The Mortifications (32 page)

Where have you been? Ulises asked her.

I don't want to tell you, Isabel said. But isn't it obvious? I'm with the religious again.

What church? Ulises asked.

A parish somewhere in Cuba, she said.

Did you know I had come back?

Yes, but I haven't known for long. I visited the work camps to look for you. I asked every prisoner I met about a bald giant doing time. Some of them said they had seen you before, but they could never remember where. Where did they hide you?

Somewhere not far from here, just outside Santiago. I was in solitary. They thought I was a threat. How did you know I was here?

A month ago I met some military at a church in San Luis. One of the sisters introduced me to a private who'd been a guard at a prison she'd passed through. He said that he'd seen you but that you'd been released. That you were sent home to grow food for the state.

Tomatoes, he said.

I didn't think I would see you again, she said.

I thought that's what you were after, which makes me wonder why you looked for me. If I was so hard to find, why not take that as your excuse?

I came to tell you that my daughter was born, she said.

You have a daughter, Ulises said, and he felt the need to lie down and close his eyes.

He was overwhelmed by two things: the tender fact that his sister would find him to share this news, and the realization that children can sometimes make their parents human again. Despite Isabel's veil and her hard eyes, she was suddenly a mother to him.

He managed to ask, When?

The day before I came down the mountain, Isabel told him. I would have come to see Ma sooner, but the girl came when I wasn't expecting her. She was early, dangerously so.

You wanted to see Ma but couldn't.

Yes and no, Isabel said. I wasn't sure. Then I had her, and I was terrified that my last image of Ma would be her crying for me as I left on a mission. I felt this desire all the way inside my bones to see how she'd changed, how she was different. I wanted to know as much about her as possible and not just what I remembered from Hartford. And then I decided I should be there when she went.

I remember that kiss, Ulises said. He paused. Why didn't you bring the baby with you? What if she'd died?

I was afraid, Isabel said. So I left her with the women at the camp. They said she would be fine, and I saw Adelina and Augusto and thought, yes, she will be fine. But I was also superstitious. I didn't want her to see anyone's face in case she might remember something. In case one day she got curious about a memory.

What's her name?

If I tell you, you might try to find her. Cuba isn't so large. There are only so many convents.

I could ask one of your sisters right now, but I'm done chasing after you, he said. I was already convinced I would never see you again.

Isabel gathered her hands into a knot. She said, To me she is Yerma Soledad.

That's beautiful, but what do you mean
to me
? Does she have another name? Does she have an alias? Do you really not trust that I won't come looking for you?

Isabel's eyes reddened, and she placed a hand on her throat. She wiped her face and tucked her veil under her chin.

Yerma is an orphan, Isabel said. She lives with other orphans at an orphanage. The parish runs the orphanage, and we look after the children who are there, including Yerma.

But she's not on orphan, Ulises said. She has her mother.

Everyone else, Isabel said, calls her Lucia. They tell her that I found her during my mission work in the countryside. They tell her I knew her mother but that she died in childbirth, and I brought her to the orphanage so that she could be taken care of, which was her mother's dying wish.

Why do they tell her that?

Because that's what I told them, Isabel said. The moment we're born, we begin to want. If we're lucky, satisfaction follows. But Yerma won't ever be satisfied, not with this family. Not if there's someone, especially her mother, who can only give her half answers. Not if everything I tell her leads to more questions.

Then Isabel said, Promise me that you'll never try to see her. Promise me that you will leave her alone.

This is why you came? Ulises asked. Because I could ruin Yerma's life by finding her?

Ulises stepped closer to Isabel. Suddenly he could smell her odor, which was something of the body and something from a cheap washing machine, and he knew without thinking it that the nuns did not wash their clothes often, nor did they shower with expensive soap—two inclinations toward vanity. Being a nun is giving things away, he thought. Being a nun is being chaste, which is the same as renouncing motherhood. Under the veil Isabel's hair was long, and Ulises could see how it had to be rolled together and pinned up so as not to drop beneath the cape of the fabric. If it was pulled back any tighter, she would look as bald as a woman suffering chemotherapy.

Ulises asked, Did Ma know? Did you tell her?

I don't know if she knew or if she really understood. She was so close to the end by the time I arrived. But, yes, I told her. She squeezed my hand. She didn't ask any questions.

Isabel touched her face. The way her hand moved looked as though she were forming a sign, albeit a mysterious sign no one but she understood. She looked at her brother and said, I wanted her to know me just then. I think she did.

Ulises thought,
He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who is victorious will not be hurt at all by the second death.

He took his sister's hand in his. Yerma will never know me, he said.

Isabel embraced Ulises, and he felt her breath on his neck.

Nearby, the other sisters had gathered to go. They stirred without speaking, and their skirts churned the air beneath them.

I'm sorry, Isabel whispered into her brother's skin. I've come and gone as I've wanted to. I can't imagine what you think of me.

Ulises said, When I wake in the morning, you are my first thought. When I go to bed at night, you are my last. You haven't fallen out of grace.

She kissed his cheek, and they said good-bye.

