Beyond the Ties of Blood

by Florencia Mallon

  “For many years Tonia was a machi, a Mapuche healer,” Samuel explained. “But after her son disappeared with the military coup, she came north. Sara’s picture, she saw it in a magazine about the Committee and came to find us.”

  “Look, look!” Laura came running back for everyone to see. The large silver copihues hung, like upside-down tulips, from her earlobes. She had tucked her hair behind her ears to set them off, and the contrast between the shimmering patterns in the metal and the raven brilliance of her mane was breathtaking.

  “They are absolutely gorgeous, m’hijita,” Eugenia said. “Have you thanked Tonia?”

  Tonia had stood when Laura returned to the patio and now took Laura’s hands in hers.

  “They were made for you,” she said, and gathered Laura into her burnt-wood embrace.

  “They’re wonderful. Thank you so much,” Laura answered, her voice muffled by the larger woman’s biceps.

  “You’re welcome, little one,” Tonia said, standing back and combing Laura’s hair with the fingers of both hands. “Welcome home.”

  They sat out in the patio and Tonia prepared a gourd of mate tea for everyone to try. Laura liked the sweet, pungent, almost woodsy taste of the mate. Not since their lunch with Ignacio’s parents had Eugenia seen her daughter so relaxed. But she was still surprised when Laura spoke up, putting her hand on Sara’s arm.

  “Abuelita, can I ask you something?”

  “Of course, m’hijita, anything you want.”

  “Do you have a photograph of my papa?”

  Eugenia shook her head in answer to the unspoken question in doña Sara’s eyes. “I can’t count the number of times I’ve regretted it,” she said. “We never had the money for a camera.”

  Doña Sara stood up upon hearing Eugenia’s answer and took Laura’s hand, and they went into the house. Eugenia, Samuel, and Tonia sat in silence, watching the sun begin its late-afternoon descent.

  “I think it’ll take a while,” don Samuel finally said, clearing his throat. “Sara made a book with all the photos when we packed up our house in Temuco.”

  When Sara and Laura returned, the sun had almost set, and they all scrabbled around for sweaters and shawls to fend off the evening chill. After a few moments they stood up to say good-bye. Grandmother and granddaughter shared an especially long hug as don Samuel went into the house to call a taxi. When the two women drew apart, Eugenia noticed that her daughter was holding a manila envelope against her chest.

  “What did Grandma give you?” Eugenia asked when they were settled in the taxi and on their way back to her mother’s house. Without a word, Laura passed the envelope to her mother.

  Eugenia opened it to find a single eight-by-ten photograph. Although it was in black and white, there was no mistaking Manuel’s hair and beard, his intense grey eyes. It looked like his last school picture, a school tie and V-neck sweater peeking out along the bottom.

  Eugenia put the picture down on her lap and blinked back the sudden tears. It couldn’t have been more than a year later that she’d met him, that same vulnerable intensity shining in his eyes, though his hair and beard had gotten longer and more ragged. For a moment she thought the longing that coursed through her would break her spine in two. She would soon learn that this was also the picture that doña Sara carried, pinned to her blouse, at every public gathering of the Committee of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared.

  The phone rang the next morning during breakfast. “Niña Laura,” Rosa said, peeking her head into the dining room. “It’s for you. Doña Sara.”

  Laura hurried out into the hallway and picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

  “Good morning, m’hijita. I hope I haven’t called too early.”

  “No, Grandma. We just finished breakfast, and I’d been up for a while anyway.”

  “Good. Listen, Laurita, I have a favor to ask you. When I got down to the Committee’s office this morning, I found a huge pile of new requests for documentation. They must have arrived on Friday, when I wasn’t here. Me and Tonia, we just can’t keep up by ourselves. I’ve called one of our members who has a son about your age, and I think he’s going to help us after his school lets out at the end of the week. But I know it won’t be enough. So … of course you’ll have to ask your mother, but I was wondering if you might like to help us, too?”

