PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
PART I
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
PART II
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
PART III
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
For my husband. If I were to do this all over again, I would still choose You.
I wake up and adjust my gaze to unfamiliar surroundings. It takes me a while to realize where I am.
I’m here. With him.
I try to move and find that I’m pressed against his chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart. His arms are encircled around me, his fingers clasped together, locking me in. A sudden chill courses through my body, and I realize my clothes are still damp from last night’s rain. His are too. From the light filtering through the shades I can tell that the brand new sun has just risen.
I sit up slowly. He opens his eyes but doesn’t let go.
“I have to leave.” I slip my arms above his and I kiss him. Here I go again, memorizing him with my touch. Mole below his left ear, dimple on his right cheek.
“No.”
“We talked about this. I have to. We had last night.”
He shakes his head, “No, please. No.” His voice is calm, but wavering. He holds my face and traces my lips with his thumbs. We stay quiet for a while, and I get up to leave. He doesn’t stop me, but buries his head in his hands. This is the last image I have of him in my mind.
I have to get home.
Today is my Wedding Day.
“Where are you going my dear traveler,
Longing for the sea like a fish?
You are in my heart wherever you go,
Only that sea can quench your thirst.”
—Rumi
I stare out the window at the endless sky littered with clouds, some big and puffy, some thin and streaked, some resembling scattered dots of marshmallows. “Clouds are made up of wind, that’s why the plane ride can get turbulent whenever we enter a cloud,” I remember a pilot telling me once. Once. When life was simpler, uncomplicated. Or was it ever? If I close my eyes long enough, will I be able to see her face in the clouds?
My chest starts to tighten and I feel the anguish of my heart breaking in two. Tears fall down my face. I’ll never ever see her again. I’ll never get to smell her, touch her … hug her. I haven’t heard her laugh in years. How can I live knowing I will never see her face again? Never. There is a finality to the word that feels like a stab to my very heart. I clutch my chest in response. The physical pain. As if someone has just decided to jump on my chest, strangling me, suffocating me. Squeezing the life out of me. How on earth can I ever live through my sorrow?
I look over at my husband and our young son, fast asleep, seat belts on, blankets piled on top of each other. I reach into my purse, feeling for the bottle of anxiety medication that I now need whenever I embark on long, transatlantic flights. Knowing they are stowed away in my purse helps to ease my worry. I just want to know that those little pills will be there for me if I need them. Such irony. What happened to the girl who vowed never to touch this stuff? The girl who spent her whole life living with someone who depended on them day in and day out? I didn’t want my life to be defined by pills. I promised I would never be like her.
I take a deep breath and remember the night I got the call. Eddie was at his soccer match, trying so hard to score a goal. He was the cutest little boy, so happy, so carefree. Just a few days before, he had made a video for his grandmother at my request. Skipping and jumping and dancing around the living room, he held his big Nerf gun in his hand exclaiming, “Pretty Namy, don’t be sick. Wait for me, I can’t wait to meet you!” He then stared at the camera and said as he cocked his gun, “Pretty Namy, wait for me, or else ...” I had told him how sick his grandmother was and how we had to rush home so that he could finally meet her.
Pretty Namy. That’s what she made all her grandchildren call her.
The phone’s incessant ringing stole my concentration as I rushed out of the indoor field to take the call.
“Hey, Eddie is having his tournament right now. I’ll call you back.”
“Isabel, she’s gone.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Isabel, Mom’s gone. She just passed away a few minutes ago. The nurse said she was sitting up last night telling her that soon you would be home and that she would finally be meeting Eddie. She started having difficulty breathing this morning and passed away.”
The next few days are a blur as I struggle to put my normal life aside and focus on finding a flight home. I have a new boss at work, someone who hardly even knows me. Somehow, I have to find a way to leave earlier than planned and stay a lot longer. Eddie has school to worry about and my husband has to get off from work as well. It’s going to be a long trip. There will be affairs to wrap up, the all too familiar family meetings, lawyers, advisers, meddling family members. The list is endless. It will have to be a trip that lasts at least a few weeks. But these things are far from my mind at the moment. All I want is her peace and her forgiveness. Forgiveness for my always being too late. Forgiveness for my being so selfish, for running away from that life years ago. I left my mother alone for ten long years.
I finally find flights that will get us there in two days. Two days too late.
“When you stop admiring yourself and let the eyes of the heart. Open your vision to vast other worlds, then all you do, will become admirable.”
—Rumi
I don’t even recall what I was doing. Isabel the overachiever, the maniacal do-it-all. Multitasking was an art form for me. I have mastered it so well; dishes, laundry, tax returns, emails all happening at the same time. Sure, sometimes I would burn the lasagna or the garlic toast, leave the clothes in the machine for hours or triple check a tax return to make sure I wasn’t doing too many things while entering the numbers. But they all got done. Ten years later, a husband, a son and a full time career as an executive — what a feat! Considering where this had all started from...
