Catalina rang the doorbell three times in a row. Papa had to take her hand away from the button. The door opened and a voice shouted, “Come on in.” The girl’s heart almost came out of her mouth when she saw all the bundles scattered in the hall. She looked at the baskets of food, the clothes overflowing from the badly closed suitcases, and the toys packed in plastic shopping bags. There was too much of everything, shoved in every which way. Papa worried about how in the world all of this was supposed to fit on the bus, and he fretted that it would make them late. But Auntie said, “No worries, we’ve got time.”
That was just like Auntie. Papa might change his mind. He didn’t understand how Auntie could be late to everything, brush her girls’ hair in the elevator in front of whoever happened to be there, or invite people over for dinner, only to start cooking after the guests arrived. Mama, on the other hand, had wished she could have been a little more like Auntie. Freer, she used to say, and so Catalina watched Auntie carefully, trying to emulate her. Papa was irritated by Catalina’s recent absentmindedness. Still, she copied Auntie’s ways eagerly, leaving her thermos every day in the school bathroom. This infuriated Papa. Of course, if Catalina had a daughter, she would never leave her in her car seat, shut inside a hot car all afternoon, the way Auntie had done to Alejandra when she was a baby. Papa was right: Catalina would never be that crazy. What Catalina really liked was that Auntie always had something fun to share, and that she was very entertaining; the opposite of Catalina, who had nothing to say since what had happened to Mama. It was as if a crumb of bread had lodged in her throat, swelling, like the cauliflower fungus that had once grown in Catalina’s ear.
They finally reached the bus stop. Catalina could not believe it was happening, and neither could Papa. As they waited for the bus to arrive, he almost changed his mind and took his daughter back with him. Too many unaccompanied women, he thought. There were his daughter and Alejandra, Alejandra’s older and younger sisters, an elderly housekeeper, and the neighbor-mother-aunt, supposedly in charge of the group, surrounded by bags of food, clothes, and toys. Papa’s stomach clenched. He bent down, looked into her eyes, took her by the chin, and said, “You behave, okay?” Catalina nodded and threw her arms around his neck in an impulsive hug. Poor Papa. But she was so happy that she practically pushed her way onto the blue bus, which was covered with dirt and dust. The layer of dirt was so compact, Catalina observed, that in some places she couldn’t see the paint even after using her fingernails. Not even when the trip got bumpy, through the poorly paved areas of the city and the rocky country roads leading them to their destination, was the dust ever dislodged.
But she didn’t mind the bumpy bus. She didn’t mind the windows that didn’t close shut, as if to welcome the frosty mountain air and then the bittersweet aroma of the tropics. And she didn’t mind the gray clouds that slowly turned purple and black, announcing a great rain as the morning came to an end and the bus descended from the mountaintop. Catalina was a perceptive child. From time to time she could smell Papa’s distinctive smell, that of the little bottles hidden behind the books. But then the smell evaporated, or she forgot, and she kept playing and laughing with Alejandra, while the other passengers dozed off and Auntie began the crossword of the day in the newspaper, folded in half.
While her mother and the housekeeper were not looking, Alejandra put her head out of the window, wetting her hands and face with the veil of water that fell from a cliffside and crashed against the roof of the bus. Catalina wanted to do the same, to cool down and escape the stench of perspiration that made her dizzy. First she put her left hand out the window, then her head, but when she was about to push out her entire torso, Alejandra snitched on her. Catalina could not believe it. “Little bitch,” she muttered, embarrassed and infuriated by Auntie’s terrible shout in front of all the other passengers. She didn’t get a chance to defend herself, to say that the idea had not been hers alone, that Alejandra had done the same thing, and that if they didn’t believe her, they could look at the wet hair stuck to Alejandra’s face… “Bitch,” she said again, but remembered at once that the curse word ringing between her teeth was forbidden, because Mama had hated it.
