She Walks in Shadows(46)

Bronze birch borers took all the trees a while back. By then, we weren’t going to Mass anymore, so it took us a few years to notice.

“Abuelita’s not doing good,” said Tío Gaspar to me over lunch one day of that last October.

Sara was at work, and Abuelita would be at her rosary. We could hear the compressors chugging along through one of the last warm lunchtimes in a season tinged with cold at the edges of the day. Grandpa Estéban would not come out into the unchilled part of the house in this heat.

“You mean the way she’s slowing down?” I said cautiously.

“Uh-huh. It’s been a long time coming and I think she’s ready.” He locked eyes with me. “You know, she never wanted to live the way we do. She thinks it’s a sin.”

After me, Abuelita spent more time with Tío Gaspar than anybody. And his Spanish was better. I nodded and spooned up some more potato soup.

“I think it’ll be a relief for her. I’m more worried about Sara,” he said. “She’s still young. She has better things to do with her life than take care of old people and living corpses.”

“I don’t plan to be a living corpse any time soon,” I told him firmly.

Tío Gaspar gave me a sweet, almost chummy, smile. “Me, neither.”



Once, years ago, I had gotten Grandpa Estéban to tell me about New York. Sara was thinking about medical school at Columbia and he wanted me to tell her she couldn’t go.

“I can’t talk her out of it if you don’t tell me why you’re asking.”

“It’s not a good place for us.”

“You haven’t lived there in must-be eighty years. Everybody who knew you and Abuelita will be dead.”

“Eighty-five. And they won’t remember me, but Mamá and I remember New York.” His forehead furrowed. “You know my father died when I was young.”

“Abuelita said you were eight years old. The flu, she said.”

“They called it the Spanish Influenza. That made it even worse for a young widow and her son. There was no more school for me after that.” Although he didn’t need to breathe, Grandpa Estéban still sighed when he wanted to. He drew a breath then just to let it out.

“But Mamá was strong. She and I were the only ones in the family who survived. And she worked hard. We had an old house and she let rooms in it. Mostly to other Spaniards, who knew we hadn’t brought the influenza. One was a doctor. Doctor Mu?oz.”

His usual raspy whisper dropped to a softer, more affectionate sound. “I brought him his meals and whatever he needed delivered … supplies, medicines, some of the same things we use today. He was kind to me, like a new father. But Mamá ….” His mouth twisted in disgust. “Mamá said his work was unholy. After a while, she wouldn’t let me visit him, anymore. No one ever took good care of him again. He passed too soon to learn one of the chants we sing to this day, one that might have prolonged his life.

“When Doctor Mu?oz passed, I stole some of his notes. Some of his books. His work is the foundation of this family, of our life everlasting.”

I worked my numb fingers inside my mittens. I had never heard this story before. “That still doesn’t tell me why Sara shouldn’t go to Columbia if she wants to.”

“Your bisabuelita was fluent in English.”

“What?”

“She had a heavy accent, but she was fluent. But the day Doctor Mu?oz passed from our home, she stopped speaking it completely. The shock.”

He gripped my hand in his, bone-cold even with a mitten between us. “She’s the reason we’ll never go back to New York. It would kill her.”

I told Sara I would mail her application to Columbia, but I threw it in the trash, instead. I have since come to regret that, not just because of the betrayal, but because of the reason behind it.



The unemployment payments on my ReliaCard ran dry in November and sure enough, I didn’t have another job. I’ll be fair: I was picky. I didn’t want to work someplace chatty and I didn’t want to work far from home. Abuelita was slurring her words and having trouble following conversations. She ran her fingers over the velvet of the jewelry roll until she dropped it from weak fingers.

It was hard to be sure, since she’d been blind and bald for years, but I think it was the lead in the paint that was doing the trick.

I added frankincense to Abuelita’s skin oil to welcome the season and sweeten the scent. She rubbed it into her skin carefully, reverently. I helped apply it to her legs and feet, since she couldn’t bend to reach them.

She still knew the touch of my hand, even through gloves. Abuelita and I were always close in a way that Grandpa Estéban and I never were. Whatever it was that made him want to live forever, we didn’t have it.

“Tu regalo,” she whispered. Your gift.

With unemployment over and years to go before I was eligible for retirement, it seemed like all I had to give anyone.



I ran into Debbie at the post office again just after Thanksgiving. Always the over-achiever, she was mailing out Christmas packages. She turned as if she were going to say something, then closed her mouth and looked away. She couldn’t tell me I looked great, because I didn’t. I was gaunt and graying.