Darn phone! Why couldn’t it just stop ringing for a few minutes? Thank God for Caller ID. I had gotten so good at avoiding calls, well, specific ones actually. Most of the time they were those of the “unknown” variety, which signified international calls. Being oceans away from home helped me maintain some normalcy in my life. My sanity. This call was a local number. Could it be the church? The school? Something I ordered and forgot to pick up?
“Hello?”
“Hi Isabel Francesca, it’s Mom.”
“Oh … hi Mommy.” I rolled my eyes. Ugh! Why did this register as a local number?
“How are you? How is Eddie? Did he get the Xbo
x 360 I sent him? Was it the right kind?”
“Yes, it was. Thank you. He was going to call to thank you but with the time difference, I didn’t want to bother you while you were resting.”
I fidgeted about, walking around, trying to think of ways to end the call. I didn’t have time for this. Not today, not really ever. I left that drama-filled life years ago.
I checked myself out in the large mirror by our entryway. “Uh-huh. Okay, Mom, yes. Mom, can I call you back next weekend? There’s just so much going on.”
“Francesca, I love you. I love you very much.”
“I love you too, Mom. I’ll call you, okay?”
“I love you, Francesca. I love you. Take care of your sisters. You are the strong one, the one who survived through it all. They are all damaged because of me. Take care of Uncle Miles. He is good to me, Francesca. Please make sure he has a roof over his head, that’s all I ask. Everything else is for you and your sisters. Treat each other fairly — there is enough for all of you. Oh, and if Uncle Miles gets another wife or woman, everything gets cut.”
Uncle Miles was the fifth man she married.
I stifled a laugh. That was so typical of my mother.
“Sure, Mommy, I’ll take care of everything,” I said as I paced around a bit more, making faces in the mirror, fixing my hair, obviously very bored. More drama. I just couldn’t deal. Oh no, is that a wrinkle I see right below my left eye? Note to self: Buy more Caudalie Wrinkle Serum stat.
“Isabel Francesca. I love you so much. I love you. I’m sorry for everything. I didn’t mean for everything to turn out so badly. I was just so hurt by what happened that I selfishly took it out on you. I missed you all these years, and I want to make up for our lost time.”
“Mom, you don’t have to say anything. It’s okay. We’re good now, that’s all that matters. I’m so excited to come home soon. Eddie has grown so much. You’ll love him when you meet him. I’ll call you next weekend, and we can catch up more.”
“Okay, Isabel. I love you. I love you. I love you and I’m very sorry.”
“I love you too, Mommy. Talk next week. Bye.”
The next week came and went and I never called. Why should I? I had worked so hard to erase the dysfunctional memories from my mind, to pretend that I came from a perfect family. To shelter my child from ever having to know how sick and messed up my family had been. Here, far away in a foreign country, as different as it had been, it was peaceful. I had made my place, succeeded in my career. Whatever wasn’t good enough for anyone then was no longer the case now. This was my home and everything that happened before this was all just a bad dream. I can’t even remember everything that happened; yet I was so sure that it had made me the person I was now. Too bad it was all at the price of so many tears and heartaches. The biggest one of all was about to happen, and I didn’t even know it.
“Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do... but how much love we put into action.”
—Mother Teresa
“Good morning, girls, time to wake up!” my nanny announced one Sunday morning, as she drew the curtains and allowed the bright sun to filter through the pink shades into our bedroom. I yawned and stretched my arms as I gave her a big smile. A seven-year-old girl in a room full of dolls. Three canopy beds were lined up facing the window and mine was the one in the middle. I turned from side to side to check on my sisters. Sometimes, we held hands as we slept.
“What are we doing today, nanny?” I asked sleepily.
“We have to get ready for church now, and then you have homework to do before your cousins come for dinner tonight.” She was bustling about, folding our blankets and opening our closets to lay out our clothes.
“Where are Mommy and Papa?” I inquired, bright-eyed and ready to start my day. I jumped up to get to the bathroom first.
“Your mom is having breakfast and your dad’s not home. You’re going to mass with your grandparents,” she replied with a sad tone in her voice.
She shuffled the three of us into the bathroom to wash up. There was room enough for us in there with three sinks, two toilets and two showers. This was our typical Sunday. Going to mass with my grandparents had become more of a routine for us. We saw them more often than we did our parents.
