
gone ahead. I had said I wasn't going--the first
dew of the evening
was always the worst for my coughing.
But at the last minute, I changed my mind. I
dressed up in
my black silk gown, as buenamoza as
a woman can look in a dress that had fit her when
she was ten kilos heavier. I put the little cross
254 Julia @alvarez
Pancho had given me around my neck, and I
marched down to
the dock with one boy in each hand.
"Con calma, Salome," Federico pleaded.
How could I remain calm after waiting four years
to be deceived?
"Remember
that he is a youngster," Federico went on,
mistaking
my silence for compliance.
Little Pibin looked up at me with his wise
eyes. "Who are you
talking about, Mami?"
"No one we know," I replied.
When the passengers were helped from the rowboat onto
the
dock, and I saw them, Pancho! Fran! I
could not believe my eyes.
Pancho had grown even more good-looking in France.
As for Fran,
I had sent my son off a boy, and he had come
back a little man.
I gave out a cry. I knew I was in
public, but I didn't care. I
spread my arms and I ran down toward them, my
lungs so tight,
I thought I would collapse before I reached them.
Behind me, my
two little ones were trying to keep up.
I saw the shock on Pancho's face as he
took in the sad reality of
how ill I was, the wasted face and figure.
He must have assumed I
was running toward him, my anger and formality
forgotten in my
happiness to have him back. He turned, handed his
hat to the
porter who was carrying his portmanteau, and spread
his arms for
me. I swooped down past him and took my boy
in my arms.
Fran cringed, and for a horrid moment, I could see
the disgust
on my son's face. He didn't know who this
old, hollow-eyed,
twig-thin woman was. And then, slowly,
recognition spread across
his face.
"Mami?" he asked, before we both burst out
crying.
THAT NIGHT EVERYONE GATHERED at our house:
all of Pancho's
brothers except Manuel, of course, who was still
in exile;
Dubeau and Zafra had come down from Puerto
Plata expressly to
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI 255
see their beloved compatriot, and Don Eugenio
Marchena, who
had carried so many letters back and forth to Paris
while he had
been minister, dropped in for a while. Sick as
I was, I stayed up,
greedy for the sight of my three sons reunited
again.
Long after the last bell at nine, when the two
youngest couldn't
stand up any longer, Ramona helped
me put them to bed. A while
later, Fran kissed me good night. "Bonne
nuit, cherie." He could
barely speak Spanish anymore. I wondered
if he had said the very
same words to that other woman those nights she put
him to bed
before she bedded down with Pancho.
Scorpions in the mind--that's what my jealousy
felt like.
And in my chest. Every time I thought of that woman,
I'd break
down in a fit of coughing.
Finally, the last guest left. Ramona shut up
the house, and
Pancho walked her home to Mama's house, a
block away. I waited,
standing in the entryway, trying to compose my thoughts.
He jumped when he saw me, shocked to find me
there on the
other side of the front door. His head was bowed;
he had obviously
been preparing for this scene. I could see he was
uneasy, for
this was really our first moment alone together.
In January I had moved to a house closer
to Mami and Ramona.
Large and airy with an inner courtyard full of
fruit trees
and birds, the house itself was shaped like a
horseshoe, with a central
parlor I used for the school and two wings with
several large
rooms for our living quarters.
We stood looking at each other a long moment in
the entryway.
His hair was cut stylishly short; his mustache was
trim and
elegant. He had come back from France, the
figure of a man,
thirty-two years old, his life ahead of him.
I, on the other hand,
had been consumed by the separation. I was forty and
looked ten
years older.
When he moved toward me, I handed him the lamp
I had
taken down from its hook. "I suspect you must be
tired, Pancho.
Your room is down that hallway."
256 Julia Alvarez
"Aren't we in the same room?" he questioned. There
was an
odd French intonation to his Spanish. "I vow
to you, Salome--"
"Your trunks should be there," I interrupted in a
tired voice.
"From now on, you go your way, and I go mine."
"Ay, Salome, por Dios, this is my first
night home ..."
I don't know what else he said. I left him
standing with the
lamp at the front of the house, as I made my
way in the dark to
bed.
I BURNED AZUFRE IN my room every
night, hoping to clear
my lungs. On the small table beside my bed, I
placed the jar of
jarabe Scott Emulsion and a glass of milk
covered with a saucer.
When I woke up, weak with coughing in the middle
of the night,
the milk soothed my throat. I closed the
jalousies, latched the
windows together, and hung a sheet over them to block
out
the noxious night vapors. By my bed I kept
a ponchera ready for
the expectoration that came with every attack.
You can see this was no place I wanted to share with a
man.
But as I secured my room for the night and latched
the
bedroom door from inside, I could not keep my
feelings from
flooding my heart. I could not bar the thought of
Pancho and his
mademoiselle from my mind. It was like taking a
swallow of
vinegar into a mouth full of sores.
Deceiver, egotist, philanderer, liar, sin
verguenza, good for
nothing, I thought to myself, as if each word were a
door I was
shutting against him.
One night, I heard steps, followed by quiet
knocking, which
I ignored.
"Are you all right, Mami?" It was
Pibin, checking on me after
a bout of coughing.
"Yes, my love," I called back, touched
by my dear boy's concern.
But I was also disappointed. I did not want
to admit it, even
to myself." I had wanted it to be Pancho.
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI. 257
Deceiver, egotist, philanderer, liar, sin
verguenza, good for
nothing, but I was still in love with him!
I broke out into another fit of coughing.
To THE WORLD AROUND US, our reunion was the
happy ending
to a touching love story. Or the beginning of a
happy ending.
First there was Dona Salome's health to set
to rights. What better
agent of her delivery than her own husband,
trained in the latest
medical procedures in France?
Pancho had come back with a big head, made even
bigger by
an ostentatious top hat, just what all the
doctors were wearing in
Paris. He also wore his Prince Albert
frock coat everywhere he
went in the capital, even when he was not calling
on a patient.
Late afternoons, he liked to drop in at el
Instituto Profesional
during classes. The illustrious doctor
recently arrived from Paris
would, of course, be invited to say a few words.
Pancho would
oblige with long discourses on the latest medical
findings.
His favorite disquisition was on Pasteur's
germ theory, and
how the spread of disease could best be controlled
by better hygiene.
In our own house, he had set up sinks in every
room and
insisted we wash our hands constantly to avoid the
spread of
germs my students might have carried in.
Pancho and his enthusiasms!
I couldn't help but recall the young man I had
fallen in
love with, eager to wipe out ignorance and
injustice. Now his attention
was directed toward the obliteration of germs with
water
and soap. You can imagine the rumors that got
started, that Don
Pancho had gone to Paris to learn how to wash his
hands!
Pancho loved to take my little Pibin along and
show him off.
The truth is my middle one was an astonishing child.
He had
taught himself to read when he was four, and then
easily learned
all his numbers. Recently, as a surprise
to his father, he had memorized
the names of all the bones and knew where they all
were.
"Scapula, fibula, clavicle, ulna and
radius, humerus, femur,
258 Julia Alvarez
metacarpal," he would recite in his little
voice, pointing to the
spot on his body where each bone was located.
Pibin would come home with stories about what Dr.
Alfonseca
had said, and then how Papancho had corrected
him. "It
sounds as if your father was as brilliant as
usual," I noted.
The boy cocked his head thoughtfully. "But he
embarrassed
Dr. Alfonseca. Maybe it would have been
better if he talked to Dr.
Alfonseca afterward?" Alfonseca was the elderly
doctor who had
saved Pedro's life when he'd had the croup
several years back. And
it was also Alfonseca, who had kept me breathing
through months
of severe pulmonary attacks.
"I'm sure your father didn't mean to embarrass
the kind doctor,
Pibin."
He thought about that a moment, and then he said, "I
don't
think Papancho meant to hurt him. I
just think Papancho wanted
to be right."
I looked at my Pedro. It was not just the fund
of information
in his head I admired. My son had a moral
gravity which, in one
so young, was astonishing. You'd teach him something, and
he
would puzzle at it, asking serious questions: What
is justice? What
is patria? Is kindness better than truth?
And the one I could no
longer answer for him, Is love really stronger
than anything else in
the world?
I HAD ONCE ASKED Hostos the same
question.
Before he finally left the country, Hostos had come
over to examine
the oldest girls on their knowledge of botany, and he
had
lingered afterward. I knew this was my only chance to say
goodbye
privately. I had already promised myself I would
not cry. I was
afraid that once I got started, I would not be
able to stop.
He was restless, as usual, on his feet, going from
object to object
in the room--almost as if like a lost man he needed
to find
his way with clues. At the whirligig I had
constructed to teach
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI 259
wind power, he turned to face me. I had been
coughing quite a bit
in the last few days of rainy winter weather.
"Are you all right, Salome?"
"It's just a touch of catarrh. Everyone has it."
I waved away
the cough as an insignificance.
"Yes, Belinda and Maria have caught it as
well." And then he
paused, waiting, as if I had not yet answered
his question.
Perhaps I would have confessed the strength of
my feelings
had he not just mentioned Belinda. Instead, I asked
him the question
that Pibin was always asking me. "Is love stronger
than anything
else in the world?"
"Why do you ask, Salome?" Hostos was never
one to leave a
stone unturned.
"Because I console myself in Pancho's absence
by telling
myself that love is stronger than his absence, stronger
than my
fears--"
I would have said more. I would have told him that I was
now consoling myself with the same philosophy about his
impending
departure, and that it was not working, But suddenly,
Hostos put a finger to his lips, his head
cocked as if he had heard
an intruder.
He motioned for me to continue talking as he walked
quietly
to the door and pulled it open. There stood
Federico peering in
through the crack in the double door.
"Perhaps we had better ask Federico what he
thinks?" Hostos
said. I could hear the anger in his voice, held in
check by his positivist
reason. I'm afraid I had no such
self-control. "Is love
stronger than anything else in the world, Federico,
or shall suspicion
and betrayal rule the day?"
That night in bed, I cried as I had not cried
since childhood.
I could not stop myself. "Tears are the ink of the
poet," Papi had
once said. But I was no longer writing. I could
waste them now on
sadness.
260 Julia Alvarez
ONE DAY, SHORTLY AFTER Pancho's
return, Dr. Alfonseca
dropped by and asked to speak to Pancho and me
privately. Ramona
shooed the children from the room. Pibin walked out behind
the others, his sad eyes clinging to me.
"I don't have to tell you, Pancho, that
Salome's condition is
serious. Her consumption--"
"I beg your pardon, Jose, but I have examined
Salome's sputum--"
"You
examined it?" I was mortified. How had he
gotten close
to my sputum when I didn't even allow him
inside my bedroom?
"Your ponchera is left by the water closet every
morning for
emptying. And I retrieved a sample and
examined it under my
microscope."
I could see from Dr. Alfonseca's expression
that he believed
this black apparatus was a boy's toy, nothing
to use in the effort to
save the lives of human beings.
"Koch has shown that consumption is caused
by tubercle
bacilli and I have not observed any such bacilli
in Salome's expectoration,"
Pancho went on. "Hers is an acute
incidence of asthma
aggravated by overwork, pulmonary inflammation, and
..." His
eyes wandered over toward me. Would he dare say
it, I wondered
--and by heartbreak?
Alfonseca didn't seem to know what to make of
this Parisian
parrot. Finally, he waved away their
disagreement. "It does not
matter what we call it, Pancho, but I do
want to touch upon a
rather sensitive matter. I believe that as a
couple you should exercise
caution, if not out-and-out abstinence--" (here
Alfonseca
went into his own fit of embarrassed coughing) "because
a pregnancy
at this point would be mortal for the mother."
Mortal for the mother? It sounded as if he were talking
about
someone else. You need not worry, I might have
told him. There is
no chance of that happening to me.
"There are cases in which pregnancy has actually
helped,"
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI 261
Pancho disagreed. As he went on to enumerate
them, I broke out
in a fit of coughing. Pancho's lectures had this
effect on me.
"Surely your French colleagues would disagree
with you, Don
Pancho, fond as they are of applying Peter's
formula to these
cases." Now it was Alfonseca's turn to show
off. The two doctors
were engaged in a medical cockfight of sorts.
Both had forgotten
about me. "If a maiden, no marriage; if a
wife, no pregnancy--"
"If a mother, no breast-feeding," Pancho
concluded the formula,
nodding deeply in agreement. "This I know--but these
strictures apply only if the patient is
tubercular, and you are totally
in error with your preliminary
diagnosis, Dr. Alfonseca."
Alfonseca stood. By his heightened color
I knew he was angry.
"I will be taking my leave," he said, bowing toward
Pancho. "Perhaps
you are right, and I shall be proved wrong in my
diagnosis,
Dr. Henriquez, but I am right about one thing.
You are Salome's
husband and I am her doctor. We should not both
try to treat her
illness. But then, Dona Salome," he added,
bowing toward me,
"you are the one to decide."
I stood, too, holding on to the back of the
chair. I could see
Pancho was waiting for me to say that he was my
husband and as
such he was the ultimate guide in all matters,
including my
health. But I did not address--indeed I did
not know how to
address--what Pancho was to me now.
"You are my doctor," I assured
Alfonseca. I could feel Pancho's
angry eyes on me, which only helped bring on
a new fit of coughing.
EVEN WITH ALL HIS sophisticated
theories, Pancho did not
fare very well that year of his return. To put it
plainly, his patients
kept dying on him. In part, I do believe that
he was experimenting
with the latest surgical procedures in our poor
little country
but without medications or trained personnel to back
him up.
When he performed the first ovariectomy on the island
on Dona
262 Julia Alvarez
Monica, who was rumored to be a mistress of
Lilis's, and she died,
what were once whispered suggestions became out-and-out
heckling.
Lechuza!
voices called out when he entered a patient's
house.
Owl, the bird of ill omen.
Matasano! Health killer!
This persecution became aggravated when
Pancho sided with
Lilis's rival. I'm referring, of course,
to Don Eugenio Marchena,
who had been Lilis's minister in France but had
now broken with
the dictator. Don Eugenio and Pancho had
become close friends
in Paris, and the friendship continued on native
soil. Certainly,
the man had done us many favors, carrying mail
back and forth,
and accompanying our Fran on the ocean crossing.
But I'm afraid
anyone associated with Pancho's Paris days
now aroused only my
suspicion. Whenever I saw Don Eugenio,
all I could think was,
How much does he know about Pancho's other life
that he is
keeping from me?
Don Eugenio's right-hand man was Don
Rodolfo Lauranzon,
who had moved his family to the capital from Azua
to help with
his campaign. When Lilis announced
he would not be running in
the next election, Don Eugenio got it in his
head, or maybe his
friends Pancho and Rodolfo put it in his head, that
he should be
the next president.
Many nights, those three gathered in Pancho's
wing, talking
until late hours in loud voices that kept me
awake.
"Pancho, pot Dios," I pleaded with him one
night. "Give up
this foolishness!"
"I cannot forget my dreams for my country," he
protested,
slipping his hand in his frock coat like the
statesman he now
dreamed of becoming.
"Neither can I," I said quietly. "But I have
been living in this
nightmare for the last four years, and I can tell you
that these elections
are a trick by Lilis to flush out the competition.
Woe to the
man who takes him at this word."
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI * 263
Pancho was shaking his head as if he knew
better. "Don Eugenio
is going to change things--"
"Don Eugenio!" I scoffed. "Without Don
Eugenio, Lilis would
not even be where he is today." This was a fact that
Pancho could not
refute. It was Don Eugenio who had engineered
all of Lilis's loans
that had steeped the country in debts for decades
to come.
Pancho let his shoulders slump; his hand slipped
from his
frock coat. "Salome, must you always choose the
contrary opinion
in order to be at odds with me?"
I had to think whether or not this was true. "I am
too sick to
fight with you, Pancho. But I am concerned for your
safety." Every
day more and more testimonies against el Doctor de
Paris were
appearing in the papers. "You are the father of my children.
I do
not want them to lose you as I have lost you."
"You have not lost me, Salome," he said, looking
me sadly in
the eyes.
Any woman who has known heartache from a man
she loves
knows how soothing such words can be. I felt myself
wavering,
the door giving way to the push of his shoulders.
"Stand with me on this one, Salome, I beg you.
If you give
your support to Don Eugenio you know how much that
would
help him."
I did try. whenever the man came over to our
house, I
listened carefully to what he had to say. He
spoke about the
Westendorf loans versus the loans from the
Americans, long-term
and short-term interest rates in silver
or gold, private creditors as
opposed to national creditors, et cetera et
cetera et cetera, but I
never heard the words Liberty Justice
Equality come from the man's
lips, except in closing, as if these words were a
napkin with which
to wipe his mouth at the end of a greasy meal.