She wished that a miracle could take her to Mama. A ladder, maybe, no matter how tall. She would climb up to find her… Catalina remembered the day she’d asked Mama where babies came from, and she answered, “From the sky.” This had left Catalina thoughtful: “But how do they come down?” Mama had tucked her hair behind her ear and answered, “Down a tall, very tall ladder.” Catalina had not had the courage to tell Mama that she already knew the truth, that Alejandra had told her everything, and in detail, long ago: “Babies come out of your butt, silly.” Catalina knew how to hold back the urge to cry by clenching her fists. She leaned her head against the window, closed her eyes, and felt the rain come down like an African drumbeat. Soon it became a downpour and she imagined a cannibalistic dance in which she ate her friend’s eyeballs, one after the other.
The inside of the bus began to get wet, and when Catalina opened the bag of sandwiches, the bus was infested with the smell of eggs. “How disgusting, you pig,” Alejandra said as she watched her eat. Catalina glared at her and sent three sandwiches around. Alejandra’s sisters didn’t accept her offer either, but Auntie took a bite of one sandwich while trying, in vain, to cover the window with one of her plastic bags. Waves of water flooded the dusty road, the way they do in intense heat: in successive blows, first moistening the earth, then soaking it, leaving the surface soapy, and finally pooling in the ruts of the road, turning the mud into a deadly jelly. Catalina became aware of the road as a presence: a narrow, stony basilisk, hemmed in by a mountain on the right and a sheer cliff on the left. Again she smelled sweaty skin, now mixed with the eggs and the smell of the little bottles Papa had collected over the years. “Something stinks,” she said, without daring to say what, thinking that maybe Papa had wanted to disappear along with the contents of the little bottles. Her words put Auntie on guard. Catalina watched her jump out of her seat like a rubber band and then walk toward the front of the bus while trying to keep her balance. It was funny to watch her because Auntie was acting like a dog, wrinkling her nose and sniffing the way dogs do in the trash, until she found what she was looking for. She didn’t like it at all. She started to tremble: the man riding shotgun, unaware of Auntie behind him, was throwing a bottle of alcohol to the driver, who caught it in mid-air and drank from it openly, chugging it down. Then he shook his head and said something like “Agrrrr.” Catalina knew that noise. Papa made it sometimes when he sat in the living room with the lights off. Mama had, too, as she bent over the metal basin, pulling her scarf from her head and begging, “Please leave me alone!”
Auntie, who was still on her feet and looked very worried, her face red with fury, began to yell at the driver, or rather the man riding shotgun, since the driver himself was ignoring her, swishing the alcohol around in his mouth, then swallowing. The downpour showed no signs of letting up; the bus was lurching over the road and Alejandra took Catalina’s hand, without saying a word, waiting to see what her mother would do. Auntie began to scream, telling the other passengers about the alcohol, telling them the driver was going to kill them all, but nobody else said anything. Some slept, others just looked at her in silence. A voice in the back mocked her, saying, “It’s no big deal, vieja.” Alejandra’s housekeeper turned toward the man and said, “Shut up, asshole.” The voice in the back said, “Maestro, if they’re that upset, let them get off the bus.” Catalina took a deep breath. Mama had taught her to do that in order to calm down in difficult situations.
The bus stopped, then it backed up to make room for a truck going up the narrow, snaky road. Catalina pushed herself close to the window. The bus was very close to the edge of the cliff—so close Catalina could see the deep green valley below. Papa had told her that dying didn’t hurt. Being sick hurt, but not dying; you didn’t feel anything. That’s why she shouldn’t worry about Mama, be
cause death was like falling asleep. Catalina leaned her head against the glass, thinking of Mama, but this time she was startled by the noise of the engine. The rear wheel of the bus lifted in the air, and the driver accelerated desperately, trying to return it to the road. The rain kept pouring down, the bus was swaying and the girls were silent, their eyes wide and expectant, while a damp, desperate Auntie began to rip off strips from the crossword, writing on them in large block letters. She sat down and gave each one of the girls a folded-up strip of newspaper. She told them not to open the note, and they each stuffed theirs in their pocket without a word, except for Catalina, who hid it between her knees, her face growing pale as she read. “If anything happens,” the note said, “the driver was drunk.” Catalina clenched her teeth tightly as a void opened up in her stomach and in her heart: Poor Papa. She felt these words in her chest, and began to pray.