“Good morning, my little ladies!” My mother greeted us as we all walked into the dining room. “Have your breakfast so you can go to church,” she said cheerfully, her jovial tone betrayed by her empty eyes. My mother. Even then, I thought she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Married at nineteen, she was practically a child herself. She was what they used to call a Eurasian beauty — fair with brown hair, a perfect nose, brought about by a combination of sharp European features and refined by the lesser-pronounced, smooth Asian characteristics. She wasn’t tall, but she was slim and fine and petite. She was graceful and stylish and very charming. It didn’t hurt that she had just graduated from a finishing school in Switzerland. A finishing school, by the way, where her parents had sent her to keep her away from my father. He followed her there anyway, and they eloped. My grandparents doted on my mother like she was their only child. The events in my mother’s life were documented in all the society newspapers and magazines you could find.
“Where’s Papa?” asked my sister. My father, Felix Amarra, was a bright young man full of promise. An aspiring race car driver; handsome, debonair and making his mark in the international racing circuit. My mother and father were heirs to various fortunes built up by their respective families. On my mother’s side, my grandmother herself was a beauty queen who married one of the top businessmen in the country. My father’s parents were both doctors — one a heart surgeon, and his wife, a former neurologist who gave up her career to raise her children. Both sides of my family were of Spanish descent, my great-grandparents on my father’s side being first generation immigrants from Spain.
“He’s got a rally today and just left for the track to practice,” my mother responded nonchalantly.
“Why can’t you go to church with us?” I asked as I took her hand and tugged at it gently.
“Mommy’s not feeling well today, Francesca. But I’ll be here when you get home, okay?” She took my head in her hands and kissed me.
“Mommy, can we swim today?” asked my other sister.
“Of course you can. Abuelo and Abuelita are coming over to have lunch here and you girls can spend the afternoon in the pool. But hurry up and finish your breakfast so you won’t be late for church.”
From what I can remember, I was always happy as a child. I had the lightest brown hair, almost blond, and light brown eyes that would squint every time I was deep in thought. I was always deep in thought. Analyzing this and that, making sure I made decisions methodically, even at the age of seven. To this day, I envy those with smart mouths, those who can spring quick comebacks from their lips. I always had to think of my answers, craft them, and take a moment to register them. I believed that in their own selfish and twisted way, my parents really loved me. I believe it to this very day. All my life, this way of thinking allowed me to make excuses for their actions. My mom, Claudia, was sweet and loving and full of life. I didn’t really know my dad very well, but they have pictures together that showed me they must have been happy at some point in their lives.
I wasn’t the only child or the oldest child. But I was the one who people would stop on the street and say, “You’re Claudia Holtzer’s daughter. You are an exact carbon copy of her when she was your age.”
Even when I was young, I knew that I wasn’t as beautiful as she was, but everywhere we went, relatives, friends and strangers would tell me how much I looked like her. I attended the same school she did, and her ancient and decrepit spinster teachers would rave about how I reminded them so much of my mother. I had an older sister named Evie and a younger sister named Alicia, and like all siblings, we had contradictory and complementary personalities. Evie was always full of life, so active and outspoken as an older sister. She was a litt
le bit on the heavier side, something that would stay with her until her high school years. I was fairer than my sisters, so much so that they thought I was afflicted by albinism when I was born. Alicia was darker and took on most of the ethnic features of my father. She was beautiful, introspective and quiet. We all looked very different but were as close as sisters could be. And although we merely spent a few years of our life growing up together, we were happy and normal in the most common sense. From our appearance you would think that everything was right with the world.
Dressing up for church was symbolic of the life we lived in those days. My sisters and I were like triplets, each only a year apart and dressed in exactly the same clothes, down to our shoes and socks. We were like my mother’s little dolls, perfectly matched and coordinated. When Evie had a red, white and blue outfit on, mine would be white, blue and red and Alicia’s would be blue, red and white. It was that orchestrated, that polished.
“Hurry girls, let’s start walking over to your grandma’s house now, they must already be waiting for you,” my nanny ordered as she turned around and started walking across the tiled path. We arrived back from church just in time to find lunch being served on the veranda by the pool. It was a normal hot and sunny afternoon in May. This was Cebu, after all — a comparatively tiny, bustling city in the heart of Southeast Asia. A beautiful island enclosed between transparent seas and sugar white beaches. It was also a third world country where the pace of life was easy and unhurried. There was no middle class, just the rich who owned everything and the poor who worked for the rich. This was the only life that I knew. It was a tropical environment with sweltering heat during the summer season and warm humid rains during the fall.
Memories of these happy times are permanently etched in my mind. That one Sunday afternoon was like any other as we swam for hours under the watchful eyes of my grandparents on my father’s side. Our abuelo and abuelita. They came over every weekend to have lunch with us whether or not their son was present at home. Abuelo strictly enforced his “Spanish only” rule whenever we were with him. He refused to answer or converse with us unless it was in Spanish.
The Light in the Wound Page 1
