Vida

by Patricia Engel

“What are you saying?” Papi was impatient, like he just wanted to sleep.

  “Quiero volver.”

  Mami had always wanted to move back. Her saying so was nothing new. I wanted to wake up Cris, tell him what I’d heard, ask him if it was really true that we were nobodies in New Jersey. Ask him why Mami seemed so disappointed by her American life, if it was because my brother and I spoke funny Spanish and were always messing up our tenses, or maybe because in New Jersey, store people were always saying to Mami, “I can’t understand you, ma’am. Speak English,” and my mother would shoot back slow and steady, “I am speaking English.” I wanted to ask him why Mami spoke as if Papi stole her from Colombia, as if she belonged more to this country than to us.

  But then my parents went quiet and I decided it was best to try and sleep.

  Carla invited my cousins, Cris, and me to her apartment to make arepas. It was the day before Easter and our parents took the opportunity to go visit some other ancient relatives because Papi said they would probably croak before our next trip back. One was the million-year-old third wife of Mami’s great-uncle, whom he married when she was only fifteen. Mami said the woman was pretty much senile now but that didn’t take away from their gesture of driving all the way out to Chicó to bring her cakes and cheeses.

  Símon, who at four was the youngest of us, refused to make arepas because in his own house men were not allowed in the kitchen, so Carla planted him in front of the TV again. Sara, who thought herself Símon’s bodyguard, went with him and Cris decided he didn’t want to cook either so he chose the television as well. This left Carla and me in the quiet of her kitchen. The muchachas were watching telenovelas in their rooms and her parents were out.

  I told Carla about the discussion I overheard between my parents the night before and she nodded as she listened.

  “Women cut off their hands for men,” Carla said as we patted our balls of flour into flat disks and dropped them onto the pan. I was already quite good at making arepas and Carla even said so. I told her I had learned from Papi’s mother, Abuela Luna with the violet eyes, who lived a few miles from us in New Jersey.

  “What do you mean they cut off their hands?”

  She shook her head as if she wished she could take back her words. I still didn’t understand what she meant and she didn’t explain. We went on in silence, sculpting our arepas, trying to make each one more perfectly round, flat, and smooth than the one before.

  Carla had a boyfriend nobody knew about. Nobody except me. She confessed her secret to me the day of the arepas when my brother and cousins had all fallen into a deep sleep in the living room. Carla and I were on the window seat again. She asked me if I had a boyfriend and I said no, I was only seven, and then when I asked her, she blushed, said his name was Andy and he was a professor at her university.

  “Is he old?”

  “No, he’s just thirty,” she said, which sounded very old to me.

  “He rides a motorcycle,” she went on, her eyes widening so that it looked like her emeralds would roll right out from under her lashes. “He was engaged when I met him and he left that girl for me. My parents don’t know yet but we’re going to get married.”

  Her little mouth grew bigger and bigger. Her teeth glistened, her cheeks filled with color, and her smile expanded so much I could nearly see down her throat.

  “How do you know he loves you?” I asked her.

  “It’s a feeling,” she said. “No matter where I am, with him I feel that I’m home.”

  I wanted to tell her I felt the same way about our cocker spaniel, Manchas, but I was shy. Carla told me her Andy said he’d been waiting his whole life for her and I wondered how that could be since he didn’t even know she existed until last semester. Even so, I felt privileged that she told me her secret, especially as us kids filed back down to Carmen’s apartment after the parents came to get us. They still wore sleep on their faces but I was refreshed because I felt I’d been let in on the adult world of love, and the way people talk about it, like it’s some kind of secret code.

  On Easter morning, Mami and Carmen were each in their rooms crying as the husbands tended to them. They got in a huge fight about something that happened when they were kids. It all came out over breakfast, when Carmen asked Mami why she wears so much makeup and Mami snapped that it might be because her sisters told her she was ugly her whole life.

