Amparo’s life took on a strange quality. If asked, she would have said it began when the crucifix nailed over her bedroom door fell during a thunderstorm, a storm that seemed to crouch just above her roof. Thunder and lightning simultaneous, twin flashes and cracks sending the jalousies clattering in applause. It was during one of those wall-rattling thunderclaps that the wooden cross jumped off its nail and split apart, Jesus’s head and the upper-right half of his torso skidding into one corner of the room while the rest of him tumbled into the hallway as the quaking windows demanded an encore.
She knew it wasn’t an omen, just Mauricio’s poor workmanship. Since he’d died, so much of the house had fallen into disrepair, revealing wobbly floor tiles, chair legs glued together, frayed electrical wires patched with frayed tape. There were stranger items that still surprised her too, like pillowcases pushed into kitchen drawers, one of her head scarves secreted away inside of an empty clay pot, and a pair of Mauricio’s old shoes wedged into a corner of the icebox. The odd items misplaced throughout the house mystified her, especially after so many years of Mauricio’s absence, but she knew it was all his handiwork, the disarray that follows death.
So when the dropped cross splintered apart, she laughed an inaudible laugh as more thunder boomed, knowing that had probably been his intention all along, hanging the heavy wood on a nail so thin and delicate, the metal would one day buckle. And she realized that he had likely used those very same nails to hang all of her crosses, so before the storm could do any more damage, she dragged out the stepladder from behind the sideboard and removed all of the crosses in the house, seven in all. Just as she’d suspected, each nail was thin enough to hem a skirt. Each one bent under the weight of her beautiful crosses, the nails sometimes hammered in at odd angles, sometimes barely hammered in at all, just wedged between two slivers of cracked plaster.
She amassed her crosses on a tea tray. Once she polished each one, she would hire someone to rehang them for her, perhaps the neighbor’s son. But after a few days, the piled-up crosses and the tea tray were gone, and when she searched the house, she found them inside of what used to be Mauricio’s study along with several strips of cheesecloth and a jar of wax. She also found her son’s most recent letter folded underneath the heavy tray.
Had she somehow misplaced all of those things? She tried to remember having taken the crosses, the letter, the wax—all of it—into the study, but when she did, her entire body grew heavy and so, so tired. She considered polishing the crosses and going to the neighbor’s son for help rehanging them. Ofelio was generally willing to help her with such tasks. But the idea of talking to him and looking into his shining face, his shoulders so broad and straight as if he were the one carved from wood, and of craning her neck to ask for his help with that tremble that was now her voice and not just something she could clear away with a good cough, all of that felt like such a strain too. She left the study and closed the door behind her, leaving her son’s letter pinned underneath the tray overflowing with Jesus.
She remembered the crosses often, whenever she glanced up at the bare spots on the walls, the thin nails still sticking out over the thresholds like tiny steel thorns. She told herself she didn’t have the money to pay anyone to hang the crosses, but in truth, the house was transformed without Jesus’s tortured figure looming over her. Mauricio had been right about that. Seeing the Messiah’s suffering at each turn was oppressive. Yes, she crossed herself and asked forgiveness for feeling this way, but she could not deny her lightness. Knowing she did not have to rehang the crosses if she did not want to exhilarated her. No one visited her; no one would notice the change, and besides, even if what she was doing was sinful, God would forgive her. Jesus died so that she could be forgiven, after all.
It was this familiar consolation that quickly grew into a revelation. It was the very idea she’d been trying so hard to understand but never fully grasped for all of her life. Despite her best intentions, she would always be a sinner, and there was no other way to redeem herself aside from simply accepting God’s grace.
The idea sent heavy weights tumbling in her mind, sliding back and dropping, her most stubborn compulsions knocked senseless and inert. Her role was a passive one, and she felt the relief of this great letting go.
She felt free and discovered a litany of things she no longer needed to do. She did not really consider how her new feelings toward sin might release her from these obligations. Many of them had no connection to sin at all, were just demands she had placed on herself. Still, God’s grace was the catchall impetus, and her new freedoms became her prayer, replacing her Hail Marys, her Our Fathers:
Free to not cook and not clean. Free to eat from a can, to sip from the carafe, to prepare only the foods I like.
Amparo had been cooking the meals her husband and son preferred even though they’d been gone for years, suffering the smells of fried plantains in the linens and drapes for days afterward even though she barely ate them, and she’d never asked herself why, feeling only the inexorable momentum to do things as she’d always done them.
I am free to forget Mauricio’s cherished lime tree, free from its pruning and picking, from hems and hair and the too-soft skin on the backs of my hands snagged on thorns, free from regretting the number of limes left rotting in its shade, the fruit soft and deflated.
I am free to take walks after dark, alone. Free to see the bay at night, unaccompanied by the church women and their sentinel husbands, hands clasped behind their backs, their lips always wet and eyes always watchful and condescending.
