Where I Live Now

by Lucia Berlin

  Before she got cancer, Sally had planned to move to a house in Malinalco, a beautiful town west of Cuernavaca. The house was almost finished, the pool was even filled. Seferino and Andrew the architect went down every week to check on the progress. Claudia bought plants at the nursery in Coyoacán to send to Tomás, the gardener. Guayabana, lemon trees, oranges, avocado. Nopal and maguey, hibiscus and jacaranda. She didn’t want to go there without Sally.

  For years the letters Sally wrote to her had been about the house. The view, the town, the convent, the blue sky. Claudia and Mercedes tried to convince Sally to go. They would make a bed in the back of the van. Miguel, her ex-husband, even offered a PRI helicopter to go from the apartment roof straight to the grass in front of the house.

  “I don’t want to see it! Leave me the hell alone!” Sally shouted.

  Later she told Claudia that there was no reason to see the house. She would never live there. The pleasure had been in the planning of it, imagining her bedroom that overlooked the garden. She had made elaborate changing plans for the garden, lists of friends to invite down for weekends.

  “I am no longer present in my dreams,” Sally said. Claudia could understand better then how it felt to be dying.

  “I can’t daydream about being in Paris or making love with Andrés or going to Malinalco. Any time I think of a place, I am aware that I simply won’t ever be there again.”

  Claudia embraced her sister, “Whatever do you think about?”

  “I remember. You’ve helped me remember hundreds of details from the past. I can imagine the children doing things. Claudia, I want so much for them! I imagine you. Please go to Malinalco. Think about living there. See what the house needs, what the garden needs. I’d be happy, dreaming about you living there.”

  Claudia resisted going until Seferino convinced her that someone needed to make lists of what was needed to stock the kitchen, what linens were needed, plants for the trellises around the pool.

  “Doña Claudia. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

  She went one day with Andrew the architect who sat next to her on his donut pillow, another pillow for his neck. A mask to cover his eyes during the trip. They were to leave at nine, but Andrew had to make five or six stops, for handles, fixtures, hinges. Seferino raised his eyebrows to Claudia in the rearview mirror.

  It was eleven before they were on the periférico out of town, past Sedue and suddenly into space and clear blue sky. Mountains beyond them, huge cumulus clouds billowing around their peaks. Forests of deep green pines, fir, miles of pink cosmos, of wild blue sweet pea and purple stock. The landscape was alpine but nopal and maguey mixed with pine and aspen trees. Stone monasteries and Catholic churches in each lovely place where the Mexica had once lived. A white horse gallops in a green meadow, baby lambs play by a mountain stream.

  They had lunch in a chalet-like restaurant. Soup of fresh picked mushrooms and broiled just-caught brook trout. There is a bowl of salsa on the table, and hot tortillas in a cloth, but the mushrooms and trout smell like a foreign country, like Montana.

  Although he had made a patronizing production about Seferino joining them for lunch, Claro, hombre, Andrew talked on and on in English to Claudia about Mexican architects of the fifties. Seferino said nothing, whether keeping his “place” or because he couldn’t stand Andrew, Claudia couldn’t tell. She said nothing too.

  “Good God, it’s way past time to go!” Andrew said, accusingly, as if they had kept him waiting. Back in the car he covered his eyes again.

  “It is so beautiful, Seferino, how can he bear not to look at it?”

  “Pues, Doña Claudia, seeing is believing.”

  “You mean what he doesn’t know can’t hurt him?”

  “You two are like children,” Andrew said. “You think that because I can’t see you I can’t hear you.”

  Claudia stuck her tongue out at Andrew into the rear view mirror. Seferino laughed.

  At the beautiful house there were dozens of workmen building a wall, another dozen leveling a parking area, more planting trees. Guido, the engineer, struck a matador pose on top of a ledge in his suede coat, tight pants and snakeskin boots. He spoke on a portable phone, to a woman, obviously. Seferino waited in the servants’ area outside the kitchen while Andrew showed Claudia through the house.

  As she entered each room she remembered Sally’s letters about the house, long before it was ever on a blueprint.