The truth is that I could not see that much difference
between
this man and our present dictator Lilis.
But I kept my peace. By now, I was too ill
to fight with anybody.
264 Julia @alvarez
FINALLY, PANCHO RECOGNIZED MY
condition. He swallowed
his self-importance and pride, and conferred with
Alfonseca. It
was decided that I would go by boat to the north coast
where perhaps
the drier air might cure me.
Mami and Ramona were present when the
prognosis was delivered.
Mami had to sit doyen when she heard
Alfonseca pronounce
that I might not last out the year unless I took
care of
myself. For once, Pancho said nothing.
"What about the instituto?" I protested. "I
can't abandon my
girls."
"Your health is more important," Ramona
declared. She had
been helping me run the school, which was growing
daily. We now
had seventy-two students. Mothers kept coming to the
house, their
daughters in hand, pleading with me to let them in,
even though
they could see there was not an inch of space in which
to put another
chair in that parlor. Indeed, we had just leased a
larger house
in the center of the city right next to the cathedral
to accommodate
our growing enrollment.
"I will move us while you are gone. That way you will
not be
inconvenienced," Pancho proposed. He had
to stay behind anyhow
to keep his medical practice going. He also could
not abandon
Don Eugenio with elections coming.
"What about the children?" Just the thought of leaving my
little grackles for several months was enough to start the
coughing.
Everyone looked worriedly from one to the other,
waiting until
the attack was over.
"Why not take them with you?" Pancho offered. "That
way
you can send them to Dubeau's school so they can catch
up with
their lessons." The implication was that in my
devotion to the instituto, I had been neglecting my
own children's education.
"But who is to go with her?" Mami spoke up.
"Ana is in such
a bad condition, I should not really leave her."
"I can go," Ramona offered, but I protested.
She had just
promised to help run my school!
IN THE NAME OF SALOMI 265
"What about one of the Lauranzon girls?"
Pancho suggested.
"There are four of them, surely they can spare one
girl."
I was always surprised at how easily Pancho
could dispose of
other people's lives. But the truth was that Don
Rodolfo's girls
would probably welcome any distraction, cooped
up as they
were. Their father did not believe in education for his
girls, who
might learn how to read and write love letters.
He had good reason
to be watchful in the kind of city Santo Domingo
was fast
becoming, full of rascals and sin verguenzas.
Each Lauranzon lass
was prettier than the last, the greatest beauty being
the youngest,
Tivisita, with a mass of auburn curls and the
dainty face of a
porcelain doll.
Tivisita often came over from next door
"to help Dona Salome."
At least, this was the excuse she gave her father for
spending
her days at my house. And though I'm sure
Don Rodolfo
worried that she was visiting a home that housed a
school for girls,
he could not refuse his compatriot Don Pancho,
who was, like
himself, a staunch Marchena supporter, and whose
wife, Dona Salome,
was a national icon.
That good girl welcomed any task I gave
her. I would leave
her in back, mending the boys' clothes or serving
Pancho his
breakfast of cafe au lair with a waterbread he
insisted on calling a
baguette. After his late-night meetings,
Pancho woke with the
clamor of my students arriving. And though I had
Regina helping
me out, she had too much to do to interrupt her
cleaning to prepare
yet another breakfast after serving mine and the boys,
two
hours earlier.
About midmorning, I would glance up and
find Tivisia leaning
against the door to my classroom. At the end of the
day, when
she helped to clean up the parlor, I would catch
her, running her
hands over the charts of letters as if she could make
sense from
just touching them.
I began giving her tasks that brought her to the
front of the
house during the beginners' lessons. And each
day, I would ask her
266 Julia @alvarez
to please copy this or that page for me, as if I
assumed she could
write. One day, when I happened into the parlor
to pick up a
schoolbook I had forgotten and needed in order
to prepare tomorrow's
lessons, I discovered her sitting at the long
table, with
the book opened before her, reading haltingly, her
finger touching
each word.
She looked up, startled, when she heard
me, and closed the
book quickly.
"Please continue," I said, smiling at her
worried face, "You are
doing just fine!"
"Ay, Dona Salome, if my father finds out
..." Her voice
trailed off.
"It's our secret," I promised her. "Now
you must stop pointing
with your finger and learn each word with your eye--like this,"
I
read the passage out for her, and then she tried
reading it back to
me, keeping her finger still.
So naturally, when Pancho mentioned taking one of the
Lauranzon
girls, it was Tivisita I thought of. She could
make great
progress learning her letters, up in Puerto
Plata, away from her
father.
"But who will make my breakfast?" Pancho
asked.
"Ramona can serve you breakfast," I
said, biting the smile
from my lips. My sister and my husband glared at
me in disbelief.
Ramona had said she would do anything to save me,
but she
did have her limits. "Only if he can start
getting up at a decent
hour."
"A decent hour," Pancho pronounced slowly,
as if he had to examine
the words carefully before delivering a diagnosis
on them.
His odd intonation had become something of an
affectation. "A
decent hour. A provincial concept of time,
to be sure. That is very
Dominican."
"Bueno, Pancho, where do you think you are?"
Ramona folded
her arms. "Paris?"
IN THE
NAME
OF
SALOM dg267
THE NIGHT BEFORE I left the
capital, Pancho was behind me
every step I took, like our lively little Coco,
who had recently
passed away. Was I taking my Scott
Emulsion along? Did I have
enough azufre to burn, ipecacuana in case I
got a fever? Had I
packed enough socks for the boys, pairs of shoes,
little sailor caps?
"Pancho," I finally said, "You are disordering my
chaos!"
I knew it was nerves. I myself had been having
a terrible day,
as any commotion always brought on the coughing.
"I want to ask you a special favor,"
Pancho finally said, sitting
himself down right in front of me and taking both my
hands. I
don't know if it was because I was departing, but I
did not feel my
usual repulsion.
"I will take good care of our sons," I vowed,
thinking of
course that was the promise he wanted to extract
from me.
"I know you will do that without my asking," he said,
looking
at me with an odd tenderness in his eyes. "But that
is not the favor
I want."
He went on to explain. In October, the
country would be
celebrating the four hundredth anniversary of
Columbus's arrival
on our shores. Friends of the Country was planning
an extravaganza
at the national theater, with music by Reyes and
lyrics by
Prudhomme and speeches by everybody. He himself
was planning
to brush off the presentation he had made in Paris
regarding
the resting place of Columbus's bones. Marti
was probably coming.
A poem by Salome would crown the evening.
I couldn't believe that Pancho was asking for
poetry at a time
like this. "Pancho," I said, looking straight at
his eyes, "Do you
understand how ill I am?"
He nodded slowly, but I could see that the reality
of what I
was saying was not sinking in.
"I often think of that incident you spoke of in one
of your
letters," Pancho went on, his voice thick with
emotion. It was the
first time he had referred to any of our
correspondence. "The one
where you told bow your students apologized for your
sacrifice of
268 Julia @alvarez
poetry for them. I feel I owe you an
apology as well, Salome. Had
it not been for me and your children, you would have continued
on that immortal path."
"Ay, Pancho," I said, shaking my head.
"My children are the
only immortality I want."
Pancho was looking intently at me, as if he were
cutting away
layer after layer of pretense to get to the truth of
what I really felt.
"But you might have been Quintana. You might have
been Gallego,"
he appealed.
"Instead I am Salome, whom no one else
could be."
He kissed me sweetly on my forehead, the
tip of my nose, my
chin. "I, for one, am so very glad of that."
Later, I heard him, washing his hands at one of
his many
sinks.
THOSE THREE MONTHS AWAY were a
glorious, sunny blur.
We--the children and Tivisita and I--stayed in a
small house
rented for us by my old friend Dubeau, who had
taught at la
Normal and at my own instituto. When Lills
began persecuting
Hostos's disciples, Dubeau and his wife
Zenona moved north to
the seaside town of Puerto Plata and opened a
little school. They
didn't even name it, so as not to bring official
attention on their
endeavor. Positivism had become an underground
activity.
We heard rumors of all the preparations going
on in the capital
for the Columbus celebrations. Dubeau guessed
the fanfare
was Lilis's way of distracting attention from the coming
elections
and the many opponents who had to be got out of the way
before
voting day. And so, as the Nina, Pinta, and
Santa Maria replicas
sent by Spain entered our harbor, they floated on
the sea along
with the bodies of Lilis's enemies. Their
cannon blasts drowned
out the gunshots of the execution squads in Azua,
where Don Eugenio's
supporters were being massacred left and right.
In our sleepy, seaside town, all that seemed
unreal. We woke
IN THE
NAME
OF
SALOMST 269
early, walked barefoot on the sand, picking up
shells, each one
more perfect than the next. By the time we got
back to our small
palm-wood house, my skirt was full of
treasures. Soon every one
of my dresses had a faded lap and a stained
hem. The sea breezes
blew away the infection in my chest. The lapping
of the waves
soothed my spirit. My lungs began to heal and my
heart to mend.
From the capital, Pancho sent loving and
frequent missives as
if he were making up for all his long silences and his
cool communications
from France. He had moved us to the new house, a
"palace," he called it. He wanted to know if
the children would
like a monkey, as he had been made a very good
offer by one of
his patients, an organ grinder. Most
definitely not, I wrote back.
With a full household and a school below, I had enough
to manage.
"If you are going to get a monkey, why not a
bear and a goat
as well?" I added to lighten my refusal.
Looking out at that ocean, I felt inspired,
and for the first
time in two years, I picked up my pen and
wrote, not one, but
two poems. The first was in my old style, the
cry of the mariner
sighting land, "Tierra!"" Hope and
expectation at last fulfilled.
The other poem, "Fe," was much quieter, the
mariners mid-ocean,
tossed by storms, needing the faith to continue with no
sign of
land comddl'aead.
I sent both poems to Pancho, and of course, he
chose
"Tierra!" to read at the concluding celebration.
If I am to believe
Pancho's account of that evening, my poem was well
received. At
the end of the ceremonies at the Teatro
Republicano, Pancho
stood and recited it, hand tucked in his frock
coat no doubt, and
using that slight French accent he
refused to lose. The great apostle
Marth and the great general Maximo Gomez, and the
incomparable
Merifio, and the next president Marchena
(pancho's
superlatives!) had all been visibly moved.
Even Marti took out his
handkerchief. Pancho swore it was the power of my
poetry; but I
imagine the apostle was thinking of his own dear
Cuba from
which he had been exiled now for so many years.
270 Julia @alvarez
"Mi musa, mi esposa, mi amor, mi
tierra!" Pancho closed.
Across the island on the north coast, we gathered that
very
night in the small parlor of our seaside
cottage. Dubeau read some
poems; my boys read their little compositions; then
I surprised
everyone by reciting my new poem, "Faith." The
lamplight shone
on the faces of my children and my dear friends. In the
distance I
could hear the waves coming in and out, in and out--all the
applause I wanted. When I had finished, I
felt elated: not once
during my reading had I broken down coughing.
The rest cure had worked. I had come through the
storm.
Faith!
BACK AT THE CAPITAL, everything seemed
changed. Electricity
had arrived, and at night the city was lit up as
if it were day. The
Carousel Americano set itself up in the central
square, and for one
mota you could go round and round and round for five
minutes
until you could hardly stand you were so dizzy. It was
probably an
appropriate state to be in with elections coming.
The large, two-story house we had leased stood
at the center
of the city. The day we arrived, I looked out from
an upstairs window
at the sea and then down at the courtyard below. A
small
creature with a collar and rope tied to a
guava tree gazed up at me.
"Pancho!" I called out to him.
He shrugged helplessly. "The organ grinder
died. The monkey
didn't want to leave."
"I'll make him want to leave," I declared, but
I had already
lost the battle. The boys, spying this
magnificent pet, cried out, "A
monkey! A monkey!" and dashed downstairs
to welcome it.
I was too pleased with our new quarters to let
anything spoil
my homecoming. The house was quite grand, with a
Spanish-tile
roof and iron grillwork at each one of its five
balconies. We used
the first floor for the instituto and the second for our
living quarters.
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI 271
The sisters Bobadilla would have been
proud of the appearance
of my instituto, if not of what was going on
inside--little
girls learning to read and write.
The school had doubled in size, which was a good thing.
With Pancho's few patients, we depended on
what income the
instituto provided to pay our debts. And there were
many of
them. Although Pancho had received a government
scholarship,
he had borrowed considerably from Cosme
Batlle in order to help
finance his Parisian studies and purchase his
equipment. As it
turned out, he had also incurred added personal
expenses, of
which I will not speak.
Even with the instituto flourishing and enrollments
increasing
every day, we gave out so many scholarships that we could
never quite make ends meet. Then, too, the
Ayuntamiento was always
in arrears in paying us our monthly stipend, a
sum considerably
reduced from what they had originally promised.
When we
found out that they were paying double the amount per student
to San Luis Gonzaga and Escuela
Central, it became quite clear
what was happening. The regime wanted to shut us
down, quietly,
by bankruptcy.
But Salome had come back from Puerto Plata
strong and
plucky. I felt up to the hard work of
rebuilding my patria, girl by
girl. Everyone noticed my nice color, the
weight I had put on.
Pancho's eyes no longer wandered to the pretty
Lauranzon girls, at
least not in my presence. Needless to say, with my
health regained,
his importuning recommenced.
It came down to a simple detail: there were not
two wings to
the new house in which we could keep our separate
quarters. In
fact, upon my return to the capital, I found
that Pancho had
moved us both into the same bedroom. Even so; I
insisted that the
porters deposit my things in a small sitting
room beside the boys'
bedroom. They helped me unfold my narrow
pallet next to a casement
window that looked out at the sea.
272 Julia @alvarez
"Salome, you'll be warmer in the back bedroom
with me,"
Pancho noted, too ashamed to plead his own
needs.. Winter was
coming, he reminded me, and the nights would be cooler,
especially
now that we lived closer to the sea.
"Cool weather is better for my health," I
argued.
"But you are cured," Pancho pleaded.
"My lungs are cured," I agreed.
I was angry at myself, for in truth, I wanted
to forgive him.
But much as I promised myself to let go my
stubbornness, my
rage would rise up like a wall between us.
Suddenly, I would
think of how Pancho had lied to me, of his numerous
excuses
for not returning home, of his explanations of why
he needed
more money. Or I would imagine Mlle.
Chrittia with her curly
reddish hair and grayish sort of eyes--I had
coaxed that much
information from Fran. I remembered how I had
sent her gifts
we could ill afford in gratitude for taking care
of "my boys." Indeed!
I was furious at Pancho, furious at
Mlle. Chrittia, furious
at myself.
Perhaps if Pancho had persisted, I would have ceded
sooner.
But he was preoccupied, as I soon was, with the
bloodbath taking
place before our very eyes.
Lilis had announced that he would, in fact.,
run for president.
Immediately, all the candidates wisely dropped
out. All, that
is, except Don Eugenio. Pancho
confided that he and Rodolfo
had urged Don Eugenio, not only to resign his
candidacy, but to
take the first ship out of the country. But Don
Eugenio believed
himself invulnerable. "Not a good sign in a future
leader," Pancho
admitted. His waning enthusiasm for Don
Eugenio saved
Pancho in the end. When Marchena's inner circle
began to be
rounded up, Lilis's spies knew that Pancho
was no longer one of
them.
The eve of election night, Pancho and Federico
went out to
size up the mood in the city. I waited in my
narrow bed, unable to
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOM 273
sleep until I heard the welcome sounds of
Pancho coming home.
For days, I had been feeling a slight
feverishness that made me
dread the return of my illness. But I had not
had a recurrence of
the horrid cough. I was still holding on to faith--
faith that this
was nothing but a touch of my old asthma.
I don't know which I heard first--the shots or the
steps in
the entryway. I sat up, and throwing my shawl
over my shoulders, I rushed to the front of the house.
I found Pancho at the top of the stairs, trying
to catch his breath. The city was coming
undone.
"I want you and the children to go to your mother's first thing
in the morning," he said firmly.
"It's you who must go away, Pancho. You must
take the first
ship out, I don't care where. Haiti, Cuba,
Curacao, Puerto Rico,
France." Rather than risk a hair on his head,
I would send him
back to the other woman. Love was stronger than
anything else in
the world. I had not known until this moment
that I was capable
of it.
