American Chica_ Two Worlds, One Childhood - Marie Arana [31]
That daughter was Trinidad Rubin de Celis. She married a Cisneros. Her son Manuel Cisneros—the high treasurer of the province of La Libertad—married one, too. That is to say, a cousin married a cousin. Abuelita was their child.
Not all Cisneros women were defined by the males of the family. One bright Cisneros spinster with a mind of her own fell in love with a Spanish priest, Padre Benjamín. He was seen coming and going from her house in Huánuco. Before long, the spinster’s house rang with the cries of baby boys, and they all had the open, intelligent forehead of her robed visitor. They were given her name, but everyone knew they were sons of the padre. The fact was whispered in salons and bruited about on the street. All the same, the priest went on with his mission and the babies continued to thrive. Eventually, the wide-browed youngsters produced the brilliant, silver-tongued Cisneroses of Peru: the poet Antonio, the orator Manuel. The gossip began to seem vapid, ridiculous, beside the point. So what if the priest had turned out to have a little macho blood in his veins? There were mortal appetites few of Eve’s children could control. Genius was the thing. Could a union that forged it be wrong? These Cisneros men were extraordinary, superior, far better than the rest of the clan. So the rumors about them became irksome, easily quashed.
There was more than one way to be a Latin male.
HOW COULD MY mother know, when she pledged her love to my father on the Fenway, that she would be dropped into the heart of a familia where what was wanted of her was not her American stock in trade—independence—but a clear understanding of three things: the primacy of a Peruvian family, a young wife’s role in it, and the dominion of the Latin male?
Confused, angry, friendless, as soon as she heard about Tía Carmen’s offer, she could hardly wait to leave my grandparents’ house. When Mother, Papi, and Vicki finally moved into Carmen’s spacious house on Avenida Mariátegui on the other side of Lima, they had all the comforts of an established home. There was Mother’s maid, Concepción, a sweet-natured mountain girl, to assist with the concerns of an active baby; the furniture inherited from my haughty great-grandfather; the appurtenances of a good city life.
Independence remained my mother’s forte. She took Italian lessons, studied Russian, memorized poetry, read philosophy with the fervor of a hermit sage. She had not brought her violin with her to Peru. In some strange unwillingness to transport all of herself to her husband’s country, she had left behind the one thing she had always professed to love most: her music.
When Tía Carmen would return to Lima from the estate she had inherited from Pedro Pablo Arana in Huancavelica, the rest of the family came to visit. This would happen in the afternoons, while Papi was still at work. During these visits, my mother retired to a back room and listened to her husband’s family through the walls. Two years went by like this, and Abuelita and Mother did not speak, the pleito was so thick between them.
Papi saw his parents, caroused with friends into morning, did as he pleased in the city of his birth, and the seeds of a compromise were sown. Mother retained her distance, wandered Lima on her own terms, learned its language and customs,