The Memories of Ana Calderón (17 page)

When Ana joined the Basts, her acquaintance with the Bible was scarce. She knew about Adam and Eve, but the extent of her knowledge was what she had learned as a girl when she and the other village children squatted on the sand to listen to the priest from Puerto Real. The few details about the Scriptures that she remembered were also what she had learned during Sunday mass. Bits and disjointed parts now drifted back to her: Jesus was born in Bethlehem and his mother was Mary. Saint Joseph was his father, but not really his father, and she recalled a few things about twelve men called the Apostles. She, however, had to admit that what Amy Bast read evening after evening was new for her, and very interesting.

As the weeks passed and Ana's pregnancy drew to its end, the evening readings became the highlight of her day. After finishing the reading, it was Amy's custom to ask Franklin and Ana what lesson they had drawn from what God communicated to them through the written words. One evening she looked at Franklin.

“Now, Franklin, here we have Moses coming down from the mountain after seeing God Almighty with his very own eyes of flesh, and what does he find? He finds all his folks partying and depraving themselves over some old statue of a calf. What do you make of such behavior?”

“Hmm. Well, dear, I think the meaning of it all is buried deep in my heart, where it'll have to stay for the time being.”

Looking exasperated, Amy turned to Ana. “What about you? What do you think of such goings on?”

Ana was sitting with her hands folded over her swollen abdomen, and she giggled nervously, explaining that she did not know how to express what it meant.

The readings, however, occupied Ana's thoughts sometimes well into the night as she reflected on what she had heard. Ana was captivated, amazed and often puzzled by the stories that Amy conveyed with so much drama and warmth. She had not imagined that such a world of kings and
prophets and shepherds had existed, and that those people had actually been in contact with God. She saw, however, that even though they communicated with God, they nonetheless murdered and warred and cheated on husbands and wives. The story of Bathsheba especially intrigued Ana, and she told herself that surely the woman must have known what the king had done to her husband.

Ana was fascinated to see how the songs and poems of those people were centered on God, and how, whenever one of them was in trouble—whether king or slave girl—from a bush, or a rock, or a spring of water a mysterious voice or an angel came to save them.

One evening, Amy's voice took on a special tone as she proclaimed her selection. Turning first to Franklin, and then to Ana, she said, “Tonight the good Lord will be speaking to us from the Book of Genesis, chapter sixteen, verses six to eight.” Looking at Ana, Amy said, “Ana, this might just be a way for the Lord to be speaking to you, so listen real hard.”

Taking a deep breath, she began reading. “Then Sara humiliated Hagar, and she fled from her. Afterward an angel of the Lord found her beside a spring of water in the desert, the spring on the road to Sur.” Amy looked up, her small blue eyes bright with anticipation. After a moment, she returned to reading, “He said, ‘Hagar, maid of Sara, where have you come from and where are you going?' She answered, ‘I am fleeing from my mistress Sara.' The angel of the Lord said to her, ‘You are with child, and shall bear a son; you shall call him Ismael…'”

Amy interrupted her reading when she saw that Ana was engrossed in what she was hearing. Putting down the book, she abruptly asked her, “Do you know the meaning of the name Ismael, Ana?”

“No, ma'am, I don't.”

“Well, I do. My Pa had a dictionary of Bible names and I just about memorized all of their meanings. Ismael means ‘Let the Good Lord Hear.' Isn't that just something?”

Ana's mind was absorbing every word uttered by Amy because she felt that they contained a special message for her. How could a name have meaning? What did her own name signify? What name would she give her child when it came? She saw, also, that she was like the maid Hagar, humiliated and running away.

Her mind was racing, darting in different directions, when Franklin's voice broke in. “Amy, aren't you going to finish the reading? I mean, I think I remember that there's a bit more about Ismael.”

“You're right, Franklin. I guess I just got carried away. It ends like this, ‘He shall be wild, his hand against everyone, and everyone's hand against him; he shall dwell apart, opposing all his kinsmen.' There, that's all there is to the verse. It ends kind of mysterious, I must say. Why should anyone who's real ornery and who separates himself from family have the ear of the good Lord? That's what I always ask myself about Ismael.”

“Maybe it's because it was to Hagar's pain that the good Lord listened, and not to Ismael himself. What if the angel gave that name to her son just to remind Hagar that she really wasn't alone, that God heard her crying?”

Ana was shocked to hear her voice blurting out words that had formulated in her mouth before she had even thought of them. Franklin and Amy sat up and stared at her as if she had just appeared in their midst out of nothing. Then they looked at one another, their eyes wide open. Long moments passed, their minds digesting what Ana had said.

“Why, Ana, that had never occurred to me.” Amy's voice was soft. “I always thought that it was Ismael who was heard by the good Lord. But…Well…It could be so…”

Amy sat back in thought. When she finally spoke, her voice was filled with conviction. “No! Let's just wait a minute here! It really doesn't make sense that a slave girl should be more important than her son, because, you see, he's the one who went on to become the head of a big tribe, or something like that. That's why the good Lord saved her; only so that she could have the baby.”

“I don't think so, Amy. It seems to me that the Lord saved Hagar because she was important on her own; because she was who she was. She came first, and God needed her so that her son could exist. That means that Hagar was more valuable than her son.”

Ana, no longer afraid to say what she was thinking, spoke quietly. “Besides, I think that the story is of something more important than a tribe. What I mean is that maybe it's about Hagar, and about how God wanted to save her for something other than just having Ismael.”