When Pancho reached for me, I did not turn
away. He led me
down the hall, past the boys' bedroom, past the
room with its narrow
pallet I had been using as my own, and into his
room and the
large four-poster with the marriage coverlet I
smoothed out every
morning when I made his bed.
He slept soundly in my arms that night, but I
lay awake, unable
to sleep. The room was cold. I could hear the
winter sea
crashing against the malecon. Downstairs, the
monkey whimpered
to be let in. Some time close to dawn, fighting
erupted.
Gunshots drowned out my bouts of coughing. I
lay there, knowing
that my hopes for my patria--and for myself--were
lost. No
matter how much Pancho denied it, I had the
signs of consumption,
the remissions, the relapses, the fevers, the
shortness of breath.
The only symptom I had been spared so far was
coughing up
blood.
274 Julia @alvarez
Hour after hour, as the dark room slowly became
light, I
could see all that was coming: Marchena dead, the
Lauranzons
forced into exile, Pancho himself forced to flee, the
instituto's
doors closed, my children without a settled home.
And I could
not catch my breath. No, I could not catch my
breath. I could not
for the life of me catch my breath.
SEVEN
Reply
Santiago de Cuba, 1909
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
dona 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
276 Julia Alvarez
--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. 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 Tia Ramona so dislikes
Papancho? She has a
right to know. After all, it is her life that is
affected by their bad
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI 277
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 sue@no, 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
278 Julia Alvarez
that Max fancies her best friend Guarina. Her
brother left a half
finished sonnet inside Salome'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 mami
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, Salome. ...
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
Cottl 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
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI 279
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 senorita 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
remembers, fat and
wonderfully cranky with everyone except
Camila. She looks at her
280 Julia Alvarez
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
Salome'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 Salome 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 Salome, she was already quite ill."
"Papancho says it is a true likeness,"
Camila insists. "Before
IN THE NAME OF SALOMI 281
Mami 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 Tivisia
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
Rod@o'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 Mami 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 Salome.
That is Salome
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.
282 Julia @alvarez
"I know all Mami'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 Salome's father gave her on her
fifteenth birthday and a black
silk dress which she spreads on the bed.
Camila smoothes 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--
was
"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.
IN THE NAME OF SALOM 283
"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 galer@ia just as
they
did for her quincea@nera 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
danzon. 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
284 Julia Alvarez
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 quincea@nera
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
quincea@nera party.
Camila never liked it, 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
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOM 285
is not appropriate for a young girl of fifteen
to wear to a quincea@nera
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, 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
mad 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
286 Julia Alvarez
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
Salome. 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!"
IN THE NAME OF SALOMI 287
The children laugh, but Camila's face burns with
embarrassment.
"Que 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!" Cottl, 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 chews.
"Cotubanami, 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!" Cottl calls
out. "Da-hell-toEspain!"
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
288 Julia .4lvarez
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 Salome'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
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOM! 289
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, Salome, 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. "Salome 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 best friend 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 CUMPLEANOS," 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. Thank
290 Julia Alvarez
fully, 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, Salome. How
awful to compare her
mother's accomplishments to her stepmother's marzipan.
"What are you wishing for?" Cottl 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!" Cotfi
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, Cotubanami, 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
IN THE NAME OF SALOMI. 291
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.
292 Julia @alvarez
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, Maria, 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 Noel's
death, just as it was
Max's absence in Mexico that brought about his
incipient tuberculosis,
and Pancho's own 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 Romin. 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.
IN THE NAME OF SALOMI 293
"WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL me the truth?"
Camila has never
spoken to her aunt so boldly. Her voice is
shaking. According
to Dona 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 Dona
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
294 Julia Alvarez
marrying his second wife--and he's an
American." She doesn't
know quite what she means by that, except that she
detests the par-
rot'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. "A
I know is Tivisita moved in right after
Salome 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 to-
ward 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 hate
crying in front of anybody, her eyes are wet
and burning. Sh,
look 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.
IN THE NAME OF SALOMI 295
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, its front
immaculate.
OCHO
Luz

I HAD NOT BEEN feeling well for weeks.
My stomach was upset.
My bones were aching. My lungs hungering for
air. Pancho and I
stopped our relations, both of us alarmed at this
return of bad
health. When I missed the first month, I did not
worry. With my
loss of weight, I often went months without
seeing blood on the
cloth I wore as a precaution.
That day, I had just sent my last student home,
and I was
climbing the stairs when I was overcome by a fit
of coughing. I sat
down on the steps, too weak to continue, and held
my handkerchief
to my mouth. When I folded it over and saw the
dark stain,
my first crazy thought was: I've got my
menses back!
I sat there, trying to catch my breath, slowly
putting it all
together:
I was with child.
I was dying of consumption.
ONE THING I KNEW. No one else must know
or they would
insist on terminating the pregnancy to save me.
Only when I was
too far along would I tell them about my
daughter.
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOM 297
I say "my daughter" because from the beginning I
knew.
Maybe it was the strange clairvoyance
that had affected me the
night of elections, the clairvoyance--I now
saw--of the dying.
As the months progressed, there were other signs.
I carried this
baby high, and the old people like Mami say it is a
sign of a girl to
be close to her mother's heart.
Of course, the larger she got, the harder it was for
me to
breathe. Nights when I woke up in a fit of
coughing, I was
afraid that I would expel her right along with the
bloody phlegm
that was also becoming increasingly difficult to conceal from
others.
Especially from Tivisita, who had stayed behind
to help me
when her family had been forced to emigrate
to Haiti. She directed
the household while I conserved what little strength
I had
to run my school. Perhaps to reward him for his having
distanced
himself from Marchena's party, Lilis had
granted Pancho a license
to continue his medical practice in spite of
complaints. And with
that dubious blessing, Pancho struggled along.
Every morning I tried to remember to wash out my
chamber
pot before hurrying downstairs. But I must have
forgotten one
morning. Before I was even finished with classes,
Pancho was at
the door, looking grave.
I told myself to take slow breaths so as not to bring
on a fit of
coughing. With so many executions and banishments and my
own bad health, I was full of dread those days.
"What is wrong?"
I whispered, alarmed.
He motioned for me to come upstairs to his office.
I followed
him to the foot of the stairs and looked up that dark
passageway.
I knew I could not make it without breaking down
coughing.
"Pancho," I called up.
He was already at the landing when he turned
around and
understood I could not follow. Up there, with the light
from the
second-story windows behind him, he seemed an
archangel descending
to deliver a message I already knew.
298 Julia @alvarez
"You have the tubercle bacilli," he announced
sadly. "Tivisita
showed me the sputum, and we examined it under my
microscope."
The thought of the two of them studying the mess in my
chamber pot made me burst out laughing.
Pancho looked at me perplexed before he went
on. "We must
close the instituto, Salome--"
This was a danger I had not foreseen: the termination of
my
pregnancy, yes, but not of the school I had worked
for twelve
years to establish. And now that it was flourishing, I
did not want
to shut it down. "There's no need for that," I put
in. "Ramona can
take over again until I come back."
"It will continue to be a preoccupation." Pancho was
shaking
his head. "And we must do everything in the world to save
you."
Not just me, I thought. With four missed menses,
I knew she
was now past danger. "Pancho," I said, as he
came down the steps
toward me. "I have another secret to tell you."
ALFONSECA WAS FURIOUS WHEN I told
him.
"Pero Dona Salome, this is a locura! I
might as well give you
a cup of hemlock. We must terminate
immediately," he addressed
Pancho, as if the two of them were laborers,
deciding on the fate
of a coconut tree that stood in the way of their
progress.
Pancho's hands were in his pocket, his head bowed.
"She's past
the mark, Jose, past the mark. We have to go through with
it."
"Una locura," Alfonseca repeated.
"Let's concentrate on what we are
going to do to save this
child," I suggested. I felt as if I were in my
classroom, trying to encourage
the students not to give up on a difficult
mathematics
problem.
"We should be thinking about what we can do to save the
mother," Alfonseca disagreed. "You have three other
children who
need you, Dona Salome."
It was then that I noticed my Pedro had come to the
door. We
IN THE NAME OF SALOM 299
wanted to keep the nature of my illness from the
children. For
one thing, were they to mention that Mami had consumption,
we might as well post a sign at the door:
lepers within. Consumption,
or tuberculosis as it was now being called, was
everyone's terror.
Hundreds of thousands of people were dying of it. Even
President Harrison's wife in her big
white mansion had died of it.
But it was unclear whether the disease was contagious.
No matter.
Should Dona Salome be diagnosed with
consumption, Pancho's
medical practice would founder. And there would be no
need to
close down the instituto. The exodus would take
care of that.
But I also did not want anything to worry my
boys. They had
already been through so much in their young lives: an
absent father,
a sickly mother, so many revolts that they always
asked before
their visits to their grandmother and aunt, "If war
breaks out,
do we stay at Mon's or do we try to come
home?"
"Pibin!" I called out to alert the others. "Come
in here. Mami
has some good news. You're going to have a little
sister."
"Or a little brother," Pancho corrected me.
As I said, I already knew I was carrying a
girl. "What shall we
name her, Pibin?" I asked cheerfully in order
to distract him.
He did not hesitate a moment, "Salome."
"We'll see," I said, so as not to disappoint
him. But I did not
want my daughter to carry my name. I wanted
her to have her
own name, to be borne up and away from the life that
was closing
down around me.
TIVISITA AVOIDED MY EYES for days
after disclosing my secret
to Pancho. I wondered why she had not told me
directly, but I
suppose she was afraid to confront her beloved
teacher. She was
devoted to me, for I had given her a set of
wings in the form of
the alphabet. Sometimes as she sat on my bed and
we went over
her lessons, I had a vision of my own
daughter, at her age, sitting
beside me, telling me all her little secrets. The
fantasy was
300 Julia @alvarez
not so far-fetched. At sixteen, Tivisita was
only five years older
than my Fran.
Many days, we would talk like mother and daughter about
one subject or another. One day we got into a
discussion about
our country. In a few months, we would be
celebrating the fiftieth
anniversary of our independence.
"Perhaps we're not ready to be a patria, after
all," I admitted.
Lying in bed those long hours with too much time
to think, I'd
been forced to realize that the patria we had hoped
for had yet to
be born. For fifty years we had struggled
to bring it to life, only to
deliver stillbirths, one after another.
"Don't say that, maestra," Tivisita said,
trying to cheer me up.
She reminded me of how I used to address my
dear friend Hostos,
maestro. From Chile, he had written me: he
was setting up
schools under the auspice of a new,
progressive government; the
family was settled; but he missed his
dear friends.
"Think of it, Tivisita, in these fifty years,
we've had over thirty
different governments. Again and again our dreams
destroyed."
Tivisita's eyes filled with sadness at our
tragic history. She
squared her pretty shoulders and announced that from this
day
forward, she was going to dedicate herself to fighting for
her patria.
I told myself not to laugh--it would just bring on a
fit of
coughing. I did not want to discourage this noble
feeling. But the
girl looked so much like Mon's old porcelain
doll from St.
Thomas, sitting there in her high-collar
shirtwaist with its puffy
leg-of-mutton sleeves, that it was difficult
to take her seriously as a
revolutionary.
"What can we do?" Tivisita wanted to know as
if suddenly realizing
that she had no idea what kind of a
patria to strive for.
We? I thought. No, my time was up. All I
had left to give were
the children I was sending into the future. "You will have
to start
over," I told Tivisita. "In the name of
Marti and Hostos and Bolivar
and all those who have given everything."
"Are you afraid, maestra?" Tivisita
asked. She had seen my
IN THE NAME OF SALOM`E 301
hand stroking my belly, for I was speaking to my
daughter as
much as to Tivisita. "I mean, many women fear
their time," she
added as if to reassure me that even healthy women
were fearful of
giving birth.
"No, I'm not afraid of giving birth," I
said. I did not add that
I was afraid of dying, of not living to see my children
grown and
happy.
PANCHO DECIDED WE MUST close the
instituto before the
month was out. The day we chose to announce it to the
girls, he
insisted on standing by with a bottle of Spiritus Vitae
and a jar of
smelling salts in case any of my girls
swooned. I thought he was
being excessive--Pancho and his enthusiasms!--but
this time he
was right. The Pou girl went into hysterics, and
several girls had to
be fanned back from dizzy spells because, they
insisted, the best
part of their lives was over.
"Senoritas, have I not taught you to reason
better than that?"
I scolded, blinking back my own tears.
"Couldn't Senorita Ramona direct it?"
Some girls looked
hopefully toward Ramona.
"My sister is needed at home," I
explained. It was true. Tia
Ana was now bedridden, and Mami's heart was in a
constant
flutter, though she claimed her heartsickness had
nothing to do
with her health but with her worries about mine.
"There's also
funding. El Ayuntamiento is not paying us
what it should for
each student. We will have to give up the lease on
this house the
first of the year." I was piling up the many reasons,
so as not to
tell them the real reason: I had to conserve all
my strength to give
birth to my daughter. And without my protection, the
school
would founder. Archbishop Merifio had recently
issued another
pastoral urging an end to schools without God,
especially those
that educated girls.
Two of my first graduates who were now back as
teachers
302 Julia @alvarez
stepped forward. "Eva and I are going to petition
the Ayuntamiento
for more funds," Luisa announced. "We will see
about reopening
the school in a few months. We
won't give up our
instituto. Long live our maestra!"
The girls took up the cry, "Viva
Salome!"
I looked at their bright, young faces and felt a
surge of hope.
These, too, were my children I was sending into the future
to start
over.
AFTER CLOSING DOWN THE school, Pancho and
I made an
even more difficult decision: to leave the country.
Our political troubles had started up again when
Pancho and
his brother Federico used their new paper, Artes
y Ciencias, to
evaluate la patria's progress on its
fiftieth year. Pancho's patients
disappeared, like a river drying up. One night, a
group of Lilis's
thugs surrounded the house, shouting insults. The
next morning
we found the monkey hanging by its rope in the
backyard. The
boys were in tears. I, too, felt
grief-stricken seeing that childlike
shape swinging from the guava tree.
"Don't worry, don't worry," Pancho
consoled us, tearful himself.
"We'll get ourselves another one, I
promise."
I was furious at Pancho for endangering all our
lives. But I admit,
I was also proud of his stubborn courage. How could
I fault
him, when most of our noble men were dead or had fled
the
country, and those who remained were silent.
"You listen to me," I said, stroking my belly.
Sensing I might
not have much time with my daughter, I'd begun
to raise her before
she was even born. "Wherever we end up,
remember, this is
your patria!"
We had decided to settle in El Cabo in
next-door Haiti. It was
fast becoming the gathering place of all our
rebels. The Lauranzons
were already there, and according to the letters Don
Rodolfo sent Tivisita, the city was a
thriving port, with many
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOM 303
opportunities for business, and a
cosmopolitan atmosphere that was
very French. (this was indeed a persuasive feature
for Pancho,
whose accent had finally worn off but not his avowed
preference
for all things French.) In addition there was a large
hospital on the
outskirts, Hospice Justinien, where a
Paris-educated physician
could easily find work.
But there was only one way I could bear to leave my
country:
El Cabo would only be a temporary stop.
We would be back as
soon as we were rid of our tyrant.
Pancho would go ahead with Max, who was giving me

most trouble these days. Although he was eight years
old, Max
was still the baby, restless and demanding--especially now
that
my illness made me less accessible to him. The
poor child would
stand outside my door, calling for me, deaf
to Tivisita's explanations
that he had to let his Mami rest so she could get
better.
The two older boys, Regina, Tivisita, and
I would go with
Pancho as far as Puerto Plata on the north
coast to our old friends
Dubeau and Zenona. Another friend, Zafra, a
doctor who now
lived in Puerto Plata, would attend to me.
("Neither of you ever
listened to me anyhow," Alfonseca commented, when
we explained
our plans.) Two months before my confinement,
Ramona
would come to be with me. Meanwhile, Pancho would be
in El
Cabo, only a day away by steamboat
should I need him. This was
a relief for me, for the thought of another long
separation from
Pancho was frightening.
"Puerto Plata will be good for us," I told my
daughter, stroking
my belly where I had last felt an elbow
pushing out. Maybe the air
that had restored me once before would work its
miracle again.
"Faith!" I kept telling both of us.
"Who are you talking to, Mama?" Pibin asked
me, stepping
into the room. Midday, when my fever usually went
down, I
would let the children come in and visit me.
"Your sister."
"Did you talk to me, too, before I was born?"
304 Julia Alvarez
"Yes, of course, I did." I was stretching the
truth a little, but
with children, we have to do this so that they know our love always
includes them.