WUTHERING
THIS MORNING I STILL felt a little angry with my grandmother, even though technically we made up last night. So I stayed away from her, to punish her, to make her feel bad about having discovered me like she did, to prove that it was actually her fault, that I was the innocent one. I hate how I’m always supposed to act as if I owe her something, to smile and smile; it’s like constantly being reminded to improve my posture, when slouching is so comfortable.
To avoid her, I decided to sunbathe in the garden: something she hates, and I know why. First, she hates how dark I get. It’s not about sunburn as much as the fact that it bothers her to see my skin so obviously brown. Second, she hates my bikini, so small that it barely covers me—something she can’t ignore when I flop over onto my back. Mission accomplished, but just to be sure, I added a third thing she can’t stand: I put my headphones on, cocooning myself with music.
The sun here is bloodthirsty. If it were a deity, it would be a sadistic one, perversely gratifying itself with the pleasure of roasting human flesh. I can feel its power soaking into my body. Meanwhile, my grandmother snips buds from the rosebush: plants, too, can get sunburn. She bustles around for a while and then stops, casting her shadow directly over my body. Even though I don’t turn over, I know she’s there, blocking my sun. After a while, she moves away without saying a word.
My grandmother doesn’t make things easy for me. She’s not like my mom: instead of exploding, she likes to dig into me sideways. It’s much more creative that way…Now she drops a copy of Wuthering Heights on my towel, plucks away one of my headphones, and enunciates slowly, “Emily Brontë was a genius. They say she was anorexic, always fasting.”
It’s a low blow, after what happened last night.
“Wuthering, what does that word remind you of?” she asks.
“Not a clue,” I respond, still annoyed, but in my head, words spring to mind: wuthering, blubbering, blustering. Nausea, anguish, despair.
She sits on the edge of the garden box, barely shaded by the roofline, so close to my towel that I have to turn over and look at her. From this angle, her eyes appear to glow.
“Wuthering is a powerful, sorrowful word,” she says, as if nothing had ever come between us, “a scourging wind, as tragic as Emily’s own life.”
I allow her to make inroads into my anger. Her limpid gaze is a trap. I love words so much. She knows this. We collect them together, although we usually travel on different paths. When it comes to gay writers, for example, she goes for Verlaine, while I give myself entirely to Rimbaud and Wilde and Capote. I love gay writers; and my grandmother? She loves Baudelaire.
“Wuthering,” I blurt out, “like a squall, a tempest.”
She smiles benignantly. “Downpour, deluge, inclemency.”
“Desolation?” I offer, feeling a little pretentious.
She looks at me, pleased. I think about something my sister likes to say: women are so “appreciative.” And it’s true. No matter what we get, we’re appreciative…My grandmother knows that I can’t resist her attentions, however small.
A lot of people don’t know that Wuthering Heights is a book, and not just a classic film. I didn’t. She disarms me.
“Emily wrote Wuthering Heights when she was 28. She published it under a man’s name: Ellis Bell.”
For a second, I think about launching into a feminist screed like the ones I hear at home, but that kind of thing would bounce right off my grandmother. So instead I ask the first thing that pops into my head: “Why?”
“Why what?” she looks at me blankly. “You mean, why did she use a pseudonym?”
I nod, tentatively.
“I think it was to avoid hurting her brother.”
She explains that their father, Patrick Brontë, was an Anglican priest, an eccentric widower with six children: five girls and a boy. His son Branwell bore the brunt of his family’s expectations, and he couldn’t handle the pressure. He ended up passing through life without leaving a mark. Overshadowed by his sisters’ talent, ravaged by opium and alcohol, he finally succumbed to tuberculosis.
“It’s amazing how poisonous the expectations of those who love us can become,” I comment, pleased with this oblique reference to my own situation, but she doesn’t answer; her reproach is obvious.