  It continued from there and us kids went into the living room to play with the pollitos Emilio bought off some guy on the street. There was a basket full of chicks sitting on a mound of fake grass, each one dyed a different color: pink, blue, green, or orange. A whole rainbow of pollitos that chirped as they bounced around between us and crapped in our laps. We each took one and named it. Cris named his blue one Rambo and Sara named hers Flor. Símon named his Símon and Cris told him it was stupid to name a pollito after yourself but Símon said the chick was actually named after Bolívar so it was perfectly acceptable. I named my orange pollito New Jersey.

  While we went to Easter mass, we left the pollitos in the bathroom. I thought they would get cold, so I dragged the alpaca blanket off my bed and tried to leave it there for them, but Carmen stopped me, said the blanket was very expensive and did not belong on the bathroom floor. After mass, the pollitos were gone. Emilio explained that someone took them to live on a finca. Not the one in Fusagasugá that belonged to Mami’s father—she lost it to some relative in a family inheritance land war years earlier, which turned out to be a blessing because guerrilleros had taken to hanging around on that land and when they get rowdy, they sometimes cut off people’s fingers, ears, or tongues. I heard that last part on the television in Carmen’s house.

  My cousins and I were crying over the lost pollitos. Even Cris was sad over losing Rambo so soon. We’d fallen in love with those little chicks so fast and now they were on their own in the world, and Símon was sure they’d been fed to the rottweiler who lived in an apartment on the ground floor. My uncle and father tried to calm us down, assure us that the pollitos were going to live long happy lives and be adopted by adult chickens that were lonely and wanted to be parents, but we were inconsolable. On top of it, our mothers were still giving each other the silent treatment. Mami was in one room saying, “I don’t know why we bother coming here anymore,” and Carmen was in another room muttering, “I don’t know why she even bothers coming back.”

  Then the phone rang. It was one of the neighbors reporting some building gossip: Carla had been in a motorcycle accident. La pobre niña, the lady said, esta media muerta.

  We went to see her at the hospital. Two days had passed and Carla was no longer half-dead but recovering, though her back was broken and she was wrapped in a long, thick plastic brace that made her look like a giant crustacean on the bed. Her arms were broken and her beautiful face was ripped open on one side, sliced by the concrete, though she said it was a milagro that that was all that had happened, since she hadn’t been wearing a helmet, just that denim jacket her mother hated so much.

  The novio was doing just fine. Somehow the guy made it out without a scratch and Carla’s parents got to meet him in the hospital, and their first words to him were not hello but “She lost the baby.” I know this much because all us kids were gathered around our parents’ legs when they exchanged information.

  Carla’s mother, who was normally expressionless and always wore a tea suit, looked like she’d just been in an earthquake, and her father, a respected advertising man, looked like Carla was already gone. My father kept saying thank God she’s all right, but her parents looked like they were ready to bury Carla and I didn’t understand why.

  When they let us in to see her, I held Carla’s hand and told her she looked pretty, that the hospital light above the bed made her glow like an angel. Cris didn’t come through the doorway and Símon was still traumatized from the missing pollitos and stayed on a plastic chair in the corridor with Sara looking over him, as usual. I told Carla I wished she were my sister. I always wan
ted a sister and all I got was lousy Cristían. Carla tried to laugh but her bones hurt, so she stopped. They hadn’t yet told Carla she wouldn’t walk again or that she would probably never have children of her own. That day, despite the stillness of her shattered body, Carla looked vibrant, her eyes dancing because Andy had just called to say he was on his way over to see her.

  We left a few days later. I promised Carla I would write her letters, tell her all about my life in elementary school, let her know as soon as I got a boyfriend, and she promised she’d invite me to her wedding, though the last time I saw her, when we went over to the hospital to say good-bye, Andy was sitting all alone in a chair at the end of the hallway with his face in his hands. He didn’t move from there during the full hour that we were with Carla.

  Mami and Carmen finally made up, asked each other’s forgiveness, and spent the whole last night of our stay sitting on the floor of the living room, going through photo albums of their childhood. There were no whispers from the other side of the wall that last night. Papi was snoring and Mami crept in without disturbing him, slipped under the heavy blanket, and went to bed without a sound. I lay in the darkness, the song of Bogotá humming several stories below the window.