"What did you say?"
I thought a moment, and then I decided
to surprise him. "I
will write it down for you to keep." That night as I
lay in bed unable
to sleep, I began composing a poem in my head,
"Mi Pedro."
It was, in fact, a poem about what I had
discussed with Tivisita:
my Pibin as my gift to the future of my
country. But I could not
seem to finish it. Even so, I recited the first
four verses I had written
a few days later to him.
"You spoke to me in rhymes! Oh, Mami!"
He rushed toward
me for an embrace, but I held my hand up
to stop him. Pancho
had written to Dieulafoy in France, who had
responded that he
was almost sure that consumption could not be spread
by simple
contact. Even so, I had grown cautious with my
little grackles. I
wanted to take no chances.
"Don't get near me, dear one," I said
firmly.
"Why Mami? The baby?"
I could not have him thinking that his sister was the cause of
any distance between us. So I told him the truth,
"It's my consumption.
And I do not want to spread it."
"Is that why you shut down the instituto?" he
wanted to
know.
I was ashamed to confess that this thought had not been
uppermost
in my mind at all. It took my Pibin with his
fine moral
sensibilities to remind me that others might be
at risk, too.
Busca la luz, I had advised him in my
poem. Follow the light.
But I had not been following my own advice,
sunk as I was in
gloomy thoughts of departure. No wonder I had
been unable to
finish the poem.
This was not the first time I had been wiser on paper
than in
person.
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOM 305
THAT BOAT RIDE TO PUERTO Plata
turned out to be like the
progress of a queen through her grieving kingdom.
News had spread that Salome was ill and on her
way north for
a rest cure. At each port, a delegation of
young poets asked for
permission to come aboard. I would receive them from my
deck
chair, with my hat on and a blanket over my
legs and lap. Tivisita
had placed it there--perhaps out of decorum to hide
my growing
belly or to keep me from the drafts she feared
would stir up my
coughing. The poets came forward, and one by one
recited their
poems to me.
I especially recall a young man, who came
aboard at San Pedro
de Macors. He was dark-skinned, with
those dark liquid eyes
of someone who seems about to cry. I couldn't help
but remember
Papi's old dictum: Tears are the ink of the
poet. His name was
Gaston Deligne, and when he began to recite,
a hush settled on
the deck of that steamboat. "Your words have filled the
sails of
our souls ..." His young voice reminded me of
Pancho's, back in
those days when he used to recite my poems as if
he had written
them.
When Gaston was done, I was too overwhelmed
to thank
him. He stepped forward and showed me the packet in
his hands.
At first, I thought he was offering me a
manuscript of his poems to
read. I would gladly have read them as, judging from
what he had
recited, he was no doubt a gifted poet. But
it turned out they were
my own poems he had collected,
including the slim book Friends
of the Country had published, and other, more recent
occasional
poems, clipped from the pages of newspapers.
"I have them all," he
boasted like a boy showing off his collection of shiny
pebbles.
Before he left, he reached for my hand and pressed
it, not
wanting to let go. Others had kept their distance,
whether out of
respect for la poetisa or fear of contagion,
I could not tell. Later, I
learned that Gaston's younger brother, Rafael,
also a poet, was dying
of leprosy. Perhaps I should have been the one
to withdraw
my hand. But his eyes held me.
306 Julia @alvarez
"We will build the patria you wanted,
poetisa. I promise."
I sighed and said nothing. I had heard this before.
"We will do it in your name." He was a bit too
intense.
Tivisita looked worriedly toward
Pancho, who came forward.
"There, there, young Dante," he said in his
effusive way. "Salome
has had enough excitement for one day." But as we
pulled away
from the dock, I could hear his shout, "In your name,
Salome, in
your name!" I felt as if I were dying, leaving behind
the shore of
the living, no longer prey to human promises
or poverty of
spirit.
THE SEA VOYAGE ITSELF Was a time lifted
from time, blessed
and sunny, no spies snooping around the house,
no school to
worry about, no students to examine, only the
briny sea air to
breathe and the rocking of the sea to lull me, so that I
felt like the
child inside me, adrift in its waters. On my
lap lay the book I was
reading, Numa Pornpilius by Florian, an
old favorite. I had packed
a small trunk of books to help me
fill the idle hours in Puerto
Plata before my child was born, among them, books
from my father's
library that we had enjoyed together. Again, I read
of
Numa's friend, the wandering Camila with the fleet
feet who
could run through a field of grain and not bend a
single stalk,
walk across the ocean and not wet her feet.
Camila! I'd almost forgotten that as a girl I
had promised myself
that if I ever had a daughter, I would name her after
this brave
young woman. Camila it would be. So as not
to disappoint my
Pibin, I would also give her my own name.
Suddenly, it seemed a
good thing that our names always be together.
"Salome Camila," I told her when I
lay down in my cabin to
rest that evening.
I felt such happiness saying it.
IN THE NAME OF SALOM! 307
THE PARTING WITH PANCHO in Puerto
Plata was more difficult
than I thought it would be. Suppose this time he
would not
come back for four years! I clung to him with my
eyes since I
could no longer embrace anyone.
Before we left the capital, Pancho had received
a second letter
from Dieulafoy in France. New studies
indicated that the tubercle
baccilli might indeed be spread by contact. It was
best to take precautions,
especially with children.
Of course, I worried about my unborn
Camila. Dieulafoy
had reassured Pancho that the baccilli could not be
spread in
utero. But once the child was born, I would have
to avoid all contact.
"Keep a lookout for a wet nurse," Pancho
advised Tivisita,
who blushed later when I explained the meaning of the
term to
her.
Pancho had sinks installed in every room
of the palm-wood
cottage Dubeau had rented for us. He coached
Tivisita on washing
the boys' and her own hands after being in the room with
me.
A special set of utensils tied with bright red
ribbons was kept in a
small cupboard in my room, along with my own
linens.
"Mami has the red ribbons," was how Max got
to calling my
illness. Only to Pibin, who even at his young
age could be discreet,
had I mentioned the word consumption.
The morning of his departure, Pancho reviewed the
regimen
for the household: the children could visit with me, but no
kisses,
no hugs, no sleeping with Mami. Saying so,
he eyed my Pibin,
who looked away, biting his lip so as not to cry.
Pancho could be
so tactless.
He had insisted Tivisita be with us in the room
as he gave me
his last-minute instructions, so that later, I would
not be trying to
prescribe for myself. "I will write every week
to keep up with your
progress," Pancho promised.
"And I will write you every single day, Mami!"
Max piped up.
He was dressed in his sailor outfit, cocky
with the experience of
having been on board a boat once before.
308 Julia '1lvarez
I smiled fondly at my baby, knowing what a
handful Pancho
was taking with him. "I would like that very much," I told
him. It
was almost a physical pain not to be able to hold him
and say
goodbye before he left.
"Perhaps he can improve his penmanship, so you will be

to read his letters," Pancho noted pointedly. Max
colored, shamed
in the midst of his avowals.
"Check the cabinet, Tivisita. There should be enough
quinine,
but remember, only for high fevers. Salome
drinks it like water."
Pancho always accused me of being a difficult
patient, of
thinking I had gone to medical school right along with
him. "I do
want her on 25 centigrams a day of ioduro
for the cough and then
her creosote capsules with two fingers of cod
liver oil. Every meal,
you hear. Salome is fond of forgetting
breakfast is a meal, not just
a time to get up and read her books."
As Tivisita was checking all the supplies in
the closet, Max
showed me the top she had given him as a bon
voyage gift. She was
also sending along gifts for her three older
sisters, whom she missed
terribly, she admitted. I had tried to convince
her to go along to El
Cabo with Pancho and Max so she could see them.
Regina could
look after me until Ramona arrived, but
Tivisita would not leave
me. "Not till you are cured and the baby is
born," she promised.
It was when I turned from listening to Max boast about
his
new top, that I saw something in an eyeblink that
I wished I had
not seen. Tivisita's back was turned, and
Pancho was gazing at her
with a look of longing mingled with renunciation. It was
this renunciation
that pained me the most, for it meant Tivisita had
entered
the realm of his imagination, where lust turns
to love,- and
souls marry.
I felt that old scorpion, jealousy, stirring
in my heart, but immediately,
I chased it out. I had heard Mami and the old people
talk of how expecting mothers could poison their
babies with
dark thoughts. I did not want my Camila to be
small-minded and
petty, her world cut down to the size of what she
did not fear.
IN
THE
NAME OF
SALOM was 309
And so again, I did what I had always done with
pain. I swallowed
my disappointment. One thing I was glad for.
Tivisita was
staying with me. To see her, Pancho would have to come
home to
me.
PANCHO KEPT HIS PROMISE and wrote
regularly. Every week
we had a letter or two from him; as for Max, there were
several the
first few weeks, then a trickle, one or two,
and then none at all.
My Max, just like his father, his enthusiasms bigger
than his character!
Zafra usually brought over the packet of letters,
since we seldom
went out. Daily now, he stopped at the house
to check on my
condition. He was worried at my labored
breathing. As the weeks
went by, and my belly grew, the
pressure on my diaphragm was
making it even more difficult for me to catch my
breath. The fevers
continued, the bloody expectorations and relentless
coughing sapping
the last of my strength. It was not a hopeful
prognosis. Finally,
Zafra suggested I summon Pancho home.
But I kept resisting.
Patients were now coming to his small office at the
hospice, and we
desperately needed the nest Pancho had begun
building.
Ramona did appear, sooner than we had
planned, saying that
our cousin Valentina from Banf had moved in with
Mama and
our aunt Ana in the interim. Mon was a sight
in her netted hat
and gloves with a cape over her shoulders and a
parasol over her
head, every surface shielded in some manner. And
there was a
considerable amount of surface--for my sister had
grown stout
comwith age. It was no secret in our family that
Ramona hated to
travel, believing every boat would sink, every train be
held up by
bandits, every bit of unpeopled countryside full
of vermin and
wild animals. She had read too much
Plutarch, I think, and
Marco Polo. But she would do anything in the world for
me, and
so here she was, dressed in the armor of a lady
ready to battle the
wilderness for her little sister.
110 Julia Alvarez
But the real battle took place from the very first day
indoors.
Ramona was not one to take direction from anyone,
"Especially
not from some little girl who looks like my old
doll." Not that
Tivisita was one to contradict anyone, but
Pancho had given her
strict instructions, which often Ramona would
oppose just to be
at odds with her philandering
brother-in-law. I had told her the
Paris story.
One day, Tivisita came in to help me with my
letter to Pancho.
I had requested but had not yet received some
eyeglasses
from him. It was a strain to read, so Tivisita was
now writing my
correspondence for me. What a lucky seed I
had planted for the
future by teaching that young girl her letters!
I knew her well enough by now that I could tell she
was feigning
her usual cheerfulness. "What is it,
Tivisita?" I asked, looking
directly at her.
A look came into her eyes: something she wanted
to say but
could not bring herself to say. I knew, of course,
what it was. "Just
let her have her way, Tivisita, she means
well." I dared not mention
any names in case Ramona was snooping.
"But Pancho says that I must not let her
overturn the regimen
he set up. He said it could make the difference
between whether ..."
She faltered, not wanting to name the thing we all
feared.
So, Pancho was corresponding with Tivisita!
Of course, he
wrote to me, too. His tone was cherishing, but the
letters were
brief. Obviously, he had a lot on his
mind. Now I wondered if
what was on his mind was living right here under my own
roof.
The next time Zafra delivered our packet,
I sent Tivisita out
of the room for a fresh drink from the cistern as my
thirst was
great. She hesitated, her glance falling on the
packet by my bedside.
Usually, it was she who sorted the packet of letters
and bills
Pancho sent home every week, sending some on to the
capital,
distributing others.
As soon as Tivisita was out of the room, I
reached for that
packet and held each envelope up to the light.
In addition to
IN THE NAME OF SALOM 311
mine, there was one addressed in Pancho's hand to a
name I
couldn't read, what looked like a remittance to the
merchant who
had sold us the sinks, a letter with an article for
Federico in the
capital, a note to My Beloved Sons, and
one in that familiar hand
addressed to Senorita Natividad
Lauranzon, sus manos. A private
missive to be put in her hands only.
I held that note in my hands wondering what to do
with it.
The last time I had read a letter Pancho had
intended for someone
else, I had come to such grief. My health had
already been sacrificed
and my heart broken with disappointment, what more was
there to destroy--except my peace of mind? I
could live, and die,
without knowing.
I shuffled that letter back with the others and
returned the
packet to the bedside table. When Tivisita
hurried in, my ribboned
cup brimming with fresh water, she glanced at me
uneasily.
Already I could see her innocence passing, her
secret like the pearl
the oyster fashions from irritable circumstance, a
fact that Pancho
had taught me years ago, when he so
gallantly offered to catch me
up on my sciences.
WHEN I CAUGHT PNEUMONIA, my condition
turned grave.
My fever was so high that my poor Camila
steadily kicked at my
sides. "Am I going to die?" I asked
Zafra, who gave me the sorriest
look. He had only been practicing a few
years and had not yet
learned to banish all such unprofessional
expressions from his
face.
"I think Pancho should come," was all he said.
I had lost weight, the skin on my
belly taut as a drum, so that
I could feel the exact shape of the baby with my
hand. "Hold on,
my Camila," I urged her. She kicked
back as if to say, I am doing
the best I can, Mami.
312 Julia Alarez
LABOR BEGAN SOON AFTER Pancho's
arrival. At midnight a
great swell of pain rose from the small of my
back and made me
break out in a spasm of coughing. Of course, I
did not immediately
think it was labor, for I was eight weeks early.
The contractions
were squeezing my lungs tight, and I could not
catch my
breath. Surely I was dying, for I did not
remember asphyxiation as
part of giving birth.
Ramona was the first one in the room, a lamp
swinging in her
hand, her long braid like a thick rope hanging
over one shoulder
and down the front of her night dress.
I tried to answer her questions,
but I could no longer give air to words, only
move my lips.
This must be the beginning of death, I thought, the
tendrils of
language unable to reach beyond the self and catch the
attention
of others.
On her heels came Pancho, Tivisita right
behind him, carrying
his black doctor's bag. Pancho put his
scope to my belly, here
and there, and then I heard him washing his hands before
lifting
my bedding and examining me. It was then that I
smelled the
pungent wetness I was lying in.
Ramona had returned with Zafra, who was
rolling up his
sleeves and issuing orders to everyone. On the
other side of the
door, Pibin was trying to calm both his brothers.
"Mami!" Max
kept bawling. I wanted to call out and
reassure him, but I was saving
up what little strength I had.
Zafra and Pancho had propped me up on
pillows to relieve
my breathing and allow me to bear down. Blood was
draining
from me, and I could feel the child struggling to be
born. Finally,
with a pain that felt as if I were being split in
half, Zafra entered
the metal contraption inside me and drew her out,
first her head,
followed by one shoulder and the other, and then there she
was,
upside down, ghastly looking and blue and covered
with a thin
membrane as if she had been born in her own
shroud, ready for
burial.
I could see the dark outcome from the look that
passed from
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOM 313
Zafra to Pancho. As the cord was cut and the tiny
creature carried
away, I called out, "Tivisita," but of
course, my voice was faint. "I
baptized her," Ramona whispered, as if what
concerned me was
that the child die a Christian.
"I want her to live," I sobbed, struggling
to get up. But hands
were holding me down; voices were calming me; then,
the sting of
a needle in my arm.
All grew calm. I watched them working over me
as if they
were working on a body that did and did not belong
to me. Far
off I could hear the voices of my children, Pibin
reading to Max,
no doubt from his beloved Jules Verne, Max
asking his endless
questions, Fran banging his ball again and again on the
living
room wall, their lives continuing without me. The
light dimmed,
the mind stilled, my lungs struggled for
air, and I could feel my
life slowly draining from me. In the light that was
beginning to
come from the window behind him, I saw Pancho, his
eyes welling
with tears, bend down toward me. He had forgotten
his own precautions.
Whatever
he was saying, I could not stay to hear him. I was
falling, falling down a long flight of stairs
into the dark center of
myself.
And then I heard a cry, a lusty wail I
recognized.
"Salome Camila," I whispered.
As if summoned by the force of my desire,
Tivisita had returned
to my side, carrying the bundle she had rescued
from the
doomed judgment of the others. She laid my
newborn daughter
on my belly for me to admire.
I struggled back up out of the darkness to meet her.
EIGHT
Bird and Nest
Departing Santo Domingo,

SHE IS ON THE boat and the breeze is
blowing her dress and the
ribbons on her cap and they are going to El
Cabo to see her father.
