Afterlife - Julia Alvarez Page 0,35
family emergency. A sister gone missing. The remaining sisters are convening in Western Mass, where the missing sister was last seen. We’re going to try to track her down.
Roger must be wondering why she’s giving him more information than he needs, front-loading, as it were, before she appends her request: Can Roger let Mario’s girlfriend (no need to go into details) stay another week?
Roger’s eyes narrow, studying her. Someone’s not telling the truth here. Last I heard, they broke up.
Antonia’s head seesaws, yes and no. Actually, it’s a bit more complicated, she responds.
Roger’s got a hundred and forty cows to milk and a back field to spray with liquid manure. He has no time for complications. Just answer the question, the TV judges instruct the gabby accused person on the witness stand. A yes or a no. So, is this the afterlife? Everything black or white? A heavenly court with St. Peter as judge. Yes or no. No complications.
Please, Antonia pleads. She knows she’s making a nuisance of herself, after resolving not to become a burden on anyone.
Roger lets out a sigh as if to expel some offending foreign matter. Is he asking himself, What is the right thing to do?
If the fellow wants to let her stay in the trailer, I don’t know about it.
Thank you, oh thank you, Antonia gushes, as if Roger has agreed to far more than just turning a blind eye to a girl in trouble.
Roger glances over her shoulder; his scowl deepens. She turns to see José and Mario walking back to their trailer on a break from their morning chores. They stop at the sight of el patrón and la do?ita talking. Instead of approaching, they wait deferentially to know the wishes of those in control.
It’s power Antonia doesn’t want. Never has. As a young woman, she dreaded getting her driver’s license: suddenly having control of four thousand pounds of steel and rubber and glass. A tremendous jump from her featherweight ninety-five pounds. She used to suffer from panic attacks those first few months after getting her license. She still feels anxious behind the wheel. I hate having power, Antonia would often say to Sam. But Sam didn’t buy her disclaimers. How about the power of being able to use words? Or being a teacher running a classroom? How about your power over me? And your beauty, he added, deflecting her defensiveness with a compliment. Beautiful women have that power over men.
She was hardly a beauty even as a young woman and definitely not as the middle-aged one he had met and married. But she was not about to accuse him of blindness when what he was seeing was delightfully in her favor.
Antonia signals to the two men to join them. She explains that el patrón is going to let Estela stay in the trailer until Antonia can get back from a family emergency. I’ll bring her over before I leave, Antonia adds. Mario stares at her in disbelief. Has she suffered total amnesia and forgotten his views from the day before? Did José talk with Mario, asking him to reconsider whether his honor would allow for forgiveness? Doesn’t she want to hear if Mario agreed?
No, not really. Antonia doesn’t have time to indulge agency, rights, agreements. She is the one with the power to say how their story will go. She does not return his gaze. She has rendered him invisible, like everyone else. Not something she would want to fess up to in that book of hers.
On the short drive back to her house, Antonia defends herself, pleading her case before the stern internal judge who, instead of a puritanical white-powdered wig, wears her mother’s face. Not surprisingly, Judge Mami often rules against her.
How much power does Antonia really have? Talk about powerless! She has lost her husband; her sister is missing. And behind these untimely losses, the timely ones, the whole flank of buffering elders, parents, tías, tíos, who have died in the natural progression of things, but still, natural or not, they leave behind holes in the heart, places of leakage where Antonia feels the depletion of spirit, the slow bleed of chronic grieving. Language used to be good at stanching the flow, the intense—call it desperate—need to get the words just right. But more and more words are inadequate . . . a raid on the inarticulate with shabby equipment, the poet wrote about writing, his lines showing no signs of inadequacy.
Antonia has had enough! Again she thinks