  The next day at the airport, we said our good-byes. Emilio kept asking my father when we were coming back and Papi wouldn’t give him a straight answer. I could tell that if it were up to Papi, the answer would be never. Mami was crying. Hugging her sister as if it were the last time. Cris and I huddled with our cousins, said “See you later” because we already knew they were coming to stay with us in New Jersey that summer.

  Emilio took me by the hand and walked me a bit away from our family crowd for some private words. “This is your country,” he told me. “For better or worse you carry its salt in your blood.”

  I told Mami what my uncle said as the plane lifted off and we watched the city shrink into the Andes. She looked tired, her face resting on her palm, her lips pale because she’d forgotten to put on lipstick that morning. She shook her head, said Emilio always went overboard trying to be poetic and I should only listen to half of what he says. She didn’t lift her eyes from the window, even after the mountains melted under the thick clouds and the plane drifted into a sea of milky sky. And I felt foolish because, for a moment, I believed him.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A lifetime of love and gratitude to my father, Richard Engel, the greatest artist I know, and my mother, Patricia García Engel, for her infinite faith. My profound thanks to my brother, Richard, Swati, Jocelyn and Farah, André Vippolis, Lucie and Bruno, Elicabeth and Louis, Nena, Hans, Con-stanza and Augustín, Norita, Katarina, Eleany Uribe, our departed Abuela Lucía and Abuelo Herbert, Walter, Alba, Herbie, Frank, my extended family across the United States and Colombia, Junot Díaz, Gabriele Corto Moltedo, Ronny Kobo, Ariana Zsuffa, Stella Ohana, Jackie Raqcer-Farji, John Lin, Lisa Coar, Alexandra and P. Scott Cunningham, Julia and James and Jude Lin, Pierre Duval, Sara Martinez-Diefen-bach, Ana Maria Lozano, Szabi Dobos, Carlos Delatorre, Dana Leven, Uzodinma Iweala, Matías Ventoso, Michele Esteves, Frijol Sanchez, Liz Curtis, Amanda Espy, Sandra Vega Louit, Alexandre João Dias, Chris Abani, Sharline Chiang, Lizz Huerta, Christine Lee Zilka, Xhenet Aliu, Jen-nine Capó Crucet, Bob Wister, Lynne Barrett, Les Standiford, Margaret Porter Troupe and Quincy Troupe, Maryse Condé, David Mura, Diem Jones, Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation, Key West Literary Seminar, the Hedgebrook Foundation, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Florida International University, and the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs. I am deeply grateful for the dedication of my agent Ayesha Pande, the passion and vision of my editor Lauren Wein, and the support of Morgan Entrekin and the Grove/Atlantic team.

  Thank you for believing.

  A GROVE PRESS READING GROUP GUIDE

  BY ERIN EDMISON

  VIDA

  PATRICIA ENGEL

  ABOUT THIS GUIDE

  We hope that these discussion questions will enhance

  your reading group’s exploration of Patricia Engel’s

  Vida. They are meant to stimulate discussion, offer new

  viewpoints, and enrich your enjoyment of the book.

  More reading group guides and additional information,

  including summaries, author tours, and author sites

  for other fine Grove Press titles, may be found on

  our Web site, www.groveatlantic.com.

  QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

  1. Sabina is the recurring character throughout Vida, even when the point of view of the narration changes; we see her at different ages, in different cities, with and without her family, in different relationships. What do we come to learn about Sabina throughout the book? What kind of a girl or a woman is she? What is her relationship with her parents like? With her brother? With her Colombian identity? How does Sabina see herself, and the various roles available to her, in relation to the women in her own family? Consider her mother, her aunt Paloma, and other members of her extended family in the United States and in Colombia.

  2. What do you make of the author’s epigraph: “In each life, particularly at its dawn, there exists an instant which determines everything.” Do you agree with this statement? Was there an instant in Sabina’s life that determined everything?

  3. At the end of “Lucho,” Sabina realizes her true feelings for Lucho only after he dies: “I didn’t even know I loved Lucho till that second. But I did … He came looking for me when I was invisible” (p. 22). How did Lucho “come looking” for Sabina? How was she invisible? Many characters in this book die. What do you think the author is saying about life considering the various ways her characters experience death?

