by Mary Morris
I wrote of other places: the Perdido Islands, off the coast of East Africa, with their practicing cannibals and beaches, huge stelae over three stories high and carvings equal only to Easter Island’s, written in a language believed to be related to ancient Polynesian. I wrote of Daridnea, a small country near Argentina, inhabited with tiny monkeys and the giant two-toed sloth. And Straccatelli, the only remaining Italian city-state whose inhabitants live as they had seven hundred years ago, in stone huts, still painting frescoes of martyred saints on their walls.
I found I did better with places that didn’t exist, and I wrote about them well. Kurt was amused, but too many readers complained, saying they had been unable to make bookings or find tours to take them to these remote isles and solitary countries. I had warned my readers that if they wanted to see these places, they needed to go immediately. We live in a world that will soon have no uncharted terrain. No species to be discovered. No Stone Age peoples living at the end of a jungle path. The Straccatellis, as we know them, I wrote, in a few years will no longer exist.
La isla, of course, does exist. Don’t let anyone fool you about that. It just feels as if it doesn’t. But it does.
Twenty-four
SELECTED NOTES for the Guidebook:
Islands are apparent worlds.
—REINA MARÍA RODRÍGUEZ
The island was purgatory.
—VICTOR HERNÁNDEZ CRUZ
Island: a body of land surrounded by water.
—Webster’s
Islanders are outsiders.
—ISABEL CALDERÓN
Twenty-five
THE CHURCH of the Apparitions was on a cul-de-sac near the waterfront. It was at this site that the Virgin had appeared to believers on innumerable occasions, her plaintive face etched into the swirls of an ancient ash tree around which the faithful built their church. Passions have been enacted. It was one of the most desired spots in the Americas for pilgrims and true believers. While not known for its architectural splendors—there was no vaulted ceiling, no impressive colonnades or faded frescoes—the church was a must-see on the tourist circuit and hence a part of my colonial churches walking tour.
But it was Isabel, of course, who told me to go there the first time I met her. And when she dropped me off after Playa Negrita, she told me again. “You must see it,” she said. For years I have resisted the must-sees that the traveler is always faced with, because someone else’s fond memory probably won’t be my own. You might remember that great meal in the South of France or that wonderful Amazon guide, but it doesn’t mean I will be able to experience that meal as you did or enjoy the sense of humor of your guide.
However, I do tend to listen to what the natives tell me to do and see, and Isabel told me twice to go to the Church of the Apparitions, so I decided I had to go. I found it with some difficulty on a quiet Friday morning after being sent down several wrong streets and dead ends. The people of la isla are famous for giving wrong directions. This is not malicious; they just want to appear helpful. When I arrived at the church it was almost noon.
Slipping into its cool darkness, for an instant I was blind and my eyes adjusted slowly. At the end of the aisle of the church, where the altar should be, the ash tree took shape, looking like something out of a Disney cartoon. Angry, swirling, rising from some child’s punitive nightmare. I walked to the front of the church and touched its bark. Standing back, I saw many things in its swirls, but not the Holy Mother. Beside the tree people knelt, touching it. A man kissed the trunk as if it were a woman. A child caressed its bark.
Against the wall crutches had been cast aside, body braces shed like skin, prostheses were discarded as if their owners had sprouted new limbs. There were eye patches, slings, plaster casts, but mainly I was struck by the piles of crutches—in descending order by height, at the end of which stood those of the lame children who had hobbled away.
Miracles don’t really appeal to me. They never have. I don’t believe in prayers answered, faith restored. I don’t expect that my mammogram will be fine because my work on earth isn’t done. I don’t think kindnesses will be returned in mysterious ways. I used to pray for things. Lydia and I prayed by the sides of our beds that our father wouldn’t notice the light she’d left on in the garage or the dirty dish I’d left in the sink. We prayed that we could sneak downstairs and not get caught. That our mother would start working during the day. That we’d come home and find a pot roast on the stove.
