In the Name of Salome

by Julia Alvarez

  What an awful person she is to have these thoughts. Her mother must be looking down from heaven with a frown. Quickly, Camila makes the sign of the cross. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of my mother, Salomé . . .

  It is all the more painful that her half brothers adore her and follow her around all the time. Little Rodolfo, in fact, calls her Mamila, and when he is in a temper, no one can calm him, not his mother nor his aunt Pimpa nor his big brothers Cotú and Eduardo nor her old nursemaid Regina, who is now his nursemaid. Only Mamila. He opens and closes his little hands, and Camila’s anger falls away before such raw, undisguised need.

  “Boys, boys!” Tivisita calls out now. There is such indulgence in her voice that the boys know they need not heed her scolds. In this house, it is Tivisita’s older sister, Pimpa, who rules. “Leave your sister alone. Her aunt Mon is coming to visit her especially, and I want you to behave yourselves.”

  They ignore her. Everyone but Papancho ignores the petite, pretty woman, or so Camila has always thought. But recently she has begun to notice how attentive men are to her stepmother. Camila’s own young gentlemen friends tell her that she has the most beautiful stepmother—as if this is a compliment to her! Whenever Camila goes with Tivisita to the shops, she notices how men on the street stop and gaze after them. Tall and awkward as she is, Camila knows the appreciation is not directed at her. Until recently, she has been glad for her invisibility, but now that she is a young señorita herself, she feels a pang in her heart. Especially when her friend Primitivo Herrera or Papancho seem to forget she exists the minute Tivisita steps into a room.

  A puff of dust in the distance announces the arrival of the carriage. “They’re here!” her brothers call out. Papancho has been in the Dominican Republic for several weeks, summoned by the new government to be considered for a possible post, and now he is returning with his former sister-in-law. The boys, eager for travel gifts, break into howls of excitement and race out of the room.

  It is now as Camila turns that she sees the expression on her young stepmother’s face: pain and worry not yet hidden behind cheerful calm. Something unspoken lurks in her hazel eyes that makes Camila uncomfortable. She doesn’t know what it is and doesn’t want to ask.

  “Camila,” Tivisita begins, her voice hushed in confidence. “I hope—” She stops herself. Perhaps she has seen the look of impatience on her stepdaughter’s face.

  Right this moment, Camila could ask, “What, Tivisita?” and encourage an intimacy that she knows her stepmother wants. But she cannot bring herself to open that door, even a crack.

  She hurries from the room, afraid to be alone with this person she does not want to love.

  HER AUNT RAMONA IS uglier than she remembered, fat and wonderfully cranky with everyone except Camila. She looks at her new nephews as if they were related to the pet monkey roaming the house. She shoos the pig away with her parasol. When they are finally alone in Camila’s room, she leans toward her niece and asks, point blank, “How can you stand it?”

  Camila would like to say, “I can’t, Mon; I’m desperate; take me back when you go home.” But, she has developed the habit of accommodating, and her recent revolt has been mostly internal, except of course, when it leaks out in the presence of her stepmother. Unless Camila catches herself, she will say something rude that will bring that look into her stepmother’s face.

  “You are looking more and more like your mother,” Mon says, cocking her head this way and that as if to see her niece from different angles.

  Camila loves to hear this compliment. She glances up at Salomé’s portrait, an oil portrait her father recently commissioned by an artist in London. The painting used to hang in Papancho’s office, but when he moved his practice to his home, he asked Camila if she would like to have the picture in her room. Camila guesses that Tivisita might have complained that her predecessor’s portrait should not hang in the new family’s parlor.

  Her aunt is looking at the portrait and shaking her head. “That’s not what your mother looked like.”

  Camila loves this portrait. She always brings Guarina back here so that her friend can see what a beautiful mother she had, as beautiful as Tivisita, though darker-featured, with sparkling black eyes and a pretty, aquiline nose and rosebud mouth. She does not want to hear that her mother did not look like this. But in fact, when her father brought the portrait home from his office, Tivisita also observed that the picture was not really a true semblance of the Salomé she knew. That time her father shared in Camila’s annoyance. “Of course it is, Tivisita. It’s just that by the time you knew Salomé, she was already quite ill.”

