Later, there would be my first night outside of solitary confinement, in the section with the other inmates. They transferred me late at night, and I stood for a long while looking through the bars at the endless, well-lit hallway with cells on each side. It was pleasing to be able to look beyond the cell wall, a joy to the eyes to be able to see far and deep, a good thing to confirm that the world was bigger than a cell. A bit later I lay down and fell asleep immediately, dreaming of the hallway, which became a subway station, and the cells train cars that passed quickly by. I woke up with a good taste in my mouth. I thought, if I’m on the subway and this is one of the trains, does that mean it’s going to take off toward some other place?
The following day they allowed me to wash for the first time in who knows how long. It was a short shower but with hot water and soap. It may not have been Heno de Pravia, Bolivia’s favorite soap, but in the shower I thought of her, of them two, or I should say us three at that time. I thought about my mother’s round pretty body, and baby Violeta and her lizard’s body, and my dark-skinned slight body, almost inconsequential when compared to Bolivia’s. Maktub, I thought, maktub, better this way, much better that Violeta had been in Vermont, that she’d been spared the raid on the house, the screams, the persistence of their questions, and the blows they had given me and would have likely given her. Good thing she didn’t see how they brought some of her favorite things down from the roof terrace in black bags. In the end, it was good that Violeta had been away at school, seated in a garden, safe, where no one could reach her or harm her, making wicker baskets in her crafts class and learning what laughter is, and what tears are, and hugs, and any other expressions that others call emotion but that she has trouble with. When I speak to you about Samir I’m referring to the man in my neighborhood who sold baklava, halvah, mamoul, and other Arab sweets. The same one who tells me that he finds it odd that Westerners use toilet paper. Greg didn’t trust this Samir but I liked him because he was as sweet as the honey confections he made, because each time he passed by his store he called out to me, Ai-Hawa, you are my Ai-Hawa, the air that I breathe. Samir explained to me that in his language there is the word maktub, which means that everything has been decided and written, everything, everything from the beginning. That morning under the shower, the first time I’d been allowed to wash in Manninpox, I tried not to think about anything except the lovely days of my childhood, my first childhood, the one before Bolivia’s trip. Not to think about anything, let my body focus on the hot water. But I couldn’t stop my mind from wandering back to Samir and maktub. Maybe everything was maktub since then, from the time Bolivia said good-bye to us when we were children. Everything maktub since then. Everything that is now coming to being.
This chapter is written in a hurry, Mr. Rose, I’m sure you’ve noticed. It’s just that this will be the last chapter, and not because I have exhausted everything I have to tell, not at all, the three of us have just arrived in America, after all. The story of Bolivia, Violeta, and me, a drama that I titled Little Women in Queens, because when we first arrived they had made us read Alcott’s Little Women in school. Yes. I’m writing against the clock now, because today, Saturday, Socorro Arias de Salmon is coming to visit. And I will give her all of this to send to you. It is a desperate decision made at the last hour. It was only yesterday that they told me she had asked for permission to come, and they wanted to know if I’d accept her request. It’s going to be my first visit in Manninpox, and likely the last, at least for a while, so I came up with this idea, a bit suicidal, to send this manuscript with her. I know it’s like tossing a coin, all or nothing, either it gets to you or it is lost forever. And that will be the end of all of my efforts to see my story turned into a novel. I hope I did the right thing, Mr. Rose, and that Socorro can find out where you live. Who knows? Let’s cross our fingers. We did what we could. There aren’t many other options anyway. There’s a rumor that in other sections they’re already beginning with the security searches. And that they’re going cell by cell taking what they can. They say that this time they’re very picky and stricter than ever. Only one thing is certain: I’m not going to just wait till they take away my papers. Anything but that. Maktub there as well.
I have two hours from this moment on. And I have to decide what story I choose to tell you. How can I fill the rest of my life? I think the best thing would be to continue chronologically as if nothing were happening, as if I still had all the time in the world. That is, continue the story of our arrival in America and taking the first steps of our American Dream, and then just stop wherever, when time runs out.