Lydia still prays. She prays in an ashram upstate and she prays to a statue of the Virgin in Queens that cries real tears. She gets up at four A.M. to chant her prayers. Todd is the opposite. He believes that if he works hard he will prosper and if he takes care of himself he’ll be fine. I think they’re both fanatics. I think that when we’re all together, I’m the only realist in the room. I’m not one of those people who gets on a plane and says this plane won’t crash because I’m on it. I get on the plane and say I hope these mechanics aren’t the scabs they hired during the strike last year.
I sank onto a pew, catching my breath. Sweat poured down my brow. Suddenly I found I wanted to pray. I too had been feeling lonely and bereft. I missed Jessica and wanted to go home. Every night I phoned and sang lullabies to ease her into sleep. Now a sense of despair came over me that I found difficult to explain. I walked with no crutches, no white cane, and yet I wanted something to cure me—of what I could not be sure.
The church was dark and a few old women muttered on their knees. A nun begging for alms stopped by my pew and I gave her a few dollars. She said a blessing over me as she stumbled on. Then I walked to the back of the church, where there was a list of the sightings of the Virgin and the miracles performed. Pictures of sick children, ailing fathers, and dying mothers were pinned to the wall. Grief was palpable everywhere. Next to some of the photographs were short letters recounting miraculous cures, remissions, sudden reversals. The tumors that disappeared, the asthma that never recurred, the twisted limb made straight again, the eyes that could suddenly see.
The saints that lined the walls were white, skin pale as eggs. Before them veiled faces knelt. As I turned to leave, I noticed a woman from behind, staring into the face of a saint. She was thin and her dark hair fell to her shoulders. She was taller than many people there and even though I could not see her face, I knew that it was Isabel with her eyes fixed on the sad faces of the saints.
I sat back down on a pew and watched. Isabel stood motionless as a statue, hands twisted in front of her. Milagro, dressed in a Disney World T-shirt and chewing gum, leaned against the wall behind her mother. She stuck a note to the wall, then took her mother by the hand, and together they knelt as tears ran down Isabel’s face.
In this room of crutches and canes, their hands encircled the tree. Milagro’s eyes were just closed shut, as if she were sleeping, but Isabel’s were clenched, her lips moving rapidly. She was praying for a miracle. She did not name her daughter Milagro for nothing, I thought as I slipped out of the church, back into the light of day.
I waited a few moments until they came out, Isabel leaning on Milagro’s arm. Milagro seemed huge beside her frail mother, as if she could scoop Isabel into her arms and carry her down the street. I followed them as they walked through the narrow streets of the old city. Isabel kept her arm through Milagro’s as they moved along.
They paused at a storefront I could not see and seemed to be admiring what was in the window. Perhaps a dress or a pair of shoes they wanted to buy. They laughed, tilting their heads as if to admire what was there. Then they walked ahead a few buildings and did the same thing. Admiring, then shaking their heads and walking on.
When I reached the shops where they paused, I looked inside. But the shops were empty. There was nothing there.
Twenty-six
I HAVE TAKEN to examining the objects in my room. Not the objects I have brought with me, though there are a few, but the ones the hotel provides for each visitor. The TV and its stand, the lamps, the minibar that
does not refrigerate the little bottles of Coke and Fanta, the gray bottles of agua mineral. There had been a Snickers bar, perhaps left behind by a previous guest, but I ate it. There is a table and two wooden chairs that I move around to alter my view. Twin beds with a built-in nightstand between them so you can’t push them together (you’ll find this feature in Japan as well). The nightstand is equipped with knobs, which turn out to be for a radio. An old rotary phone. Three glass ashtrays. I am living in the Twilight Zone.
