In the Name of Salome

by Julia Alvarez

  Today, Papancho intercedes on their behalf. “I think it is best if we wait for the poem until later, son, so the food does not get cold.”

  Camila can tell Max is annoyed to have his poem deferred, but he will not show his temper in front of lovely Guarina. Instead, he sits down and begins reciting it quietly just to her, not realizing that he is sitting on the side of her bad ear. But Camila has promised not to say anything to anyone about her friend’s increasing deafness. They have traded secrets: Guarina’s deafness for Camila’s first kiss from Primitivo; Camila’s growing annoyance with her stepmother for Guarina’s frustrations with her strict father, the general; their likes and dislikes among the young people around. But there is a secret Camila cannot admit even to her best friend: the funny sensations she has when they have sat together in bed, propped up on pillows, reading her mother’s poems.

  Glancing around the table, Camila sighs with relief. Everyone seems to be finally at peace: Primitivo and Max are in deep conversation with Mon over one of Salomé’s poems. At the other head of the table, Papancho is conversing with Guarina, trying to extract conversation from the shy girl. The boys are comparing mouthfuls, Pimpa fussing now at them, now at their nanny Regina. Only Tivisita at the far end seems withdrawn, listlessly spooning her sancocho into her mouth. Camila has a sudden shocking premonition: Tivisita is going to die soon. But perhaps this thought is not so much a premonition as another of those secret wishes she cannot talk about, even to Guarina.

  She feels awful when these dark thoughts come in her head. And yet, she tells herself, it is probably no different from the way Tivisita feels about her. No doubt her stepmother wishes Camila had died right along with her mother in that dark sickroom. She remembers how angry she was when Tivisita named her first child, Salomé, as if wanting to replace both Camila and her mother. “It’s my mother’s name, and she gave it to me,” she had told her stepmother. “Salomé Camila.” Later, when the infant died, Camila felt guilty, as if it were her anger that caused it.

  But something has been happening in the weeks since she wrote to her brother Pedro. She no longer wishes she were dead. She finally has a lovely girlfriend and a young man who calls her lovely, even if he seems more taken with her mother’s poems and her stepmother’s looks than with her. But this is far better than the desperate loneliness of the last few years. Who knows? Maybe soon, she will surprise herself and burst out of her shell like the naked Venus in Pancho’s artbook from Paris that Camila loves to gaze at.

  Tivisita glances up, and catching Camila’s dreamy gaze, she smiles back. Quickly, Camila looks away before that other look comes on her stepmother’s face.

  “FELIZ CUMPLEAÑOS,” TIVISITA marches in, singing. The cake on its platter is blazing with candles. Behind her the two oldest boys are trying to follow the tune on their violins. Camila bites her lip so as not to laugh at the caterwauling sound.

  She glances toward her friends and smiles in apology. Thankfully, Guarina smiles back as if to say, Don’t worry. It’s just the same at my house.

  Why does Tivisita have to make her go through this? She knows how much Camila hates being the center of attention. The cake is a rich chocolate, her favorite, and Tivisita has gone to quite some trouble to make the little marzipan lady at the center. It is July, the heat in the kitchen is unbearable. Anyone making marzipan in this weather deserves a medal.

  Camila touches the medallion around her neck and whispers a quick apology. In your name, Salomé. How awful to compare her mother’s accomplishments to her stepmother’s marzipan.

  “What are you wishing for?” Cotú wants to know.

  “I can’t say,” Camila reminds him, though in fact, she has not made a wish, so concerned is she with her imagined offense to her mother’s memory.

  “Yes, you can! Tell us your wish!” Cotú insists. The oldest of Papancho’s new family has a striking, indigenous look no one can trace to a known ancestor. Max’s theory is that the Taino name that Papancho once used as his pseudonym and then gave to his newborn son, Cotubanamá, has worked like the Creator’s Word in Genesis and made the boy into a likeness of his native name.

