The Mortifications (26 page)

Eventually, or perhaps as a result of what Ulises witnessed and felt, he asked Isabel to teach him sign language, and to his joy—the commingled joy of learning he'd always possessed paired with the joy of rediscovering, or reseeing, his sister—he found it fascinating. She made him sit and face her, and he was forbidden to talk. First she taught him the alphabet, and then she taught him the basics of making it through the day. She taught him the signs for
here, there, now, stop, more, yes, please, may I,
and
good night.
He caught on quickly in his mind, but his hands, more accustomed to the blunt motions of cutting, twisting, and pulling, took longer to remember the more delicate gestures. The children were not allowed in the chapel during lessons, because they were distracting, and so Ulises and Isabel were often alone together.

In the slanted light of late afternoon, Ulises spent hours studying his sister's face. He saw that she had their father's nose, which was more Mediterranean than Continental. Her eyes were Soledad's as well as her forehead. Her cheeks were a cross between the parents, and her lips seemed to come from no one, or maybe from a distant relative or grandparent they had not known. Ulises watched as Isabel spelled words and spoke sounds, each accompanied by a slow but deliberate and exact series of minor movements. There was a synchronicity to her hands and face, and it was mesmerizing to watch.

Some nights Ulises found himself dreaming about Isabel's hands. In his dreams they touched his face and stayed there, and the dream paused at such moments till he woke. They disturbed Ulises because they seemed illicit, as if to dream of his sister were the same as to dream of her naked.

Awake, Isabel was patient with him, perhaps more so than with the children, who had no other language and would assimilate easily whatever knowledge she offered them. There was a faith she had in him that he should and could learn to properly ask with his hands,
May I sit here?
and,
Will you bring me a towel?
She was teaching him to speak all over again, and every day he improved, he felt closer to her, more drawn into her world, and after some time he realized that he'd been expelled from the inner lives of his family since the start, since the boat trip from Havana to Miami, since his mother held a pair of sewing shears to his neck. Isabel had sunk down into her faith in God and her father, and his mother had found another love to whom she could devote herself. Ulises understood that he'd been alone all these years and that he'd grown used to his solitary lifestyle. He'd made no friends in school, had worked night and day in fields alongside migrant workers, and both his mother and sister, the two women of his life, had gone mute in conjunction with each other. And though he perhaps had done so to survive, he'd forgotten them. Yet here in Cuba, inside a makeshift chapel and amid the buzz of hummingbirds, Ulises remembered his sister. He felt a part of her again, and he felt wanted in her heart. The feeling overwhelmed him, and one afternoon he cried when she tried to correct one of his signs, a failed attempt at
Today will be sunny.

What's the matter? she asked.

I'm sorry. I know now that forgetting is a sin.

Isabel said nothing, but she touched his face.

At the same time, Ulises had other dreams as well, dreams he was not so fond of. He dreamt of a man with swollen arms coming into his room and rubbing his back, and he awoke from these visions in a state of apprehension, realizing every time he opened his eyes that he was in a strange place. Ulises thought he understood the meaning of his reveries, his brain working over the proximity of his father, an oddity after such a long separation manifesting itself in his nightmares.

He did consider the vague possibility that Uxbal visited him in his sleep. The old man had seemed curious in their conversation, and Ulises wasn't sure if Uxbal believed what he'd been told about Soledad. He might have made his way to Ulises's lean-to—a second lean-to since added to the chapel—to watch the sleeping stranger, the prodigal son, for signs of truth on his face. He likely wanted to know if it was worth worrying over the news of his wife's imminent death. Uxbal, Isabel had said more than once, drifted in and out of consciousness, and Ulises had witnessed the vacillating attention. Maybe he'd come in the blue light of morning to simply touch Ulises and see if he was real. His son might have been an apparition or a hallucination brought on by his poor health, and perhaps Uxbal worried that he was seeing things. Perhaps Ulises was a manifestation of guilt. Uxbal saw every day his daughter living in squalor, and it was his fault. By continuing to live, he'd drawn her back to Cuba and to this poverty, but he couldn't admit it to himself, so his mind, clearly rotting along with his heart and kidneys, created a son who might tell him just that.