Early the next morning Adelina and Augusto found Ulises alone in the kitchen, sitting in his dirtied work clothes and drinking coffee.

You should be gone, Adelina said.

I'm not going to Havana this weekend.

Why not? Augusto asked.

I don't feel like it.

You're sick, the boy said.

No, Ulises said. My sister came to see me yesterday, and we haven't spoken in a long, long time. It wore me out.

We have an aunt? Adelina said.

No, not exactly, Ulises said.

You said she was your sister, Augusto said.

She is.

You're not our father? Adelina asked.

Well, no, Ulises said. Not in a biological sense.

Do you know what happened to him? Adelina asked. Or our mother?

Augusto added, Do you know where they are? Are they farmers like us? What language do they speak?

Ulises did not know what to tell them, and he said as much to Inez the following week when he returned to Havana.

You can't lie to them, Inez said. Even if your sister would.

Ulises felt the same way, but still he said, If I tell them who their parents were or might have been, then I will have to tell them about the rebel camp. If I tell them that, they might run up into the hills to see the old shacks. If they see the camp, they might want to know about my father and what he did. I would have to tell them about Isabel, and then they might want to find her. They don't know that they might have a cousin, or maybe three cousins, and maybe they'd run off looking for her or them.

What you tell them might also be a reason for them to stay, she said. Or to come back to you. You're the only one who knows their histories. But probably they're just curious children who have an itch to scratch.

They might abandon me to see about their real family.

It sounds as though you've grown to love them, Inez said.

Eventually, then, Ulises gave in to the children's demands for answers, knowing how powerful the draw of the past was and how dumb it was to fight it. Saying first, Know this above all: fate is family, and family is fate, Ulises began the arduous task of explaining to Augusto and Adelina where they had come from. He began with his own childhood, what he could remember of it, and told the children about Isabel, Soledad, and Uxbal. He told them where the tomato vines on his plantation originally came from. He told them about the packinghouse church and his sister's singing, the old guava crates men used to sit on, the hummingbird traps his father used to step on. He explained what it was like to ride a train for the first time and how much colder it was up north than it was on the island. The story, Ulises quickly understood, was much too long and possessed too many details, so after a while he limited himself to one or two hours a night alone in the garden with the children by the gravestones. In this fashion he made his way toward the distant end, which was only Augusto and Adelina's beginnings, but he hoped, after a while, that hearing everything was enough of an answer as to why the two of them lived with a perfect stranger in Buey Arriba. Some nights he forgot where he had left off or what he'd already told them, but the children never forgot; they knew exactly what his last word had been, and this should not have surprised him. They were good, obedient children, and though they spoke with odd accents, they listened extremely well, perched as they were, like bee hummingbirds, on the various strands and branches of the account of their creation, of Ulises's life, and of the manner in which he eventually returned to Cuba.

All my gratitude and appreciation to:

PJ Mark, for the tremendous time, patience, insight, and energy you gave to this book.

Marya Spence, for your careful readings and criticism.

Tim Duggan, for shepherding this novel into the world and for helping me to discover its final form.

Will Wolfslau, Rachel Rokicki, Sarah Grimm, and everyone at Crown Publishing, for their extraordinary support.

Erin McGraw, for the endless wisdom you have shared and continue to share with me—if there is any soul in this story, it is because of your intellect, friendship, and dedication.

Andrew Hudgins, for teaching me how to read and write another way, and for your mostly funny jokes.

Michelle Herman, Lee K. Abbott, and Lee Martin, for your teaching and guidance.

All my peers, friends, and colleagues of The Ohio State University MFA program.

My truly remarkable friends and first-readers Bill Riley, Clayton Clark, Daniel Carter, Alex Streiff, and Gabe Urza—I am wildly fortunate to have found and kept as confidants such funny, intelligent, and compassionate folk.

My supportive and loving friends Morgan Lord, Abraham Stein, Peter Harrison, Daniel Beaulieu, Stefanie Carrabba, Lindsey Pryor, Jessica Corey, Chris Markunas, Joe Scapellato, Dustyn Martincich, Erica Delsandro, and, of course, the incomparable duo of Christopher and Erin Maskwa.

My friends and colleagues at Bucknell, Susquehanna, Sewanee, IAIA, Nouvella Books, and the University of Michigan.

My incredible parents, Debra and Carlos.

My wonderful siblings, Aubrey and Dan.

All the joyous new members of my clan: Keri, Selena, Ava, Lise, Adam, Delilah, Nic, and Gaylyn.

The entire Palacio family.

My wondrous creature of a daughter, Esmé Ofelia.

Lastly, there is a love in my life I will never deserve but still get to call my own—te quiero mucho, Claire Vaye.

Derek Palacio received his MFA in creative writing from The Ohio State University. His short story “Sugarcane” appeared in
The O. Henry Prize Stories 2013,
and his novella,
How to Shake the Other Man,
was published by Nouvella Books in the same year. He is the co-director, with Claire Vaye Watkins, of the Mojave School, a free creative writing workshop for teenagers in rural Nevada. He lives and teaches in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and is a faculty member of the Institute of American Indian Arts MFA program.