I have, however, brought certain things with me. A photo of Todd and Jessica in a canoe (a picture I always carry, though it is a few years old), my Scandinavian travel clock, the small stuffed bear Jess sticks in my suitcase for good luck. In my own house, I have few of these personal touches—no pictures on the wall. Our bedspreads are plaid, our sofas and chairs have rough, beige covers. It occurs to me as I spend hours in this room that I am able to make my hotel rooms homey and my home like a hotel.
On my desk at home I have one picture of my parents from before I was born. They are on a road, standing in front of an old car. He has his arm around her waist and they are laughing. I was born a year after this picture, and Lydia fourteen months later. I have no pictures of all of us together. In the evenings before my mother went to work, we sometimes all had dinner. My mother cooked on Sundays and froze whatever we’d need for the week. I’d open up the trunk freezer and find foil-wrapped packages with the days of the week written on them. We never knew what was inside until we defrosted them. After she died, my father still ate the meals she’d frozen for him for the next two years.
I liked staying home sick as a child because then my mother was home with me. I’d feel her cool hand on my head, the thermometer slipped between my lips. She brought me trays of hot soup, Jell-O, ice cream. Hospital food. Everything was hot and cold. All day my mother would check on me, and when it was time for her to go to sleep, usually in the middle of the afternoon, she’d lay down beside me and I’d watch her chest rising and falling.
I’m not sure when she moved into the guest room, but perhaps I was just fifteen. She never said a word about it. She just moved in her things. Eventually it was a room filled with mirrors, clocks, bottles of pills. She had shoe boxes all labeled with the same spelling error. High Heals, Low Heals. Time heels, I signed my notes to Lydia as we grew up.
My mother had a love of natural phenomena. In August we’d lie on lawn chairs all night long, watching meteorite showers. She taught me how to cross my fingers during a lunar eclipse so they made shadows shaped like crescent moons.
This hotel room is notable for what is missing. There is no Bible, no stationery, no phone book. There is only one object in my room that truly interests me. It is that frog, wedged between the wall and a slat of glass that forms a window in my bathroom. I have tried to pry open the window, but it won’t budge. All night and all day long the frog sings.
It is always the same song. Coquí, coquí. The frog is saying its name. The coquí says its name because it is trying to make contact with its own kind. I really should ask someone in the hotel to unlock the window and let the frog go because it will starve if it stays where it is. But I have resisted so far because in a way this frog is the only company I have.
In the afternoon I nap, though it is difficult. I am used to sleeping with the door ajar. It is a mother’s habit. All over the world, women are listening for a cry, a cough in the night. I have acquired this habit of listening.
I am awakened by noises, shouting in the street. And there is a crackling sound that I have heard in my own neighborhood in Brooklyn before. I run out onto the balcony to try and see. Then I hear footsteps, people running away. Is it a mugging? I wonder. Or some kind of unrest?
I get dressed and go downstairs, but the lobby is strangely quiet. No one seems to be around. I look and see that Enrique is not at his usual post. Finally I see him standing by the kitchen door. As I approach, he seems to avoid my gaze until I ask if he has heard anything, but he says no one has heard a thing. I ask him if it is possible that I heard gunfire. “It is possible,” he tells me. “Anything is possible here.”
Twenty-seven
I HAVE ONLY LIVED in houses of women, Rosalba told me when I went back again, looking for Isabel. Except for a few brief episodes, my life has been devoid of men. I grew up in rooms of petticoats and hand creams, tea cakes and curtains. My mother never remarried and we just lived together, my mother, Mercedes, and I.
There were a million things to do. My mother, an exacting businesswoman, tended the finca. I went to school. We had a housekeeper and Mercedes and money was not a problem. But there were no men in my life. So you can imagine how I felt the first time I saw him. I was no more than a girl when he came to help my mother balance her accounts. He wore a blue suit that was too small for him and carried a ledger book tucked under his arm. I would never see him in a suit again, or with a ledger book for that matter. They were burning the cane fields and there was the smell of dead things in the air. It made me sick, what I smelled that day, and the sky was filled with blackened smoke.
