The Mortifications Read online

  You are a child.

  But then we’d break apart completely. I’d have to leave her out of my life. Don’t you think that would be worse? To be driven off by your daughter? Isn’t that worse than still having some part of your child?

  Ulises assumed she meant some part of the time, and he had to agree. He couldn’t imagine his mother if Isabel told her to leave her alone for good. Ma is barely afloat now, he thought to himself. And to hear Isabel say those things?

  —

  For the next three days, Ulises tried the park patrol each morning and night. Yet by the fourth morning Soledad and Henri still could not be reached, so he dressed in a new white oxford shirt and headed to the church to see his sister make her temporary vows, which, after some years, she would reaffirm as final vows.

  Kneeling before the altar, Isabel swore herself to a life of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Then she swore herself to a life of silence. The archbishop looked down at Isabel and crossed one pasty hand over her face, pronouncing the verdict in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. She stood, and the archbishop placed a necklace, a cross on a chain, around her collar. Isabel bowed and faced the congregation as a willful mute. It was over.

  Mortified, Ulises scrambled out of his pew, eyes fixed to the tiled floor so that he might not have to see his sister’s restrained smile. At the door, on the way out, he blessed himself with holy water from the font. He did so out of habit, but the water was too cold for summer, like frozen rain, and it reminded him of how he’d stopped doing that a long time ago. He cursed himself under his breath, angry at the fact that some routines dwell in the subconscious. He pushed through the doors of the vestibule out into the wet August heat, full of questions: Was his sister like him? Or was her unconscious aligned always with her outward movement? And why, he asked himself, did she want me to come?

  Ulises was hurt, as if he’d been made to watch a loved one die. He wondered at Isabel’s future, how the world would change—if it did change—when a person could no longer make a noise in it. He tried to recall the pitch of her last words, the vows, but all he could muster was a vague impression of forced air. She had breathed her last words.

  Ulises considered the conversation he, not his sister, would have to have with Soledad. He could not imagine telling her the news over the phone—he pictured her out there in the Grand Canyon, dust under her fingernails and caking her eyelids, bedraggled and perfumed in her own dried sweat after several days under the sun. He imagined Soledad alone, hearing of her daughter’s vows in the pine-smelling office of a park patrolman. Ulises saw his mother hanging up the phone and walking back out into the wilderness.

  Then, for the first time, Ulises was terrified of being the messenger. When had he ever come to Soledad with good news? When had he ever brought her loving information? A stiff, happy wind in her sails? Maybe someday, maybe this coming day with this coming phone call, she would be unable to distinguish between her son and the collapse of her daughter. His voice would become synonymous with ruin.

  —

  At first, over the phone, Soledad ignored Ulises’s attempts to discuss the hard facts of Isabel’s vows. She spoke instead of an owl she and Henri had seen twice, across two consecutive days, stalking the riverbank for desert rats. The owl, she said, was an utterly noiseless bird; the rats made more sound drinking from the river. The owl took a snake on the second day, and I thought the creature would snap at the talons, she said, but the owl had his claws at exactly the right spot, just behind the skull and curled around the throat. I think they keep their prey alive until the final moment. They want a hot meal. I’ve never seen anything like it.

  Your daughter, Ulises said—and the distance was necessary then—has taken a vow of silence. It’s a temporary vow, I think, and so it might not last, but for now she’s promised God not to say a word. She didn’t tell me ahead of time, or else I would have tried to stop her.

  Soledad was silent for a minute. It would have been worthless, she said. Ulises could not tell if she meant his efforts would have been too little or if she meant Isabel’s will would have been too much. She didn’t clarify.

  We’re coming back, she said.