  “I’d love to, Grandma, and I’m pretty sure that Mama will say yes, but are you sure I can help? I’d just started tenth grade back in Boston, you know. I’m a year behind in school.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, hijita, the work is not that complicated once you get the hang of it. And besides, from what I can see, you’re a very intelligent young lady.”

  “Okay, Grandma. Do you want to wait on the line, or should I call you back after talking to my mother?”

  “Just call me back, hijita. I’m sure your mama will say yes, but just call back and let me know when you’re coming.”

  After she hung up the phone, Laura went bounding back into the dining room. “Mamita! Grandma Sara wants me to help out at the Committee! Can I? Please?”

  Eugenia and doña Isabel looked up from their conversation. “What kind of help does she need?” Eugenia asked. “Did she explain on the phone?”

  “They just got a lot of requests for documentation, and they need people to help because she and Tonia can’t do it all themselves. She’s going to ask another kid about my age whose mother works with them, but he won’t get out of school until the end of this week.”

  “Is she sure that you and this other boy will be able to do the work she needs?”

  “I asked her that already,” Laura said, a hint of irritation in her voice. “She said she would teach me what to do.”

  Eugenia picked up her cup of coffee and brought it to her lips. “Then I’m sure it will be fine,” she said after taking a sip. “And I think it’s a great idea. It will help you make other friends and get out of the house.”

  “Are you sure it’s all right, Chenyita?” doña Isabel asked. “The Committee is all the way downtown, isn’t it, and Laura isn’t familiar with the city. And I think the neighborhood around there has gotten pretty tough in the last years. I haven’t been down there, but—”

  “Don’t worry, Mamita,” Eugenia interrupted. “I’ll go with her the first time, make sure everything’s all right, help her find her way on the metro. It will do Laura good to start seeing other parts of the city.”

  An hour and a half later, after both mother and daughter had showered and dressed and they’d made a call to confirm arrangements with doña Sara, the two set off to the subway on their way to the Committee’s offices.

  “Laura! Laurita!” Eugenia called as she came down the stairs.

  “I think she’s in the backyard, Chenyita,” doña Isabel called from the kitchen. “She’s been out there for almost an hour helping Demetrio with that new jasmine vine, the one with those gorgeous yellow flowers that he’s been trying to train up the side of the house. I don’t know what’s gotten into that child,” she added as her daughter passed through the kitchen on her way outside. “She’s spending so much time in the garden, and when she’s not back there she’s at the offices of that committee. I hardly see her, and—”

  The rest of doña Isabel’s sentence got lost in the slam of the screen door as Eugenia left the kitchen and walked down the back patio stairs. Laura was balancing precariously on the top of a step-ladder, trying to loop the tallest branch of the vine over a hook that Demetrio had installed among the bricks halfway between the first and second floors of the house. Worried that startling her daughter in the middle of this task would be too dangerous, Eugenia waited until she was halfway down the ladder.

  “Laurita. Have you packed your bag for our trip to the country? You know we leave tomorrow morning. From the look of your room you haven’t picked what you’re taking yet.”

  “Ay, Mamita.” Laura struggled to keep the irritation out of her voice as she finished climbing down and stepped
away from the ladder. Her hair was pulled back in a barrette, and the ubiquitous copihues danced back and forth against her tanned cheeks. “How hard will it be to throw a few things in a bag? How long are we staying, anyway?”

  They had been fighting back and forth for several weeks. When doña Isabel suggested they spend the summer at the country house, Laura’s reaction had been completely negative.

  “I want to stay here,” she insisted. “Bobe Sara and tía Tonia need me at the office.” Eugenia had been startled by how quickly Laura had fit in at the Committee’s offices, and her using the Yiddish word for “grandma” had also taken some getting used to. “Besides,” Laura continued, “what is there to do out there? Here, I like to help Demetrio in the garden, and Joaquín and I go out for ice cream after we’re done working at the Committee.”

  Laura had relented a bit when she learned that Irene was coming for the holidays, and that Sara and Samuel did not celebrate Christmas, so she would not be depriving them of a holiday celebration with her absence.

