The professor’s house had a kitchen that looked onto a small backyard. In the summer, little hard wild strawberries grew in the patchy grass. I remember a winter afternoon with the snow outside, and my mother baking cranberry bread. This was a novelty. My mother had never learned to cook, or even make a cup of tea, until after I was born. She had quickly mastered bacon and eggs for breakfast, because she thought that was the American way, and that was her repertoire for a few years. The cranberry was an indigenous revelation to her, and cranberry bread was a delicious breakthrough that was very New England-y. We had gone a tiny bit native, and I was comforted by this American activity that was so cozy and delicious.
7
ONE WINTRY DAY I HAD trouble reaching our front door. There was a blizzard, and there were steep stairs and a hilly walk from the spot where I had been dropped off by a friend’s mother on our street. I was bundled up, and in one hand, through a thick mitten, I was clutching, like a trophy, a recipe for cookies that we had been given in school. It was mimeographed purplish blue and white. I was so excited and proud to bring this recipe home, and I was terrified that the strong winds would blow it out of my hand, no matter how hard I tried to hold on to it. The paper was already soaking wet.
I saw my mother at the door, and I held the recipe up even higher, so that she might dash down to help me. But before I knew it my hand was empty, and the sheet had blown so far away so quickly that I couldn’t see a trace of it. I burst into tears and ran inside, begging my mother to go hunt for this special recipe that I was sure we would never find again. She went out to look, but to no avail.
I was inconsolably sad. Only years later, looking back, did I realize that that morning in my kindergarten class, one of the other children had whispered to me that a classmate was adopted. I didn’t know what that meant, but she told me it was when your real parents didn’t want you, and the state had to find a family to adopt you. She also said that it was always a secret, and that if the new parents didn’t like the kid, they could return it. Sometimes, she added, the child would go from one foster home to another. This information, which fascinated my little classmate, filled me with terror. She was a mean girl, and I knew I shouldn’t listen to her, but I couldn’t help it. As soon as I heard this, I was convinced that I must be adopted because I didn’t have a father. Later in the morning, when we baked the chocolate chip cookies, I had momentarily been distracted from my adoption fears, and had focused entirely on the recipe I would try to triumphantly take home to my mother.
But the recipe was lost to the wind, and from that moment onward, I made my mother promise every day that I wasn’t adopted, which she did, faithfully and affectionately.
Yet I still wished my father would appear. My father, or even a father-like figure, I imagined, would bring great happiness to our lives. From television I knew that grown-ups “dated,” and this term gave me false hope on one occasion. My mother was going to a dinner with other professors, she said, to meet some “candydates.” She said the word in English, with her Spanish accent, and I never doubted that her dinner was to be a combination of very attractive potential suitors and lots of candy. When I asked her eagerly the next day if the “candydates” had been interesting, she shrugged and said they were OK. I was disappointed and eventually figured out my mistake.
It took several years for my mother’s English to become more American. I was a simultaneous translator whenever needed. I understood the colloquialisms, the slang, and the thick New England accents that have now almost vanished. My mother proudly told a friend one day that she had “mowed the land” outside our little rental home. Another time she was distraught when a student approached her at the college snack bar. She had successfully ordered cheeseburgers for us and we were enjoying them. The student interrupted and said, “Excuse me, do you mind if I ask where you’re from?” That took my appetite away. My mother said “Spain.” “Aha,” the student said, smiling. She asked, perplexed, how he knew we weren’t American. He pointed at our plates: “You’re eating your cheeseburgers with a fork and knife.”
