Beyond the Ties of Blood

by Florencia Mallon

  “Hija,” Eugenia ventured after another silence. “There’s another reason I came by to talk to you. Now that we’re both citizens, it seemed like a good time to think about our future plans. You now have the documentation you need to go back to school.”

  Laura looked at the envelope sitting on the side table. She folded her hands in her lap, and her right thumb began to rub back and forth across the top of her left hand. Then she unfolded her hands, picked up the envelope and held it upright on her knees, as if the name on the front contained an answer to the question in the air between them.

  “Joaquín has only one more year in high school,” she said finally. “We’ve been talking about getting our own apartment after he graduates. By then I’ll be eighteen and legally independent. He wants to study Law, and if he scores highly enough on his aptitude test—”

  “But Laurita,” Eugenia interrupted gently. “What about you? You need to think about graduating from high school. I’d hate for you to have to repeat yet another year.”

  Laura’s voice was steady but sharp. “I will not live apart from Joaquín.”

  “But hija, you’re not even seventeen!”

  “I don’t care. You’re right that I need to go back to school, and I will. But I will not live apart from him. I want to go to a school near where we will live.”

  Eugenia wasn’t sure what she had been expecting, but it was not what her daughter said. As she got back on the subway on her way out to her mother’s house, she wondered what to do next. Laura’s “we,” she realized, no longer included her.

  She thought of her mother, just now coming out of her depression. Since they’d gotten home yesterday after the ceremony, she had seemed so happy. She thanked Eugenia, over and over, for what she had said. She thought about Ignacio looking so much older, and the physical response she still felt when he hugged her after her presentation. And then there was the matter of her job in Boston.

  That evening, after lingering over dinner with her mother and celebrating her newly recovered citizenship, she returned to her room. She took a shawl from the chair near the desk, wrapped it around her shoulders, and carried her second mug of coffee out onto the balcony. It was about ten o’clock, and stars glimmered in the clear late-August night. Off to one side she could see the Southern Cross, its glow dimmed by the lights from the city’s multiplying buildings. Yet there it stubbornly remained, shimmering softly through the flashing of Santiago’s night sky. Memories were like that, too, Eugenia thought. Even as everything changed around them, they shimmered on.

  Before she came back to Chile, her memories had rooted her to the past, surrounding her in nostalgia and desire. She’d hoped that Laura, too, would feel connected, that they’d build a life together in the land where they were born. But now that she knew the truth, she had no idea what came next. With her citizenship she might now be able to find work, but she knew that other retornados, those who like her had returned from exile, were having a hard time. Did she go back to Boston, to her fragile university position, and take up where she’d left off? After talking to Laura earlier in the day, she knew that if she did, she would return alone. And then there was the question of her mother.

  Eugenia thought of Ignacio, and the attraction that was still present between them at the ceremony the day before. The connection to Manuel, to human rights, had been the origin of a deep mutual passion. She remembered when he’d kissed her scars before they made love for the first time. But was she more than a vehicle for his redemption? And his connection to his family, so like all the other elite Chilean families she had known. She could never play the role of wife and mother they expected. In fact, she couldn’t play any of the roles Chilean society offered her. Returned exile. Redeemed subversive. Wise matron of memory. Her roots that had so powerfully beckoned to her in exile now tied her up, drawing her down into a dark, subterranean place she did not recognize as her native land. Even at the farm, when she had run into Inocencio García early that first morning. Her mere presence had called up his ghosts too.

  She went back into her room, sat down at the desk, and took out the new notebook with its half-completed essay “Math Lessons.” She wrote through the night. The next morning before breakfast, her eyes bleary from lack of sleep, she realized she was done.

  She took a day to rest, and another to read her essay over slowly, stopping every now and then to savor the texture and color of the voice she saw reflected there. She thought back to the Guatemalan student who had come to her office a year and a half before. Now, she realized, she could easily answer the young woman’s questions. Not that she’d been entirely wrong before. But personal experience meant nothing until you could look it straight in the eye.