  (“Oh, and a kitchen you can sit around in and smell nardos from the open windows, look far out onto cows grazing, and a fireplace in the living room because even in summer the mountain nights are cool. Andrés and I can lie in front of it and look up at the stars, through the skylight. No esmog!”)

  In Sally’s bedroom Claudia sat, weeping, in the room that was her sister’s dream come true.

  Andrew was in the bathroom droning on about solar heat. He had much to discuss with Guido. Perhaps Seferino could give her a tour of the village, quite picturesque. They went out the kitchen door.

  “Seferino, take the lady for a spin, perhaps to the convent. Exquisite murals, delicate, unique. The bridge also is 16th century, quite fine.”

  “Flies don’t get into your mouth if you keep it shut,” Seferino muttered as he opened the van door. On the road into town he looked at her in the mirror. “Doña Claudia, did it make you sad to see the Señora’s house?”

  “Yes. I can see why she wouldn’t want to come. It’s not fair. It’s horrible.’”

  “Andale. Go on. Cry.”

  They stood at the foot of the mountain and temple that rose above the town.

  “Doña Claudia, please come back with me soon. You would like the climb up there. The entrance is in the shape of a serpent’s jaws.”

  Claudia shaded her eyes, looking up at the temple, intact, majestic. “It’s magical.”

  “Exacto! It was magic, is, maybe. In Moctezuma’s time this was where sorcerers came to learn their craft. The place was discovered by Malinalxochil, the maguey flower, the beautiful sister of Huitzilpochtli, when she led a dissident band of Mexica from Patzcuaro.”

  “Seferino, are you making all this up?”

  “No, Doña. I’m reading it from that big sign right behind you.”

  There was a description of the ruin at the beginning of the trail up the hill. It went on to say that Malinalco had rebelled against Cuernavaca and the Spaniards right in the middle of Cortez’s attack upon Teotichlan. Since Cuernavaca and the area around Malinalco were the centers for gold, Cortez sent an army led by Andrés de Tapia to overcome the Indians, but most of the Indians took refuge inside the serpent temple.

  Seferino and Claudia went to the convent in the village. The murals were lovely, with delicate and fragile designs, just as Andrew had said. There was a small chapel with statues of the twelve apostles. Claudia knelt by the candles in front of the altar, missing her sister already, remembering her funny letter about the apostles. Seferino knelt in the back of the church.

  Claudia walked through the cool convent in the late afternoon light, grieving for Sally but smiling to come upon a lovely wall. A deep window framing a perfect scene. Seferino walked paces behind her as usual. His footsteps echoed hers on the silken worn stone.

  Seferino opened the van door for her, left for a few minutes. He came back with “huaraches,” hot cakes of blue corn maza with beans inside. There were Coca-Colas in an ice chest in the van.

  The village was so quiet she didn’t have to raise her voice so he could hear her from the back seat. “Cosmos. Those pink flowers we saw growing wild. More bougainvillea, in different colors for all those pillars around the pool. Against that deep pink-brown of the house and buildings. You must admit Andrew did a wonderful job on the house.”

  “Señora Sally designed the house. He did just what she said to do.”

  “We’d better go, no?”

  “Yes. You’ll see. He’ll keep us waiting, then blame us for his being late to tea…”

  Claudia didn�
�t go back to Malinalco, even when the house was finished, the lawns put in. Sally was very ill, with continuous oxygen and IVs. Claudia and Mercedes took turns staying awake. Mostly Mercedes stayed up and woke Claudia to give Sally injections, change the IVs. At first there were bedpans and vomit basins, but less and less as she could no longer eat. Claudia hated giving her shots, it seemed she hit bone wherever she put the needle.

  Miguel, the minister, Sally’s ex-husband, came one morning as Claudia sat in the kitchen on a stool, waiting for water to boil for Sally’s bath. As Miguel left he stopped by the kitchen and deftly handed each of the maids, and Claudia, a folded one hundred thousand peso bill.

  When he had gone, the maids burst into laughter. “The Señor gave you a tip! A tip!” Seferino was embarrassed for Claudia, shocked that she would laugh with the maids about it.

  “It’s OK, Seferino. You must admit I’ve been working very hard. Of course I look like an employee to him.”