  Soledad returned to Hartford on a 747 direct from Phoenix and immediately laid siege to the Church. The first assault was an extensive letter campaign to the bishop, the archbishop, the cardinal, and eventually the Pope, each missive an indictment of the patriarchy of the institution, older authorities allowing the youth to wager their lives when they were too young to truly know any better. Soledad set her Smith Corona on a sewing table near the Sumatra plant that was Willems’s first gift to her—despite Henri’s insistence, Soledad had never moved the weed outside; she’d grown accustomed to the shades of green light the broad leaves cast across the living room during the day—and tested the durability of her ink ribbon. In the persistent, percussive hammering of her keystrokes, Ulises detected the same violent determination that had taken them from Cuba. Day and night she was a storm, amassing from county-courthouse testimony not only precedents for parent-guardian privilege, but also rulings against the Church in its instruction and guidance of its underage parishioners. Most impressive, she threatened to dismantle the convent itself, nun by nun, if the parish did not release her child immediately.

  The bishop’s response was quick: he would meet with her. But the higher echelons of the Catholic institution ignored her entirely.

  Ulises watched all this alongside Willems, who seemed content to simply sidestep Soledad’s whirlwind and follow closely behind with encouraging applause. They smoked cigars again in the kitchen, though now with the sound of his mother typing nearby. At first Ulises was overjoyed to see Soledad return with such gusto. It had been a little more than a year since Isabel’s first confession of absolute faith, and finally Soledad was doing something about all the ensuing nonsense. However, smoking a Chico Dulce with Willems, he felt a familiar jealousy, the same envy creeping up his spine that had poked at his brain and his heart when Isabel revealed her promise to Uxbal. Here was the mother, now, devoting her life again to the daughter. Before, it had been Ulises’s life as well, the ransom for escape. He recalled the story of the prodigal son. Suddenly, he wished he’d been a difficult child, a more dangerous type of human.

  Ulises heard Soledad snatch another page from the Smith Corona.

  For the first time in a long time, he reconsidered his position on fate. He looked at Willems, who wistfully stared through the kitchen door at Soledad. His pale face sagged, and he looked like a man who’d lost the horizon, who was adrift and hadn’t touched another body in a long time. Ulises agreed finally with Isabel: he and the Dutchman were probably the same—two finless fish, helpless in his mother and sister’s relentless tide.

  —

  Actually, Henri’s last good lay had occurred at dusk on the morning that Soledad had first seen the owl skimming the Colorado River for rodents. They’d not been able to fuck on the train because of a cabin light that had no switch and was always on; Soledad had been embarrassed by their silhouettes against the window shade. In Phoenix, the hotel mattress had been excessive, and they’d slept so deeply, they didn’t dream. On the river, their guide, a plump military vet from California, was fond of sitting by the fire all night, which meant that the game of shadows playing across the canvas walls of their tent had kept Soledad awake and worried for her daughter; Isabel was becoming a shadow, in Soledad’s mind, of some girl she once knew.

  On their third night on the Colorado, however, the guide went to bed early, suffering from a bit of dehydration, and so the fire died, giving Willems and Soledad the chance to make up for lost time. They rushed through once and fell asleep, but before sunrise, which is a long, late affair at the bottom of a canyon, Soledad felt Willems behind her, and they inched slowly into each other. The air by the water was humid, and when they finished, Soledad was slick with the perspiration of two bodies and incredibly thirsty. She slid from their sleeping bag and exi
ted the tent to drink from the portable cooler, and in the twilight before dawn she saw what she thought was a bat. She crept closer to the water. The creature was much larger than a bat and seemed not to disturb the air in the slightest bit. It was an owl! It was beautiful, and it made Soledad cry out in joy to have seen such a thing. Frightened by her sound, the bird soared back up toward the canyon’s rim before disappearing into a crevasse.

  She thought of nothing else the entire day. Distracted by her vision, she could not focus the following night when again the guide went to bed early and Willems rolled into her. Soledad silently pushed him aside and studied her watch until she was sure the sky was halfway black and halfway blue. She was rewarded for her diligence in the very early morning. The owl reappeared, this time to steal a snake from the river, water dripping from the tail.