Free to throw open the windows at night, let in the outside air, even if it is damp, because there is no one here to complain it’s too chilly, no one in danger of catching cold.
Her son Rolando’s health had always been so delicate after all, but he was out of her hands now.
I am free from worry, free from praying and praying for Rolando.
This particular thought sent blood rushing to her head, her heart racing so suddenly, the tips of her fingers went cold and numb. She’d been praying for him since the day he was born, but she could not deny her newest conviction: his life would go on as it would whether she prayed or not. It was his own life, and not at all hers. So much had happened that she had not prayed for—he’d married against her wishes and left, the span of time between calls or letters growing longer until it settled on the regularity of monthly letters and weekly calls. No, now more than ever, he was not hers.
Free from being a wife, a mother; free from hunching under the weight of so many crosses.
Free to belong only to myself.
This last freedom made her the most nervous, the way the thought burst in her mind like a lightning bolt, her nerve endings sizzling electric as she touched the edges of her face, the backs of her arms. For the first time, she did not recoil from the loose skin, the deep folds. Her body, more than anything else on earth, was her own.
She soon decided to stop wearing makeup, collecting her compacts of powder and pots of creams and tubes of color in a paper bag and then stuffing it in the garbage can, underneath fruit peelings and used coffee grounds so she would not be tempted to retrieve it.
She then regarded herself in the mirror, the top of her vanity now bare without a small city of toiletries cluttering the surface. What she saw was a woman not especially ugly or wrinkled but not beautiful or young either.
There is freedom here, she told herself, in letting go of the desire to be beautiful, to be seen and admired.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d turned a man’s head. Each time she failed to turn a head, that indifferent man pressed his thumb against a soft bruise in the center of her chest, the rotting pit put there decades ago by her indifferent Mauricio. She was free of that now. The vanity that had possessed her for nearly all of her life left her, a poltergeist chased out of the house, whooshing from her mirror and out the window. A beautiful silence took hold after years of hearing her own harried voice urging her to paint her skin, paint her hair, squeeze into her corsets, teeter on high heels. It all seemed so absurd to her now.
She began to appreciate her nude form in the mirror, particularly in the evening when the setting sun shone behind her. It lit the rim of her body, the tiny hairs on her arms and shoulders and hips glowing halo-like all around her. This was her body for all of her life, and she’d have to leave it behind at some point. She had to appreciate its vitality, if only because it was momentary.
I am free from sex, beauty, modesty. Free from vanity, from pride.
If this freed her from sin, it couldn’t possibly be sinful, she reasoned.
I am free to be as I am, just as God made me.
And yet that tense feeling remained. She worried she would fall back into her old ideas, her old compulsions, or maybe she would just find she was so very wrong. Often in her dreams, she was running. She ran so fast, she lost control of her legs. Her bones twisted out of their sockets or snapped in two as her body spiralled out of control, somersaulting through the streets. Her arms, head, and face smashed against the ground or tangled high, so frighteningly high, in the tallest trees. But somehow, in the morning, her nude body intact and stretched across the bed she shared with no one, her cherished sense of freedom remained, a warm glow hanging above the overcast of her disquiet.
It was after waking from such a dream early one morning that she wrote to Rolando. Eager to escape those anxious feelings that remained, she switched on a lamp and wrote:
My dear son and fellow child of God,
Your last letter never reached me, but if it was anything like the others, it’s just as well. They’re all the same, rehearsed phrases about how life is well, how your wife sends her regards, how your daughter is such a smart girl, followed by the requisite questions after my health. In the past, each time you asked how I was doing, I responded with complaints, something strained, some social slight, another ache, a lonely plea. No more. The walls are bare now (except for all those little needles I forgot to pull, those bent thorns your father thought would be enough to carry the weight of our savior. Imagine that. I left them in the walls because I was afraid of pulling too hard and falling back and not being found until I was soft and brown like one of his limes). But I have peeled away conceit and seen the soft fruit inside, some parts sweet, some parts sour. Maybe I’m like a plum, the fruit you disliked most as a child. Do you like them now? I am the best I have ever been. I am without illusion or fear even if my dreams are haunted.
Your Mother. Your Loving Mother.
She folded the letter in three, confident it said everything she needed to say. She was convinced Rolando would finally understand her, would be able to follow each train of thought, and somehow know her newfound freedoms came as a result of the incident with the crosses even though she’d never mentioned any of it to him. She slipped the letter into an envelope and sealed it shut. But as she slid her tongue along the back of the postage stamp, sadness overtook her. Her son hadn’t ever liked plums or grapes or anything remotely tangy. His aversion to the very fruit she identified with in her letter was a symbol of their broken relationship.