My mother never spoke about my father, nor did my family in Spain. When I asked questions, I got evasive answers. It was as if he had never existed. At some point I remember my mother talking about adopting a child, an idea I liked, though it also scared me a bit. Of course I didn’t know about her surgery and that she could no longer have another baby. But the notion of adoption faded as quickly and mysteriously as it appeared. How could it have ever even been a possibility? By herself she could barely raise me and teach at the same time. When I was three or four my mother asked one of her colleagues, who had children my age, for advice about writing a will. If she didn’t have a will with a designated guardian for me, he said, and anything happened to her, I would become a ward of the state. He also seemed to be offering himself and his wife as legal guardians, just in case. They had two girls who were a bit younger than me. Somehow I overheard this conversation, and though I was very little, I immediately understood everything. Ward of the state—of Vermont—words I had never heard before, were perfectly and terrifyingly clear to me. To have these people as my legal guardians was something I was not prepared to accept, however hypothetical or well-intentioned it was. Nor was my mother, and when she made the will, she appointed Edith and my aunt Inés in Madrid as my guardians. Just in case.
This terrifying eventuality of my mother’s possible death and its consequences descended into our tiny living room like the looming tornado from The Wizard of Oz. The lawyer who drafted the will was a kind, tall, rangy man with tanned skin and white hair. He was a part-time lawyer and full-time beekeeper who made house calls, and with every professional exchange came a new large jar of Adirondack honey. The honey, the colleague, and the will were all part of a dark scenario that hinged on a circumstance that, to me, was unimaginable: my mother dying and leaving me alone.
This took place in the house my mother rented from the medieval history professor whose family had come over on the Mayflower. It was the most profound fear I had felt, but there had been others. One sunny day we looked through the window and saw a big car pull up to the curb on the street where we lived. Two men wearing suits, hats, and trench coats got out of the car, one of them smoking a cigar, and to our disbelief they slowly made their way to our front door. The doorbell rang. My mother told me to go upstairs while she spoke to them. It took longer than I hoped. If I overheard anything, I don’t remember. When I asked her what it was all about, she simply said, “It was the FBI. But they were looking for someone else.” I probably didn’t know what FBI stood for, but in the context the acronym was somehow self-explanatory..
I had a blue passport with an eagle on it, but my mother had a green card. My mother and I had to go through different passport lines when we entered and left the United States. Customs officials, both in Spain and in the States, lorded over areas of high anxiety where my mother always risked getting a migraine. She traveled with a special medication and a crafty little plastic cup that collapsed like an accordion into a flat object when not in use. I disliked this cup and the medicine because they were associated with feelings of precariousness, the sense that we had always just made it past the police by the skin of our teeth. The trips were all perfectly legal, yet in my memory they were very tense and unpleasant. Even when we had arrived and were out of the airport, there was no real relief because every single trip we took, whether to or from Spain, was always part of an eventual round trip. We never stayed anywhere permanently.
When I was older, my mother told me that that the first time we left Spain, when I was still a baby, the Spanish police refused to let her take me out of the country because she didn’t have the right paperwork. Another time—and this I remember vaguely because I must have been eight or nine—we were stopped when we arrived in Spain because there was a search warrant out for a mother-daughter pair whose description we apparently matched. I lolled about and felt scared and clumsy while we were detained and searched and my m
other was interrogated. It was the first time I knew our fate was not up to her, and that anything might happen. We were let go, of course. And it wasn’t until many years later that my mother told me about her immigration interview in New York when she was pregnant and had decided to stay in the United States. She wore a nice dress, a raincoat, and her pearl earrings. They asked her what she planned on doing with herself, and how she was going to make money. She said she didn’t know. The pudgy, white-haired, blue-eyed agent looked her up and down through his smudged glasses: “Well, are you going to walk the streets?” My mother was stumped, though she understood the literal meaning of all the words. The insinuated colloquial meaning crept in more slowly, but with violent clarity. She felt her hands start to tremble, looked defiantly at the officer, and said, “I don’t understand the question.”
For so long I thought that these horror stories were a part of a world that was safely gone, but I was wrong.