  4. In “Refuge,” Sabina mentions a coworker, Wanda: “Wanda likes me because we have the same last name though we are no relation—she’s Puerto Rican and I’m Colombian stock—and she says us Latinos have to stick together though she doesn’t speak Spanish” (p. 32). Ethnic identity is complicated; how does Wanda define ethnic identity? How does Sabina? Does Sabina agree that she and Wanda should “stick together”?

  5. On page 35, a character says, “The guy is dead. And death is a huge aphrodisiac.” Why could death be an aphrodisiac? Are there other examples in the book of love as a result of a certain kind of fantasy?

  6. In “Refuge,” Sabina’s boyfriend Nico gets into a fight. “‘The punches I took for you,’ Nico would say, like it was a debt to be paid” (p. 39). Where else in this book are women considered to “owe” a debt to men?

  7. In “Refuge,” newspapers are hidden from children so that they won’t see the disturbing images of 9/11. In “Lucho,” Sabina’s mother hid newspapers with information about the uncle on trial. What do you think of this separation of family/domestic life and the “news” of the world? Is it important or damaging?

  8. Also in “Refuge,” Sabina says, “It will be months, and most of the wreckage will have already been cleared, before we admit it’s not enough. It will be uneventful, the way most life-changing moments are.” After the aftermath of 9/11, Sabina and her boyfriend decide to break up. Do you agree with Sabina’s statement that most life-changing moments are not the biggest events, but smaller ones? Has your personal life ever been significantly altered by an event that occurred on the world stage?

  9. In “Green,” the narration shifts and the story is written in the second person, although it’s clear that the story is still being told from Sabina’s point of view. What do you make of this shift in narration? How does it change—if at all—how you read?

  10. On page 53, the narrator says, “Your parents are immigrants who don’t really understand the concept of depression.” What do you think about this statement? Is depression a particularly “American” phenomenon?

  11. “I gave you a little smile so you would feel absolved” (p. 106). Guilt and blame come up frequently in the book—between couples who may or may not be faithful; in the aftermath of accidents; in friendships. What do you think of Sabina’s sense of account
ability—is she too frequently feeling guilty? Not enough? What about the other characters and their sense of accountability?

  12. “He was a boyfriend for the shadows” (p. 122). Sabina has many secret-boyfriends or almost-boyfriends. Why do you think this is? What is it about these sorts of relationships she finds appealing?

  13. Sabina tends to surround herself with other young drifters who spend their time looking for love and then fleeing from it. Discuss some examples of this tension between being sought out, being found, and the urge for isolation, retreat, escape.

  14. Many different languages appear in the book—Spanish, Ukrainian, Portuguese, Hungarian. Even the Spanish is not always the same to each character: “She found my Spanish amusing. Said I talked like it was the seventies. That’s the Spanish my parents left with” (p. 120). What do you think of this cacophony of languages and second languages and translations? Do you think they ultimately lead to misunderstandings or does there seem to be an essential understanding among the characters, despite language barriers?

  15. In “Vida,” Sabina learns that a friend of hers had been forced to work in a brothel. Her reaction to learning this information about her friend is complicated. At first she feels she must keep it secret, because she fears that if Vida’s boyfriend found out the truth, he would leave her. Then she learns that Vida’s boyfriend had actually worked at the brothel with her. Sabina seems uncertain what to do; she claims at first she had no impulse to get involved: “Nothing in me said I should help Vida. … I just wanted to drink her up like everyone else” (p. 135). It’s a question of exploiting Vida’s story; when we learn of gruesome events, is our interest driven by a desire to help, or mere curiosity? Later on, Sabina accuses Vida’s boyfriend of not helping her enough: “Being a witness can make a person just as guilty” (p. 141). Who is Sabina really accusing here?

  16. Vida says, “There is no love. Only people living life together. Tomorrow will be better” (p. 145). What do you think of Vida’s outlook on life and love? Is it optimistic or pessimistic (Or realistic?). Does Sabina share this outlook?