But Ulises stopped himself when he realized he was speculating a remorseful Uxbal, and that was not what he'd encountered. Also, the old man was obviously too ill to ever get out of bed more than once a day. He would have collapsed trying to stoop down into Ulises's tight quarters. Uxbal was barely a man anymore, and as Ulises thought about this, he chastised himself for considering the sickly creature a menace. Isabel, Ulises knew, had a large heart, a plainspoken and forceful heart but a brimming one nonetheless, and her plight now was one of sympathy, not obligation. He believed her when she said she would leave after Uxbal died. She would certainly leave.

Ulises's nightmares prompted him to ask Isabel about their father; she, unlike Ulises, would regularly go to the old man, and she had even begun bathing him again. Uxbal sometimes still got up at night to drink with the other rebels, but he didn't stay up as late, and he often fell asleep by the fire, leaving to whoever was still awake the responsibility of dragging his crumbled form back to his cot. His smell had also changed for the worse, Isabel told Ulises; she claimed that even after a wash he had a peculiar stench, a mushroom odor that seeped from the pores of his face.

He is beginning to fall apart from the inside out, she said.

What does that mean?

It can't be much longer now.

The psychologist said to Soledad, Soap operas are an interesting medium, aren't they?

What did Henri tell you? Never mind—I'm sure I can guess. Yes, I'm taking notes. No, I haven't really thought about why. I enjoy the game of keeping it straight. One sees a pattern after a while. I can guess about half the time where the story will go, who will die, who will live, et cetera. It keeps me occupied.

Why do you think Henri told me about the soap operas? the psychologist asked.

Because we're not fucking as much anymore, Soledad said, but then she apologized for her language. I'm drawing away from him. I feel it as much as he does. The sex has gotten boring. The soaps, they're not terribly exciting, but there's brainpower involved: Robert killed Madeline, who was sleeping with Joseph, who was Robert's bastard son…I enjoy how deep the story runs. There's an interconnectedness that's unavoidable.

The psychologist asked her to explain further. For instance, did she think there was a disconnectedness in her own life that led to her fascination with
As the World Turns
?

You're referring to my children.

Good, the psychologist said.

I'm dying, Soledad said.

You don't know that.

I don't want to spend my last days thinking about children whose lives I've mismanaged.

So you'll think about other families and their children? the psychologist asked.

I'll enjoy myself. Does that make me a terrible person? Does that make me disgusting? Reproachable?

Soledad waited for an answer, and then she said, Yes, I know it does.

She began to cry, but then she said to the psychologist, Henri was asleep one day, and he didn't see the special report that interrupted the show. It was about a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. They said it was going to pass over Cuba. Isn't it clear? My children are dead. Both of them. One I could not stop, and the other I sent there myself because I was too afraid to go. I've sent them both to their deaths.

You can't be sure, the psychologist said. Until you hear from someone, you can't be sure.

Bullshit, she said, and she started to cry again.

The psychologist sat up in his chair. Why are you afraid of going back? I think we should talk about that. I think maybe you should stop watching TV for a while. I think you should write about something else besides
As the World Turns.

Like what?

Cuba, the psychologist said. Take some notes. Maybe create a list of your own family members. Remember as much as you can. I think we have to go there to make any sense of this.

A week passed. The psychologist said, Read me what you wrote.

My family was from the east, just a mother and a half sister. The half sister meant another man for my mother, but I never met him. She told me barely anything about him, my sister's father, and she said just as little about my own father. He died on a boat, according to her, and I always believed it was
his
boat, and I often asked my mother why we never got it back, whether or not it was at the bottom of the ocean.

A half sister, the psychologist said.

I've never met her either, Soledad said. Her father took her away before I was born.

What did that do to your mother?

Her mother had felt guilty about the separation, especially toward her. It was as though Soledad had been robbed of an essential person in her life, a counterpart who watched the same things happen from nearly the same perspective. She imagined it would have been nothing unusual until they were older, until they got curious about their fathers. Then she and her half sister probably would have spent all their time trying to figure out what parts of them belonged to their fathers and what parts they shared from their mother. But talk like that would have driven her mother crazy.