  She couldn’t continue to do this, and certainly not write about it, or tell her students about it, if she remained in Chile. There was no work for her here, especially without the credentials that would establish her as an authority in the eyes of others. And as she had learned from her encounter with Ignacio’s family and with Inocencio at the farm, most Chileans did not want to confront the past openly.

  She called Carmichael College the next morning. “Dean Henderson,” she said after her call had been put through. “It’s been very hard for me to reach a decision. Still, today I feel confident in saying that I wish to come back to the college and resume my teaching position. I can write the letter today and send it to you by courier service if you wish.”

  “Professor Aldunate. Thanks so much for calling. And I’m so glad to know that you will be rejoining the faculty. Just send the letter to me by certified mail, even if it takes a few extra days. That will be fine.”

  “Thank you, Dean Henderson. There is, however, one more thing I wanted to ask you.”

  “About taking an extra semester’s leave, I expect. As we already discussed last time, that will be just fine, as long as you return in time for the spring semester. Please include a sentence to this effect in your letter.”

  “Thank you, I did want to confirm that as well. But my question was actually a different one. Dean Henderson, I would be very interested in applying to change my position from permanent adjunct faculty to tenure-track.”

  “Oh. Well, in order to do this, you would have to have a Ph.D.”

  “I’m aware of that, Dean Henderson. Given my teaching experience and my years as a professional journalist, I would presume that if I wrote and submitted an acceptable dissertation, it would be enough?”

  “I expect so, Professor Aldunate, although I would have to confirm this with the relevant individuals on our faculty. I must ask you, however, whether this is a precondition for your return.”

  “Oh, no, not at all. But I would like to know soon, since, if the answer is positive, I would like to use the next six months to make as much progress on a dissertation as possible.”

  “I see. Well, then, I guess everything is settled. I will get back to you as soon as possible with the answer to your additional question.”

  A week later, Eugenia received a phone call confirming that, with an acceptable dissertation submitted in crosscultural reporting, she would be awarded a Ph.D. and a tenure-track position. She knew that her testimony, polished now, was already crosscultural; but for the whole of the work to be considered an acceptable dissertation in journalism, it would have to include different points of view. So for the next several months, with the collaboration of Tonia and doña Sara, she gathered stories of repression in three cultural registers: her own, doña Sara and don Samuel’s, and finally Tonia’s. As she had learned over the previous months, there were many stories out there, including Angela’s and Inocencio’s, that were still hidden and crying out to be told. Perhaps with time she would come back and record more.

  They carried out the interviews at the office of the Committee, and as Laura became aware of them, she offered to transcribe the tapes. She was back in school now, and the lack of new requests for documentation had begun to lighten the workload. On weekends she would sit and li
sten. Eugenia was pleased to see that, one day, while Tonia was talking, Laura sat next to doña Sara and held her hand.

  Eugenia struggled with the careful transcripts her daughter prepared. Which should go first? Which last? She decided to place them in rough chronological order, though her own story ended up sprinkled throughout. And she concluded with Tonia’s.

  I’ve told you before, m’hija, that the blood doesn’t always speak with one voice. Sara and I became sisters not because we were born in the same family, but because I didn’t want to be a machi. I got sick when I was six years old, chills rattling through my body so strong my mother tied me up in a goatskin so I wouldn’t hurt myself. Still I snaked across the floor, and once I got so close to the fire in the hearth that the tail hairs attached to the hide caught fire and my mama had to beat me with a broom to put it out.

  We tried everything, all kinds of cures. Though it thundered in my head and swords of light exploded behind my eyes, the white-coated doctor in the hospital just shook his head. “There’s nothing wrong with her,” he said; “it’s in her mind.” So my mama took me to the local machi, an old man who smelled of smoke and spoke like a rock cracking in two. He read my pee as if it were a book. “It’s an ancient spirit,” he said. “A fiery lightning machi who died of grief after the Great War.” My mother’s fingers turned to claws upon my arm. “Oh no,” she breathed. “It’s Grandma Fresia.”