She rested the tip of her pen on the front of the envelope. Something inside of her fell, a heavy stone sinking toward the earth’s core. Ink feathered around the tip of her pen in a black sunburst. Rolando’s name was written across the front of the envelope in her neat script, but she couldn’t begin to write the house number or name of the street or even the city in which he’d lived for almost nine years.
Surely she had his address somewhere. She searched the nightstand where she kept all of his letters, and she did find the letters, but they were all without envelopes, just the letters themselves, stacked together and bent into a thick trifold that she’d bound with a satin ribbon. She always discarded the envelopes; the torn edges made everything look such a mess. And why keep them if she knew his address by heart? Except she didn’t.
New letter in hand, she hurried to the kitchen, where she kept her address book in a far corner, placed on a small round table alongside the black enamel telephone. Except the address book was not there. The image of the address book, black leather binding, embossed letters, the yellow satin ribbon sewn into the spine and marking a page, probably the page where Rolando’s address was written, was so vivid in her mind. When had she last held it? She looked at her hands as if she could materialize the book with her thoughts. The thought of searching the house brought on that tired feeling once more. Where would she search? Would it be hidden in some unexpected place? The medicine cabinet? Wedged underneath hammers and wrenches in Mauricio’s old toolbox? She didn’t know where to begin to look.
I’ll call Rolando, she thought. I’ll call and ask him for the address. Or Elisa. Better Elisa. She won’t ask why I don’t have it. A yam in a dress, that one; she questions nothing. Probably why Rolando chose to marry her; nothing sour about her, just sweet submission.
But as she reached for the phone, Amparo could only stare at the dial, her finger hovering above first one number then another, willing her hand to remember the motions her mind did not.
Her own fault. She’d pushed her son out of her mind after so many years of worry and desperate prayers. Now he was fading from her thoughts the same way Mauricio had. She had trouble remembering her husband’s face, the sound of his voice, and most painfully his smell, the way his skin smelled and the way his scalp smelled, all of it gone from this world, and now Rolando was fading too. Except that Rolando still lived; she could still reach him, hear him, touch him, only now she’d lost the means.
No, she wouldn’t just submit to the loss. The neighbors. They had his address. The neighbor’s son maintained her lawn and raked the leaves even if he didn’t prune the trees. And Rolando paid him. He had to have the address because the check was mailed directly to him. She tucked her letter to Rolando underneath her arm and hurried for the door.
In the flat dark of early morning, she cut across her lawn and the neighbors’, the cold dew of the grass on her feet as she stepped around their hibiscus bushes and their statue of San Lazaro to get to the side door leading to their kitchen. She tapped on the door first and then on the small window at the top of the door using her knuckles and then her fingernails and then the metal tip of the pen she still held in her hand until she heard the voice of that young man, Ofelio, calling out, “Coming, coming!”
A light flickered on behind the frosted glass of the door’s window, the small rectangle glowing a deep orange before the door cracked open. He was shirtless, the dark hair from his chest reaching the tops of his shoulders and curling around the delicate slopes of his collarbones. For a moment Amparo wanted to touch him, to slide her fingers in between the dark hair and make contact with his skin. It sent a chill through her, one that spread across the small of her back and traveled up to the hollow at the base of her skull. She struggled to hold on to her reason for coming to his door, her resolve to get Rolando’s address fading like the details of a once vivid dream.
For his part, Ofelio stared at Amparo for what felt like too long before finally asking, “Is everything okay, Señora Torrez?”
She regarded the letter in her hand. The spot of ink just underneath Rolando’s name was now smeared like a black little comet. She remembered then, remembered pressing the pen to the envelope, remembered the missing address book, her resolute sprint across the front lawn.
“I came for his address. You must have it since he pays you, and I need it,” she said, waving the letter in the air before regarding it once more, trying to recall at least the first number of that address.
“Señora Torrez, I mean no disrespect, but you should not be out like this.”
“Yes, of course, thank you.”
She expected him to open the door and invite her in, but as she stepped closer, the young man retreated. Yes, he had the body of a man, but his eyes were the scared eyes of a boy, darting and wide. Was he the one she’d smacked on the hand when she caught him throwing rocks at a neighbor’s chicken? Or had that been her own son?
“I’m sorry if you were asleep, but I need to be able to reach him, and things are not where they should be.”
“Who do you need to reach? I don’t understand.” He hooded his eyes with both of his hands and stared at the floor even though it was dark.
“My son. Rolando. The one that pays you.” She could hear her own voice getting louder.
“Wait here, Señora Torrez. Wait just a second.”
He closed the door then, and she could hear him call out to his mother, a muffled “Mama, Mama,” drifting further away as if he were a bird in flight.