So Violeta and I were having chicken and vegetables on the plane, or I should say I was having it all, her meal and my meal, because she hadn’t touched a thing. Meanwhile, Bolivia wasn’t doing well, I know because she later told me the story many times of how she had to deal with hell and high water on the day of our arrival. Some months before, let’s say eight months, she had realized something. Something that was self-evident and if she had not realized it, it was because she had not wanted to: with the little she earned, and the amount she sent to Colombia for her daughters, then rent and living expenses for herself, she was never going to put away enough money for our visas and plane tickets. That simple. But what was it that suddenly made her realize this? I don’t know. The thing was that one day she stopped deceiving herself with happy accounting tricks and settled on the truth, the hard fucking truth. She had been working like a slave for four years in New York without having saved enough and living on hope, pretending things were fine, letting the years pass, but then that truth struck her like a full-blown slap, she said. She sat in Alice’s little plaza in Central Park, the one where Alice is with her tea party companions, the Mad Hatter, the White Rabbit, and such. It was the place she had wanted to bring us on the day of our arrival, a very pretty place that I knew from photographs she had sent of her there. On the back she had written, “To my daughters, we will meet here again.” From the day I received it, I placed it in my wallet for safekeeping, where it should still be, although they took my wallet when I arrived here, but they’ll give it back some day, and the picture will still be there, a very young Bolivia with a red wool cap and scarf standing by the Cheshire Cat. But it was there in that same place that she realized she’d never make it, she could work another four years, and it would still not be enough. Meanwhile, time would continue to pass, her daughters would continue to grow older, and what had begun as a temporary separation would become permanent abandonment. The possibility was terrifying, abandoning her own daughters, and although she never told me this, I suspect that she was frightened less by the idea of abandoning us than by the thought she might get used to it. That is, seated there next to the cat, Bolivia must have known she was in a quandary: either she went back to Colombia or she abandoned us. And it hurts me to think that at least for a moment she must have thought of choosing the second option. But even if it happened like that, she corrected herself right away and began to look for a temporary solution. Like most Colombians, she knew how to dance, was genius at the salsa, mambo, and merengue. On Sunday afternoons she went with her friends, two Dominicans called Chelo and Hectorita, to the Copacabana, where someone would always pay for her entrance and maybe a couple of drinks. She had met some men there who were crazy about her. She was still pretty, my mother, although work life had tattooed her legs with varicose veins, caused her eyes to wrinkle with crow’s-feet, and made the skin on her hands red and peeling. But she was still alluring and full of life, and knew how to arrange it so she’d have what she needed to shine there at the Copacabana: Bolivia knew how to dance. Among those who attended that club on Sundays, there was a rich Venezuelan called Miguel who had become well known for a phrase he kept repeating: it’s not Miguelito, call me Mike. This Miguelito or Mike took an interest in Bolivia and was soon approaching her with what she called serious propositions, such as coming to live in Spanish Harlem. He had a nice place, this Miguelito wh
o liked to be called Mike, I know because later on Violeta and I would also end up at his place. It was a spacious apartment with great light, wine-red wall-to-wall carpet, expensive furniture, and even a white grand piano that they had gotten in there somehow for who knows what because no one played. Mike was tall and always gasping for air because he wouldn’t stop smoking even though he had suffered from asthma since he was a child, a serious case that often had him on the verge of suffocating. He wore a wide-brimmed Panama hat, white shoes and pants, a palm-print shirt, and had an enormous belly.
“Why are you dressing up as if you were coming from the beach?” Bolivia often asked him.
“I’m not dressing up, it’s who I am.”
Deep down, I always liked this Miguelito, call him Mike, better than any of the scum we had to put up with later. This guy had character, that can’t be denied. He was the owner of a packaging company and that may have been the reason Bolivia said yes one of those Sundays at the Copacabana; she’d later be less subtle about her reasoning: if this man supported her, she could save the money to bring her girls. And what was said was done. Maktub. The new apartment was a dream, more beautiful than she could have imagined, but living with her new boyfriend was more difficult than she had suspected. Until you sleep beside a severe asthmatic, you have no idea what a torment the night can be, for the afflicted and the partner. Bolivia came to understand that for Mike the bed wasn’t a place to lie down, because he’d sit up almost at a right angle with a bunch of pillows propped up behind him, and he’d snore like a seal if he happened to fall asleep, or wheeze all night if he didn’t. Sometimes she pitied him, and tried to help him by boiling eucalyptus leaves, getting him the inhaler, massaging his back, and begging him to stop smoking. Other times, and these were more frequent, she thought of him as a giant and clunky noisemaking machine. She couldn’t forgive all the horrible nights and the days she struggled through at the factory because of him, overcome by such sleepiness that she shut her eyes even though she was holding a hot iron. But my mother withstood this respiratory drama for seven months, during which she was able to save the money she needed. She sent us the tickets and said she’d be here waiting for us, and ten days before we arrived, she left Miguelito, called Mike, without offering too much explanation. According to Bolivia herself, she told him as he served her the morning coffee. Ciao, Mike, I’m not coming back tonight, I’m going to live with my daughters who will soon arrive. She had warned him previously that the setup would last only until her daughters arrived. Then good-bye forever. That very afternoon, Bolivia sublet two rooms with a bathroom in an apartment of Colombians, far from Spanish Harlem, near the East Village, which was cheap then.
Her roommates were single and pleasant, students, or so they had told her, and she believed them, or had to believe them because she had no other choice. That’s the way my mother thought: if I can’t afford another place, then this is the best place. It wasn’t huge or pretty, safe or peaceful, no wall-to-wall carpet or grand piano, and in the end wasn’t even private because the entrance and kitchen were shared. The money she had saved was enough to buy a whole other round of used goods, three simple mattresses, a table with four chairs, a black-and-white television, and a set of picture frames.
“The two rooms turned out very lovely,” she told me. “Like a dollhouse. I was very lucky to have a place to receive you. All that was missing was a vase and the towels and sheets I had left at Mike’s.”
