Happy Families_ Stories - Carlos Fuentes [134]
“He spent his life putting us to the test. How good that this is over.”
The sisters look at her with disbelief, amazement, and grievance.
“It’s true,” wails Genara. “It’s true. He’s dead.”
“He died,” Julia insists without wanting to. “What a shame.”
“Died, yes,” Augusta concludes. She insists, “Do you remember? Do you remember that list of prohibitions he wrote out by hand and tacked at the entrance to the bathroom?”
“You don’t remember that,” Julia said with easy tolerance.
“I remember, and so do you, Julia,” Augusta continued with the air of a gardener who cuts the overgrown grass and can’t interrupt the work without changing the rhythm or destroying a bed of roses by mistake. “Don’t touch yourself, don’t look at yourself. Avoid mirrors. Get dressed in the dark. Bathe in your shift. Don’t touch yourself. Don’t look at yourself. Don’t look at a man. Don’t let anyone touch you. Don’t go out alone. Sit in the first row at the movies even if it makes you cross-eyed. Don’t let yourself be looked at. Put a fig leaf on the art prints at school. Better yet: Don’t go to school anymore. I’ll be your school. Come, Augusta, sit on my lap so I can teach you. Go on, Genara, let me dress and undress you while you close your eyes and imagine I’m the sweetheart I forbid you to have. Lie down, Julia, I’ll sing you to sleep. You girls don’t have a mother. I’ll be father and mother both, I’ll—”
“I’d say that a father can be a perverse mother.” Augusta twisted her lips.
Julia touched Augusta’s hand. “There were only good intentions.”
“Then why do I remember them as perversions?”
“Because the perverse one is you,” Genara dared to say, and Augusta slapped her, a heavy blow of square, metallic Caesarian rings.
Julia stopped Augusta’s hand and looked incredulously at the signs of authority that adorned her sister’s long, curved fingers.
“What, haven’t you ever worn rings?” the oldest sister said haughtily.
Julia bowed her head artfully. “The one I wanted Papa denied me. He forbade the three of us. But you know that.”
Genara bit a finger and thought of everything she and perhaps Augusta and certainly Julia had not done in their lives out of fear of their father while their father was alive. And now, now that he had been dead for ten years . . .
“. . . why don’t we have the courage to do everything he prohibited while he was alive?”
“Out of respect,” Julia said sweetly, though with a lost, disoriented look, as if she had been left hanging on the last word said before this one.
“Out of greed,” Augusta stated brusquely. “Because we don’t want to lose the inheritance. Be honest with the devil. Because we’re afraid to disobey him even though he’s dead.”
“Because you’re afraid of him,” Julia said almost inaudibly, “the way you were when he was alive?”
“Papa and his damn time periods. All of you wait. I’m coming. You’ll find out. Have faith, have faith, have faith!”
Augusta’s voice was lost in its own echo. Julia and Genara knew that echo. It was what Augusta emitted in order not to cry or shout. The two sisters approached to embrace her, caressing her head with its short, bristly, masculine hair. Genara, without meaning to, pulled off one of Augusta’s earrings.
“Oh! You’re always so clumsy.”
Julia and Genara withdrew their hands from Augusta’s head as if they had profaned an authority that competed only with that of the father. She was the oldest sister, though her authority always remained beneath that of their father, feeding a sense of inferiority in her that only increased her throbbing pride.
“Don’t deceive yourselves,” Augusta said to her sisters. “Don’t forget his disdainful, pitying, triumphant face. ‘Don’t upset yourself, my girl. Don’t deceive yourself. Don’t lower your eyes when I come in. Without us you aren’t . . .’ ”
“What is she saying?” said Julia.
“What are you saying?” asked Genara.
“Nothing.” Augusta blew