The Memories of Ana Calderón (33 page)

“Yes…thank you. I'm calling to extend my condolences to you and Mrs. Wren. I'm also at your service. I mean…if there's anything I can do for you.” After a long pause, she
added, “How is Mrs. Wren?”

The man sighed deeply, but his voice was steady. “She's having a hard time. He was everything to us.”

Ana wanted to tell him that Terrance had been everything for her as well, but instead she said, “I would like to accompany you and your wife at this time.”

“And we want you to be with us. We've decided to have a simple graveside service with only the people closest to Terrance and to us. You're one of them, of course. I'll notify you as soon as the time and place is settled.”

Ana was listening keenly. There was one more thing she needed to ask. “Mr. Wren, what about his body?”

“It's en route at this moment. My wife and I will be at the airport to receive it.”

“Thank you. I'll wait for your call.” Ana returned the telephone receiver to its cradle. She was home; she was alone because she had instructed her staff to leave and not to return until she called them. She walked out to the front terrace, where she stood gazing vacantly at the ocean; it was a massive sheet of grayish slate. She stood for a long while in the drizzling rain, feeling its moisture chilling her burning skin.

Two days later at the airport in San Francisco, Ana walked over to the waiting car after leaving her plane. She was dressed in a plain black woolen suit and a small hat that curved down shading her eyes. As she slid onto the stuffed leather seat, she asked the driver if he knew his way to the cemetery. When he affirmed that he did, she sat back and closed her eyes. She had not slept since the news of the plane crash, nor had she been able to eat, and she had not reported to her office. Isolation was the only way she could deal with her grief.

The rain had stopped, giving way to dense fog as the limousine approached the inner area of the cemetery. The car glided slowly up to the grassy knoll where the gatekeeper had directed them, to where Ana saw a small group of people. They were dressed in black, and they huddled around the coffin which had been placed on a bier. The vehicle was still moving, but her eyes were riveted on the box piled high with flowers.

The car slid up to the curb and stopped. The driver walked around to open the door for Ana, who was already scanning the group, trying to identify Terrance's parents. Her
attention was caught by a tall man wearing metal-rimmed glasses, and next to him stood a woman whose face, which was sad but composed, told Ana that she was Terrance's mother.

Ana got out of the car and moved toward the mourners, who had already seen her and seemed to be waiting to greet her. She found walking difficult because the heels of her shoes sank into the moist sod with each step. But as she approached the Wrens, she put out her hands to greet them. No one said anything because they understood that they shared the same loss. It wasn't until moments later that Mr. Wren spoke to Ana.

“We thank you for being with us today. It means a lot to the both of us.”

She managed a weak nod in recognition of his words, and she was grateful when the minister asked them to take a seat in front of the coffin so that he could begin the service. As he read from the Bible, Ana's mind drifted back to the chicken ranch and she saw Amy reading from the book with black covers, her face illuminated by the bluish light cast by the kerosene lamp. When Ana's attention returned to the present, the minister was reading a psalm that told that no one need fear because, like the shepherd who seeks out the lost sheep, the Lord will come to the rescue.

Ana winced at the irony she perceived in those words. Her heart welled up with resentment, thinking that life had taken her on different paths, but each one had ended in loss because there had been no shepherd; nothing but emptiness and pain.

When the minister finished his prayers, he went over to the Wrens to console them as he patted each one on the shoulder. He handed Mrs. Wren the small crucifix that had been placed on top of the coffin, and with that he left the mourners, who began to break up into small groups of twos and threes.

Ana was about to make her way back to her car, when she recalled that she had not said goodbye to the Wrens. She turned to approach them and saw a man, someone she had not noticed before, talking to them. She lowered her eyes for a few seconds, but then returned them to the man. She blinked, then focused her gaze, trying to see more of his face because there was something about his body and its
movements that reminded her of someone. She turned away, wrinkling her brow in concentration. A few moments later she knew. It was Octavio Arce. He was stouter, and his hair had receded, but she knew that it was him.

She was overcome with confusion; she could not explain his presence there, nor his connection with the Wren family. She gawked at him, not noticing that he, too, had looked in her direction and that when the Wrens moved away, he began to approach her with a look of surprise on his face.

“Ana…”

Octavio extended his hands toward her, but lowered them when he saw that she had no intention of returning his greeting. He appeared to be intimidated by the way she was looking at him.

“What are you doing here?” Her voice was a hoarse whisper; it was charged with rancor.

Resenting her tone, he changed his attitude, and instead of answering the question, he fired another one at her, his voice also harsh. “How did you find out?”

“Find out? Find out what?”

Octavio responded bluntly. “That these are the folks who adopted Ismael. I've kept in touch with them all these years.”

Ana, who by now was standing next to her car, fell backward, but was stopped from landing on the concrete by the support of the limousine. She glared at Octavio, her mouth agape, her eyes opened so wide that they looked like pools of black water. Only seconds passed, but her mind had already grasped the pieces of the puzzle, putting it together. Years of searching had led to one dead-end after the other. The files had been sealed, she had been informed, but now she knew that Octavio Arce had been given every detail, and he had known the truth all along. She clamped shut her eyes. Ismael was Terrance and Terrance was Ismael. Her son!