Did you write your way to your own children?

No.

Do you think Isabel and Ulises spend much time looking for Uxbal in their own features?

My daughter has her father's arms and his constitution. My son is different. I'm not sure he even knows what to compare. He does sound a bit like his father. I once heard Ulises shouting in a tobacco field. He was calling to some of the other workers in Spanish, and I could hear the little booms of his soft consonants—all his
d
s and
b
s—bouncing down the row.

When he was still in high school, I used to attend his Latin Club orations. These were readings meant to show off the boys' impressive but useless skills. They all wore white collars and dark blue ties, and they would take turns reciting classic myths in Latin. I would sit at the back and sip weak coffee. Ulises never went first, and I think that's because he was one of the best. He would take the stand last, and his thick neck would bulge against the collar of his shirt. He wasn't as big as he is now, but I should have seen it coming. He would stand perfectly still, and only his mouth would move. The times I am remembering now, he hadn't yet learned how to look up at the audience, but that didn't matter, because his voice was so strong. The audience, we would all together put down our coffee and listen. The room hushed as a room does when a truly wonderful song comes on the stereo. Or the way a theater suddenly darkens when the starlet, the one we've all been waiting to see, comes onto the screen with her hair bouncing at her shoulders.

Lovely memory, the psychologist said.

Sentimental, Soledad said.

That was how Uxbal sounded?

I suppose so, Soledad said, but that seems like something I should have been more conscious of. And now I wonder, am I mistaken altogether? Was Ulises really so talented? Did others really put down their drinks to listen to him? Looking back, it seems hard to believe.

Did you ever tell Ulises this?

No. I stopped going after a while.

Why?

Henri and I had started dating.

The psychologist scribbled on his notepad, and Soledad heard how grating the sound of his pen could be, how it turned to claws from a distance.

She said, Can I ask you, do everyone's actions, all the pasts of your other patients, seem so obvious and trite in retrospect? Is there any mystery in why they do the things they do?

I can't talk about my other patients.

I feel like such an idiot.

Why?

I thought I had let go of my husband.

The psychologist said, Well.

You're on the verge of telling me these things are natural. That of course we hear or see our loved ones in the bodies of others, especially our children.

Did you write about Uxbal?

Some.

Please.

They met at a New Year's Eve party. Soledad was working for an English family as a housekeeper and a nanny. She didn't know whom Uxbal knew at the party, but he came, drank but did not get drunk, and stole her away from them. He told her his family had some land in Buey Arriba. He said the government had taken away his family's farm but not all of it. A house and a plot remained, and though he had an aunt, she was blind and couldn't take care of the place.

What was your impression of Uxbal when you first met?

He was very convincing.

Anything else?

He was very alone.

The counselor escorted Willems to the couch.

How's the sex? she asked.

It's stopped completely, Willems said. She just watches television now, though she's also doing writing assignments for her counselor. She's been sick again recently. The doctors aren't sure if she's weak from the chemo or if this is a sign that she's about to take a hard turn. It's not that she's exactly without energy, but she seems trapped in her own mind. She walks around the house with a faraway look on her face. I've spoken to her about it, but she says she's just thinking. I ask her about what, and she says, Cuba. The children. I ask her if she wants to talk, and she says no. She says she's just trying to hold it all together in her head, all those thoughts and memories. And I know I'm not a part of them.

How? the counselor asked.

Because when she comes out of her daze, she looks at me as though I'm a stranger. It takes her a moment to recognize me. What do you make of that?

What do you make of that? the counselor asked.

I don't have a fucking clue. I'm beginning to think these sessions are worthless. I do all the talking, and I don't feel any better for it. And the last time we met, the only conclusion we came to was that I'm becoming a myopic, sex-driven monster. Sex is all I've got left. It's the only damn thing we even talk about in here, and I'm treating Soledad like a body that stumbled into my room.

We can talk about other things, the counselor said. When Soledad says she's thinking about Cuba, what do you think she means?

I'm not entirely sure, Willems said, but there are times she just sits at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, and the tea goes cold because she gets so lost in her head. I sometimes wonder if she isn't just reimagining her life, wondering, maybe, what would have happened had she stayed.

