My mama always admitted that the sewing machine saved, if not her life, her sanity. And she was grateful more to Simonopio than to my father for it. Though they never discussed it openly, both of them understood that their godson had suggested the sewing because he knew it brought her peace.
How right he was: while my grandma found peace with her constant stirring of heated milk in the kitchen, switching hands each time she finished a Mystery of the Rosary, my mama needed the soothing rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat of her machine. Rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, for hours. When she sat a student down to sew, the change of rhythm drove her crazy. It was her machine, and it had to go rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat. Not rat-a . . . tat, rat-a . . . tat.
I never saw the machine in its temporary home at La Florida, but sometimes I imagine that the rhythm of my life is based on the rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat that would always accompany me years later, from my first days in the womb and until adulthood, ensuring my mama’s clearheadedness.
My heart, your automobile, time—it all moves forward and ages at that rhythm. Rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat.
With the rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat of her machine in those days of exile, my mama made ball gowns for my sisters and practical clothing for her fellow refugees. In addition to two skirts with matching blouses, she sewed a Sunday dress for Margarita Espiricueta, the only surviving girl in that unfortunate family. With the remnants, she decided to also make her a ragdoll, which was so beautiful and so coveted that soon she had to make a dozen more for all the workers’ young daughters.
And since she had plenty of time and anguish to spare, she kept sewing, guessing her friends’ daughters’ sizes, hoping that the Spanish organdy blouses she accumulated would fit. That they wouldn’t seem out of fashion or too childish. She made skirts and blouses of all sizes in more practical fabrics for the girls of the charity school, for when they went back to class.
Later she would admit that, had their exile continued, she would have carried on making clothes until the fabric ran out. That she would have sewed even if the combination of materials and thread was not right or in good taste. If absolutely necessary, she would have unpicked old clothes and even new ones in order to reinvent each garment, so that she didn’t have time to think or give in to sorrow.
Immersed in this creative endeavor, my mama did not contemplate—she refused to contemplate—that some of the people she’d worked so hard sewing for would never need new clothes again.
18
Land Will Always Be Somebody Else’s
From the position he had chosen at the top of a hill, Anselmo Espiricueta observed the caravan of cars and carts in the distance. They had warned him in advance that the boss and his family would arrive home that day, but since they had not specified a time, he made a special effort not to be there to welcome them.
He spied on them while sitting against a tree, for his clothes were insufficient to protect him from the icy morning wind. But there he stayed, bearing it, waiting, bitter, wishing he could be at home covered in blankets. Where he came from, people wrapped up a little more in the rainy season, but other than the arrival of a hurricane or two, there were no climactic surprises, and so he did not need much clothing in order to cope with life. In the North, one had to wear thin clothes, short sleeves, long sleeves, garments of cotton and of wool, thicker clothes, and clothes that were thicker still, and then one had to know which ones to wear depending on the day, which could start warm and turn ice cold by lunchtime.
It was not his first winter there—he had arrived in the North eight years ago. But he still did not understand the cold. Where did it come from? Who sent it and why? And when it went away, where did it go? Where was it kept? And also, how did the cold manage to get inside him, into his flesh and bones? However much he wrapped up, the cold always found a way to seep in, and sometimes it seemed that, while it began outside—near the trees on the hills, perhaps—it ended up occupying his entire body until it made him tremble. As if it were trying to shake apart his skeleton, to dismember him, to scatter his parts around that land that held him prisoner.
He had arrived there without knowing it even existed, in search of an elusive North. Of course, here they called the region “the North,” but now he was certain there would always be a more northern North. This was not the North he longed for. It was not the one he had left his old life behind for. It was not one that was any good to him, when it offered nothing but a life full of work, scorching heat, dry air, rare clouds, ice, and now also disease and death.
They had been passing through, intending to move on, when something squeezed his wife’s belly hard and made her expel the daughter she had inside prematurely. They had seen some disused land and settled on a little piece of it that Anselmo claimed as his own, with his family as witnesses. With sticks and branches, he and his eldest children had built the Espiricuetas’ first dwelling. They had had nothing more than they were searching for: land and freedom.
“We’re gonna build a brick house soon, you’ll see.”
And they would have their own tobacco field and their own animals, he promised himself. For the first time, on that little piece of land, Anselmo Espiricueta felt he was the master of his own time, of his free will, and of his destiny. Until then, he had lived a life of brutal punishment and poorly paid and thankless work. The revolutionary air he had breathed in the South had seduced him, and he had understood he would have to go in search of land and freedom himself to have any hope of finding it. He had heard that anyone could get rich in the North and that there was still much unclaimed land. And he wanted it.
He would no longer live at the mercy of others. After making this wish, Espiricueta did not have the patience to wait.
The risk that his employer would snare them on their escape from the South was great. The chances of climbing onto the train and going unnoticed were slim. But he preferred to take the risk, to die and see his wife and children die, rather than spend another day as a serf, waiting meekly for the beating that would finally kill him.
There, in the distant North, which at first—for a few weeks—he had believed was the North for which he had yearned, he had felt like lord, owner, and master. His children would never see him humiliated or knocked down by a foreman again. They would not have to stand aside for anyone, to let anybody through, to try to go unnoticed. They would not have to be less, to have less, or to count their beans every day.
In that North, there would be no more hunger, no more poverty.
However, it was one thing to want it, to think it, to consider it; seeing it through was quite another. A few days after settling there, they had no beans left to count or share out: they were all hungrier than ever, and crueler still, their thirst was no less acute, perhaps worse. Their bodies had never felt such heat, and however much they searched, neither Anselmo nor his sons could find water.
People who take for granted that water always falls from the generous sky to wet the earth do not develop the skills needed to find it deep underground. If it does not rain today, then it will tomorrow, they thought; but the days passed, and the rain they longed for never arrived. The vegetation around them was foreign, strange, and they soon realized they would obtain no food or even a single drop of moisture from it.
With traps and spears, they managed to kill rabbits and opossums, but they did not provide enough nourishment for the whole Espiricueta family, and they were no replacement for water.