Fearing that she would be sick in front of the others, Ana opened the rear door of the car and stumbled in headlong without closing the door behind her. Octavio followed her move and crouched down on his haunches. He saw that her eyes were shut tightly, and that her head was bent back against the seat. Her skin had become ashen.

“What are you doing here, Ana? How did you know?” When she refused to respond, Octavio frowned and bit his lip. “Are you the woman who was his employer? The one he was
crazy about?”

He glared at Ana. Her head was still pressed against the seat, and she was holding her arms close against her stomach as if to relieve intense pain. Her silence forced him to piece things together, slowly at first, but it wasn't long before his face betrayed his understanding of what had happened.

Shocked with what his mind was telling him, he asked, “You didn't do anything wrong with him, did you?” Ana's mouth was clamped shut, and her prolonged silence compelled Octavio to pursue questioning her. “How far did you go with the boy, Ana?”

The impact of this question struck her in the center of her being, making her shudder. Without thinking, she shouted, “Leave me! Get out! Go away!”

The driver, who had been standing, waiting for her next instructions, thought that the man crouching next to the car was assaulting Ana, so he ran to Octavio and, taking him by the nape of his coat collar, dragged him back. Octavio lost his balance and fell on his buttocks, but he was able to get to his feet almost immediately. Struggling, he shouted, “Get your hands off me, you son of a bitch!”

Another chauffeur came to assist Ana's driver, and both men grabbed hold of Octavio's arms and forced him to his knees. As he grappled with the two men, his coat and shirt hanging in disarray, he managed to wrench himself partially loose, and he turned to Ana. She was sitting rigidly against the seat, her jaw set and her eyes dilated.

“How far did you go with him? I'm asking you a question?”

Octavio's voice was high-pitched and nearly hysterical, but instead of responding, Ana glared back at him, inciting him to scream even more. Ugly words sputtered from his mouth.

“Oh, you dirty, filthy woman! You slept with him! You! His mother! You actually did that with him! And you poisoned him, too, didn't you? Just like all the others, you killed him with your poison! Not even God will forgive you this time! Pig! Go blow your brains out! That's what you should do! You bit…”

Someone, an unseen hand, slammed the door, shutting out the obscenities that Octavio was vomiting.

I was oblivious of everything except the sight of his bloated face and neck, which were deformed by hatred and which I could see through the sound-proofed window. I saw that his contorted, muted mouth was spewing words that were riddling my spirit.

When the driver returned to the car, he was red-faced and sweating. I asked him to take me to the airport, where I boarded my plane and headed back to the shelter of my home.

It was the twelfth of December in Mexico City. Ana was kneeling on the rough concrete courtyard leading up to the Basilica; her knees were bare and unprotected. She wore a loosely fitting black cotton dress, and a mantilla designating her as a woman who had committed a grievous sin. As she looked in front of her, she saw that there were hundreds of other people also on their knees. When she turned around to look behind her, she saw that there were as many others back there, too. She was surrounded by penitents, men and women who were about to make their way across the immense plaza of the Basilica on their knees until they reached the altar of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

She looked up at the facade of the building, scanning its intricate design of coils and loops and niches. Ana's eyes, blinking in the vivid sunshine, made out statues of saints, martyrs and virgins, their limestone faces eroded by centuries of exposure to wind and rain. She looked at the pigeons and how they moved around their nests, craning their necks to peep down on the mass of people beneath them.

Over to her right, Ana saw Indians dancing in homage to the Virgin. The dancers were resplendent in their headdresses crowned with long, green quetzal feathers. The loincloths worn by the men were decorated with metal patches, and the womens' dresses were of white cotton decorated with rainbows of color. Rattles and strings of dried pods were wrapped around the dancers' ankles, and as as they moved to the
cadence of drums, they pounded their bare feet against the ground, creating a rhythmic clatter that rose to the far sloping hills fringing the expansive valley of Mexico.

Her knees were beginning to ache, but Ana forgot her discomfort as she looked in every direction and saw thousands of brown-faced people, their hair shining jet-black in the rarified air. The men had sparse beards, and their moustaches were stringy tufts that hovered above long, tapered upper lips. The women she saw had round, flat faces, and their eyes were slanted and bright. Most of them had children with them, some lashed to their backs in a shawl.

They were jammed into the open courtyard facing the Basilica. Ana knew that the mass of people spilled out beyond the churchyard, clogging city arteries that led to the shrine like spokes hooked to an axle. Her eyes took in every imaginable color: white and turquoise balloons; magenta, royal blue and green
sarapes
; brown, tan, gray
huaraches
and
sombreros
. There was food and drink and sweets everywhere, and in the center of that mass of human beings were the penitents who waited their turn to crawl all the way to the altar to fulfill the promise that would cleanse them of their sins.

Ana's mind drifted away from the din and chanted prayers to the days that had passed since Terrance's burial. She had returned to the protection of her home, but she had been unable to sleep or eat because of what she had learned. Her confusion was so great that she could not think clearly or make sense of what had happened to her.