The waves are slippy-slapping
slippy-slapping on the side of
the boat like Mon pretending to spank Max because
he is so bad
but she does not really spank him but Max really
cries because
Mami is gone to heaven and that is who Max really
wants.
She stands on the trunk Pibin has hauled over
next to the rail
so she can wave at everybody on the dock.
Mon, Minina, Luisa,
Eva--that's enough! Her hand hurts. Besides, they
are all crying
so much no one waves back.
She loves it on this boat. She hopes they will
never get off but
keep on sailing to El Cabo for the rest of their
lives with her dress
blowing up like when Max is being naughty, wanting
to peek at her
petticoat (and getting spanked for doing so,
slippy-slap slippy-slap),
and the ribbons on her cap snapping against the side
of her head
and every time she tries to look, the wind blows them out
of sight.
Quick! she turns her head and catches a
glimpse of them: red
ribbons!
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI 315
"ARE WE ALMOST THERE?" she asks Pibin.
He is the brother
who answers the nicest when she asks him things.
"We haven't left yet," he explains to her.
He looks so sad, almost
as sad as the day Mami died but not as bad.
Maybe he is sad because of what happened in
Mon's house
before they left for the dock, everyone talking
in angry voices.
Mon stood at the door, holding Camila's
hand. "Your Mami said
you were to stay with your aunt Mon, remember?"
Mon squeezed
Camila's hand to help her remember.
But Camila couldn't remember what her mother had
said that
last time. She remembered Puerto Plata and the
curly seashells
and Dr. Zafra, who made faces to make her
laugh, and her mother
coughing and the funny eyeglasses her father sent
Mami from El
Cabo and many many bottles of medicines ranged
on the bureau
and the light striking through them like the stained glass
windows
of the cathedral.
"Their father says they must all come to El Cabo."
It was
Pimpa, Tivisita's sister, gruff and fat
just like Mon, who is Mami's
sister, as if everyone needs one sister, gruff and
fat, to fight off
mean people. But Camila has no sister. If she
goes to El Cabo to
live with her father maybe she will get another sister
like Regina
says she might. "Don't you see, Ramona,
that you are just making
matters worse for all the children?" Pimpa shook
her head sadly
and reached down to pick up Camila.
But Mon was holding on tight to her hand and would not
let
go, and Pibin and Fran looked like they didn't
know what to do.
Max was sobbing for Mami, who was too far away
in heaven to
answer him back, and then their grandmother Minina said,
"This
is a crying shame, a crying shame," and everyone
stopped arguing
because she had a flutter in her heart like when a
wasp gets under
your mosquito net and you have to get out or it might
sting you
and cause your heart to swell.
And then the mules came to carry them
away to the dock but
no one could find her, SALOME! CAMILA!
SALOME CAMILA!
316 Julia Alvarez
because she had run off and hidden in the hole underneath
the
house where she sometimes hid from Max but now she was
hiding
from everybody fighting, and suddenly it was so quiet
and peaceful
like the wasp going free and you can go back under your
net
and go to sleep.
AND SHE DID FALL asleep, just a little
nap on the straw mats
rolled up in a corner, and the next thing she knew
there was Mon
at the opening and Tivisita behind her and everybody
so happy to
see her at first and then everybody scolding that she
must get over
this bad habit of hiding or she was going to be the
death of everybody.
"I
didn't make Mami die," she
protested. She is a big girl who
can clean her plate and not go peepee in her
drawers.
A look went from face to face and ended up
lodged in
Tivisita's eyes as she said, "Of course not,
dear heart. Nobody is
saying so. You are a good girl. Your mother in heaven
is so proud
of you."
Then Mon crouched down beside Camila so her
eyes--
which are just like Mami's eyes, Camila never
noticed that before--were
looking straight at Camila's eyes. "Would you
like
to stay here with Mon? Is that why you were hiding?
Tell your
aunt Mon." Her face had sad lines down
each side of her mouth
and little hairs under her nose like a man's
mustache. "Tell your
aunt Mon you would like to stay with her and your grandmother
Minina." This time it was not a question but a statement.
"Mon,
pot Dios, her father has written that she is
to come."
Tivisita had come down to eye level as well.
She was brushing
away the dirt from Camila's pretty new
dress and straightening her
bonnet.
"The mules are leaving," Pimpa called down from
the back
door.
IN THE NAME OF SALOMI 317
Tivisita stood back up and took Camila
by the hand. "Your
father is waiting for us at El Cabo."
"Stay!" Mon called. She was still kneeling in the
dirt with her
dress getting dirty, looking up at the sky and
sobbing.
Halfway up the back steps, Camila stopped
and peered down
at the distressing sight of her aunt, crumpling in
a heap on the
ground. What was she to do? she wondered, and this
moment of
standing, looking through the bars of the rail, not
knowing what
to do because her mother was not here to tell her, this moment
was the very first time she ever felt a funny tightening
in her chest
that made her struggle for air and her heart
flutter like Minina's
flutters when a wasp gets in her chest that
nobody can get out,
and she began coughing, standing there on the steps, and
suddenly
it was quiet, and then Tivisita said, "See,
it's as Pancho says,
she has a touch of contagion. She needs a
dryer climate. Do it for
that reason, Ramona."
And then, Mon did stop crying and came slowly
up the steps
as if someone else were holding her back by the hem
of her dress,
and she took Camila's other hand and led her
outside to where the
mules and their drivers were waiting to take them
away to El
Cabo to see her father.
THEY ARE GOING TO EL Cabo
to see her father, who lives there.
EL Cabo is in Haiti like Santo Domingo
is in the Dominican Republic
and the stars are in the sky and Mami in heaven.
Her father went to El Cabo after the parade when
Mami was
taken to the church in a box piled with flowers on
her way to
heaven, and he has been gone for as long as Mami
has been gone,
the fingers of one hand. Now he has written Mon
and said he has
changed his mind and all the children are to be sent to him
with
Tivisita who will help take care of them.
Tivisita had been living with Camila and
Pimpa, Fran, and
Max, and Regina, and their mother. Then when Mami
went to
318 Julia Alvarez
heaven, Camila, Pibin, Fran, Regina, and
Max moved in with
Mon and Minina, and her father went to El Cabo,
and Tivisita
had nowhere to go because Mon didn't have any
room in her
house for a girl who looked like a doll from St.
Thomas.
So Tivisita stayed in their old house and took
care of the
pony, Patriota, and Tom, the puppy dog,
and the new monkey,
Monkey Two, with her sister Pimpa.
Every day Camila went with Pibin to visit Mam
at the
Church of Las Mercedes, but Mami was never
there. Instead,
Tivisita was there with a bunch of white flowers
("Remember how
your mother loved these?" She didn't
remember...), crying and
saying if it hadn't been for Mami she wouldn't be
able to read the
name written on the stone that Camila couldn't read
at all.
MON WAS ALWAYS ASKING her what she
remembered of her
mother.
"I remember coughing." She coughed into her hand to
demonstrate.
Mon was teaching her how to recite some more of her
mother's poems. She already knew "El ave y
el nido" and a little bit
of "Mi Pedro," but the poem her mother wrote about
how she
almost died when Camila was born was too grown
up for her to
learn now. ("We thought you weren't going to live.
We put you in a
cigar box with cotton, but then you lived so we
used it as your first
cradle." Mon knew she loved to hear this
story!) Mon was copying
all the poems in a book she was going to give
to Camila some day
when she was grown up enough to take care of them.
"You are going to forget your mother unless we keep
reminding
you," Mon explained.
And then Mon taught her to make the sign of the
cross, and
to recite, "In the name of the Father, the Son, and the
holy spirit
of Salome, my mother."
The next day at church, Camila
corrected Tivisita on how to
IN THE NAME OF SALOM 319
say the sign of the cross prayer, and when
Tivisita heard it was
Mon who had taught Camila that prayer, she
said she would have
to report Mon to Pancho in a letter, and that was when
her father
asked that all the children be sent to him on the boat
to El Cabo
to start a new life.
SHE IS ON THE boat, holding on
to Tivisita's hand, so that she
doesn't fall into the Atlantic Ocean and ruin
the new dress Tivisita
made her.
Black, with a white collar and sash, just like the one
Tivisita
is wearing for going to El Cabo. A bonnet
trimmed with red ribbons
and a black parasol to match the one Tivisita
is carrying.
"Throw a kiss to Minina," Tivisita says.
And she throws a kiss to her grandmother way off on

dock, hoping that will settle the flutter in her
heart.
"Why are they crying?" she asks but nobody
hears her. For
just then the steamboat honks and a puff comes out of
its chimney
and they are moving away from the land! Everything is
getting
smaller and smaller: the houses, and the cathedral
with the two
bells, and the big house with five balconies where
they used to live
(pibin says), and the fortaleza where Lilis
puts his enemies, and
the park where the wooden horses, about the size of
Patriota, go
round and round while a tune plays, and Mon is
getting smaller,
though she is very fat, and Minina and Luisa and
Eva, until Camila
can't tell if she is waving at them or other people
she doesn't know,
but now they are waving back.
"I don't want to leave Mama!" Max starts
sobbing, and Tivisita
has to let go of Camila's hand and go over
to Max and crouch
down beside him and have a little talk.
"Where is Mami, Pibin?" she asks, looking
up at her brother
and seeing that sad look that tastes like the dark air
in her room at
night. He does not say what the others say, in
bright voices like
turning on lights, "Your mother is in heaven."
320 Julia @alvarez
He takes her hand and he presses it against her
heart. "There,"
he says.
"Not in heaven?"
He shakes his head and looks away.
"Why not in heaven?"
"Heaven is for the dead," he says. "We're
going to keep Mami
alive, you and I."
She doesn't understand a word he has said, but she
keeps her
hand at her heart just so Mami doesn't have
to die.
REGINA IS COMING ALONG, too,
but she is down below the
deck because she will have a fit if she looks at the
sea.
Regina's skin is so black that whatever she
says has to be believed.
Her family came long ago on a slave
ship, in chains, and when
she sees the long watery distances, she says those
old people in her
blood start moaning and she is liable to do anything,
including
throw up.
So it is better if Regina stays down below
deck holding on to
her sides and smelling the smelly bottle she
brought with her.
When Camila puts her nose right against the
opening, she smells
her mother's room, an odd smell that makes her
nostrils tingle and
spread like Patriota's right before he whinnies when
he sees her
coming with a sugar lump in her hand.
Max has stopped crying and Tivisita is
back. "Let's go sit on
the deckchairs," she says. "I'll tell you a
story."
"The story of the cigar box and cotton?"
Tivisita looks doubtful. "Well, the true
story of the day you
were born."
"Mami almost died."
Tivisita hesitates, a blinking look in her
eyes like she doesn't
know what to say. "But she lived for three whole
years--"
"And then she died."
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SAIOM * 321
"Your mother is in heaven now, God rest her
soul."
Camila shakes her head, red ribbons tossing,
but then she
catched a glimpse of Pibin from the corner of her
eye. He is giving
her his secret look that means, Don't tell.
She presses her hand against her heart.
Her mother is as close
as that--but Tivisita is not supposed to know because
Pibin says
Tivisita has not proven herself to be Mami's
true friend. But why
not? Tivisita is her friend and her father's friend, and
they are going
to meet him in El Cabo where maybe there will be a
big surprise,
like Mami coming back from heaven where she went to get
rid of her cough and get a baby sister for
Camila to take care of.
THEY SIT ON THE deck chairs,
Tivisita and Max and Camila
and Pibin. Fran is older, so he is up in the
cabin with the captain
learning how a steamboat moves over the sea.
She is older, too, three going on four! But
at Mon's house this
morning when she could not remember what Mami had
said, Mon
told Tivisita and Pimpa, "The child is too
young to remember."
"I am going on four," she spoke up. But
nobody was listening
to her, because they were arguing and Minina was feeling faint
and that was why Camila slipped away to the dark
hole to get
away from everyone. She has been doing this a lot
lately, hiding
under the table or in the mahogany armoire or in the
dark hole,
because then she is like Mami who has gone away
to heaven to get
rid of her cough.
"On the day Camila was born," Tivisita
begins, and Camila
feels a surge of happiness hearing those words like
the sun is coming
up in the morning and shining right on her face. When
Tivisita
tells the story of the day Camila was born, the
story is different
from when Mon tells it. Tivisita says she
never put Camila in the
cigar box with cotton. She put her in a
pretty blanket. She put her
mouth to Camila's mouth and put air in her
lungs and Camila
cried and her mother woke up for three more
years before she died.
322 "Julia Alvarez
But in that sunrise of warm feeling, there is a
patch of dark
worry. "Why was Mon angry?" she asks
Tivisita now.
But Tivisita does not want to talk about why
Mon wm angry.
"On the day Camila was born," Tivisita
repeats, looking at Max
and Pibin to help her tell this important
story.
"What don't I remember?" Camila wants
to know. Mon said,
"The child is too young to remember."
"You don't remember this story," Tivisita
explains, "because
no one remembers the day they were born."
"I do!" Max claims.
"So do I," Pibin says, lifting his chin.
Her brothers do that a lot now. Everything
Tivisita says can't
be, they say it can be. As soon as that happens,
all stories are over,
and everyone is very quiet, like now, listening
to the waves splash
on the deck as they move across the ocean toward
El Cabo, where
her father is waiting with Mami and a baby sister
to start a new
life together.
"WHAT DON'T I REMEMBER?" she asks
Regina that night.
"Child, go to sleep or this ocean is going to swallow
us both
up. You got to peepee or anything?"
"I remember the day I was born," she whispers
to her nanny.
She would not want Tivisita or Pimpa to hear
her or they would say,
"Camila, don't tell untruths. Your mother
is watching in heaven."
"And I remember the day the world was made,"
Regina says.
Camila cannot tell if her nanny is teasing because
it is dark and so
she cannot see Regina's face.
When she closes her eyes she hears the
slippy-slapping of the
waves like she used to in the creaky house
in Puerto Plata before
the sound of her mother's coughing exploded like guns
going off
and a war starting, and Camila would wake up,
crying.
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI 323
MOST OF ALL SHE remembers her mother's
cough--in the
morning with the roosters crowing and all through the day and
most especially at night when there is no other
noise except the
hush of the waves and the breeze blowing through the
palms.
"Mamii, are you all right?" she calls through the
door.
She is not supposed to go into the room unless
Tivisita or one
of her brothers takes her in, and then she is not
supposed to touch
her mother so she does not catch the coughing germs.
She goes in anyway. It is a
secret. There is a bench and there
are books piled up on it, and Camila
climbs up on one end of the
bench and walks to the other end near her mother and sits
on her
books. Her mother puts a handkerchief over her
mouth to trap
the coughing germs and tells stories about where the name
Camila
comes from,
A beautiful lady who walks on the sea and
never ever wets her
feet.
One day her mother is writing when Camila walks
in. A
poem for Pibin.
"Are you going to write one for me?"
Her mother is a thin, sad face with funny
glasses that make
her eyes look big like fish eyes and long,
bony hands that move oh
so quickly over the blank piece of paper.
"Yes, when the cough
stops."
But the coughing never stops. Her mother gets
skinnier and
skinnier so that she looks different from other people.
No one
comes to the house except Dr. Zafra with his
funny monkey faces
and his thumb he can make disappear. They are staying
up in
Puerto Plata because it is good for Mama's cough
but the cough
doesn't get better, and so Mami says she
wants to go back to die
with her mother in the capital.
Their father is still in El Cabo and says Mami
must stay in
Puerto Plata for surely the trip will kill
her. "These are Pancho's
orders," Tivisita says, but Mami says
she is leaving for the capital
and Tivisita can stay and tell on her if she
wants to, which makes
324 Julia Alvarez
Tivisita cry. Then Tivisita packs up
the whole house and writes a
quick letter to Pancho (that she gives to Regina
to take to the mail
boat with a silver coin not to tell anybody) and
they all get on the
people boat, Fran and Max and Pibin and Regina
and Tivisita--
and by the time they get to the capital, Mami is so
sick, they have
to put her on a cot and carry her home from the
dock.
Mon is angry and says Mami is going to die
on account of
Tivisita allowing her to have her way and travel
when she is in
such bad condition.
Tivisita cries and says it is not her fault
and shows Mon the
letter from Pancho that says Salome must not
travel. But now,
Mon is even more angry and wants to know what on
earth Pancho is doing writing to a young lady about
Beatrice and Dante when his own wife is on her
deathbed dying of consumption.