Do you think she misses it?

You mean the time in her life when she had both her children? Willems asked. When everyone was under the same roof?

Willems looked out the window of the counselor's office and ignored the question, waving it off with his hand. It was an inane question. It had an obvious answer.

Your doctor tells me your recovery is starting to lag, the psychologist said. Are you eating well? Are you sleeping at night?

I try to eat whatever Henri makes me, and I'm awake all the time, Soledad said. Sometimes if I open the windows and let the room get cold, I can rest for an hour or two.

With your condition I would worry about a fever or pneumonia.

I'm not concerned about the cancer anymore. It's there. I'm living with it. I want to be comfortable when I can.

The psychologist said, Sometimes an illness, especially when it comes back, can seem permanent. It can feel as though it's become a part of us. Some of my patients have described their cancer as another organ, another limb.

They've only cut me up and taken things away.

How would you describe it?

I would call it a fog under the skin. Eventually, it will get to my lungs and choke me out.

That's very different from
living
with your cancer. It's more like waiting for it to take you over. I have to ask: are you experiencing any suicidal thoughts?

My body is not the problem. It's my heart. We haven't heard from my son in weeks, and the Cuban government isn't cooperating, which means Ulises and Isabel are still missing.

Your heart is part of your body.

I just want to see my children again.

You have to take care of yourself for that to happen.

Not if they're dead. If they're dead, then the longer I live, the longer it will be before I see them.

You think they're waiting for you in some afterlife?

I don't know, but I want to join them, wherever they are.

Willems canceled his next appointment with his counselor. He went walking through some of his tobacco fields east of the city. He walked for hours, staring at the ground, and if he kept his eyes on the leaves passing by his feet, then he swore he might as well have been in Cuba. Or Haiti. The dirt was just as dark. He went home.

Soledad was up and sitting at the kitchen table. Where have you been? she asked. I had a terrible session with my psychologist, and when I came home and found the house empty, I started to worry.

As she told him this, Willems watched her face, and he remembered something of the hunger in her eyes she once had for him. It made his chest ache, and he put his hand on her shoulder. He squeezed her neck.

That feels wonderful, she said.

Willems rubbed her shoulders with both hands, and Soledad moaned. They went up to the bedroom and had the slowest sex of their lives.

During the act, she'd been able to forget briefly about her children, about Cuba, and she found that tracing the hairs around Willems's nipples gave her some continued distraction from the bizarre constructions of her mind. As a result, she seemed alert, and Willems took the opportunity to say to her what he'd been thinking.

I think you might be losing your mind.

You think so?

Yes. Actually, the both of us. I'm starting to believe in my father's curse. I want to say it's breaking us. It took my mother from my father, and now it's taking you from me.

What's it responsible for? Soledad asked. Is it the cancer? Is it the sex? Or is it your bad luck? Is it having fallen in love with a woman who would die in front of you and leave behind a ridiculous family?

I don't know.

How does any of this fit with your family's past?

Who says these things are logical?

No one, she said. Except for you. Though you did tell me once that your grandfather eventually lost his mind. Perhaps we're headed in the same direction.

May I ask you something I probably shouldn't?

I don't think that's possible anymore.

What did you and the psychologist talk about in your sessions? What did you tell him?

Soledad pushed herself onto Henri's body. She pulled his head into the sweaty cavity of her chest.

I told him that Uxbal was a singer, that he sang at church, and that the first time we met, at a New Year's Eve party, he sang just for me. He and I had talked ourselves into a corner—not a standstill in the conversation, but an actual corner where we were alone—and the bells began to chime. The whole party began to sing. I only mouthed the words. Uxbal saw, and he said he wanted to kiss me, but only if I sang with him. I said I was too embarrassed, but he said it was fine. The point was many voices together. So I sang, and it was terrible. We kissed after the last refrain. I told the psychologist that being invited into the song by Uxbal was intoxicating. He had a sort of optimistic charm, and it made a space where he sang over me, but somehow my own voice still helped. It made the song a little more interesting, even though I was such a terrible singer.