  “Wish! Wish!” Rodolfo beats heartily on his plate. His aunt Pimpa swoops down and wrests the spoon from his hand. The baby, of course, bursts out crying again.

  “Come sit by me,” Camila finally calls out when no one has been able to quiet the bawling boy. Across the table, Ramona is shaking her head at this new wife who cannot control her children.

  The baby’s high chair is brought around and placed beside Camila. To keep him happy, Camila turns to him periodically, reminding him of how they will go get seashells at the beach with Mon, how they will visit Cuabitas and catch butterflies and tickle big brother Max’s toes, how he can have a second serving of cake and keep the marzipan girl if he is a good boy.

  It happens so quickly that it takes a moment for Camila to realize why everyone is gaping at her. With his spoon piled high to feed his Mamila her birthday cake, Rodolfo has turned toward her and, of course, not managing the aim, lands the spoon on Camila’s chin and the chocolate cake goes tumbling down the front of her new dress.

  THAT NIGHT AFTER EVERYONE has gone to sleep, Camila commences her accustomed prowl of the house and garden, ending up as usual in her father’s study, where she reads until late hours. La dormilona, sleepyhead, she is known in the family. Everyone assumes that her late wakings, midmorning, have to do with her asthma, not her insomnia.

  Tonight, her father’s study is a mess of unpacked books in different stages of progression toward the shelves. There are textbooks from when her parents ran that progressive school in the capital, inspired by their friend Hostos; her father’s medical tomes, all in French; inscribed books that seem to have been given to her parents by various famous persons.

  Since her father’s library is now fully here in Cuba, it’s clear they are not going to go home any time soon. Papancho’s long debate whether to move the family back has always snagged on how he would earn a living there. It would be difficult to rebuild a medical practice at this late stage in his life, and the government posts he keeps getting offered pay more with prestige than with pesos.

  “I just want to stay here and take care of my patients,” Papancho claims. But any time he is called over to the home island to consult on some national problem or fill some brief, honorary post, he goes, and leaves the family behind. From time to time there have even been rumors that Don Pancho is being considered as a compromise presidential candidate. “Anything to serve my country,” her father has said, bowing his head to his duty, as if he wouldn’t love running a whole country, not just the small domain of his family.

  Seeing Mon again, Camila realizes how lonely she would feel if she did go back to live with her cranky aunt and ancient grandmother Minina and the ghost of her mother everywhere. But if only her father would allow her to visit Pedro, or at the very least to travel to Havana, where her brother Fran lives with his new wife, María, and see something of the world! Maybe she would get some inkling of what she is meant to do with her life, besides behave herself so as not to disappoint others.

  But her father does not like the idea of his children wandering off. It will be the death of him, he claims, putting his hand to his heart just to hear it mentioned. As an example, he cites the case of his own father. Papancho believes it was his departure from Santo Domingo that caused Don Noël’s death, just as it was Max’s absence in Mexico that brought about his incipient tuberculosis, and Pancho’s going off to study in Paris that caused Fran to lose his temper thirteen years later and kill a man. No wonder he doesn’t want Camila to leave his side. What unhappy thing would she become apart from him?

  My own person, she thinks, excited at the thought of what that might mean.

  Sitting in her father’s chair, Camila opens the first book in the pile before her. Lamartine’s poems, a gift to Herminia, whoever she is, from someone named Miguel Román. She turns several pages, looking for some further
clue as to how her father acquired the book. Tucked in the middle, she finds several letters from Paris, France, which her father must have written her mother during those years he studied medicine abroad, and one from her father to her uncle Federico, which seems to have been crumpled and then smoothed and folded back up.

  This is the first letter she reads, her heart racing, her chest tightening. Then, she goes on to the next letter, and the next. When she is done with Lamartine, she picks up Marco Polo.

  Book by book she goes, until she knows the whole story.

  “WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL me the truth?” Camila has never spoken to her aunt so boldly. Her voice is shaking. According to Doña Gertrudis, her bel canto teacher at the conservatorio, Camila’s voice is not strong enough to sing opera, a dream she has had ever since she heard Lucrezia Bori singing La Traviata in the opera house in Havana.