And then Tivisita really starts to cry and Max
is crying and
Minina has one of those wasps in her heart that
won't come out.
That is the first time Camila remembers hiding in
the dark
hole underneath the house.
AND THEN THE DYING starts, in that dark
bedroom, with lots
and lots of visitors keeping Regina busy
bringing chairs and serving
cafecitos no one wants to touch because they worry
that the
cough can spread on the rims of the china cups.
Her father arrives from El Cabo, though at first
she does not
know it is her father. Everyone is in the back
parlor or going into
the bedroom in little groups, and so that afternoon it is
Camila
who hears the knock at the door up front which
has been shut because
as Mon says this is not a party and where on earth
are they
to put any more visitors with her sister dying. So
Camila unlatches
the door and it is a man in a frock coat and
top hat and
when she says, "Who are you?" he
swoops down and picks her up
and he says, "I am your father, Salome
Camila."
How much he already knows about her!
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI 325
"How is your mother?" he wants to know.
"She is dying from the cough," Camila reports.
He looks smacked when she says so, and then he
buries his
face in her dress, sobbing like Max. "My
poor child," he is saying,
"my poor wife, my poor family."
Then Tivisita comes in the room, and he puts
Camila down,
and dries his tears, and takes Tivisita's hand
and says how much he
and his family are indebted to her kindness.
"Not at all," Tivisita says, and then she
is crying because of
what Mon said and how it is all her fault for
allowing Salome to
travel in her condition.
"That is unjust," her father is saying. "It was
already too late
back when--" His eye falls on Camila, and
his voice goes on its
tippy toes. "She never recovered after that."
From the room in back they hear the spasm of coughing
like
a summons. "Mami is calling us," Camila
reminds them in case
they have forgotten.
THE SUN IS RISING through the round window right
on her
face, making the water sparkle with fallen-down
stars. Camila
braces herself to hear her mother coughing.
But there is no cough. Regina is gone from her
side of the
bed, and Pimpa is still snoring on the other bed, and
Tivisita is lying
on her back looking up at the ceiling.
Up on the deck someone is hollering and Camila
hears the
rushing around footsteps of grown-up people busy with
something
important. From the bottom of the boat comes the
whoosh
whoosh whoosh of the steam rushing up the chimney like
Fran
explained to Pimpa last night at dinner.
Tivisita sits up and sees her awake, and
smiles. "We better get
dressed. Soon we will be in El Cabo."
"And see my father," she says, adding to the story
to make it
move forward.
326 Julia Alvarez
"Yes!" Tivisita says, smiling again.
"And Mami and my little sister?"
The smile fades. "What little sister?
Camila, your mother is in
heaven now."
"She went to heaven to get me a little sister."
Tivisita turns to Pimpa who has sat up
and is listening to the
conversation. "Let her be," Pimpa says,
making a secret gesture
with her hand. "It takes time."
Regina is back with a lemon tea for the ladies
and Camila's
milk in a bottle. "I can see land," Regina
says relieved, making the
sign of the cross.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Salome, my
mother, Camila
says in her head, but she will not say it aloud as that
is what
started all the trouble.
THEY ARE ON DECK and up ahead loom
dark green mountains
with a little town at their feet and pretty houses coming
right up to the sea with zinc roofs flashing in the sun
and fishing
boats bobbing up and down, just like when they lived in
Puerto Plata, which she remembers as the sound of
her mother
coughing.
"The bay is too shallow to come in today," she
hears Fran explain
to Pibin.
"The bay is too shallow to come in today," she
chants, a song
about their arrival.
SUDDENLY, THE SHOUT! "There's Pancho!"
Camila cocks her head, this way, that
way, and tries to fit the
shape waving in the small boat with the tall man in
a frock coat
who came to say goodbye to her mother several months
ago.
"Papancho!" she calls out because she has been
told that is his
name.
IN THE NAME OF SALOMI- 327
"Papancho! Papancho!" her brothers are
shouting and Tivisita
is waving her handkerchief and smiling.
He shouts back, but the rowboat is still too far
away for anybody
to hear him. Besides, the steamboat is making
horrible,
squealing sounds that mean, Fran explains
to Pibin, that they are
stopping.
As the boat draws closer, she can see her father
standing and
waving. Another man is rowing. But where is
Mami? Where is the
baby sister from heaven?
"Pibin," she asks him, "Where is
Mami and the baby sister
from heaven?"
Pibin looks down at her, frowning. As if he
thought she were
older, as if he thought she knew better.
"We're not going to have
a baby sister, Camila."
"You're the baby sister," Max taunts.
"Baby! Baby!"
Camila ignores him. "Why can't we have a
baby sister, Pibin?"
Max's face gets red like just before he bursts out
crying. "Because
Mami is DEAD, stupid!" he says, like
slamming a door in
her face.
She sees the meanness in her brother's face, and
that more
than anything is what makes her want to cry.
Maybe someone will
scold Max for calling her a baby, naughty
boy! But everyone is too
excited with the boat approaching, and Tivisita and
Pibin and
Fran are hurrying to greet her father as
he comes up the rope ladder
and throws his arms around them.
Camila is not going to cry in front of
everybody and be called
a baby again. She runs from the deck, down the first
stairs, past
their cabin where Regina is tying up their bedding, and
on down
the narrow passageway of the boat rocking, and down
the steep
stairs to the dark hole with the boiler making gurgling
sounds and
men without shirts cranking open valves and a great
whoosh like
steam escaping out of a kettle's spout.
"Stoke her down!" one of them shouts.
She crouches behind the coal pile in the heat of the
nearby
328 Julia @alvarez
furnace, listening to the men put out the fires and
stop the boat
that she thought was taking her to her mother.
IT GETS SO HOT and steamy, she cannot
breathe, but she must
not cough or they will find her and take her
away to El Cabo,
where she now knows she will not be seeing her mother.
But where is Mami?
In heaven? But where is heaven?
In her heart? But then why doesn't her mother come
out so
she can see her?
The last day, her mother tried to tell her where she
would be.
But the handkerchief was over her mouth and so Camila
could
not make out the words she was whispering.
Tivisita had dressed her up in her white
dress with the
embroidered leaves on the collar like her head is
a flower. "Dear
heart," Tivisita said, kissing her forehead,
"you must be very
brave."
"What am I to do?"
"Your Mami wants to hear you recite "El
ave y el nido." And
she wants to say goodbye to you."
"Where is she going?" Camila asked, suddenly
afraid.
For days now, so many people have been dropping by that
straw has been put down on the street in
front of their house so
the noise of carriages won't disturb her mother.
People are coming
in and out of the dark room, crying and shaking their heads
sadly
when they look at Camila. But Mon will not let
Camila go in
there because she says it won't be good for Camila
to see her
mother in this condition.
That last day, when Tivisita is done dressing
her, Mon comes
and carries her into the dark room. It takes a
moment for her eyes
to adjust, but slowly she recognizes the
figures, ranged around the
bed, handkerchiefs dabbing at their eyes: fat
Archbishop Merifio
with his big red sash, and Dr. Alfonseca with
yellow streaks on his
IN
THE
NAMI
OF
SALOM 329
white mustache where he blows out smoke from his
nostrils, and
her mother's students, Luisa and Eva, her
grandmother Minina,
her three big brothers, her uncle Federico,
her pretty aunt Trini,
and Tia Valentina with her cousins from Banf it
seems everyone
they know is here.
She looks from one to the other, searching for her mother,
her
eyes finally falling on the pale face lost in the
big bed, surrounded
with sweet-smelling white flowers and green
sprigs from the laurel
tree.
"Mama!" she calls out and the eyes open and the
lips spread
in a faint smile.
Mon places a handkerchief over her mother's
mouth, the center
sinking down as her mother takes a breath to speak.
Immediately,
she breaks out in a spasm of coughing.
"Recite for your mother!" her father commands.
How can she remember the words of "El ave y
el nido," when
her mother looks so bad? "Go ahead," Mon
encourages. "Your
mother wants you to recite for her."
She looks at the frail figure lying on the
bed. She wants to do
anything to please her and keep her here. And so she
begins reciting
the poem her mother wrote years ago about a bird
flying away
because her nest has been disturbed.
When she is done, many of the ladies begin to weep.
Her mother motions for her to come closer, but her father
holds her back. Mon whispers something to her
father, and he finally
lets Camila go stand next to the bed.
She is looking right into her mother's eyes, and she can
see her
mother moving farther away, but struggling to get loose
from
whatever is pulling her away so she can say something
to Camila.
The handkerchief flutters--the words are trapped
beneath it.
She leans in closer, turning her head toward the
sound the way she
has seen Minina do with her good ear to listen
better. But then her
father bends down beside her, pushing her head away.
"She is saying something." He holds up his hand
for everyone
330 Julia ,bledavarez
to keep quiet. ""I see more light,"" he
repeats, Then, he lifts her
hand as if he is going to kiss it, but very soon he
lays it back
down next to the other one. "Salome is gone,"
he sobs, bowing
his head.
Everyone makes the sign of the cross. Archbishop
Merifio
starts a prayer. Some of the ladies burst out
crying.
But her mother is not gone. Camila sees the eyes
flick open,
the handkerchief stirs, the hand reaches out to touch
hers.
Or did this really happen? How can she be certain
that what
she heard is what her mother actually said when her
mother's
mouth was covered up and her voice so faint?
So, she plays the scene back. She exits the
room, Tivisita
dresses her, she goes back to the last trip
on the boat, to Puerto
Plata and the sand and the waving palm trees, to the
room with
the sunlight, where her mother sits writing a poem,
and coughing,
and then she starts over.
Backward and forward she goes, as her mother's
face begins to
fade and the sound of the coughing to recede Until it is
the faint
hooting of steamboats when the tide is up and they
can come in
the bay, and she can see them bobbing on the waters from
their
two-story pink house in the center of El
Cabo, while downstairs
the baby Salome is crying, and her
stepmother Tivisita is calling
for Camila to come out from wherever she is hiding and
say hello
to her father home from the hospital, and she will go
down, for
she must go down, but for this moment she stands on the
balcony
with the sun so hot it will burn her skin darker, which
she is supposed
to avoid doing, trying to remember that first steamboat
ride down to the capital with a sick lady coughing
in the downstairs
cabin and people crying over a bed of flowers and the
silent
parade of schoolgirls with black armbands stopping
at the seven
houses where their teacher lived before they arrive at the
church of
Las Mercedes and the bells begin to ring scattering
the doves in
the tower.
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI
This is how people can really die, she thinks,
remembering
her mother.
BUT ALL OF THIS is the future which she has
yet to live. Right
now, she is crouched behind a pile of coal in the
dark hole of a
steamboat filling up with smoke. She cannot catch
her breath. She
is faint with the lack of air, her head is beginning
to spin.
She hears steps rushing down the corridors,
thundering down
the iron stairs, and the steam hissing in the air, and
someone is
shouting at the men by the boiler and they shout back,
"NO!"
There are more steps, more shouts, and just when she feels
she is going to plunge down into the dark center of
herself where
her mother waits to take her by the hand and lead her
to heaven
where they will start a new life together, she swallows
a big breath
of air and her lungs explode in a fit of
coughing.
"SALOME CAMILA!" It is her father's
voice shouting with
such desperation she can feel his need drawing her up
out of her
hiding place. "SALOME CAMILA!"
Salome Camila, her mother's name and her name,
always together!
Just as on that last day in the dark bedroom she
remembers
everybody crying and the pained coughing and her mother
raising
her head from her pillow to say their special name.
"Here we are," she calls out.
EPILOGUE
Arriving Santo Domingo
September, 1973
"SHE WON'T KNOW THE difference," one of the
nieces is saying.
As if along with my bad cataracts, I am also
losing my hearing.
"I can hear you, girls," I call out. They are
in their twenties
now, but I think of them still as
Rodolfo's pretty girls. In Cuba,
when they still lived there, they were the toast of the town,
even
after the revolution, when we weren't supposed to be
paying attention
to such things.
There is a moment of silence, and then giggles, little
hiccups
of laughter in the hall where they have been planning
how to delay
our excursion to the cemetery. Their father,
Rodolfo, bought a
plot "for those of us in the family who aren't
famous," and he
kindly invited me, his half sister, their aunt
Camila, to join them.
A few weeks ago, I chose a spot, and
made arrangements for my
stone.
Then, the trouble started up.
"Now Tia Camila," Elsa, the oldest of the
girls, is saying,
"how do you know we were talking about you?"
"Because I'm the one being difficult, that's why."
I respond to
the touch of her hand by squeezing back. The softness
of the skin
and the shapeliness of the fingers recall another hand from
the
past. This is no longer unusual. At my
age, everything is haunted
by an antecedent. More and more, my loved ones
surface in their
young replacements, no doubt signaling my
departure.
For that reason, I am making a fuss now.
334 "Julia Alvarez
WHEN THE GIRLS FIRST took me to the plot
several weeks ago,
I chose the lowest level in the three-tiered,
outdoor vault, lower
left, close to the ground.
"But your marker is likely to be covered over with
weeds," the
cemetery attendant argued. He had a point.
With all this rain,
weeds grow quicker than we can keep up with them.
"Wouldn't
you prefer the top, so everyone sees you?"
"Heavens no," I said, shaking my
head. Who was this fresh,
young man, discussing burial spots as if they were
boxes in an
opera house? "I want to be close to the ground.
You see, I moved
around all my life. Every decade a new
address. This will be my
first permanent home."
"You're being so morbid, aunt!" My nieces
groaned. Rodolfo
was along that day, and for once he supported my
view. "Your
aunt Camila is right. We're at the age when
we must think about
these things." Daily, he and I compete for who
feels worse in our
mortal bodies: his arthritis to my touch of
asthma; his painful left
hip ("I can hardly walk[") to my heart
murmur and bad cataracts.
It's as if we are playing one of those old board
games I used to
bring back from the States for my nieces: Risk
and Scrabble
ands--oh dear, if my revolutionary
friends should ever hear of
it--Monopoly.
"Come, come, Rodolfo, you're the baby," I
reminded him. At
sixty-seven, he is the youngest of all of
Papancho's children,
twelve years younger than I.
As for the stone, itself, I told them, no angels,
no bearded
Christ--like a skinny Fidel--baring his chest to show
his heart. I
had given them precise instructions, and so when we
came back
last week and Elsa read me what was on the
stone, of course I
made a fuss.
"The name is wrong," I told her.
"You always liked going by Camila," Rodolfo
reminded me.
"In fact, Papancho said you used to get
annoyed with him when
he called you Salome Camila. You'd go
hide."
IN THE NAME OF SALOM 335
Of course, Rodolfo was right, or
partly right. After I realized
that she would not be coming back, I hated to be
reminded of my
mother. But still, I longed for her--a longing that would
well up
in me in the middle of the night and send me wandering
through
houses, apartments, wherever it was I was living at the
time. I
tried all kinds of strategies. I learned her
story. I put it side by side
with my own. I wove our two lives together as
strong as a rope and
with it I pulled myself out of the pit of depression and
self-doubt. But no matter what I tried, she was
still gone. Until, at last I found her the only
place we ever find the dead: among the living.
Mami was alive and well in Cuba, where I
struggled with others
to build the kind of country she had dreamed of. But
how can I
explain this to my autocratic baby brother, who
every day seems
more and more like a reincarnation of our crazed old father?
Just
a mention of Cuba makes him so angry that I
worry he will precede
me to the grave.
"I want you to have the stone redone," I told
them, right then
and there.
"But Tia Camila, what's the difference?"
Lupe reasoned. It
was on the tip of her tongue that here I had come from
Cuba,
where I had been going through any number of
deprivations.
What was an omission of a name from a tombstone I
wouldn't
even live to enjoy?
And then, I "heard" the elbowings and the hushings with the
eyes. Humor her, their looks were saying.
We'll tell her it's been
changed, and she won't know the difference.
I HAD FLOWN OVER from Cuba to see
Rodolfo and my nieces.
Quincea@neras, graduations, birthdays had gone
by, and their tia
Camila had been too busy to come. Or so went
my excuse. But in
fact, once my pension was frozen in the States,
my meager salary
at the Cuban Ministry of Education would not
stretch as far as a
plane ticket. Then, Rodolfo sent me the
money along with a note,
336 Julia @alvarez
"No excuses," followed by the heart tug, "I
have to see you before
I die, Mamila."