He never stopped talking. When he finished with his accounting for my mother, all he did was talk. The first time he came to me, he sat in the cane chair. And he began to talk about the peasants and how terrible it was that they had so little. He had traveled all across la isla, he had been to every village, and he saw things that he could not bear—children who died because there was no milk, young people gone blind.
And ignorance. He could not bear the ignorance. He said that it was by design that the people were not sent to school. He would make them go to school. He would create schools for them. And hospitals.
He talked about it for hours and hours, until my mother told him it was time for him to go home. I loved his voice as much as I loved anything about him, and, of course, I loved what he said. If a woman can be drawn to anything in a man, shouldn’t it be to what he says? And then he went away, disappeared really, and no one knew for certain where he had gone, though rumors reached me that he had gone to work with the peasants in the fields.
Though a day did not go by when I did not think of him, it would be ten years before I saw him again. I married someone else, but when El Caballo returned to Puerto Angélico, the first thing he did was look for me. Of course, he was married at the time. He had married Clarita, the only wife he would publically acknowledge. They had gone to school together while he was studying law.
Clarita was a lovely girl with a gentle, kind face who could not know what misery was in store for her. I met her on several occasions at dinners, when she stood behind him, almost hidden behind his looming frame. She doted on him, but I cannot say that she really understood him. Her father ran a small grocery and her mother’s family had some money from a farm they kept in the west. But of course they lost everything.
Clarita’s mother had begged her not to marry him. That man will make you miserable, she said. I do not know this first-hand, but I have been told that she lived in a small, dingy apartment with no electricity or hot water and she waited for him while he was fighting in the hills.
But once he came back, once he saw me again, he could not stay away. Not that I wanted him to. There was no one else he could talk to the way he could talk to me. Clarita listened but with that blank stare of a woman who loves a man unconditionally, though she may not understand him. We scraped the money together to rent a tiny studio on the top floor of an apartment building near the Prado. I siphoned off money from my weekly allowance to pay for it.
It had an entrance off an alleyway, so it was easy for us to sneak in and not be seen. This was especially important for him because already he was getting well known. We furnished it with a simple bed, a small table, and two chairs, some dishes we found on the street. But I tried to make it nice. I brought yellow cotton sheets from home, sewed curtains out of an old floral fabric. I went to the botánica around the corner and bought votive candles, which we would burn in the light of the late afternoon. I bought
statues of Santa Barbara and the Virgin Mother to protect us, and these I put over the mantel. When he came in, he kissed them first, then he kissed me, though no one would believe this if I told them.
At the botánica I also bought Desire Come bath oil and Nothing Can Go Wrong and Make Him Want Me floor washes. These, of course, I hid under the sink, where I knew he would never look. I always arrived before three o’clock and waited for him. While I waited, I bathed in the oils I’d bought, or scrubbed the floor on my hands and knees. I am not a superstitious woman, but for him I did these things. I arranged flowers, made tea. The things my housekeeper did at home.
Then I would lie upon the bed where the sunlight streamed in and listen for his boots on the stairs. Some days he would not come. Then I would leave, dejected, at five o’clock, returning to my life with my husband and Serena. Other days he would come and make fierce love to me for our two hours together, hardly saying a word. He would make love with a fury as if it were our last time together and often I feared it was. He is, as you know, a huge man and I am slight and sometimes he would hurt me, though I do not think he meant to.
There were times when he was preoccupied and just wanted to talk. Then I would pour glasses of iced tea and serve him little cakes, as if he had come for tea, and we would talk, but never about little things. He would not discuss his family or his personal life and he did not want to hear about mine. He wanted to talk about Tolstoy and Napoléon, about poverty and illiteracy. He made promises to me that he said he would keep for the whole country. If he won his revolution, he said, everyone would be able to read and have a place to live and work to do and food to eat. These are not small promises, but he made them to me and he kept them.
