Oscar Hijuelos - Beautiful María of My Soul

For a while several of those bitter pills daily seemed to do the trick. Still, with their foul taste, Teresita dreaded the very idea of having to take any medicine, and whether she took those pills or not as instructed, she seemed just fine.

A few months later, several days before the Christmas of 1943, they were out at the bodega by the crossroads, where trucks from distant cities sometimes stopped, dancing for a crowd of rum-soaked guajiros, who were whooping it up on one of those nights when the poorest of the poor pretended to be rich, the tables covered with all kinds of victuals-succulent lechón and pit-roasted chickens and doves, rivers of aguardiente and beer flowing like the Nile, their roosters and hounds meandering about, droppings left everywhere, as if anyone, some dancing barefooted on those sagging pine floors-covered in sawdust in the corners-gave a damn. On that night with their papito in good voice and on a little makeshift stage with a few of his musician friends from around-what were their names?-oh yes, Alvaro and Domingo, and a third fellow, the one-eared Tomaso, who played a gaita that he’d made from a pig’s belly, his terrible wailings on that primitive bagpipe appreciated just the same, those guajiros were having so much fun.

Among the females were those charming jamoncitas in their best flower-patterned dresses: María and Teresita, displaying their youthful rumbas, white blossoms tucked into their hair, and laughing as they turned, spinning in circles like flowers fallen from a tree. In the midst of all that, with the musicians playing, their papito proudly beaming at them, and with the oldest of the old clapping along, and the other beautiful young women of their valle, usually pregnant or on their way to becoming so, nodding at las muchachitas-with all that going on, Teresita, in the midst of a dance, had the second of her serious attacks, falling stiffly into her older sister’s arms and then, after appearing as if she were dead, trembling so violently on the floor that her limbs were soon black and blue. But, la pobre, even that wasn’t the worst of it-the pretty thing lost control of her bowels, coño, a shame of all shames. That fiesta still went on, though with more restraint in respect to Manolo and his daughter, the pretty one, with the wistful spoon-shaped face, who had nearly died and then come back before their very eyes.

After that, it was María who kept after Teresa to take her medicine, whether she wanted to or not, but even so, those fits returned, her body contorting in frightening ways, her eyes becoming blank as stone. Looking after her, María preferred to think those seizures, lasting only a few minutes, would soon vanish altogether because of the medicines (and their mamá’s constant prayers). But they didn’t. Out in the yard one morning, jumping rope with some of the local girls, Teresita, gleefully yelping as she took her turn, their hounds Blanco and Negro barking at her, died again, her eyes rolling up in her head. On another day, they were feeding the pigs and crying out with delight (and disgust) at the way the sows sniffed their feet and prodded their ankles with their moist and bristled snouts, when Teresita, in the midst of a laugh, suddenly turned to stone and fell right down into the swill, but this time, instead of violently shaking, she simply seemed to stop breathing, her lips and face becoming slightly blue. María, frightened to death, smothered her younger sister’s face with kisses until, by some sleight of God’s hand, she came around again, with a terrible belch that forced open the passageway to her lungs.

When it happened yet another time, while the sisters were accompanying their papito to town, it didn’t take María long to figure out that Teresita, detesting the bitter taste of those pills, only pretended to be taking them. From then on, María made sure Teresita actually swallowed them down, even if she had to force her mouth open by twisting her hair back before shoving one of those píldoras in herself. It wasn’t easy. Just slapping Teresa in the face for her own good, in the same way that her papito had sometimes slapped hers, nearly brought María to tears-of anger and grief. She came to hate the way Teresita spat that phenobarbital at her face or doubled over, clutching her belly and sinking to the ground, trembling-not from bad nerves but from the very thought that María, who had always loved her so, had started making her life a misery. Every time Teresita told her “Tú no me quieres”-“You don’t love me,”-or “Te odio, hermana”-“I hate you, sister,” her voice cracking and eyes blistering from the strain of crying, María’s heart broke a little more. (Long after Teresita was gone, those memories pecked at María like crows.)

Guajira sisters were never supposed to be at odds, but no matter how much Teresita abhorred those pills, María remained determined about fulfilling her duties-Teresita was her only sister, after all. And when her sister’s condition seemed to improve and she didn’t suffer any attacks for months, María, despite Teresita’s misery and weeping, felt more than a little justified in her actions. Too bad that her younger sister seemed to become nervous and gloomy around her, as if she, la bella María, would ever lift a finger to hurt her. It took María a while to understand some other things: that such a medicine affected the mente, the heart and soul, in short, that phenobarbital had started to change her younger sister’s sweet nature.

Indeed, that medicine had a bad effect on her younger sister; Teresita’s moods were never the same from day to day. Sometimes she became so timid and afraid of people, trembling not from epilepsy but from the belief, without any reason, that even the most gentle of farmers wanted to hurt her. Her fears followed her to bed: Teresita couldn’t sleep, spending half the night turning from side to side and sighing (and despairing over the aftertaste of that medicine, which lingered in the throat for hours even if she had consumed it with a sweet mango or papaya or mamey or guineo). To feel her sister’s heart beating as quickly as a hummingbird’s against her chest in the middle of the night, as she held her tenderly, to hear her breathing, but painfully so, while gasping for air-all that was almost more than María could bear, to the point that on certain days she would have welcomed one of her sister’s fits again-possessed by the devil as Teresita seemed to be-instead of having to watch her turn into someone she didn’t know.

One day Teresita was saintly, the next all she wanted to do was to stick her tongue out at passersby, or torment the animals, tying cords around their necks and pulling them cruelly across the yard. Whereas she used to show appreciation for even the smallest kindness-“¡Ay, qué bonito!”- “How pretty!” or “¡Qué sabroso!”-“How tasty!”-and never hesitated about saying nice things-“Te aprecio mucho, hermana”-“I love you, sister!”-days now passed when she wouldn’t say a word to anyone. Her facial expressions were affected as well: it was as if she refused to smile and took to crying over nothing; and when she wasn’t crying, she withdrew into herself, as if no one else in the world existed, and never lifted a finger to help around the house or yard, not even when her mamá, with her slowly failing eyesight, begged Teresita to help her thread a needle.

(“I’ll do it, Mami,” María offered.)

As for prayers? Whenever their mamá, in her God-welcoming way, got them down on their knees to give thanks for the salvation that was sure to come, Teresita would refuse, shaking her head and running away-why should she? Neither her mother nor her father lifted a finger against her in punishment. (“Niña,” as María once asked her daughter, “how on earth can you force someone to believe?”) Still, there came the day when things got out of hand. Teresita, with her own kind of beauty, also entered into puberty-and quickly so-but whereas María had been cautious and could care less about having a novio, or any of those birds-and-bees romances, Teresita became obsessed with the idea and started to do anything she could to avoid María’s company, their excursions to the cascades long since behind them.