  Once we knew that Kuku Fresia’s spirit had staked her claim inside my head, Mama sent me away. That’s when Sara and I became sisters. But with time, as our bodies began to change, Kuku tracked me down. I dreamed again, stinging whirlwinds that made my body ache all day when I woke up. Then the fevers came and I shrank to the size of a small child.

  They finally took me home, wrapped in a blanket in the back of a hired truck. Don David put me on his lap to cross the lake in my father’s small boat, shielding me from the cold wind in the hollow of his arms. Once on shore, he carried me up the hill to my family’s house. “There’s nothing more we can do,” he explained when Mama opened the door. “It’s much too strong.” That very night Mama took me, still wrapped in the blanket, to the machi’s house.

  They said I roared at first, because Kuku Fresia was so angry. I don’t remember exactly, but I know that after a trance my throat was sore, and sometimes my whole body ached with bruises from how hard they’d had to hold me down. I recall images, fields covered with human bones, all mixed together, and mine among them. My ancestors’ bones called out to me from underfoot, begging me to tread gently.

  With time, the flood of energy Kuku unleashed became a river whose might flowed in a clear direction. The old man taught me herbs and cures and I spent days in the swamp, learning to unlock the power hidden in each nook and plant. With my large hands I wheedled music from sick people’s bones and foretold the future in the crackle of their joints. But my dreams kept taunting me, their meanings hanging just beyond my fingers’ reach. All the old man could say was that dreams didn’t offer themselves willingly. You had to unlock them, coax them out, reach down and remove the kernel they contained.

  One day Mama came to get me. “There’s a man,” she said. “He saw you picking plants inside the swamp, so he knows what you are. But still he wants you badly enough that he brought a horse.” That night I dreamt a tranquil lake, large and clear and deep, and its waters washed the soreness from my heart. When I awoke, I gathered my few things and my new drum and climbed the hill toward my parents’ house. At the top I saw a man astride a horse, his eyes two pools of liquid peace. He stopped right by my side and stretched one arm out toward me. Without a word, I took it and swung up behind him, arms around my Florindo’s waist as we galloped off.

  At first the people in his community were afraid. That changed one soft spring night when a desperate mother brought me her child, a baby with large almond eyes too big in a wizened face. The baby’s urine spoke to me clear as a newborn stream, and with a mixture of four plants picked at the break of day, then crushed into a brew forced down the throat, he was cured in three days. As news spread, people began lining up every day along our walk.

  One morning, before the earliest riser had staked a claim outside my door, a small gurgle called me out from beside the hearth. The almond-eyed baby was lying there, in a basket crib covered with vines of red and white copihue woven through its edges, upside-down waxy blossoms moving gently in the dawn-swept mist. His eyes were still too large for his small face, and as they looked at me they said, “You saved me, so now I’m yours.” We called him Renato, which means “reborn.”

  I’d never seen my Florindo so playful. He’d lie on the floor for hours letting Renato pull his hair, his ears, his nose, with pure pleasure on his face. As soon as Renato could walk, Florindo began taking him to the fields and teaching him to plant potatoes and take care of the sheep. They became inseparable. I was worried, though, especially when Renato neared his sixth year with us. What if Kuku or one of her companions decided to find new living quarters? Florindo only laughed. “Don’t worry, Tonia,” he said. “Natito doesn’t share your blood. Kuku and her friends can’t get a piece of him. Besides, his feet are planted firmly on the ground.” And with time, it seemed that Florindo had been right.

  When the wildflowers bloomed in the spring of Renato’s twentieth year, everything changed. I couldn’t remember when government offices had opened on time before, sour-faced old hags at the typewriters suddenly replaced by smiling young things who wanted to help. By the next year, the poor in the countryside got tired of waiting and just started walking onto the farms. Renato took part in one takeover, on a large estate just down the road with a fancy wooden fence and a grove of eucalyptus trees. Every time he stopped by to see me and drink a gourd of mate, his too-big almond eyes shone bright with hope.