8
I HAD AIRSICKNESS FOR YEARS. With all the trips back and forth, I spent many hours of my early life perched over Iberia, TWA, or Pan Am motion sickness bags, swallowing and trying not to throw up. Someone told me that throwing up on a plane was worse than not throwing up, because throwing up would just bring on new waves of nausea. I don’t remember anyone else being sick on these flights and it was humiliating. The mere thought of the airplane, the sight or taste of those medicinal chewy orange children’s Dramamine pills, or the overpowering smell of American brewed coffee, in glass pitchers that the stewardesses carried up and down the aisles repeatedly, that wafted out of the airborne kitchenette: any of these could set me off. Turbulence was also a sure trigger, bringing on motion sickness combined with the firm conviction that we were going to die.
But I recovered quickly after each flight. As soon as we arrived at my grandfather’s house in Madrid, always in the early morning, no matter how sick I had been on the plane, I would tear down the long, dark hallway to the bright kitchen to see Feli and ask for a chorizo sandwich. My aunt Inés always asked eagerly if we had jet lag, a term she learned from a magazine and found cosmopolitan. In response, to her disappointment, we always shook our heads. My mother was tired after the trip, but I was raring to go. We had no idea what jet lag was.
Francisco Franco’s minister of tourism had coined the catchy slogan “Spain is Different,” and during the years we spent there, I would have agreed. The bathroom at my grandfather’s house fascinated me. The toilet was in a separate room, and to flush one had to pull a chain. The loo paper was rough and gray, or sometimes bright pastel pink or blue. It was never white. Cotton balls were also dyed in pastel colors. Many families bought cologne in liter-size bottles. It was a household staple, like laundry detergent. My grandfather was tall, and he wore a suit and hat for his morning stroll through the neighborhood. He carried a cane and had a putty-colored patch covering one of the lenses of his glasses. He had lost an eye in a botched cataract operation. He had involuntarily moved or twitched, against the doctor’s strict instructions that he keep the eye completely still. This may have been typical of early cataract surgery, but in my mind, there was something very sad about this story. My elegant, vain grandfather—whose gaze peered commandingly out of the photographs from his youth – was very elderly by the time I was born.
Lavender and citrusy colognes were popular, but unfortunately many people wore uniforms that were never changed or cleaned frequently enough. It was a key part of the dictatorship culture. A literalization of uniformity. A militarization of civilian life. People who worked in shops wore uniforms, and so did taxi drivers. Even my aunt, who worked as a guide in the Royal Palace, had a summer and winter uniform. I loved her job, and she used to take me to work with her all the time. I could run around the Palace to my heart’s content, and the guards would just wink at me and give a piece of candy. My favorite thing was ducking under the thick red velvet ropes and looking up at the Tiepolo frescos on the ceilings. I also liked the parts of the tour when Inés explained that most of the paintings on view were reproductions, and that the originals were at the Prado. I assumed that the tourists would never know this and that Inés had real inside information. She led groups of twenty to a hundred people at least twice a day. She never knew how many would show up, and she was prepared to guide the groups in English, French, or Spanish. She sometimes made friends with the visitors, and through her we met a very kind Argentine couple who lived in Boston. When Inés came home for lunch in her official garb, which included a pillbox hat and white gloves, she was served by a maid in a uniform with a white apron. And people smoked liked fiends. My aunt was a chain smoker and most of the guests who came over for drinks also smoked. There were wonderful heavy enameled cigarette lighters. My favorite one was in the shape of an elephant. There were silver cigarette cases and ashtrays everywhere, constantly emptied and cleaned. It seemed like more of an art than a vice. I thought Inés was so cool. She stayed under my grandfather’s roof and eschewed the responsibilities of being a grown-up. This kept her somehow extra youthful. She was absent minded and once or twice came home from walking one of the dogs without the dog, though it all worked out in the end. She smoked, curled up on the couch, surrounded by books on Flemish tapestries, the Spanish royal families, painting, and decorative objects. She was sometimes overwhelmed by the scope of what she thought she should know. She dreaded the question some conniving or innocent tourist might pose and show her up in front of the crowd.