Amy leaned back in her chair, making it creak against her thin back. The light shed by the kerosene lamp hanging from the middle rafter cast bluish shadows on her hair and on her high cheekbones. The expression on her face showed keen interest. “Could it have been, then, that it was to Hagar's anguish that God listened, and not to her son's discontent? If that's the case, it's possibly as you say. Hagar is more important than Ismael.”

Amy glanced over to Franklin who also seemed caught up with the new way of looking at a story he had heard over and again ever since he was a child. Amy suddenly said, “Franklin, had you ever thought of it that way?” When he remained silent, she closed the Bible, turned to Ana, and smiled, “Well, now, I'll just have to give this whole thing a bit more thought.”

Ana slept fitfully that night. Visions of tents, tribes, and angels glided through her sleeping mind. She was Hagar and she had been cast into the wilderness not by Sara, but by her father. Laughing shepherds stood by jeering as they pointed at her distended belly. In her dream, she was dying of thirst in a desert filled with machines that made shoes, and where women workers mocked her with cracked, parched lips; their soiled bandannas flapping in the arid breeze. She screamed and asked for someone to rescue her from the sun that was burning her with shame and humiliation. But it was only Doña Hiroko and Doña Trinidad who heard her cries. One gave Ana a tiny cup of green tea to drink, and the other sheltered her in an embrace.

When Ana awoke, her pillow was wet with tears and saliva. She sat up in bed and saw that outside the night was still dark, and that it was raining heavily. She leaned against the iron bedstead as she pulled up the blankets to cover her chest and shoulders, then cupped her hand on her stomach for a long while, feeling the child move. She closed her eyes, sifting through her dream part by part, trying to decipher its meaning. And she remained that way for a long time until sleep overcame her.

The following morning as she joined the Basts for breakfast, Ana said to them, “If my baby is a girl, her name will be Hagar.”

Franklin was about to take a sip from his coffee, but he stopped, holding the cup in mid-air. Amy slowly placed her
fork on the edge of the plate as she tilted her head to one side. “What if it's a boy, Ana?”

“If it's a boy, his name will be Ismael.”

Ismael was born on a rainy night in early February of 1940. His birth was difficult because he began to make his way out of me a day and a half before he was born.

I was not like 'Amá, who bit her knuckles rather than cry out when she was giving birth to her children. I screamed and wailed with all the force in my body. Each time I let out a howl I was aware that the chickens were startled, and that they cackled in fear. Even the roosters crowed, although it was dusk and not dawn.

I was unconscious most of the time. I was not with Amy on the egg ranch; I was somewhere else. I went back to the palapa, and to the emerald ocean where I danced and dreamed; to where Tavo, Alejandra, and I played games of Aztec warriors and princesses. I saw myself sprinting toward the palm trees, ignoring Tía Calista's call to come help deliver the new baby. When I finally went into the dim hut, instead of my mother's spread-out knees, I saw mine. It was not her blood but mine that smeared the rough sheets clinging to the black sand, and it was my body that was being torn open, not hers.

In my delirium, Tía Calista's face appeared; it was still cracked by the ocean sun, and it was darker than when we had left Puerto Real. She made clucking sounds with her tongue as she reminded me that I had turned out to be like other women after all, just as she had said I would. In her eyes I could see a faint glimmer that said that all women are the same, and that we all end up with our legs spread apart enduring the pain of new life.

Suddenly Tía Calista's face was pushed aside by Miss Nugent, who sorrowfully wagged her head as she silently walked away. In her place I saw the women I had worked with, the ones in the tomato fields of the Yaqui Valley and in the shoe factory. Those faces were as I remembered them; their skin was blotched and their lips were drawn and sad. They gaped at me as their shoulders drooped to sagging, tired
breasts that rested on their distended stomachs.

Behind them I could see Alejandra, the sister I knew had turned into my enemy. Her white skin was radiant, and her hair seemed fairer than I remembered. Her body was full of life, and she held herself so straight that her small breasts stuck out menacingly. She walked up to me, pointing at my convulsing belly, and she said, “Ugh, it's a boy! I'll bet you it's going to die. It's poisoned in there, you know.”

I let out a scream so horrifying that Amy rushed over to me and placed a fresh cloth dampened with rubbing alcohol on my forehead. She stroked my arms and hands, telling me to relax, that it would soon be over. She didn't know that my cry had not been of pain, but of terror.

Alejandra disappeared and in her place was Tavo. My body suddenly became serene as I saw him gazing at the spot between my open legs. I saw that he had grown even more handsome since the last time I saw him; he was taller. His hair shone as it did that first time we loved one another on the golden hill above our house. Although his eyes remained fixed on the opening where the child would soon emerge, I knew the expression in them. I was sure that it was the same as when he laid upon me, smiling at me, kissing me, pressing himself over and again into me.

But I was wrong. When he finally looked up at me, his eyes were hard, filled with ice. Those pupils accused me of terrible things. “Everything has been a mistake, a misunderstanding.” Octavio's eyes bored into me, saying that the child showing its slick, wet head between my legs was not his, and his glare told me what he felt. “I didn't have anything to do with it! You sneaked a seed between your legs and kept it there until it spawned. The baby is yours alone!”

“Get out! Get out!” I shouted over and over. Amy didn't know what I meant and she said that she had to stay with me, that she couldn't leave me alone. I calmed down and looked out the window where I made out Doña Hiroko and Doña Trinidad trying to coax my father into the room. I could only see his back, but I knew that it was him. A downpour made the three of them disappear.

Ismael finally came. He was alive, and he was beautiful. When Amy placed him in my arms, I saw immediately that he had gotten the white skin that ran through our family. Like Alejandra, my son inherited the color of the unknown French
grandfather who had decided to marry a brown Mexican girl generations before us.