When a conversation shuts her out, she’s content to let it languish. Drama annoys her (which is partly why she annoys me).
I fill the silence. “You said there were five sisters?”
“Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne.” She pauses briefly and closes her eyes before going on. “No one in that family was born under a lucky star. The four older girls were sent off to boarding school when Maria was eleven and Emily was only six. That’s where Maria, the oldest, and Elizabeth, the second oldest, died of tuberculosis, hunger, and, without a doubt, sorrow.”
“Sorrow,” I repeat. The sun burns away sorrow, pricking at my legs and shoulders. Tonight the pain will make me scream, but I don’t care. I close my eyes and focus on my grandmother’s solemn, warm voice.
“They were killed by a teacher at the school, Miss Andrews. Andrews! Never forget an evil name,” she admonishes me, and I promise to remember. To justify her rancor, she describes in detail the torments they endured.
“This Miss Andrews became obsessed with Maria. She beat her and punished her, even when she was practically on her deathbed.”
I repeat it all back so that I won’t forget her name. What I really want to know more about is Charlotte and Emily, those windswept girls. I get up; I need a glass of water and a hat. I bring them over.
“So why was Emily always fasting?” I ask, knowing I’m not going to like what I hear.
“Because she, unlike some, had reasons to want to die.”
Although my grandmother’s words hurt me, it doesn’t seem to be deliberate. Or do her eyes hold a gleam of satisfaction? I resist the urge to fight back; I’d rather focus on Charlotte and Emily.
“How did they go on living?” I ask, almost to myself.
“Creating imaginary worlds together. It was their favorite game: Charlotte and Branwell invented Angria, while Emily and Anne had Gondal. They made their own tiny books with the history of each nation written in minute letters.”
She tells me about the moorlands: rocky, inhospitable, exposed oceans of grass. That’s where, sheltered in a little stone house, they forged an existence beyond their poverty. My grandmother describes them writing together at night, after finishing their chores, by the light of a lantern. Lantern, I think, is a wonderful word.
“Sometimes sorrow ceases to be blue, and its yellow tones make it easier to bear. It’s as if, for a moment, sorrow could be beautiful,” I say out loud, not expecting anything. My grandmother listens, gives me another smile, and continues with her story.
“One day, Charlotte, Emily, and their little sister Anne discovered that each of them had secretly written a novel. They decided to publish their books under the names of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, choosing male names to hide their identity. They never told Branwell—he was already lost to them—not even when thei
r books became bestsellers.”
I interrupt her. “They were betraying him, and they knew it!”
“I always thought they were protecting him, but maybe you’re right,” she says, and that small concession is a victory for me. “At any rate, it was why Branwell’s death devastated them so completely. Emily, who for years had been anorexic, stopped eating entirely and refused to see a doctor. After three months, she died of tuberculosis, and five months later, so did Anne.”
“Then Charlotte was the only one left?”
“Not for long. She died a month before her 39th birthday, after publishing two more novels.”
Her eyes seem less liquid, deeper, more opaque. She says I can keep the book, if I want to. I thank her. She lovingly thumbs through the pages and asks me to read part of the introduction: an excerpt of a famous letter. I read it out loud: “The great trial is when evening closes and night approaches—At that hour we used to assemble in the diningroom—we used to talk—Now I sit by myself—necessarily I am silent.”
“That’s Charlotte?” I ask.
“Yes, that’s Charlotte, alone amidst the wuthering.”
The sun sits low in the west now; it no longer burns. My grandmother, or perhaps it’s the golden afternoon, leaves me speechless.
SLEEPING DRAGONS
Bear this in mind about the circumstances of my story: I was a young, sad, semi-foreign girl going on a journey. Not for vacation, but for work, although I would be paid under the table, as a production assistant for a documentary. It was July, 1992. In those days I was an atheist; or maybe I should say an agnostic; or perhaps it would be closest to the truth to recognize that my heart had been broken. Consequently, on account of my bitterness, please maintain some skepticism and a deliberate attitude towards everything you will hear about my trip.
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