  The final days of the trip the guide was feeling better, and Soledad apologized for ignoring Willems. She thanked him also for taking her to the canyon, and she told him that she’d been rejuvenated by the trip. Before leaving the park, she kissed him at an overlook near the southern rim, where they could see vultures in the distance. But it was a strange kiss, because it was bare, something she was certain they both realized. Soledad had thought herself resuscitated, not emptied out. She let the notion pass as they drove back to Phoenix, which was easy, because she had the owl on her mind, the sight of the bird becoming an object of meditation as she traveled.

  Back home, she made a metaphor of what she’d seen, giving weight to the empty kiss and the mute hunter. She could sense an allegory coming to life as her fingers bit at the keys of the Smith Corona: she was the captured snake, and the owl was, of course, her silent daughter. At the Grand Canyon she’d not been restored, but reborn, and if she was not careful here—if she was not vigilant—her life would be carried away by the soundless creature she’d once loved. The Grand Canyon did not give her the strength to return home but the strength for one last strike, and it had to be a good one, teeth flared and jaws open, so that her daughter might release her grip.

  But this did not at all explain the empty kiss, except that maybe Soledad no longer had the strength to love Willems and her daughter all at once. He was left behind on the riverbank. It was a sad parting, she thought. She opened a new ream of paper alongside the typewriter. But it could not be helped. It was likely only temporary, and at the moment Soledad had no time for apologies. Willems could stay as long as he could stand it, but she was unidirectional, and she rattled down the warpath.

  —

  In the light of the church vestibule, Isabel struck Soledad as strange in appearance. The habit she wore was white for her preliminary phase, cupping her chin and rounding her forehead in a way that made her large brown eyes appear even larger.

  Here is your daughter, the bishop said to Soledad, as if she’d forgotten the face.

  Soledad handed to the bishop a thick manila envelope, which he seemed to expect and placed on a table next to a bowl of holy water.

  You should familiarize yourself with the contents, Soledad said. There are a series of court dates already set for initial hearings, which I have no doubt will lead to a trial. The district attorney has all the same materials. You may request extra copies if you’d like.

  You can, of course, take her, the bishop said. But I don’t think this is really necessary. The Church offers up its sacraments, and it’s a person who chooses to take part in them. No one has forced these vows on her, just as no one forces the body and blood of Christ into mouths on Sunday.

  Soledad felt an angry heat rise in her. According to doctrine, she said, a person dies and goes to hell if they don’t cannibalize the Christ. A form of coercion, in my opinion.

  The bishop nodded and then turned to Isabel. You can come back whenever you like. The doors are always open.

  Soledad did not speak to her daughter, simply took her by the arm and led her to the car and then home. She’d not wanted to argue with the girl at the steps of the altar or under the influence of the cloister walls. She’d requested an office meeting solely for some semblance of neutral territory, but the bishop, not affording her even that, gave her no choice but to drag Isabel back to the house and confront her in the place she’d abandoned.

  Back at the house and in the living room, Isabel remained silent. Ulises listened to his mother’s urging from the kitchen, occasionally cracking the door to watch. He understood that in the girl’s mind she could not speak, bound as she was to the Highest Being. Instead, she provided Soledad with a note she’d written beforehand, but the only words written on the tiny slip were Please, Mother.

  How are you going to exist in the world? Soledad asked. How are you going to communicate with people? They’ll think you’re a mute charity case, a dumb girl because you can’t speak. What about school? I don’t understand how you can even pray.

  But then Soledad moved into her own pain, her own guilt, holding out her hands the entire time as if the daughter could take back the failures of the mother.

  Can’t you speak for just a few minutes? Just long enough to explain to me why? Are you sick of talking? Were you not being heard? Did I not listen?

  Isabel’s large eyes widened in response to Soledad’s desperation, but the girl’s lips remained shut. Eventually, she tried to sign for her mother as way of explanation or, perhaps, apology.