Our plane arrived on a Monday night at eight and Bolivia had asked for a week off from work, so that she could show us our new American home. That Monday as we were about to board at the airport in Bogotá, she got up at six to finish ironing the blankets, cleaning the whole place, going to the market for crackers, food, eggs, cereal, maizena, soda, flowers, and at around noon she went to get the rest of her luggage from Spanish Harlem. Returning in a cab, she noticed the commotion of sirens near her block, and when she got closer she realized it was directly in front of her building. She asked the cabdriver to stop, got out at the corner, and went into the deli to find out what had happened.
“Get out of here, woman, they’re searching your apartment,” the store clerk told her. “Get out.”
“But why?”
“For the same reason as always, drugs. Get lost, woman, before they grab you as well. Did you leave your papers up there?”
“No, I have the papers right here in my purse. But I have my furniture in there, stuff for my girls. I’m going to go see if I can get my stuff. I’ll explain to them I have nothing to do with these drugs,” Bolivia resolved.
“Oh no you won’t,” the man detained her. “Over my dead body. I won’t let you go.”
“What about my things, my girls?
“Your girls are lucky there’ll be someone waiting for them at the airport tonight. Their mother was almost taken away by the feds. Thank God and get lost. Now, what are you waiting for?”
The rest of her belongings were in the taxi, and the taxi driver was cursing because of the delay as he emptied the trunk of the car, leaving Bolivia’s things on the sidewalk.
“Now what do I do?” she asked the store owner. “I have nowhere to put my things.”
“Come. Leave them down here until you get set up. There’s room in the store.”
Bolivia could not have been more grateful. May God repay you, as they say in Colombia. She stacked her belongings in one corner of the store and set off on foot to look for a place to rent, because in a few hours we would arrive, and she had no place to put us. How would she tell us she had no place for us to sleep? All the promises of the good life in America, so much waiting for the great moment. But where was my mother going to find someone who would open their doors, just one someone who would take pity on them and say come on in, comadre, bring your daughters and make yourself at home, where two fit so do three, where three fit so do four, and if we have to water down the soup, so be it. That’s how Colombians welcome each other. But in New York, no one told her these things, and Bolivia couldn’t find a place, and she had to suspend the search to come get us.
The plane arrived on time and Bolivia saw us immediately, her two girls standing there almost unrecognizable with the years that had passed, very different from each other, me darker than she remembered me, almost an adolescent but still a girl, and with hair, a lot of hair, messy and unruly, that’s what she’d tell me later, she said that on first sight I had seemed more hair than girl, and that she watched me looking around with those sullen eyes and that face of few friends. That’s how she saw it, but it was just that my face was puffy from having slept most of the flight.
“I looked at Violeta from the other end of the gate and I don’t know what I saw in her,” Bolivia would tell me years later, “but I saw something. Very pretty, my girl. But strange.”
I have to love them both equally, Bolivia promised herself as she approached us, I have to love them both exactly the same, not an ounce more for one or the other. And I’m not sure if she succeeded. I’ve always thought our mother loved Violeta more. Maybe to protect her, but it wasn’t just about that. There was something the girl had that I lacked, some magic in between temper tantrums that made it easier for Bolivia to be a mother to her than to me. Who knows? Between the three of us nothing ever arose spontaneously, everything had to be learned slowly after five years of everyone on their own. Bolivia was going to have to get used to being our mother, us to being daughters. We had a lot to learn, sometimes I think too much, or perhaps too late. In any case, it wasn’t going to be easy.
At that point, the story of that day ties in with my own memories, a swarm of people and suitcases in that airport, very hot, Violeta restless and me in a black mood, maybe because of exhaustion or all the confusion. María Paz! Violetica! María Pacita! Violeta! The woman with wavy hair and red lips that ran toward us, screaming our names, turned out to be our mom and she fell on her knees and embraced us and we embraced her, al
though I think Violeta was hesitant. I wasn’t hesitant, but it was strange. Five years of not having seen Bolivia, five years of speaking to her on the phone, had made her more into a voice without a face, and at the point of meeting her, there in the airport, I felt as if that voice that was so familiar was coming from the wrong face, I couldn’t make the two square off, I don’t know if you get what I mean.
Bolivia, for her part, who had fought like a lioness to get to this reunion with her daughters, lived through that moment as if it were a personal victory, the end of a long journey, a kind of impossible goal that became reality through a monumental sustained effort. A victory, yes, but a Pyrrhic one, because her little girls were here, but where could she take them? Up to that point every time Bolivia was about to surrender, every time she was about to drop dead from exhaustion, or that she couldn’t take it anymore, every time that happened, she got a second wind with the mere thought that one day she was going to see us again, just as was happening at that moment at the arrival gate in JFK. Except that she did not imagine Violeta looking so strange and she couldn’t quite see me in that young woman with dark skin and too much hair, as if I was not her daughter but that I nevertheless brought back memories of the man who had impregnated her, who I learned from Socorro, because my mother would never talk to me about these things, was a sailor on a Peruvian fishing boat, half-native and half-black, who had arrived to the Pacific Colombian coast in pursuit of a school of tuna. He had partied with Bolivia for a whole week and then taken off after another school of tuna. And never returned. That was my father, and Bolivia thought of him when she saw me at the airport that day.
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