I’ve wondered what it was like for my mother to be under my grandfather’s roof again. And what it was like to share an adult life with her sister, who never married. Seen from my limited American perspective, life in that house seemed so regimented, and I had no idea how anybody felt about anything or anyone.
In New England everybody wore comfortable tumble-dried clothes, and people were in and out of each other’s houses at all hours. Martinis, whisky sours, cigarettes, station wagons, and barbecues ruled the day. There was no such thing as “organic” meat, just hotdogs and burger patties, ketchup and relish. The food at other people’s houses tasted faintly of dishwasher detergent to me. It was off-putting and unfamiliar. Children—and adults—had Cheerios for breakfast and lunch, and walked around barefoot in the summer. In the winter people threw a coat on over their pajamas to drive to a convenience store to get coffee and the newspaper. Though it was a college town, it was rural. It was America.
At our home in Madrid, nothing was spontaneous. There was a living room where the grown-ups had drinks, and a breezy sitting room for the women, where the television was. There was only one Franco-run state channel. My grandfather had his large study. We only gathered for meals. Everybody was dressed and groomed at all times, unless they were in the privacy of their own rooms. Nobody from the family ever went into the kitchen except for me.
My mother didn’t work when we lived in Spain, and I was either not yet in school or on vacation. In the mornings, after my adventures at the market with Feli, my grandfather, who was long retired by then, and my mother would walk down the Calle Serrano or Claudio Coello with me to the Retiro Park. Once there, we would visit the rose garden, and then we would stop at one of the many bars with the plastic chairs and tables on sandy plots between the park’s lawns, paths, and avenues. I would have a Coke and a bag of potato chips, most of which were broken into crumbs to feed the sparrows that hung about. Then we would walk back for lunch that was always served at 2:00 p.m. sharp.
I loved the evenings in Madrid when my mother went out with her old friends or cousins. It gave me a glimpse of the person she’d been before America, before me, the person I hoped she might become again. She was always very pretty, beautifully and simply dressed, slender and long legged, with dark shiny hair and delicate features. In Middleton she had made good friends, some who had children my age, but in America she was often harried by her classes, bundled up for the snow, or concerned about money. She sometimes wore an expression of worry, a kind of frown, that as a child I often begged her to re
place with a friendly American smile. Things had been hard for her since she left Spain, and I unconsciously suspected that my existence was to blame. In Madrid, when people came over for lunch or drinks, and especially when she went out to dinner, she was a different person. Not only was she vivacious, smiling and laughing, but she seemed downright glamorous, carefree, and slightly haughty. It was like having two mothers, and though the other mother had been through so much—and I couldn’t live without her—I selfishly preferred the evening-going-out-in-Madrid version.
If my mother was happy, I was somehow absolved. Like a gambler, I placed many emotional bets on her late-night outings in Madrid, hoping they would stick so that we would never have to get on another airplane. But we always went back. I was too young to fathom that a return home might also have a dark side for her, that it could be oppressive. She could never explain to anyone what really happened between my father and her. But I sensed she belonged in Spain and that I had somehow taken her away from her real home. I couldn’t yet imagine that, in a way, she had needed to leave Madrid.
9
AFTER I WAS BORN, MY mother abandoned her plan to pursue her doctorate in American literature with a dissertation on Emily Dickinson. It took her several years to fully dismiss the idea. At home she seemed to have every book ever published of Dickinson’s work, and she bought all the critical studies and biographies that came out. On a trip to Madrid she went back to the university to speak to a professor at the English literature department where she had done her coursework. She had rewritten the beginning of her thesis to show to him. It was a big step for her to try to piece her life back together. The professor she met with, an old man, told her not to bother him again until she had a finished product of at least 500 pages to show him. But even then, he said he wasn’t sure they would be able to readmit her after such a long hiatus. I remember her sadness after this meeting.
Madrid Again Page 4