  Hot and frustrated and growing hoarse, Soledad slapped at the hands, screaming. My daughter is not an idiot mute! Slapping her once gave her permission to slap her again. Talk! Soledad shouted. Talk! She slapped Isabel on the hands until the girl put them behind her back, and then she slapped the girl twice across the face, the second time hard enough that Isabel’s lip split. Finally her mouth opened, but only wide enough for her tongue to lick at the blood. Soledad stepped back, and the habit framed her violence nicely, an oval face dissolving into a rounded jaw, a red seam splitting the chin into halves.

  Soledad had lost, and she knew it. She slipped to her knees, and Ulises watched as his mother begged forgiveness from his sister. Soledad cried, and Isabel ran her fingers, her delicate and expressive fingers, through her mother’s hair. For Ulises, it was the final tilt of all things gone askew, the mother kneeling before the child, seeking redemption.

  Isabel stayed at the house that night for the last time. She and Soledad sat quietly next to each other on the couch in the living room without talking. Eventually, Soledad handed her daughter one of her stenographer’s pads. She asked questions and waited patiently for written answers, listening to the pen on the paper, a switch dragged through sand. She found herself wishing that she’d taught her children the art of shorthand when she first learned it, but she could not have imagined a need for it then.

  Over the course of the night and well into dawn, Isabel satisfied her mother’s curiosity: yes, the convent was a wonderful and spiritual place to live; in fact, it took only a week for silence to feel natural; no, it was not because of her mother that she’d made the vow of silence; yes, she wanted to continue her work with the deaf children of Hartford; yes, she was happy. As happy as she had ever been.

  And by the time the sun rose and Ulises was searching out his boots for another day in the fields—his work hours would lessen soon, the summer almost finished, the harvests coming in, and the university reopening after Labor Day—Soledad had begun to anticipate her daughter’s responses, had begun to only ask yes or no questions, attributing emotion and feeling to the nodding or shaking by paying close attention to her daughter’s face. Soledad, melancholic though determined, seemed to make up for five years of unchecked freedom and thin vigilance by learning to communicate with her daughter in just one night. Words no longer clouded the space between them, and it was the closest they had ever been to understanding each other.

  Reading faces became their secret language. Soledad, in the presence of her mute, holy daughter, became comfortable with silence, and Isabel learned to decipher her mother’s twitching lips. They communicated constantly in the
presence of the other: during Sunday dinners, during the walks Soledad and Isabel took together, often holding hands, and during the rare occasions when Isabel would sit and watch her mother sew late into Sunday night. The unnoticed consequence of their communion, however, was a melancholic haze that shrouded the whole house when Isabel was away. In between visits Soledad preferred absolute silence, creating a daily loneliness in which she could relive the unspoken conversations she’d had with her daughter.

  Ulises, busy with school but not wanting to lose a grip on his field work, was not home enough to break the long spells of noiselessness. Willems was also away, traveling throughout the Caribbean and Asia, looking to replenish his stock with newer, stronger, more robust plants. By the start of October, two months after Isabel took her vows, the Encarnación household was as solemn as a funeral parlor, and its members passed through its doors as spirits between headstones.

  In truth, the only outward appearance of life at the time was to be found in Ulises’s body, which was undergoing another growth spurt so great, it seemed fueled by his mounting envy. He was jealous of Isabel, of the new attention his mother put upon her, and he could say nothing to his mother that would pull her fully out of the quiet in which she found refuge. So his limbs and his torso—perhaps feeling the void of love with greater sensitivity and urgency—responded with a swelling and lengthening that should have garnered the young man more notice. He wanted to be seen. Following Soledad and Isabel’s reunion, he sprouted five more inches and added two more stones, bringing him to six-foot-seven and 260 pounds. He was not monstrous, but he’d started feeling cramped inside the quaint New England home. It got to the point where he could not sit comfortably at any of the rickety kitchen chairs long enough to even smoke a cigar. So, rather than lumbering about the house and disturbing the peace, he decided to dedicate his bulk to the tobacco fields.