At the airport, Rodolfo had been upset
at my failing eyesight,
my shabby clothes. "Is that all you brought?" he
asked, staring at
my small bag. I had debated bringing the
trunk of Mam pounds papers,
which I had kept with me for years. But right before my
trip, I decided
it was time and called up the archives in Havana
to come
pick it up. Poor Max (dead five years
already!) must be kicking in
his grave.
That first afternoon as Rodolfo and I sat in rocking
chairs on
his galeria, he brought up the question of my future.
"My future? At my age?" I tried not
to laugh.
"Things are going to get worse and worse over
there, you
know that," Rodolfo began, slowing his rocking for
emphasis. My
brother, always so diligent with his scales as a
boy, has learned to
play his rocking chair like a musical instrument in
old age. "Tell
me something, Camila," he added as if to prove
his point, "when
was the last time you had a dish of pistachio ice
cream?"
"I don't like pistachio ice cream,
Rodolfo. I don't miss it in the
least."
"I want you here with me so I can take care of
you." His voice
had become peevish, phlegm from his last bad
cold caught in his
throat. (residual bronchitis to my
persistent asthma; kidney stone
to the hernia that should have been operated on
years ago.) It was
a voice not so different from the little boy's bawling
for his
Mamila to come out of her bedroom so they could go
tickle the
pig, Teddy Roosevelt, with guava sticks.
"But how can you take care of me, Rodolfo?"
I teased him.
"You're in worse shape than I am,
remember?"
"Camila, Camila," he was rocking
prestissimo--I had to
swing myself back and forth to keep up with him. "Just the
thought of you alone at Riomar--"
"Sierra Maestra," I corrected him. Perhaps
that was why the
many letters he claimed he wrote me never reached
me. Along
INTHE
NAME
OF
SALOM.
with most things, my apartment building had been
renamed after
the revolution. But Rodolfo insisted
on addressing the envelope
with the old name.
"Just the thought of you all alone there--it would kill
me,
Camila, it really would." He put his hand on his
chest, that old
gesture of Papancho's, threatening to punish
filial disobedience
with a paterfamilias heart attack.
"Rodolfo, dear," I said, reaching for his hand.
"Let's talk about
the real future. I think I should make
arrangements."
That was when my brother offered me a spot in the
cemetery
plot he and Max had bought before Max passed
on. "And something
else," he added, "I want you to get those eyes
fixed."
"Why waste money?" I argued. In the three
months it would
take after the operation to be fitted with the glasses that
would allow
me to see, I would be dead. I was sure of it.
Which is why I
had come home, not just to visit my half brother and
nieces.
But Rodolfo insisted. "Think of it, Camila,
to be able to see
our faces clearly again. To be able to read
poetry again."
"All right, Rodolfo," I told him, "Do
what you will with me."
I did not want to worry him with my
premonitions. But I could
feel it, the weariness of the old dog turning in
circles around the
spot where he has chosen to lie down.
"You COULD BE BURIED with Salome,"
Rodolfo was saying as
we drove to the pantheon to see my mother's
monument. I had already
accepted his offer at the cemetery, but I think
Rodolfo felt
that I was cheating myself of the choice spot I could
demand because
of my connections. "We could make a case for your
wanting
to be with your mother and father in your final resting
place."
"Oh please, Rodolfo," I shook my head
at him. "An eternity
of visitors! What could be worse than that? As
for being with
Mama, I learned how to be with her as an absence
all my life.
Why change things on me now?"
238 .julia @alvarez
We entered the echoing hall, and Rodolfo
announced the
names on the tombs as we passed them. We
stopped at the tomb
of Maria Trinidad Sanchez. It was she who
had had sewn our flag
and later requested that her skirt be tied down before
she went before
the execution squad ordered by General Santana
(now lamentably
buried directly across from her). Depending on the
president, the pantheon of heroes changes, one
regime's villain is
the next one's hero, until the word hero, like the
word patria, begins
to mean nothing. That is another reason why I do not
want
to be buried here among the great dead. All I have
to do is put my
life next to my mother's life, and I see the
difference.
At the final tomb in the corner, Rodolfo
read out the names.
Mami and Pedro lay in the center vault--
eternally together!--
Pibin's dying wish. On the right lay Papi,
recently arrived from
the cemetery in Santiago de Cuba.
"Did you get a chance to visit Tivisita's
grave when you went
to get Papancho?" Rodolfo asked me.
I didn't have the heart to tell my half brother
what had become
of his mother's gravesite. When the Dominican
government
requested the return of the body of one of its former
presidents,
I traveled to Santiago de Cuba from
Havana to sign papers and
supervise the transfer. In order to exhume the
body so that the former
president could lie in state in the
Dominican pantheon with
his first wife, the poet Salome Urefia, the
shared grave with his
second wife, Tivisita, had to be opened.
In doing so, the large
headstone was cracked and then discarded, so that
Tivisita was left
behind in an unmarked grave.
My silence obviously puzzled my half
brother. "I've always
wondered, Camila. Did you get on well with
Mother?"
"Tivisita was always kind to me," I told him.
"We were
friends." One good thing about this new handicap of near
blindness:
my eyes no longer betray me.
Perhaps I should have told the truth, that I had
struggled to
love her as I had struggled with countless others.
I thought, of
IN THE NAME OF SALOM 339
course, of Domingo and the handsome Scott Andrews,
and my
old friend Marion, still alive in
Sarasota, both her eyes sharp, repaired
by an exiled Cuban doctor using the latest
techniques.
"Come and visit," she had written. "I will pay
for you to see."
The struggle to see and the struggle to love the flawed
thing
we see--what other struggle is there? Even the
struggle to create
a country comes out of that same seed.
In the name of Hostos, Salome, Jose Marti
...
"I am indeed surprised," Rodolfo was saying
playfully. He had
caught his agnostic sister making the sign of the
cross. Of course,
he had not heard my sacrilegious prayer.
THAT AFTERNOON, RODOLFO LOANED me his car
and the
young driver he hires as he no longer drives.
(his macular degeneration
to my cataracts; his high blood pressure to my
high blood
pressure.) I wanted to go for a long paseo through
the old part of
the city, Mama's city. Rodolfo was tired out
by our morning outing,
Elsa was working and so was Lupe, so the baby
Belkys -- now
in her twenties!--came along. Dear Belkys
is pure Lauranzon.
She doesn't interest herself in the everlastingly
boring history of
the Henriquez clan--all those professorish
half uncles with their
dull books of criticism and patriotic
poetry.
"Where is my tangerine nail polish!" she
cries at the top of
her lungs.. She cannot go out in the city with
unpainted fingernails.
Thank God I do not have to see those nails.
Hearing about
them is enough.
We set out in the car and asked the driver to take
us to Salome
Urefia's house. "Where would that be?" he
wanted to know.
"Where would it be, Tia Camila?" Belkys
asked, as if I couldn't
hear the man just because I couldn't see him. "Would it
be on
Salome Urefia Street?"
"Of course, dear."
But once we got there, no one on the street could
tell us
340 .julia ,bledfulvarez
which house it was exactly. With my poor
eyesight, I couldn't pick
it out from the others, but I knew I could find it
by feel. A plaque
had been embedded in the wall soon after
Salome's death. What a
sight we must have been in that hot afternoon sun: an
old, blind
woman stroking the faces of the buildings" on the
south side of the
street and a girl with orange nails and high
heels trailing with a
parasol so her already dark aunt would not get any
darker. "Here
it is!" I called out.
"Here lived and flowered Salome Urefia,"
Belkys read the
plaque for me. Our young driver had
accompanied us, bringing
up the rear, no doubt catching the gratifying
sight of Belkys in her
minidress. Elsa tells me that Belkys's
hemlines cause a stir wherever
she goes. "Who is this Salome Urefia?"
he wanted to know. "I
read her name everywhere."
I had to bite my tongue, I most certainly
did.
"She was one of the best poets of the
Spanish-speaking
world," Belkys bragged--as if she would know!
"She started the
first school for higher education for women in the
country. What
else, Tia Camila?" she asked turning
to me.
I couldn't think what else to say. I felt the
old sadness welling
up in me. And so I said simply, "She was my
mother."
"May she rest in peace," the young man said, his
hand flashing
before me as he made the sign of the cross
to seal his wish.
WE VISITED THE SCHOOL. Mami had
opened the Instituto de
Senoritas in 1881 in her front parlor, and
except for the hiatus of
some years when she was ill, the school had
survived dozens of
revolutions and civil wars and changes in
government. In that respect,
we had not changed as a people since Mami's time.
Now
the building occupied most of a block.
"Describe it to me," I
asked my young escorts.
"It's olive green with a darker olive green
trim."
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI 341
It sounded very martial--like a building in Cuba
after Soviet
taste took over. "What else?"
"It's got bars at the windows,"
Belkys said. "How creepy."
"Of course, with all the crime and vandalism these
days," the
young driver lamented. He sounded as if he had
been around for
ages and had seen the awful direction the human
race was taking.
Once inside, we entered a din of scolding
teachers and girls
reciting their lessons.
What had happened to the positivist method? I
wondered. To
young minds asking unsettling questions?
"Do you have a pass?" It was one of the teachers, I
suppose,
patrolling in the hall.
My dear Belkys, princess of brag, spoke
up rather rudely,
"We don't need one. This is Salome
Urefia's daughter."
"And I am the pope," the huffy teacher snapped
back. A challenge
to her authority was something she would not tolerate,
especially
in the halls within earshot of her charges.
No doubt it did
not help our cause that a young man had
accompanied us inside
this den of females.
"But I'm telling you the truth," Belkys
argued, her voice trembling.
"Come on, Tia Camila, let's go."
"Tell me exactly what it was like inside," I
asked her as we
rode back to the house.
And that is when she described the weedy, littered
inner yard;
the torn-up wooden floors; the cluster of
cleaning women with
sullen, tired faces, sitting in cane-back
chairs; the many rules and
mandamientos tacked up on the bulletin boards;
the young girls
walking down the halls with Dixie cups of something
they had all
learned how to cook that day.
"That's enough," I said, pressing her hand.
" "Ay, Tia Camila," Belkys was sobbing
now. All tangerine nail
polish gone from her voice. "What would
Salome say if she could
see the place now."
342 .julia @alvarez
What would she have said, except what she must have said
to
herself, time after time, when her dreams came tumbling
down?
Start over, start over, start over.
LATE AFTERNOONS, RODOLFO AND I sit on
the galeria, rocking
in rhythm. The rocking chair duet, Elsa
calls it. The smell of rain
and ginger is in the air--there is a hedge, the
girls tell me, circling
the house, a moat of ginger!
Sometimes the subject comes up, not death as one would
think for these two white heads and ailing bodies--
that is easy to
talk about--but Cuba. "The experiment that has
failed," Rodolfo
calls it bitterly. Since he managed to get
out five years ago with his
girls, Rodolfo, like most exiles, feels
driven to soil the nest for
those of us who stayed. It's a nest that is
already well soiled, as I
tell him.
"But that is not the point," I add. "We have
to keep trying to
create a patria out of the land where we were born.
Even when disthe
experiment fails, especially when the experiment
fails."
"You weren't even born there!" Rodolfo
counters.
"It's the place where I was raised. And as
Marti once said--"
"Camila, Camila," he sighs, "your
handicap is showing." This
is what Rodolfo calls a certain know-it-all
tendency in his older
sister, the schoolteacher, to dispense her little nuggets
of wisdom
wherever she finds ignorance--a state of mind that,
of course,
does not exist in my brother's head.
"The truth is," he begins, his favorite opening
phrase these
days, as if his advanced years have turned him into a
Moses coming
down the mountain with his tablet of numbered truths,
"la
pura verdad is that we have been a wandering
family."
That is a truth we can both agree on. The
seeds of the Henriquezes
are scattered across the Americas: Pedro's two
girls in Argentina;
childless Fran wherever his wife's family took
their ashes
when they fled the revolution; Max's sons
shuttling here and there
IN
THE
NAMH
OF
SALOM 343
in South America, so that the times I have called
their homes,
their wives sigh deeply and say, "Let's
see. It's Thursday... he is
in Panam@a." Then there are Papancho's
French grandchildren,
scattering his seed in France and Norway and New
Jersey, so I
hear. And every one of these children driven by the little motor
of
life and need in a world that increasingly resembles
our neighbor
to the north, a world without sufficient soul or spirit,
as Marti put
it, as if the great sacrifice and vision of the old
people have washed
out over time.
"You're rocking strangely today," Rodolfo
notes, stopping his
rocking as if to listen more closely to mine.
Indeed, I have been
beating a rhythm with my hands on the armrest even as
I clack,
back and forth. "You are playing jazz, not singing
harmony."
"I do that sometimes," I tell him.
"YOU SHOULD REST, Tia Camila,"
Belkys suggests. We are
back on the subject of the contested tombstone.
My nieces want
to cancel today's outing to the cemetery.
"Don't you trust us if we tell you we've
changed it?" Lupe
asks, just the slightest bit of impatience in her
voice.
"I'd like to go and see for myself."
"If you're going to see it for yourself, you better
wait until after
your operation to go check up on us!" Belkys
pipes up, fresh as
ever.
They do not want me to go out at all today. There's
a strike of
garbage collectors. In some places, the
strikers have set up roadblocks
of garbage.
"Besides, it really does look like rain. It
won't do for you to
catch a cold before your operation." Lupe, ever the
logician. She
does not believe in arguing, but in reasoning things
out, she likes
to say. When I used to bring them workbooks from the
States, her
favorite exercises were always those analogies:
house is to home as
country is to blank.
344 "Julia Alvarez
But their excuses make me suspicious. My
operation is scheduled
for next Tuesday, si Dios quiere, as the
Dominicans are fond
of saying, if God wills it and the garbage
collectors allow it. In
case anything happens, I want to be sure this
last wish has been
carried out. "The rain will let up soon. Then we
can go."
"Tia Camila, if we were trying to fool you,
all we would have
to do is take you to the cemetery and read you what you
want to
hear," Lupe continues in her reasoning.
I have ways to check up on you, I think, my
hands now quietly
folded in my lap. The more blurred my vision
has become the
more sensitive my fingertips. I would feel the
stone and know the
difference.
"So you might as well take our word for it, dear
Tia!" Lupe
concludes, straightening the bow on my
collar as if I were a petulant
child.
Elsa, the soulful one of the three, worries that
my preoccupation
with this little detail is a sign of my bigger
anxiety about the
upcoming eye operation.
"I'm not worried about that," I reassure her.
"All I'm leaving is
that stone. The least I can do is get the details
right." Indeed, my
old friend Marion used to tease me that I wrote
only with pencils
because I didn't like my mistakes to show.
"If there is one thing I hate about the
revolution," I add, and of
course, they perk up hearing me say this, as they so
much want their
old aunt to agree with their point of view, "it
is the sloppy use of
the language." I have any number of
examples, but I don't use them.
"Is that all?" Lupe asks--as if I had
complained about a
bunion when the problem is the gangrenous
foot.
I think a minute about it before I respond--
Elsa calls it the
time lag of Tia Camila's thinking. "Yes,"
I say. "That is all." Though
I could very well have said, That is everything. The words
that create
who we are.
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOM! 345
I REMEMBER MY FIRST job in Cuba after
I returned in 1960.
The jefe of the personnel department at the
Ministry of Education
had heard that a Dominican woman had resigned
her job
as a professor at Vassar to come join the
revolution. (the inaccuracies
were already creeping in.) Would la compa@nera
Camila like
to serve as technical assessor in the national
literacy campaign?
His own letter was full of errors and messy efforts
at correction.
No doubt his secretary had been liberated to a
cane harvest, and
he had been left alone to type his own
correspondence.
It was not the letter itself that made me feel uneasy.
It was the
close at the end. Revolutionarily yours,
Patria o Muerte! Venceremos!
Surely one of these phrases would have been enough.
It was happening all over Cuba, this awful,
overwrought language.
Every time I ventured out I would have to fight an
urge to
take my red pencil. One shopkeeper posted,
"The customer is always
right except when he attacks the revolution."
Both false statements:
one of capitalism, the second of Marxism.
Oh dear, I
thought, what have I come back to?
The first few years, before I learned the new names,
it was impossible
for me to travel anywhere by taxi unless
I happened upon
an older driver. A young driver would not know
Calle de la Reina
because it had been liberated and renamed Simon
Bolivar before
he had learned to read. Carlos III
Boulevard was gone, but Boulevard
Salvador Allende could still take you where you were
going.
We were at the foot of our very own Tower of
Babel, ideological
as well as linguistic, and the exodus began,
mostly of the rich who
had the means to start over in the United States of
America.