  “Papancho says it is a true likeness,” Camila insists. “Before Mamá got sick,” Camila adds, to soften the defiance in her voice.

  Her aunt is studying the portrait, shaking her head. “Your mother was much darker, for one thing.”

  “As dark as me?” Camila wants to know. Even though she herself is quite light-skinned, next to the pale Tivisita and the new brood, Camila looks like one of the servant girls.

  Her aunt hesitates, “Darker. Pedro’s color, with the same features.”

  Camila can barely remember her brother’s color, much less his features. He left Cuba three years ago, mailing the farewell letter Camila recently found in her father’s copy of Rodó’s Ariel just before boarding the ship.

  By the time you receive this, Papancho, I will be bound for the land of the Aztecs. I fear that if I stay, I will succumb, like my mother, to moral asphyxiation.

  Moral asphyxiation? Everyone knows her mother died of consumption! What is she to make of her brother’s diagnosis? She tries to picture his handsome, swarthy face but Pedro’s image has become so faded that Camila would probably not recognize him were she to pass him walking down a crowded street in downtown Santiago de Cuba. Would he turn and gaze after her only if her stepmother were along? she wonders with a pang.

  “They say Mamá was quite tall. Very attractive,” Camila continues, hoping her aunt will supply more details, filling in the many blanks in her head.

  Mon looks at Camila a moment as if trying to decide something, before waving her questions away. “Get to know your mother from her poems. That is the truest Salomé. That is Salomé before . . .” She trails off. Camila is so sure she can complete the sentence that she does not need to ask if her aunt is referring to Papancho.

  “I know all Mamá’s poems by heart,” Camila boasts. In fact, she loves to rehearse the poems with Guarina, reciting while her friend follows along in the book.

  Her aunt smiles proudly and pulls her rocker toward one of the trunks she has been unpacking. A third and fourth trunk with books the family left behind when they emigrated to Cuba have been stored in the front parlor. Two men unpacked the wagon of baggage that followed the coach up the hill. “You came with a whole household!” Pimpa observed, initiating the war that would soon rage between the two outspoken sisters-in-law.

  “I brought some of your mother’s things that I think you should have,” Ramona explains. She unpacks a silver comb that she says Salomé’s father gave her on her fifteenth birthday and a black silk dress which she spreads on the bed. Camila smooths out the fabric with the palm of her hand, a dark silhouette of her mother’s body. From a velvet reticule, Mon withdraws a gold medallion and a small book whose binding looks hand-sewn. She lays these articles on the lap of the dress. “She wore that dress the night she got the national medal. Those are the original poems—”

  “Her book?”

  Her aunt shakes her head. “No, your father tinkered with those. These are the ones I copied down from the originals. Some day I hope you or Pedro—since you’re the ones inclined in that direction—I hope you will publish them.”

  Camila picks up the book and opens it. The pages are roughcut, and each time she turns one, the binding strains, so that she is afraid the whole will come apart in her hands. She begins to read “Sombras” and since she knows the published poem by heart, she can make
out the small differences. “Why did Papancho do that?”

  “He thought he knew better,” Mon says, twisting her mouth as if to knot it shut.

  Just then, there is a soft knock on the door. “May I come in?” Tivisita calls out. Camila feels her shoulders tensing.

  “Of course, you may come in, Tivisita,” Mon says in a voice loaded with patience.

  The door opens, and Tivisita peeks in. Her eyes fall on the bed, where the dress and medal are laid out.

  “I’m intruding,” she states, the edge of a question in her voice. She wants so much to be asked into this moment of privacy. Camila feels herself weakening and glances at Mon to see if her aunt might want to collude in indulging the nervous woman.

  “I haven’t seen my Camila for five years,” Mon says firmly. “We’re just catching up with each other. Aren’t we?”

  Tivisita looks as if she has just been slapped. Why can’t she be a horrible stepmother so I can hate her? Camila wonders. Instead, she feels a stirring of affection that she does not want to feel. It would amount to betraying her mother.

  “Of course you want some time together,” Tivisita says, pulling the door quietly closed.

