So, justice has been done. Or has it? She’s heard it somewhere, or maybe made it up herself that the purpose of justice is not universal happiness but the satisfaction of the wronged individual. Yet she feels nothing—no joy, no satisfaction.
But then, she has never been one to self-analyse. Or maybe she has, but has forgotten it like so many other things she has always thought impossible to forget. Of course, some things and situations slip from one's mind easily, like picking up umbrellas on the bus or pens and keys left in handbags and pockets. Or irrelevant dates. Jorge, her husband, forgets names or rather fails to match them with faces. But to forget so much of her past?
It’s been a gradual process, as far as she can tell—shadows blotting out memories not all at once but in parts, as if on the installment plan from a Sanborns catalog. She’s aware that whole chunks of what used to be are now mislaid, and no matter what she does, which isn’t much really, she can’t pry open the airtight door to her past.
Her mind seems honeycombed with missing recollections: happy, sad, indifferent. She can understand how the tasteless, odorless, achromatic slices of life, or those that brought nothing but grief, have been sucked into the whirlpool of oblivion. Mental blocks—she once heard a TV presenter call it in a mid-afternoon talk show. But why has all the joy been wiped out as well? Is it because there has been no happiness at all? Not a drop of it in an existence consisting only of black and grey?
From above, she can hear the creak of the floorboards responding to the constant pressure of the wheelchair going in circles, like on a treadmill. She gets up and fills the kettle with water. The reassuring warmth of tea has a calming effect on her. But it’s more than that. The whisper of puffing steam will drown out the squeaks and groans sifting down from the ceiling.
That day in Hospital Español, when the doctor’s mild, nothing-is-too-difficult-to-bear voice called her back from her self-induced trance, she blinked rapidly, more surprised at the sound of her name, or what she thought was her name, than at the news.
"Señora García? Señora Rosa María García? "
It took her a moment to realise he was speaking to her. The name's unfamiliarity jarred. It was as if he were talking to someone else—to a person looking over her shoulder.
"Mrs. Garcia?”
She slowly drew her attention away from the bog of passivity.
"Yes, I’m Rosa Maria Garcia." The r’s rolling off her tongue left a bitter taste.
For years, she’d been nothing else but “Jorge Garcia’s woman.” For her in-laws, she was simply “Jorge’s wife.”
Jorge ... Jorge used a plethora of names that had nothing to do with her own.
"Useless; absolutely useless." Can you do anything right?"
He called her feeble-minded, touched by the insanity that ran rampant in her family. That’s why the name, spoken in the soft tones of intimacy, jarred.
“Yes, my name is Rosa Maria Garcia," she repeated, gnawing at the clusters of sounds.
The doctor’s face adopted the lines of compassion reserved for the bearers of bad news.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Garcia. We couldn’t save your husband’s leg. Had he come a month earlier…"
She smiled, and a look of disbelief dilated the doctor’s pupils. However, the stretching of never-exercised smiling muscles was not the result of her insensitivity but of hearing her name spoken aloud. She was not gloating at Jorge’s misfortune. Far from it. She would have never expected it would be Jorge—strong, infallible, and bursting with nearly insolent health—who would get sick and get his leg chopped off right up to the hip. The dapper lawyer of high-flying but corrupt Mexican politicians, actors, and yes, why not say it, Sinaloa drug lords failed to look after his own damn leg and would, for the rest of his life, be wheelchair-bound.
"Do you understand what I’m saying?“ The doctor asked again.
Aware of his disapproval, she wiped off the smile at once.
"Yes. Yes. I do. You couldn’t save Jorge’s leg."
Afterward, things happened at such a rapid pace that she had no time to file away impressions and thoughts. They brought Jorge home and taught her about his post-operative care. The wheelchair, shiny and new, began its dizzy rounds in the bedroom upstairs. And she was left alone to cope both with her husband’s unexpected illness and her own muddled emotions.
She looks out of the window onto the undulating garden filled with a promise of spring: green fronds poking out of the still dark soil, the crimson atzcalxochitl, the purple and white dahlias, the speckled tiger flowers, and the sun like a swollen daffodil blooming over the edge of the world.
She hoped for some mellowing from Jorge. She believed that his predicament would soften the sharp edges of his temper. But instead, he wore his temper like a badge of merit, took pride in it, and, if anything, his blustery impatience grew more pronounced. After all, all his life, he had been forced to deal with clients who were used to power and, in a matter of seconds, could point a gun at his face if challenged. And neither did he expect the fires of rebellion—the tiny but still smoldering vestiges of resilience hiding under the ashes of his wife’s life-long acceptance.
“How long do I have to wait for you to come up?”
He would holler and shake the bell until his bones rattled.
“Get that lazy ass of yours up here at once!”
At first, she obeyed. Like a Pavlov's dog trained to salivate on command, she shuffled up with mugs of tea and platefuls of alegrias and camotes. Emotionless, she watched him eat, his mushy spit dribbling down his chin.
"What? What are you staring at?" he growled between the mouthfuls of food.
“Don’t you have anything better to do?"
