Years later, she told me that she never knew where all the tears that sprung forth that day had come from. She would always refer to it as “the day I cried for no reason.”
She had cried over her father’s death, of course, but that was a discreet, dignified crying filled with pride, with no outbursts or drama, though not without bitterness. Knowing my mama, she would have made use of her embroidered handkerchief, careful as she always was not to show her natural—but uncomfortable and shameful—secretions. It had been elegant and justified crying.
But there’s crying and there’s crying.
The person who burst into tears when she saw the mass of wood and metal that was her sewing machine could not have been her. From the instant she laid eyes on it, she did not recognize herself. At that moment—she would say—she was thrown into a trance, and only a tiny part of her brain remained intact, asking her, Who are you? Do you not care about the spectacle you’re making of yourself?
My mama left the group of several men and one boy speechless, stunned, not knowing what to do or say. Together they had made an enormous effort to transport the machine from its usual place to the truck without its parts falling off or the pedal tipping. Then some of them walked back while others steadied the machine on the bumpy ride in the cattle track. They knew, of course, that they still had to haul it down and position it in its new place, but they were willing. What none of them wanted was to return it to its original location.
“What shall we do, Boss?”
“Go rest. We’ll see about it tomorrow. You, too, Simonopio. Don’t worry, go have a bite to eat.”
My papa didn’t go to find my mama straightaway. He listened to some survival instinct and waited to be called for dinner before he went to see if his wife was calmer. He found her in the bedroom, sitting on the armchair that she mostly used for sewing by hand or for her embroidery. It was dark, but she had done nothing to light the room. My papa lit the nearest oil lamp.
There they remained, not caring that dinner was going cold.
Dr. Cantú wrote them a brief note once in a while and left it at the entrance to La Amistad for my papa to find on his visits. So far, my papa had received three: the first two very short and far from encouraging, and the third one a little longer but very odd. In his hurry, the doctor had not explained himself very well when he wrote about the overcrowding at the cemetery, a failed rising from the dead, and a survivor.
Since the communication was one-way, he had no means to request more information from the doctor, to ask questions, or to receive specific answers. Cantú was already doing enough by sending his notes. My papa must have resigned himself to it, guessing the doctor would not have the time, between patients and deaths, to write long accounts, to make full lists of those who had perished, or to remember whether he had already mentioned the death of such and such. Indeed, in each letter he repeated the names of some of those who’d succumbed. The information therefore served to tell them only whether civilization still existed, and not the details and fate of all their friends and relatives.
Despite his frustration with the patchy information, riddled with gaps and ambiguities, my papa was grateful for Mario Cantú’s distraction. He was grateful for not knowing. He felt some relief concluding, for want of information confirming otherwise, that his brothers-in-law still lived, because it was clear that the circumstances could change a great deal from letter to letter.
My mama did not know, either, whether it was better to receive this news that only tormented her or to remain oblivious to everything.
However, when my mama saw the sewing machine on the truck—the one that had given her hour upon hour of peace, the one she’d positioned in the brightest part of her sewing room, counting on the fact that it would not be moved even after her death—she let out all her well-hidden, pent-up anguish, for she believed that the end of the world had arrived. That it was real: they were the last survivors. That they would never return to the life they had known. That they were isolated forever. That they would never order flowers for the spring dance. That the fabric she had ordered for the girls’ ball gowns would never arrive. That her daughters would never find husbands if there were no flowers, gowns, or boys. That if there were no fabric, there would be no use for the machine, because she had no loom and, at any rate, did not know how to use one. Then she pictured herself unpicking their old clothes in order to remake them, again and again, until the wool was threadbare from use. She saw herself with no flowers to take to the cemetery. But if the cemetery was full and everyone was dead, who would’ve laid her brothers to rest? Who would bury the last person standing? The risen one that Dr. Cantú had written to them about?
All these thoughts came to her at the same time, in that tiny instant of afternoon when she stood in the shadow of the pickup truck. And that was the little glimpse my mother gave my father into the labyrinth of her thoughts.
My mama believed him when he promised her the world hadn’t ended, and she felt reassured. My papa then left her there, still in the darkness of her bedroom with the one oil lamp he’d lit, to tend to some extremely urgent task. A task he made up, according to my mother, so he did not have to see her like that anymore. My father might never have understood that episode, his wife’s “breakdown,” but his wife certainly understood him.
Calm now—comforted by her armchair and in particular by her reunion with the hope of life, new clothes, future sons-in-law, and grandchildren—the small amount of good sense that had persisted during the outburst witnessed by her husband, workers, and godson returned to occupy its rightful position in my mother’s ordinarily even-tempered mind. It returned strong. It returned offended and complaining to her that it had been some tantrum you threw. And in front of everyone. Aren’t you ashamed?
But my mama, who at her age had learned there was no pain—and now shame—that would stop her, got up from the chair, took off her apron, splashed cold water on her face, and seeing herself in the mirror, ignored the question. And then she went to find my papa.
“Come on. Let’s get them to serve dinner again.”
The next day, the Singer was in its new, albeit—to my mama’s relief—temporary, place in the room my sisters had taken over for their romantic reading.
But there was no fabric suitable for sewing. My poor papa was a country man, and as such, he knew nothing of sewing or fabric. And he had not brought any. At the end of the next day, my papa arrived with another offering for my mama.
He brought me everything they could find in my sewing room, my mama would say. The trunks full of calico, the summer and winter fabrics. He brought all the thread. And also feathers, beads, sequins. He even brought the trunks of yellowing old curtains that I was going to send to the convent! We had to store everything in one of the bedrooms because it didn’t all fit in the sewing room.
Nonetheless, not with all the materials in the world could my mama have made hardworking seamstresses out of my sisters. Before their exile, sewing had never held their attention. My mama had thought that when the modern machine arrived, it would arouse their interest, but she soon concluded her daughters would stretch only to darning socks and sewing on buttons, nothing else. Now that she had them captive, as my papa would say, she made another attempt, albeit a failed one. This time, the problem did not stem from my sisters. My mama realized that, while she was an excellent seamstress, she was a dreadful teacher. She lacked the necessary patience. Seeing another person sitting in front of her Singer sewing machine—whether it was one of her daughters or another student my papa found for her—would put her in a very bad mood. She would start by telling them that the pace of their pedaling was wrong. Then she would try to show them how to baste or change the needle, but seeing the novice’s clumsiness, she would say, Move over, let me do it. That’s how she would end up doing the whole thing, telling them, Oh, what lovely work you’ve done!