  She realized that her role had actually changed because she did so much physical work. Except for Seferino, she was no longer Doña, but Claudia, the one who lifted and bathed the señora, changed her diapers and the linens.

  Sally could only eat crushed ice now. Claudia put ice in a towel and smashed it in a fury, whap, whap against the wall.

  Sally could not live much longer. Claudia and Mercedes went to Goyozo funeral home to make arrangements. It was ghastly. Claudia wished somebody spoke English so she could tell them how extremely unctuous the funeral lady was. She and Mercedes held hands in the back seat but didn’t speak. Mercedes called to Seferino, “Oye, take us to Sanborn’s.” They bought nail polish and perfume, French Vogue, Hola Magazine and chocolate eclairs, stumbling like drunks through the aisles.

  Sally became too ill to leave; Claudia stopped going out in the mornings. She saw Seferino when he arrived to take Sergio to school. One morning he was sitting, dejected, when she came into the kitchen. “Que pasó?”

  He shook his head. “Del gozo al pozo.”

  Salinas was rearranging his cabinet. The minister would be “campaigning” to be governor of a southern state. The department of ecology was eliminated, replaced by Urban Affairs, headed by Colosio, who would be the next candidate for President.

  “So I stay only until the poor Señora dies and then only God knows. I’ll be sent to some office to file, or stamp papers. Doña Claudia, I, who was born to drive! My daughter Lydia has already lost her job as secretary.”

  “Can’t she stay on with Colosio?”

  “No. He got rid of all the women. Secretaries, telephone operators, cleaning women. He says they always cause trouble.”

  “For him, maybe. He’s so handsome.”

  “You’ll put in a word with the Señor?”

  Just as he said that the buzzer rang three times. It meant Miguel, the Señor, was coming up to see Sally. Claudia went in, to take her ice, and tell her Miguel was coming. “I’m so glad,” Sally whispered and when Miguel came in, she smiled at him. “Oh, my dear,” she said. Claudia left them.

  Seferino was sitting in the living room, something he had never done before.

  “Did you speak to him?” she asked.

  “Yes. I said, ‘Señor Licenciado,’ since he is no longer minister, ‘please consider the fate of me and my daughter. Surely there are positions for us during your campaign.’ He told me those jobs had to go to natives from the state. ‘But, after all these years, sir?’ I said. And imagine what he said to me?”

  “What?”

  “He said, ‘That’s life.’”

  Sally died soon after that day, quietly. Claudia lifted her to change her sheets and she was light, like bones, like an angel. Mercedes and Claudia lay next to her as slowly she stopped breathing and grew cold.

  The next few days were a blur, the long day and night vigil, the rosaries, the mass. Hundreds of people who had loved her. Claudia felt nothing but kept going to the casket to look at her sister. In Mexico they don’t embalm bodies, bury them immediately. As the hours went by, Claudia could see her sister’s lovely skin begin to discolor and decompose. Grief came to her not with sadness but with the sense of betrayal, of a mockery.

  For days then, on Amores Street they sat around, aimless and zombie-like. Since the death had been expected, they were even more taken by surprise.

  Three rings. The Señor. He sat with them at the dining room table. Claudia brought him coffee and water. Everything had been arranged. He had to start campaigning, day and night, in the south. It was time for Claudia to return home. The children would be better off together traveling. They would learn to get along with each other.

  Claudia was to leave for Oakland tomorrow, the children for Paris, London and New York day after tomorrow. They would spend the summer traveling, all reservations had been made. The apartment would be remodeled while they were gone.

  Mercedes and Claudia went to the Gitana café, had lattes and pan dulces. Mercedes would never question a decision of her father’s, worried only how to manage Sergio and Alicia in Europe. Claudia worried that mourning, saying goodbye to Sally, would get completely bypassed. Which it was. Not until months later did Mercedes call her in Oakland. “Tia, I want to come up and cry.”

  That day over coffee, after days and days of no sleep, they confessed that they still didn’t realize Sally’s death.

  “If anything, I feel happy,” Claudia said. “Do you know what I mean?”

  “Exactly. Me too. I feel like when we’ve finished a movie or a video and they’re striking the sets. I feel good. We took good care of her, no, Tia?”

