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By Root 1120 0

she’d tell me anything, I had to recount the whole Chincha adventure and answer the endless questions she asked me about the most unexpected details: what dress, for instance, Aunt Julia had worn for the wedding ceremony. What delighted her and made her burst into peals of laughter (though she didn’t believe me) was my slightly distorted version of events wherein the mayor who had married us was a black, half-naked, barefoot fisherman. After that, I finally got her to tell me how the family had greeted the news. It had all been quite predictable: goings and comings from one house to another, animated family councils, innumerable telephone calls back and forth, copious tears, and apparently my mother had been extended everyone’s sympathies, visited, and kept company as though she’d lost her only son. As for Nancy, convinced that she was our ally, they had besieged her with questions and threats, trying to get her to tell them where we were. But she had held her ground, vehemently denying everything, and had even shed a few great crocodile tears that allayed their suspicions somewhat.

Nancy, too, was worried about my father’s reaction. “Don’t even consider going to see him till he gets over his terrible fit of temper,” she warned me. “He’s so furious he might very well kill you.”

I asked her about the little apartment she’d rented for us, and once again her sense of practicality amazed me. She’d spoken with the owner that very morning. There were things that had to be fixed in the bathroom, a door had to be replaced and painted, and therefore it was going to be at least ten days before we could move in. My heart sank when I heard this. As I was walking back to my grandparents’, I wondered where in the world we’d be able to find a roof over our heads for those two weeks.

I arrived at my grandparents’ house without having solved the problem, and found my mother waiting there for me in the living room. When she caught sight of me, she burst into a spectacular flood of tears. She gave me a tremendous hug, and as she stroked my eyes, my cheeks, and ran her fingers through my hair, half choking with sobs, she kept repeating with infinite pity in her voice: “My baby, my little darling, my treasure, what have they done to you, what has that woman done to you?” I hadn’t seen her for nearly a year, and though her face was swollen with weeping, I found her prettier and younger-looking than ever. I did my very best to calm her, assuring her that they hadn’t done anything to me, that I was the one who had decided, entirely on my own, that I wanted to get married. Every time the name of her brand-new daughter-in-law came up in the conversation, she burst into tears all over again; she fell into fits of rage in which she referred to Julia as “that old lady,” “that brazen hussy,” “that divorcée.” All at once, in the middle of this scene, I realized something that had never crossed my mind before: it wasn’t so much what people would say but religion that was making her feel so heartbroken. She was a fervent Catholic and it wasn’t the fact that Aunt Julia was older than I was that was upsetting her so much as the fact that she was divorced—in other words, forbidden to remarry within the Church.

With the help of my grandparents, I finally managed to quiet her down. The two oldsters were a model of tact, kindness, and discretion. Grandfather merely said to me, as he gave me his usual brusque kiss on the forehead: “Well, poet, you’ve finally turned up again, have you? You had us worried.” And my granny, after hugging and kissing me repeatedly, said in my ear in a half whisper so my mother wouldn’t hear, with a sort of mischievous complicity: “And what about Julita—is she all right?”

After taking a long shower and changing my clothes—I felt liberated on getting rid of the ones I’d had on for four days—I was able to have a talk with my mother. She’d stopped crying and was having a cup of tea made for her by my granny, who was sitting on the arm of my mother’s chair, caressing her as though she were a little girl. I tried to get a smile out