A vortex of anger was gathering inside her. The hardly smoldering sparks of rebellion were not extinguished; they had merely gone into eclipse, waiting to burst into flame. A one-sided grin landed on her lips.
"What are you grinning at, woman? Have you gone completely mad?"
The cartilaginous protuberance in his scrawny neck flicked up and down as he swallowed hard.
She chose not to answer, smug in her knowledge that he had no idea what was going on in her mind. With a bolt of comprehension, she realised that Jorge was absolutely at her mercy and could hurt her no more.
She went on with the punctilious rituals prescribed by the doctor, massaged the pathetic stump of his leg, and washed off sweat and dust collecting in the creases of his skin, but she let him wait a little longer each day, withdrawing her presence, ignoring the ugly notes of impatience from the summoning bell. And watching him eat, she let the you-don’t-know-what’s-going-on smile linger in the corners of her mouth.
But the newly found independence failed to bring pleasure, just as it failed to bring back the missing chunks of her past. The lost pieces of her existence that would fit into the empty slots did not emerge. Nothing came.
She puts a handful of hierbabuena in a pot and fills it with boiling water as the kettle whistles. water. Jorge's now timid and beseeching voice will soon be heard from upstairs.
It rained in the morning, and the little hill crouching behind the house exhales steamy clouds of evaporating moisture. She hates the city and the house with the tiny hill. She longs for the sea of her childhood, surrounded by the Sierra Madre del Sur: choppy waves splintered into a myriad of holograms by the setting sun and boats plowing the furious swell as young, tanned Acapulco divers pirouetted into the water.
Her childhood… Rays of warmth burst into her mind, and streaks of color blossom on her cheeks. The memory is a distant spot in her mind. She remembers tiny snatches of her past—the village perched on rocky slopes, with houses clinging to their spines. And the people—simple people who ate simple food and enjoyed simple things: rainbows for their announcement of good weather and nights for bringing a well-deserved rest.
She is enjoying the unexpected excursion into her past; she has not enjoyed anything for a long time. Silhouettes emerge out of the fog. Her mother bent over the table, kneading dough for chalupas. Nora, her sister, waving from the train window, the handkerchief white and trimmed with lace, going away to service to the far far away Texas. And Jorge, dressed in his finery, without the daunting promise of things to come, pushing the door open, and calling her, saying her name. And she – smooth-faced, untouched by age and adversity.
Jorge, one of the Acapulco tourists, the best dancer she'd ever seen, invited her to the Sunday dance. His arms around her, keeping a proper distance, warned, of course, by Father Grande’s vigilant eyes. They danced, it seemed, forever to Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman.”
Where had they gone wrong? How did it all happen?
Jorge proposed that same summer before returning to Mexico City and pursuing his law studies. His shaking hand clutched hers as if his life depended on it. She remembers the manly scent of the Varon Dandy cologne and his angled face towards her. He said he’d make her happy but that he preferred the old ways, the good ways, the tried ways he could trust and rely on; she’d have to give up her emancipated ways and the job at the Acapulco Post Office. And her dreams of becoming a nurse.
So she did. She put on hold assorted ambitions and followed him to this city full of smog and swarms of unfriendly people. She also accepted his ways.
Soon after, things started to turn sour. Silence, prolonged and wounding, lurked in the corners of the house. They wanted children—the stay and prop of old age—but none came. She grieved quietly, but blame began to seep into Jorge’s voice when they settled on the sofa in front of the TV in a drowsy conversation before bedding down. She answered in a hesitant, bird-like voice. He responded with slaps. At first, it was gentle, more like love bites, meant to bring no pain or damage but awakening.
"You get the worst out of me," he accused, and he withdrew into a more profound silence.
She persisted, trying to be the tender wife he wanted her to be. She trailed after him from room to room, begging for an explanation, for a touch other than the slaps. Unwillingly, he admitted that a part of him was missing and blamed his childhood and adolescence for the violence, the echo of family battles that neither distance nor time could put to rest.
With time, the tenderness he demanded turned into acceptance. She stopped trying to understand the world in which, against her wishes, she was immersed.
Gradually, the process of forgetting began. Her past, snatches of happiness, and stretches of grief sank into oblivion. Nothing but a husk remained. She became "Jorge Garcia’s woman." Lacking the determination and will to preserve her identity, she put as much distance as possible between herself and the dangerous mental process called remembering.
The wheelchair above begins its routine rotation. She pushes aside the nostalgic musings and reaches for two mugs, heaping sugar into Jorge’s daisy-patterned one, squirting milk into the other, and placing the two on a tray. Balancing carefully, she trudges up the stairs towards the squeak of the wheels, towards Jorge.
As she opens the door, she sees her husband sitting hunched in the chair, the swollen flesh under his eyes moist. Looking at him now, the bitter sediment of revenge in her mouth is replaced by the sweet taste of recovered recollections.
-J.B. Polk
(Polish by birth, a citizen of the world by choice. First story short-listed for the Irish Independent/Hennessy Awards, Ireland, 1996. Since she went back to writing in 2020, more than 100 of her stories, flash fiction and non-fiction, have been accepted for publication. She has recently won 1st prize in the International Human Rights Arts Movement literary contest.)
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