  “We’ll be out soon,” Camila calls after the retreating footsteps. Then, just to be sure her aunt knows that she, Camila, does not like Tivisita either, she rolls her eyes skyward.

  THE FIRST SUNDAY OF Mon’s visit, Camila asks that her friends Guarina and Primitivo be invited to the big dinner at noon. Her stepmother, of course, turns the gathering into a repeat birthday party, since Mon missed the April festivities. Paper streamers hang from the pillars of the galería just as they did for her quinceañera party. Back then, a group of Max’s musician friends played, and everyone danced on a makeshift platform set up in the garden. Primitivo had written her a poem, “Rimas galantes,” and he recited it to her as they danced a danzón. The first dance, a waltz, had been reserved for her father. Her stepmother had actually been nice about it and taken herself and the three young boys and Pimpa for an overnight outing to Cuabitas, letting Camila be the mistress of the house, for once.

  Today, just before her friends are expected, Camila, dressed in her mother’s black dress with the silver comb in her hair, joins the family in the front parlor.

  The moment she comes into the room, Papancho’s face clouds over. He pales and puts his hand to his heart—the threat of a heart attack always part of his performance of displeasure. “That is not appropriate for a quinceañera party.”

  “Why not?” Mon has come in behind Camila, dressed in what looks like gray drapery. With her girth, Mon’s clothes have no shape to them.

  “Black is not the color for a birthday party. And I hardly have to tell you, Mon, that such a dress brings painful memories.”

  “How about your beautiful lavender,” Tivisita says, helpfully. She comes forward to escort Camila out of the room, almost as if the tone between Pancho and Mon is not appropriate for a young lady to listen to. The little boys are still in their room being dressed, and the punctual Primitivo has not yet arrived. As for Guarina, she is being picked up by Max, which means she will not be on time, as Max is always late for anything someone else has planned. “Your lavender dress will go beautifully with that gold medallion.”

  “I hate that dress,” Camila blurts out, knowing full well the comment will upset her stepmother. The dress, fussy with bows and gathers, was a gift from Tivisita for her quinceañera party. Camila never liked the dress, but Papancho insisted she wear it so as not to hurt her stepmother’s feelings. “She hunted all over Havana for that dress,” her father had explained to Camila.

  “But it looks so nice on you,” Tivisita says quietly. That look comes into her eyes: something she wants to say but cannot bring herself to mention to her stepdaughter.

  Together, they leave the room, the voices in the background rising, especially when Pimpa joins the discussion of what is and is not appropriate for a young girl of fifteen to wear to a quinceañera party.

  Back in Camila’s room, Tivisita opens the mahogany armoire. “What would you like to wear, Camila? I mean, besides that dress.”

  “The beautiful lavender,” Camila says with more sarcasm in her voice than she had intended.

  “Why do you say that?” Tivisita asks, looking pained.

  “Because if I don’t wear it, I will be in trouble with Papancho.”

  Tivisita nods thoughtfully, as if she is finally realizing Camila’s predicament. “I understand,” she says, which surprises Camila in turn, as her stepmother has always seemed a shallow woman, someone whose thoughts could be skimmed from the surface of whatever she was saying.

  They arrive at a compromise dress—neither her mother’s black silk nor the overdone lavender gown, but a cream lace dress that has recently been delivered by the seamstress to the house. “Are you sure, Camila?” Tivisita hesitates. The dress has been made expressly for her commencement in September. “It’s rather dressy for just a dinner party, don’t you think?”

  Of course, her stepmother is right. But Camila refuses to alter her choice and find herself in agreement with the woman. “That’s what I want to wear,” she says, biting her lip so as not to cry at her own awful peevishness.

  Tivisita glances up at the portrait above Camila’s bed, an uncertain look on her face. She is a small, delicate woman, so that Camila always feels she should be nicer because she towers over her—as if over a child. When Tivisita finally nods, Camila can see the hairpins holding up the pompadour on top of her head. “I’ll go fetch it then.”

  The dress is being stored in Tivisita’s armoire under a sheet for protection. Camila chose the fabric and lace trimmings in part to aggravate her stepmother, who felt that such a dress would be too extravagant for an afternoon graduation.