  It seems that whenever she feels a strong emotion, she cannot get enough air in her lungs, and her voice fades. She clears her throat and takes the deep breaths Doña Gertrudis has coached her to take before she begins an aria. The one thing she must not do is look at her mother’s portrait. That would undo her.

  “Calm yourself, Camila. There is nothing to get so upset about.”

  “How can you say that? I know everything!” And then, detail by detail, she enumerates the secrets she unearthed from reading her parents’ letters last night.

  “He even has another daughter. Her name is Mercedes. Mercedes Chrittia. She goes by her mother’s name.”

  Mon is shaking her head as if to keep the idea from taking root. “You’re coming home with me,” she says, plucking her handkerchief from her enormous bosom and blowing her nose. Camila feels that familiar tightness in her chest. But she does not like to cry in front of other people, not since she was very little and missed her mother so miserably she thought she, too, would die.

  “And there were others. Someone named Trini. And a Herminia.”

  “Herminia was your mother actually, Camila, a pseudonym she once used.”

  “I just want to know one thing,” Camila goes on, ignoring her aunt’s explanation. She can see Mon bracing herself, glancing worriedly toward the portrait above the bed. “I want to know about Papancho and Tivisita. I mean, Papancho remarried within the year. Even Roosevelt had the decency to wait two years before marrying his second wife—and he’s an American.” She doesn’t know quite what she means by that except that she detests the parrot’s freewheeling chatter and so assumes that those who trained him, the Americans, must also be lacking in proprieties.

  “I don’t know anything about that,” Mon says, crossing her arms, as if she were ready to block Camila’s access to the past. “All I know is Tivisita moved in right after Salomé got sick. Then of course, when you were born and your mother almost died . . .”

  This is a topic everyone always avoids. It’s as if they do not want Camila to make any association between her mother’s death and her own birth.

  “You were such a solace to your mother,” Ramona adds quickly. “That’s why even with the doctors’ prognosis, she got better. She lived for three more years. She lived those years for you, Camila. I do believe that.”

  “But why did Tivisita stay?” Camila persists. She still believes there is something her aunt is not telling her.

  “Your mother wanted her to stay. You were quite attached to her. You felt toward her the way your little half brother feels toward you.”

  Camila is so resistant to this idea she cannot believe anyone would think it was ever in her head.

  “Tivisita has always been good to you.” Her aunt sighs as if she has to overcome her own resistance toward saying anything kind about Papancho’s new wife. “It was a bad labor, as you can imagine. Your mother, your father, even I—we all thought you were dead. Tivisita saved your life—”

  “That’s not true!” Camila objects, though, in truth, there is no memory at all she can put in its place. As much as she hates crying in front of anybody, her eyes are wet and burning. She looks toward her mother’s portrait, as if for protection, like a child being bullied. Through her tears, her mother’s blurry, pretty face resembles Tivisita’s.

  The knock makes them both jump. They look at each other a moment, and quickly Camila dries her eyes. This time Tivisita does not wait to be invited inside. She enters the room, bearing the washed dress on its hanger like a trophy, its front immaculate.

  OCHO

  Luz

  1893 – 1894

  I HAD NOT BEEN feeling well for weeks. My stomach was upset. My bones were aching. My lungs hungering for air. Pancho and I stopped our relations, both of us alarmed at this return of bad health. When I missed the first month, I did not worry. With my loss of weight, I often went months without seeing blood on the cloth I wore as a precaution.

  That day, I had just sent my last student home, and I was climbing the stairs when I was overcome by a fit of coughing. I sat down on the steps, too weak to continue, and held my handkerchief to my mouth. When I folded it over and saw the dark stain, my first crazy thought was: I’ve got my menses back!

  I sat there, trying to catch my breath, slowly putting it all together:

  I was with child.

  I was dying of consumption.