"What they don't want to admit is that now their
servants"
children are getting schooled, and everyone can eat, and
everyone
can get medical care," my friend Nora Lavedin
observed. "When
there is food and medicine," she added wryly.
One spot I did want to visit before all of the
names were
changed was Domingo's grave. But by the
time I made it to the
346 Julia Alvarez
cemetery, the place was a mess. Graves had
been plundered, statues
toppled, the busts and bones of rich ancestors
carted to Miami
on Pan Am.
The young compa@nera in charge of records kept
mumbling to
herself as she checked through a pile of file folders
she had been
renumbering. "I would have to know his date of death and
date of
burial."
"I'm not sure," I told her. "You see, I
was gone for so many
years, that he died and I never knew of it."
The sharp-featured woman in her beret and combat
boots
eyed me curiously. "Was he a relation of
yours?" She needed to
know before she could go on.
"No, not a relation exactly," I explained--
always the stickler
for accuracy. The priggishness of the
schoolteacher in my voice
was itself like a red pencil mark across the permission she
might
have granted me.
"Compa@nera, I will need a pass filled out by the
comandante
of cemeteries before I can release any information."
Comandante of cemeteries! I thought. Everyone was
now in
charge of something. That was the bad news. But the good
news
was very good: we were all in charge of taking care of
each other.
I could live, and die, for that, too.
"If you would be so kind, compa@nera, to write the
comandante's
address down." I complied, even when the rules
seemed
foolish, even when the means were flawed. We had
never been allowed
to govern ourselves. We were bound to get it wrong the
first
few times around.
One evening, with Domingo on my mind, I
followed the
smell of the sea and found myself at the docks, where
we had
once protested together, for what cause I can no
longer remember.
I walked among the fishermen and stevedores,
unloading
cargo from Soviet vessels, hauling bins of
sugar and barrels of
rum and crates full of fragrant cigars with
cranes into the holds
of those ships. I had this sudden desire to hide
myself in one of
IN THE NAME OF SALOMI 347
those vessels and wake up in a whole new land
where the revolution
had already succeeded and the people were free and my work
was done.
My LIFE IN CUBA--IT was a whole
life, wasn't it? Thirteen
years flew by. I was busy all the time. For
one thing, with our fuel
shortages, I had to get everywhere on foot, so
each task took twice
as long.
The exodus that began as a trickle
became a flood. With so
many gone, those of us who stayed were needed even more.
I
taught at the university at night and in
factor@ias during the day.
Weekends, I joined my young compa@neros,
writing manuals and
preparing materials for the teachers who came in from the
rural
schools. Sometimes I was sent out into the
countryside.
Soon after I arrived, Rodolfo applied
to leave, taking my
nieces with him. "How can you stand this, Camila?"
Rodolfo
whispered to me as we walked to his final hearing
with the Committee
for the Defense of the Revolution. "What kind of a
revolution
is this?" He glared at yet another poster of
Fidel going up
on Lenin Boulevard.
"Con calma, Rodolfo," I reminded him.
I was disappointed with his reaction. For I had never
thought
of the real revolution as the one Fidel was commanding.
The real
revolution could only be won by the imagination. When
one of
my newly literate students picked up a
book and read with hungry
pleasure, I knew we were one step closer to the
patria we all
wanted.
One summer, I was assigned to a literacy
brigade in a cafetal
up in the Sierra Maestra. Day after day, I
read to a large, stuffy hall
of women sorting coffee beans. One morning, I
put aside my suggested
list (granma, Karl Marx, Jose Marti)
and read them a poem
of Mami's that had never been published. She must
have written
it right after Fran was born.
348 .julia 41varez
There sleeps my little one, all mine!
There sleeps the angel who enchants my world!
I look up from my book a dozen times,
absorbed with him, I haven't read a
word.
I looked up after I was finished; the women had
stopped sorting
and were looking at me with interest. "What is it?"
I asked,
glancing over their shoulders at our
compa@nera-in-charge at the
back of the hall. She could be rather brusque when the
sorters fell
behind on their quotas.
"That was written by a mother?" one of the women asked.
I nodded. "It was written by my mother, in fact."
And then, I
told them her story, and when I was done, one
by one, the women
began to clack with their wooden scoopers on the
side of their tables,
until the din in the room drowned out the compa@nera,
shouting for order, in the name of Fidel, in the name
of the revolution.
THE
RAIN IS COMING down hard. Elsa sits beside
me, our
chairs pulled back from the edge of the galeria.
Rodolfo has
caught a cold and is napping. We sit in
silence, listening to the
downpour, a mist of the raindrops on our faces.
"See, Tia Camila, Lupe was right. It
did rain."
"I don't mind a little rain," I say.
"Are you upset at us for not taking you out there today?"
"You are the ones in charge now," I say, with an
edge in my
voice.
"Maybe Sunday," she says. "The operation
isn't until Tuesday,
remember."
"Maybe," I agree. But Sunday the sun will
be too strong. The
strike of garbage workers will have made the streets
impassable.
Rodolfo's cough will be so bad that everyone will have
to be on
call in case he decides to die.
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI was 349
"Tia Camila, I often wonder, are you glad
you went back to
Cuba?"
I sigh as this is a question I am asked a lot by people
who find
out I had another life in the States. I might
have retired with a
nice pension and lived out my days in a cottage
on a lake in New
Hampshire or Vermont or maybe even in
Sarasota, close to Marion
and her husband whose name I never could get right. How
could I throw that life away at sixty-five?
"How could I not?" I always answer back.
"You gave up so much," Elsa notes.
"Less than you think, dear," I tell her. The
pension I later discovered
I had lost by moving to Cuba was nothing compared to
what I had found. Teaching literature everywhere,
in the campos,
classrooms, barracks, factorias--
literature for all. (liberature, Nora
likes to call it.) My mother's instituto had grown
to the size of a whole country!
"It was a lot, Tia. You always want
to make yourself sound
less great than you are."
I have to laugh. "We are all the same size,
don't you know?
Just some of us stretch ourselves a little more."
My niece squeezes my hand. I am reminded
suddenly of
Domingo, how he always had to be in physical
touch when he
spoke to me. I feel again that old regret at
how I might have misled him.
But then, I misled myself, thinking I had fallen
in love
with the man, when in fact, I had fallen in love
with the artist, his
intensity, Africa in his skin--the things that
connected me to my
mother, not to him.
"It was time to come home," I tell my sweet
Elsa. "Or as close
as I could get to home. I wanted that more than
anything." Who
can explain it? That dark love and shame that binds
us to the arbitrary
place where we happened to be born.
We listen to the drops beating down from the galeria
roof to
the hedge below. The scent of ginger is very strong.
"I miss Cuba," Elsa confesses at last.
She was older than her
350 "Julia Alvarez
sisters when they left, and so she feels a greater
pull back. "But I
don't think Castro is the answer."
"It was wrong to think that there was an answer in the first
place, dear. There are no answers." I
hesitate. I don't even know
how to explain this to her. If I could see her
face clearly, perhaps
the words would rise up from the mute knowing of my
heart. "It's
continuing to struggle to create the country we dream of
that
makes a patria out of the land under our feet. That
much I learned
from my mother."
"So you think I should go back?" Elsa is a
dentist, she has
studied long and hard to set up her little practice
in the front
rooms of her father's house.
Such a mistake to want clarity above all
else! I feel like telling
her. A mistake I myself made over and over
all my life.
"Again you want an answer, my dear." I
smile because I understand
just how she feels.
EARLY IN THE MORNING, I dress
quietly and make my way to
the front of the house. Usually my roamings take
place in the
middle of the night, in and out of rooms, as if I
had lost something
during the day which I need to recover after dark.
"Ignacio," I call out when I get to the
front gate.
I had caught the young driver by the front steps the
day before
and arranged for this drive to the cemetery. I offered
him my change
purse of pesos, but he refused. "It would be
an honor," he insisted.
An honor! A young man working for honor! I was
impressed.
In spite of our disappointing history, my people
keep surprising
me with their generosity of spirit. What is it that
Marti used to
say, Every time has its own evil but a human being
can always be
good? Or was it Hostos who said that, or was it
Mami, after all?
The beautiful, the brave, the good--they are all
running together
in my head, into that great river of time that is now
hurrying me
along.
IN THE NAME OF SALOM 351
The morning is cool, rain on the trade winds
coming off the
sea. Soon we will edge toward our tropic
winter, the Waves going
wild, the dark closing in earlier each day. I
shiver thinking of
those long, cold winters in Poughkeepsie and
Minnesota and of
the long eternity ahead of me. So much left to be
done! And no
children of my own to send into the future to do
it.
Not true! My Nancy in Poughkeepsie, my
coffee sorters in
Sierra Maestra, my Belkys, my Lupe,
my Elsa in Santo Domingo
--my own and not my own--the way it is for all us
childless
mothers who help raise the young.
The gates are already open by the time we arrive. I
can smell
the carnations, brought from the outskirts, being put out
in their
cans, a welcome scent after the stench of
uncollected garbage on
the city streets.
"Would the senora like some flowers?" a marchanta
calls out
after us, without much enthusiasm in her voice--a
tic of selling,
to offer wares to anyone passing by. The real
buyers come later in
their black Mercedes with shaded windows that do not
expose
their privileged grief to the curious passerby.
Ignacio knows the way, as he brings
Don Rodolfo here often
to visit Don Max and Dona Guarina. "I have
to go take care of
the car," he reminds me after he has settled
me on the stone bench
that faces the family plot. We left the car
by the entry turnabout
--the sereno let us--so that Ignacio could help the
old woman
find her dead people before going back to park it.
Just before he leaves, we hear something drop with a
bang like
a firecracker. "What was that?" I say,
startled.
"The anacahuita tree," Ignacio
explains. "There's a great big
one right next to the grave."
The pods of the anacahuita are known for exploding
when
they hit the ground. Oh dear, I think, there
goes my peaceful
eternity!
When he has gone, the silence is so profound,
I wonder if
perhaps I have already died. But soon enough,
the sound of traffic
352 .julia @alvarez
starts up as the city wakes to work. Horns
blare, annoyed cars
navigating the piles of garbage on the streets.
An occasional
siren wails. A woman calls out for Juan
to remember the milk on
his way home. Early Friday morning in the land
where I was
born.
I lean forward, my hands out, to find my stone and
check the
name. But the bench is placed too far from the
graves, and I almost
fall over on my face. Just as I regain my
balance, I sit up,
tense and listen. There is a stirring nearby.
Someone is approaching
furtively, and suddenly I wonder if it was
foolish after all to let
Ignacio leave me alone in a deserted
cemetery in a capital city increasingly
known for its crime.
"Who is there, please?"
"It's just me, dona," a boy's voice calls
out. He introduces
himself: Jose Duarte Gomez Romero.
"They call me Duarte." Duarte is from Los
Millones, a nearby
barrio, named not for the millionaires who do not
live there but
for the million poor who do. He comes here by foot
every morning,
weeding grave sites for small change. "Would you
like me to
do your plot?"
"Are there weeds here?"
The boy is silent. No doubt, he thinks I
am tricking him with
my silly question. He has not registered that I cannot
see very
well. He comes closer. "Can't you see,
dona?"
"Not as well as I used to," I explain
to him. In some respects, I
might add, much better than I used to. "I
would like your help,
Duarte. The stone on the left there at the
bottom. What does it say?"
Again he is silent. "The one at the very bottom
on this side,"
I say, waving my left hand. Not a word from him.
Finally, it dawns
on me. In Cuba, he would know how to read. He
would not be
picking weeds on a schoolday. "Put my hand
on that stone," I tell
him, rising and coming to kneel by him. How I will get
back up
is anyone's guess. "The one at the bottom
there."
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI 353
His smaller hand closes over mine and he leads
my fingers
over the cut letters. I feel the satisfying
curves of my full name.
My nieces kept their promise!
The boy has guided my hand, and now I put my
hand over
his. "Your turn," I say to him.
Together we trace the grooves in the
stone, he repeating the name of each letter after me.
"Very good,"
I tell him when we have done this several times.
"Now you do it
by yourself."
He tries again and again, until he gets it right.
Salome Camila Henriquez Urefia
9 April 1894 12
September 1973
E.p.d.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO ACKNOWLEDGE the many people
who made this
book possible. Helpers and colleagues in
Middlebury College,
Vassar College, New York, Cuba, and the
Dominican Republic
offered their books, knowledge, comments, insights,
memories.
To all of you, mis gracias and heartfelt
thanks. Never has it been
truer that without your help, I could not have written this
book.
But every book has godparents, and these I
will mention by
name:
Gracias to the padrinos: Jose Israel
Cuello, who one day invited
me over to his house for una sorpresa and handed
me the
original diary that Pedro Henriquez Urefia
kept after his mother's
death with the full history of the family, and told
me, with that
incomparable Dominican generosity, that I could
borrow this
treasure until I needed it no longer. And
gracias, too, to Aristides
Inchiustegui, opera singer turned historian,
who gave generously
of his time, his research, his insights into the figures
of the past.
And to Ricardo Repilado, now in his nineties,
living in Santiago
de Cuba, who brought the young tutor, Miss
Camila, to my imagination,
including her slightly "nasal" voice that always
quavered
with strain, and who before my departure gave
me another treasure,
the 1920 edition of Salome's poems, because,
he said, "I am
an old man, soltero, sin hijos, and when I
die, no one will end up
with this book that will get as much pleasure from it as
you." Finally
to Roberto Veguez, colleague at
Middlebury College, whose
help ranged from details of Spanish
punctuation to the names of
streets in his hometown of Santiago de
Cuba. Mil gracias.
And to the madrinas: Chiqui Vicioso, who
five years ago, just
356 Julia Alvarez
after I finished In the Time of the Butterflies (the
ink was not yet
dry!), sat me down in her apartamento in
Santo Domingo and
loaned me her copy of the just-published
Epistolario of the Henriquez
Urefia family, and a copy of the poems of
Salome, and like
some bossy musa said, "Your next
book, Julia!" (chiqui went on
to write her own prize-winning play about
Salome, Cartas a una
ausencia.) And to the other madrina, Shannon
Ravenel, who encouraged
me every step of the way. Gracias for the faith and the
excellent "invisible" help throughout.
As always, my thanks to my agent, Susan
Bergholz, indefatigable
luchadora and guardian angel at the writing
door who protects
the space and time to do the work.
Finally, my deepest gracias are reserved for
my compa@nero,
Bill, who has accompanied me over the years
through a thousand
and one and more pages that I could not have written without
his
help, his photographs, his sense of
adventure, his faith, and his
wonderful home-cooked meals.
In writing my book, I read and reread
Salome Urefia's poems,
gathered together in several editions: beginning with that first
publication of her youthful poems,
Poeslas de Salome Urefia
(santo Domingo: Amigos del Pais,
1880); followed by Poesias,
compiled by her son Pedro (madrid: 1920);
then the first complete,
centennial edition, Poesias completas
(ciudad Trujillo: Impresora
Dominicana, 1950); a later edition,
Poesias completas,
collected with an introduction and excellent
notes by Diogenes
Cespedes (santo Domingo: Editora
Corripio, 1989); and most recently,
Chiqui Vicioso's own edition, Poesias
completas (santo
Domingo: Comisi6n Permanente de la
Feria Nacional del Libro,
1997). In addition to these editions, the
two-volume Epistolario,
containing much of correspondence of the Henriquez
Urefia
family, provided enormous insight
into Salome's relationship with
Pancho and the dynamics of this talented,
complicated family
(santo Domingo: Editora Corripio,
1996). My translations of
IN
THE
NAME
OF
SALOMI 357
Salome's poetry are
approximationsstimprovisations in English of
her own words in Spanish.
Every one of these texts and each one of these helpers,
as well
as many left unnamed, enabled me to recover the
history and poetry
and presences of the past, But in thanking them, I would
stress that all inventions, opinions,
portrayals, errors in this book
are my sole responsibility. This is not
biography or historical portraiture
or even a record of all I learned, but a work
of the imagination.
The Salome and Camila you will find in these
pages are fic-
tional characters based on historical figures,
but they are recreated
in the light of questions that we can only answer, as they
did, with
our own lives: Who are we as a people? What is
a patria? How do we
serve? Is love stronger than anything else in
the world? Given the continuing
struggles in Our America to understand and create
ourselves
as countries and as individuals, this book is an
effort to
understand the great silence from which these two women emerged
and into which they have disappeared, leaving us to dream up
their stories and take up the burden of their songs.
Virgencita de la Altagracia, gracias
por acompanarme, paso por
paso, palabra por palabra.