  After one of these visits, when Renato came to help Florindo with the busiest part of the harvest, I first had the dream. A broad river flowed quietly toward the sea, and its waters were so clear that I could see the rainbow-colored fish swimming peacefully near the sandy bottom. I was so happy looking at them play, chasing each other around the rocks that made eddies in the current, that I didn’t see the darkening clouds over the mountains. Suddenly, as if from nowhere, huge coughing birds the color of sludge, with tentacles covering their heads, swooped down upon us. Their bellies opened up and an army of toads and spiders crawled out, covering the green pastures as far as the eye could see. Everything turned brown in their wake and began to die. The dream started to come more and more often, until it felt like I was having it every night. I woke up screaming, covered with sweat, my Florindo holding me in his arms.

  At first Florindo only chuckled as he rubbed my back and wiped the sweat from between my eyebrows. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s about the wheat spiders that come with the harvest. I know you’re really scared of them, Tonia, but it’s all right. I’ve filled the drainage ditch around the house with enough water that they’ll drown before they make it in.” He changed his mind when the harvest was done and the dream kept coming back. “It must mean something else,” he muttered. But neither of us could fathom what that was.

  The winter began badly, the ground deeply frozen before the July rains, which then ran off because they couldn’t penetrate the ice. The river swelled, a dark and murky current rushing by our house. My herbs and plants went under, and I had to make do with those I’d dried the year before. Renato came by late or not at all. When he did appear, drinking his gourd of mate and warming his hands by the fire in the hearth, there were deep circles under his eyes. When I asked him what was wrong, he looked up at me, his gaze as murky as the river. Then he cradled the gourd between his hands like a newborn puppy, staring down into its depths as if the answer to my question were lurking there. “I think we’ve lost,” he whispered. “The tide is turning. The big fish, I can see it in the way they move. They’re getting ready to swim back up the river.”

  When the moon began to wane in the night sky, the r
ains stopped and the days dawned frigid cold. One morning, as I tried to warm myself by a sputtering fire with no dry firewood to feed it, a harsh, repeating cough grabbed my attention. I rushed to the door and flung it open, not even able to finish my thought that someone was really sick, and what could I do with only dried herbs, before I saw them. Huge olive-colored birds coughed their way down from the sky, massive propellers churning tentacle-like at the top, and landed in the meadow of Renato’s agrarian reform center. As I ran toward them, their bellies opened wide, and toad-colored soldiers came flowing out like insects, fanning out across the meadows with their guns raised. Renato had been right. Their time was up.

  Years later, people who worked there after the great estate was returned to its previous owner said they heard ghosts in that room on the second floor of the boss’s house, the one where the soldiers tortured the peasants. I think they were telling the truth, because what they described is what I heard that morning, clear and frigid as a glacier, when the helicopter birds came tearing down into our lives. The blows and moans, followed by screams, echoed for miles around. They took the leaders and tied them by their waists, then dangled them from the leg of an olive-colored monster bird and flew them out over the swollen river, dipping them in until they could breathe no more. Some died from lack of air, and I saw their souls steam up out of their bodies before setting out along the river of tears. It was not their time to die, which is why they returned to the place where they had passed, condemned forever to repeat the suffering that went on that day. They are the ghosts who scream on moonlit nights.

  Luckily, Renato was not among them. He escaped, along with two or three others, and even when they took the dogs and hunted for them that first night they found nothing. I didn’t know where he was, but I beat my drum hard for the first time in many weeks, hoping that somehow I could persuade Kuku to help him hide. The following night I dreamed him on the far side of the river, cutting a quiet midnight path toward the hills that hug the coast. The smoking fire in the hearth bid him farewell.