  As she reenters the parlor, she finds her father unpacking books from the trunk, while Mon on a small ladder places them on the shelves. How did they manage to make peace? she wonders. As querulous as her aunt is, she has never disowned Papancho and his new family. “You can’t choose who you are related to,” she often reminds Camila.

  “Now that is much better,” Papancho says, smiling at Tivisita.

  Look at me! Camila wants to cry out. Almost as if he has heard her thoughts, her father turns to her. “That is a beautiful dress, Camila. You look like a bride!”

  “I love your dress,” Guarina agrees when she arrives a moment later.

  Her brother Max follows behind Camila’s girlfriend. “I only surround myself with good-looking women,” he flirts. Guarina hides her smile behind a gloved hand. At twenty-four, Max is nine years older than Camila and Guarina. Why can’t he find a girlfriend his own age? Camila thinks as she slips her arm through Guarina’s in a proprietary way.

  As Primitivo takes his place beside her at the table, he leans over and whispers, “You look lovely, Camila, just like your mother.”

  Camila colors with pleasure. But a moment later, she realizes that Primitivo has never seen an image of Salomé. The only portrait hangs in her bedroom, which the young man is not allowed to enter. He must be comparing her to her stepmother!

  He can stick his compliment where the sun never shines, thank you!

  HER FATHER TINKLES HIS glass with his spoon, calling the table to attention. He is so handsome and elegant with his silvering hair and mustache there at the head of the table. Guarina has confessed to Camila that her father looks “very presidential.”

  In the silence before Papancho intones grace, the parrot calls out, “Chow time, amigos!”

  The children laugh, but Camila’s face burns with embarrassment.

  “¿Qué dice ese bendito animal?” Mon asks, directing her question at Camila as if only her niece can be trusted to tell her the truth of what this dreadful animal is saying.

  “It says to eat your food!” Cotú, the oldest of the half brothers, announces to the old woman. He has already stuffed his mouth with mashed plantains, which he displays to the table as if to demonstr
ate how it is one chows.

  “Cotubanamá, por Dios,” Tivisita says, shaking her head with obvious pride. The boy grins, biding his time. “I am so sorry, Mon, you know how children are.”

  “Some children,” Mon observes.

  “My theory is that the parrot was a mascot for the rough riders,” Max observes, no doubt hoping to change the subject. “That’s how he picked up all those ill-mannered expressions in English.”

  “Ree-mem-berrr-da-Maine!” Cotú calls out. “Da-hell-to-Espain!” Eduardo and Rodolfo join in.

  “Hush now,” Camila says quickly before Paco becomes encouraged and goes through his whole repertoire of disgusting Americanisms. The boys glance up at her, little Rodolfo offering her his most charming smile. He looks so much like Tivisita! she suddenly thinks.

  Today, they are dressed like sailors in navy blue outfits with white trimming, Rodolfo’s ribboned cap still on his head. The poor child has been jealous for days, since Mon arrived, and his favorite companion, big sister Mamila, has been sequestered away in her bedroom, talking, talking, talking, refusing to open the door to his howls.

  “I would like to make a toast,” Max stands up. Her brother has gotten so stout and manly in the last few months. For the past year, he has lived in Mexico with Pedro, but after a bout of lung trouble, which Papancho feared was tuberculosis, Max came home to recuperate. He has been staying up in the country, at Cuabitas, where fresh air, daily exercise, and five shots of rum a day have restored him to near perfect health. Love is doing the rest.

  “This is a splendid gathering,” Max begins, removing a sheet of folded paper from his pocket. “Not since Greece have so many Graces gathered together.” Camila hates it when Max gushes with compliments. It’s so embarrassing. She looks over at her friend to share a smirk, but Guarina is smiling. “And so in honor of my dear aunt and sister and her lovely friend,” a nod in Guarina’s direction, “I have composed a poem for the occasion—”

  “Can we eat first?” Eduardo pleads, though he knows the rules. Poetry is sacred in this household. Whenever anyone stands up to recite, all forks and spoons must be laid down.