  ONE THING I KNEW. No one else must know or they would insist on terminating the pregnancy to save me. Only when I was too far along would I tell them about my daughter.

  I say “my daughter” because from the beginning I knew. Maybe it was the strange clairvoyance that had affected me the night of elections, the clairvoyance—I now saw—of the dying. As the months progressed, there were other signs. I carried this baby high, and the old people like Mamá say it is a sign of a girl to be close to her mother’s heart.

  Of course, the larger she got, the harder it was for me to breathe. Nights when I woke up in a fit of coughing, I was afraid that I would expel her right along with the bloody phlegm that was also becoming increasingly difficult to conceal from others.

  Especially from Tivisita, who had stayed behind to help me when her family had been forced to emigrate to Haiti. She directed the household while I conserved what little strength I had to run my school. Perhaps to reward him for his having distanced himself from Marchena’s party, Lilís had granted Pancho a license to continue his medical practice in spite of complaints. And with that dubious blessing, Pancho struggled along.

  Every morning I tried to remember to wash out my chamber pot before hurrying downstairs. But I must have forgotten one morning. Before I was even finished with classes, Pancho was at the door, looking grave.

  I told myself to take slow breaths so as not to bring on a fit of coughing. With so many executions and banishments and my own bad health, I was full of dread those days. “What is wrong?” I whispered, alarmed.

  He motioned for me to come upstairs to his office. I followed him to the foot of the stairs and looked up that dark passageway. I knew I could not make it without breaking down coughing. “Pancho,” I called up.

  He was already at the landing when he turned around and understood I could not follow. Up there, with the light from the second-story windows behind him, he seemed an archangel descending to deliver a message I already knew.

  “You have the tubercle bacilli,” he announced sadly. “Tivisita showed me the sputum, and we examined it under my microscope.” The thought of the two of them studying the mess in my chamber pot made me burst out laughing.

  Pancho looked at me perplexed before he went on. “We must close the instituto, Salomé—”

  This was a danger I had not foreseen: the termination of my pregnancy, yes, but not of the school I had worked for twelve years to establish. And now that it was flourishing, I did not want to shut it down. “There’s no need for that,” I put in. “Ramona can take over again until I come back.”

  “It will continue to be a preoccupation.” Pancho was shaking his head. “And we must do everything in the world to save you.”

  Not j
ust me, I thought. With four missed menses, I knew she was now past danger. “Pancho,” I said, as he came down the steps toward me. “I have another secret to tell you.”

  ALFONSECA WAS FURIOUS WHEN I told him.

  “Pero Doña Salomé, this is a locura! I might as well give you a cup of hemlock. We must terminate immediately,” he addressed Pancho, as if the two of them were laborers, deciding on the fate of a coconut tree that stood in the way of their progress.

  Pancho’s hands were in his pocket, his head bowed. “She’s past the mark, José, past the mark. We have to go through with it.”

  “Una locura,” Alfonseca repeated.

  “Let’s concentrate on what we are going to do to save this child,” I suggested. I felt as if I were in my classroom, trying to encourage the students not to give up on a difficult mathematics problem.

  “We should be thinking about what we can do to save the mother,” Alfonseca disagreed. “You have three other children who need you, Doña Salomé.”

  It was then that I noticed my Pedro had come to the door. We wanted to keep the nature of my illness from the children. For one thing, were they to mention that Mamá had consumption, we might as well post a sign at the door: lepers within. Consumption, or tuberculosis as it was now being called, was everyone’s terror. Hundreds of thousands of people were dying of it. Even President Harrison’s wife in her big white mansion had died of it. But it was unclear whether the disease was contagious. No matter. Should Doña Salomé be diagnosed with consumption, Pancho’s medical practice would founder. And there would be no need to close down the instituto. The exodus would take care of that.

  But I also did not want anything to worry my boys. They had already been through so much in their young lives: an absent father, a sickly mother, so many revolts that they always asked before their visits to their grandmother and aunt, “If war breaks out, do we stay at Mon’s or do we try to come home?”