Infinite Country(28)

Mauro told Talia about the serpent that lived at the bottom of the lagoon. Some said she was Bachué, mother of the Muisca. Others insisted the serpent was the devil.

From the lake we came and to the lake we will return, Mauro repeated Tiberio’s words, though Talia’s eyes were on the birds circling above. We’re all migrants here on earth.

There was one story of Guatavita Mauro never told Elena or either of his daughters when he took them to see the lake. A story he wished he’d never learned, though it came from his mother, and was one he’d never be able to forget.

The territory surrounding the lake was once governed by a powerful cacique who was married to a princess from another tribe and with whom he had a daughter. But the cacique was often drunk on chicha, off at bacchanals, and in his absence, his wife fell in love with a young warrior. The lovers were caught, and the cacique had the warrior tortured, cut out his heart, and presented it to his wife as proof of his ruthlessness and her infidelity. The princess ran away, thrusting herself, with her daughter in her arms, into the lake. The cacique sent his high priests to search for them. They soon returned to inform the cacique that his wife now lived below in the water kingdom as the bride of an enormous serpent. The cacique demanded his daughter be returned to him. The serpent sent back a young girl who resembled his daughter but with her eyes removed, so she could not see her father, recoiling when he tried to embrace her. And so it was the cacique who submitted, returning his beloved daughter to the lake to live with her mother and the serpent until the end of time.





SIXTEEN


Before they left for Texas, people warned Elena everyone gets fat in the north. Chemicals replace natural ingredients, so bread is not bread by the time one eats it. Meat from hormone-reared animals, mutant produce, colorful and rotund yet flavorless. Where fresh was expensive, and cheap was a tasty poison packaged as a meal. But after each time she gave birth in the United States, her body restored itself to its original form. It was after Mauro left that her body became something else, even as she walked more, ate less, carrying the children and their belongings every time they moved. She was stronger but never felt more tired or shapeless. When cell phones enabled people to see the person on the other side of the call, Elena held the camera close to her face to conceal from Mauro her new bulges.

She remembered the first time Mauro’s eyes glinted in that small screen. For years she’d imagined them meeting again, and there he was in her hand, gaunt, his forehead wide and square. The long hair she so loved to bury her face in was gone. She could tell he was taking in the sight of her too. The new wrinkles mapping old smiles, grays sparking from her temples.

“You’re as beautiful as ever, Elena.”

“I’m not and I know it. You don’t have to lie.”

Silence anchored until Talia took the phone from her father to ask Elena to send money to buy a new schoolbag.

“The one you have is perfectly fine,” Mauro said, and Talia argued briefly as Elena watched through the phone, a spectator to an intimacy she no longer shared with either of them.

Perhaps it had nothing to do with her body but with what the man at the restaurant did to her. The only man she’d ever been with besides Mauro. Their separation was involuntary. But time and borders did more to distance them than any divorce or widowing could.

She’d remained faithful. If not with her body, with her mind and heart, still with Mauro even through his years lost to drinking and hiding in city streets, despite the sporadic contact and stilted conversations, the silence that on her end, at least, held fear that it would be that way forever. She had many nightmares, but when her dreams were good, they were only of him, of being old with Mauro, their children safe and grown with families of their own. In her dreams they were always back in Colombia, never in the north, waiting peacefully for death to find them in their own land.



* * *




She stayed to work at the restaurant a few months longer. These were zombie days of obstinate nausea when Elena understood that what she said or wanted meant nothing. She kept what happened to herself, even when she’d hear about another woman from the neighborhood who went through something similar. They never commiserated. They kept each other strong so they could keep mothering and survive.

Maybe it goes back to the first time she got paid in the United States, apart from Mauro’s income, and was able to send money back to her mother. A pride, a satisfaction like no other she’d known. To be able to give to the one who gave her everything. To be able to make Perla’s days easier. A feeling that brought meaning and light to every dark day that came before or after.

One spring day with a morning moon, instead of walking from the bus stop to her regular shift at the restaurant, Elena turned and headed past the main avenue to streets lined with houses, expensive cars parked in driveways, and began knocking on doors. In her best English, she pronounced: I can clean your house. First time you pay what you want.

She soon had a few regular clients. She tried to be discerning. Yamira had taught her to be careful for whom she cleaned. Just like at any other job, one could be assaulted by an employer or work for weeks without getting paid.

Some houses were bigger than others. In one case, the current housekeeper had just been fired. In another, the lady of the house told Elena her husband demanded she do the cleaning herself but she would hire her if she promised not to tell anyone and be gone before the husband returned from work. In another home, the patrona made Elena wear slipcovers over her shoes. In another, no shoes were permitted at all. One man insisted Elena clean everything with bleach, which made her so dizzy she’d often have to lie on the bathroom floor, cheek to tile, until she could see clearly again. Some nights, she coughed through her sleep. Hands calloused, fingertips inflamed. Back sore and feet blistered from treks to each house to the bus station and back home. But the money. It was everything.