  “Well, okay,” she agreed. “But only for a few days.”

  Irene traveled almost directly from Boston to the country house, stopping in Santiago only overnight. That had been four days ago, and she’d been telephoning ever since to hurry them up. “The house is open and ready,” she told Laura. “It’s time to come down. You’ll really like it.” But Laura kept dragging her feet. She said good-bye at the Committee as if she was leaving for years, and Eugenia had caught her and Joaquín in the back room exchanging addresses. “We’re gonna write every day, even if it has to be on toilet paper,” she announced when Eugenia asked her about it. Then she’d gotten involved in Demetrio’s jasmine project.

  “M’hijita, with Irene there and everything, it makes sense to stay until after New Year’s, don’t you think?” Eugenia suggested.

  “But Mamita, that’s more than two weeks!” Laura wailed. “What will I do there?”

  “Nobody will be back at the Committee until after the New Year, I can guarantee that. Besides, don’t you want to spend some time with your aunt? She’s really good on horseback, she can teach you a lot of things,” Eugenia wheedled. “In fact, when we were growing up, there were days when she and Papa didn’t come back until sundown. She can show you trails in the hills, places I’ve never been.”

  “Well … all right.” Laura started toward the kitchen, then turned back. “So, how much should I pack? Can we do laundry there? Can I ride horseback in jeans and sneakers?”

  Eugenia put her arm around her daughter’s shoulders. “The servants will do the laundry. I don’t think you need more than a week of clothes, and you can ride in jeans and sneakers. But it will get cold at night, so you’ll need a sweater, and maybe a jacket or sweatshirt.”

  The two women banged the patio door, startling doña Isabel, and started up the stairs to Laura’s bedroom.

  “Am I glad I listened to Irene’s warning and wrote down the directions she gave me over the phone,” Eugenia said as she drove the rented car up to the large wooden gate that separated her family’s property from the road. “Everything is so different.”

  “Mamita,” Laura said impatiently from the front passenger seat, “I get it already. This must be the tenth time you’ve said the same thing.”

  It was true that she had been repeating herself since the moment they’d left the last small town on the way out to the farm. She’d seen, on the land itself, what Irene had said on the phone.

  “You need to be ready for big changes,” Irene had warned. “I know everyone says that the military gave the land back, and it’s true, to some extent at least. But we only got back about half of what used to be our farm, and the rest went to the people who worked for us before. Everything’s divided up now: there’s a piece for Mamita, a piece for me, even a piece for you. They’re all cultivated together, of course, but there are fences between them. Mama’s just put in a small grove of fast-growing pines, for easy cash. The people who used to work for us, they’re small businessmen now. A lot of them have planted pine trees too.”

  At least the man who came to open the gate looked familiar. When he approached the car and looked inside, his smile showed a gap where his two front teeth should have been.

  “Niña Eugenia!” he marveled, “finally my eyes can see you again!”

  She tried to remember who he was, and vaguely connected him to the family that had kept the horses, the Garcías. They had been the most loyal of all the workers, and had warned doña Isabel the day before the illegal takeover of the farm. But this couldn’t be the patriarch from back then, who twenty years ago had already been at least fifty-five. His son?

  “Inocencio?” she ventured. His smile widened, taking in all the folds and furrows of his weather-beaten cheeks. As he chattered on, giving her an update on all his relatives, explaining about his own family, his wife, four children, how he now had enough money to fix his teeth, she only partly understood his lisp. She focused on the piece of land that clearly belonged to him now, to the right of the dirt path that led up to her mother’s country home. A late-model truck stood beside a newly painted residence that, she calculated, must have at least four bedrooms. The half-grown pine forest extending back from the house, as far as her eye could see, also belonged to him. Harvesting its ancestors had probably helped pay for all this prosperity.

  “Well, patrona,” he rasped finally, “welcome. You need any horses, you tell me, okay?”

  She thanked him and said good-bye, off-balance with the contrast between his obsequiousness and his more modern capitalist ways.

  “Mamita,” Laura asked as they set off toward the house, “did you understand him?”