The darkness and silence of the sleeping neighborhood surrounded her despite the orange glow of the small window. She began to feel a chill, but this time it did not come from within, from some awakened relic of desire. This time she felt the air around her, felt the cool of the concrete stoop on her bare feet. Dear God, she hadn’t even had the sense to put on her house slippers, and here this rude young man left her on the stoop to catch her death. She wrapped her arms around herself, replacing the letter underneath her arm. A June bug bounced against the frosted glass and landed on her bare shoulder. It groped her skin with its sharp legs, steadying itself before taking off in clumsy flight once more. It was then that she saw the pale flash of her own skin for the first time. Her chest, her arms, the mounds of her breasts, all shone yellow in the light of the window.
Her chest throbbed. She stacked her hands over her heart and pressed her arms against her breasts. Her heart was beating the fastest it had ever beat. Faster than when she ran in her dreams. Remarkable how the mind could dictate such reactions in the body: a racing heart, the taste of something sweet, pain, orgasm. All things she had experienced in dreams. Except this was no dream.
She could hear the approach of footsteps, the familiar shuffle of an old woman, her neighbor Elena. The two women were close in age, but Elena appeared so much more aged, even though Ofelio was younger than Rolando. Amparo always felt sorry for her whenever she happened to witness Ofelio helping Elena climb or descend the porch steps, her legs trembling, her pale scalp flashing in the sunlight as she bowed her head toward her unsteady feet. She would wave at Amparo, but only after she had been safely conveyed to either the top or the bottom of the porch. The beatific look of gratitude on her face as she released her grip on her son’s arms always made Amparo want to laugh or spit. Now Elena would see Amparo, nude and disoriented. For her part, Amparo couldn’t decide if she should cry out or run home or feign a heart attack. Her indecision kept her anchored to the square of concrete, arms pressed to her chest.
No. This would not do. She may have shed her vanity and pride when she was shut up in her own house, but there was no way she’d allow Elena to see her like this, the very neighbors her son paid, the people she’d wasted her time praying for when Elena’s husband was sick, and they refused to go to church, and the old man died. Amparo’s prayers were no doubt why Elena was lucky enough to have a son that stuck around.
Her entire body shook. She didn’t think she could make it across both yards before the door opened and Elena stepped outside. If she tried to sprint across, her heart would beat even faster—leg muscles, brain, the heart itself, all deprived of oxygen, all seizing as her frenzied blood slipped past each muscle and organ like a ghost. If she didn’t die, she’d lose consciousness, her body splayed in the wet grass, ass up, for the entire neighborhood to see.
She scooted into the dark gap between a ficus hedge and the wall. Recently pruned branches poked her belly, her arms, her face, but she tried to remain still as the door reopened. From the way the light was cast on the lawn, Amparo guessed Elena had opened the door wide.
“Amparo?” Elena called out. “Amparito?” Her high voice broke the silence.
Amparo held her breath. Her heart felt like a small animal trapped inside of her, thrashing against the walls of her chest in its frenzy to escape.
“Are you sure she was out here?” There was the high voice again, but muffled this time as Elena spoke to her son inside the house. He was no doubt hiding behind the door, determined not to set eyes on her again. She recalled the way he had shielded his eyes with both hands. Was it out of respect or revulsion?
“Amparo?” The last call was a hiss. Elena must have realized the heaviness, the sacredness of the silence surrounding her. Not even a cricket chirped. The silence and stillness revealed the ugliness of things—Amparo’s skin, Elena’s voice.
The door remained open, judging from the light. Amparo prayed Elena would just go inside, close the door and lock it, turn out the lights, restore the darkness Amparo needed to sneak home.
The light cast on the lawn narrowed and dimmed. Seconds later the door sighed closed, the lock sliding into place, before the orange glow from the glass cut out altogether. Amparo held her position for several moments, though she couldn’t say for how long. Even in her stillness, she was panting, and there was a clear, high ringing in her ears, a note so pure and sharp, she could almost see the line of it, a strand of trembling glass thrumming inside of her. She pushed against the branches as she tried scooting from behind the hedge. She needed to sit on that concrete stoop, if only for a moment.
Once she escaped the tangle of branches she tried lowering herself to the ground, but as she did, she felt the earth shift away from her, everything swerving in a narrow arc. She dropped to her knees. The thud of bone hitting concrete far away. As if her head, lost in the ringing, were part of another body hanging somewhere high above the body falling to the ground. Except she was attached to the body that was falling, falling. A sound escaped her, a slow moan, as the letter to Rolando slipped out from underneath her arm, as her shoulders and the side of her head thudded against the door that had clicked safely shut just moments before.
The high ringing began to fade, and Amparo heard, once more, the unmistakable shuffle of an old woman, only faster this time, getting closer, as the glow from the window returned. She considered the paleness of her own hand, held inches before her eyes, groping along the wall and the ground for something to hold on to, to keep her steady against the spinning and swaying of the world around her, as she remembered a street name and number, a city and neighborhood, a postal code, all of it a slow chorus in her mind like a forgotten love song or a prayer.