  “Yes, we did.”

  The next day when Seferino and Mercedes went with Claudia to the airport, Mercedes was sullen and angry.

  “You promised my mother you would care for us, but you really can’t wait to go home. I’ll be stuck forever with those brats.”

  “They’ll be OK. You’ll see. If not, I’ll come back. You’re mad because everyone has left you, and now you think I’m leaving you too. But I’ll always be with you, entiendes?” Mercedes and she embraced, then Claudia hugged Seferino. All. three of them were crying, loud. Mercedes turned and ran through the airport lobby, high heels clattering on the marble floor.

  A New Life

  “…Can you think of what it would be like to live the rest of one’s life in a new way? Oh, to wake up some fine clear morning feeling as if you had started living all over again, as if the past were all forgotten, gone like a puff of smoke.”

  Uncle Vanya

  Please don’t suggest anything, like for me to volunteer as a pink lady or to seek psychiatric help.

  I told my friend Marla that I was ready to commit suicide. What a mistake. She recently became a psychologist. She tried to get to the root of my hostilities and to make me stay with my anger. I’m not mad at anybody. I can’t blame anybody but myself for having been a lousy wife and mother and general failure. I’m sixty years old and still working at a horrible receptionist job.

  It is too late to learn anything new. I am incompetent. I can’t drive on the freeway or make U-turns without an arrow and if an answering machine answers I get scared and hang up.

  I’m just fed up with myself and my entire life. And sure I’m angry that I don’t even have a friend I can talk to about killing myself without getting a lecture about how hostile this is.

  I bought a how-to book on ways to kill yourself. This is a depressing book. It has a chapter on dumb ways that don’t work, like don’t pull the toaster into the tub with you. It tells you how to con doctors into stronger and stronger medicines so you can stockpile them until you have enough to make a soup. The author could call it a tea, or an infusion. But soup? She died from soup.

  To get the right medicine, you have to keep going back and going back to doctors, each time saying, “Nope, still can’t sleep.” This means you have insurance and a job that gives you time off to keep going to see doctors. The patience to wait, reading Smithsonians. The motivation to persist. If you have
patience and motivation, you’re obviously not suicidal.

  Although the author gets very specific about dosages he says that the main thing is not to forget the plastic bag. Just wrap a plastic bag around your head and fasten it with a rubber band. She died of plastic bag. She died after a long battle with a plastic bag.

  A nice accidental drowning is the only dignified way. At Lake Temescal, just keep swimming, past the rushes and the red-winged blackbirds and then you’re out of sight, out of mind.

  It’s not that I’m worried about the future that much. I’m curious, still. It’s my past that I can’t get rid of, that hits me like a big wave when I least expect it.

  Grocery shopping, for example. I go up and down the aisles and chat with people in line, joke with the checkers. It’s pleasant, really. But some days I’ll remember things. Like when Terry and I got in an argument and he soaked me with the hose to spray lettuce with. I have a fit, quietly, missing him. Or the time…Oh lord, I could go on all day. The good parts are as hard to deal with as the bad ones. The point is, they are in the past.

  Maybe I’ll just walk around my Oakland neighborhood, witness a murder. Testify and then I’ll have to get witness protection and they’ll send me to Lubbock, Texas with a new identity.

  I have two fine sons and three dear grandsons. Jason is a prosecuting attorney in Marin and Miles is an Oakland policeman. Marla says they chose their professions because they grew up without a father, that they have become the authority figures they themselves needed. I suspect it is me they want to arrest and prosecute.

  And their wives…If only they had married schizophrenics or women who were beneath them. I feel so petty complaining because their wives are perfect. And not compulsively perfect, they really are nice women.

  Jason’s wife Alexis is an architect. Beautiful, witty. Runs eight miles a day, volunteers for charity bazaars, reads to the twins every night even when she gives sit-down dinners for twelve. Miles’ wife Amanda is beautiful too, warm and giving. She is a speech therapist, sews all her own clothes, makes bread and weaves. They are all good parents. They do things like climb Mt. Tam with their children, go whale watching and to Lawrence Hall of Science.