  “Only partially,” Eugenia said. “He has a country accent, and the missing front teeth didn’t help.”

  “Oh, good. For a moment there I thought I’d just stopped understanding Spanish.”

  Irene was waiting for them when they pulled up. “Well, you made it in one piece,” she said after hugging them both. “Did you have trouble finding the place?”

  “Ay, Mamita,” Laura said in mock dismay. “Don’t repeat yourself yet again!”

  “It’s just that, since we left San Jacinto, I’ve been saying that I’m glad I wrote down your directions,” Eugenia explained at Irene’s quizzical look. “But the biggest shock was Inocencio García.”

  “Well, you recognized him, that’s already pretty impressive,” Irene laughed.

  “What I just couldn’t wrap my mind around was his kowtowing to me, calling me patrona, niña Eugenia, the whole thing, and then right behind him his large house, new truck, and pine forest!”

  “Welcome to the new Chile, Chenyita,” Irene answered. “María,” she called, stepping back toward the house. “My sister and her daughter have arrived, and we need to get their bags to their rooms. Then,” she added, looking at Eugenia, “maybe we can sit down and have a snack?” At Eugenia’s nod, she called after María’s disappearing back, “Just leave the bags in the rooms for now. We’ll need you to serve the coffee, maybe some fried egg sandwiches. Has today’s bread arrived? Did you check the hens to see if they laid this morning?” To María’s muffled “sí, señora,” Irene added, “I’ll take care of setting the table. Just bring things out when you’re done.”

  They sat down to frothy mugs of freshly boiled milk flavored with coffee. Country eggs sizzled inside fragrant rolls that tasted like they had just emerged from the oven. Even the orange juice was freshly squeezed. Sitting at the head of the table, her dark blond hair increasingly highlighted with modish streaks of white, her light brown eyes framed by discreet wrinkles, Irene looked the part of the grand country matriarch.

  “Ayayay,” Laura exclaimed, “I don’t think I’ve ever tasted an egg quite like this.”

  “I’m not surprised, city girl,” Irene teased. “It hasn’t been an hour since María pulled them out from under our hens.”

  After they were done, Irene took them back to their rooms, making sure they had th
e towels and linens they needed, showing them where to hang their clothes and the extra blankets on the top shelves of the closets. At first, when Eugenia had seen the front of the house, it looked as if nothing had changed. But once inside, she realized something was different, although she wasn’t exactly sure what. Then she began to notice subtle changes: a new window here, a different placement of a door there. Startled, she realized that the house had been redone, even as her mother had taken care to keep the same style and ambiance.

  “It’ll still get cold at night,” Irene warned, “and we don’t have heating in this old place.”

  “It’s not as old as I remember it,” Eugenia answered. “It’s subtle, but Mama redid the house.”

  “That’s true, hermanita, but we haven’t put in central heating, and I don’t think we ever will. So we’ll just have to make do with blankets.”

  Not long after they were unpacked, the summer’s buzzing afternoon heat settled down upon the house. After making sure there would be a mail pickup the next day, Laura retired to her room and closed the door. Irene and Eugenia retreated to the coolness of the living room, its thick curtains shut against the afternoon sun.

  “What’s up with her?” Irene asked once they had settled into the couch’s thick cushions.

  “I’m not entirely sure, but all signs are that she’s found a boyfriend.”

  “Oh, really? That was quick!”

  “His name is Joaquín. He’s been working at the Committee since school let out for the summer, and she’s been down there a lot, too, helping doña Sara.”

  “So that connection has worked out.”

  “Amazingly well, actually. Almost from the moment they laid eyes on each other.”

  “Well, that’s good, isn’t it? It’s what you wanted.”

  “Absolutely. The problem is that it isn’t working out so well with Mama.”

  “Oh? Not that I’m really that surprised.”

  “You know Mamita, you can probably write the script without my telling you a thing. But every word that comes out of her mouth, somehow it’s always a judgment, a veiled criticism. Even before she speaks, I can see Laura tense up.”