Rosa Jordan - The Woman She Was

“It’s the baby thing.” Franci sighed and Celia saw that she found this less amusing. “It’s so bad I’ve told them that if they keep bringing it up, Philip and I will move out.”

“They do know…?” Celia delicately left the sentence dangling.

Philip finished it for her. “That we can’t have kids? Listen, those two know only what they want to know. They’ve been given the same medical information we have. We even had Franci’s gynecologist explain it to them. You think it did any good? My mother implies that it’s because I’m not the macho my father and grandfathers were—overlooking the fact that I myself am an only child. Franci’s mother thinks it’s all a matter of praying to the right fertility goddess—or possibly our conversion to Santería.”

They pulled into the driveway. As if materializing for a Santería ceremony, Franci’s massive mother sailed toward them in a billowing white lace dress. A blue turban, wrapped African-style, added almost a foot to her height. The whole effect might have been awe-inspiring were it not for the comic touch of a live chicken tucked under one arm.

“Would I be right to surmise that that chicken is not long for this world?” Celia murmured.

“Good guess,” Franci replied and called, “Hola, Mamá. Look who’s here.”

Philip opened the back door for Celia and took her bag. “It’s been an ongoing battle to keep her from filling the backyard with chickens,” he muttered. “So she buys them live, one at a time, and sneaks it into the cottage until it’s needed for ceremonial purposes. We are not supposed to know, of course.”

Laughing, Celia called out, “Buenos días, Tía Yolanda.” She approached Franci’s mother on the opposite side from the clucking chicken and stood on tiptoe to brush a kiss across her espresso-coloured cheek. Normally the old lady was garrulous, but apparently she had more serious matters to attend to this morning, or possibly some trepidation at having been caught with a contraband chicken. She murmured a welcome to Celia and moved majestically down the sidewalk toward the bus stop.

Franci paused under a vine-covered portico from which dangled lavender blossoms. One flower lay decoratively atop her frothy hair. Although the Afro style had gone out of fashion decades ago, Franci’s poise was such that on her it looked as avant-garde as tomorrow. She motioned Celia into the house. “Come.”

Celia followed her into a living room ringed with family photographs. Several were from their wedding. One showed Franci’s beautiful black hair brushing Philip’s blond crew-cut as they bent to cut the wedding cake. Another caught them as they descended the church steps. One of Franci’s smooth dark arms was linked through the white sleeve of his dress uniform, the other lifted to fling her bouquet to her bridesmaids. What the picture did not show, but Celia remembered vividly, was how deliberately Franci had aimed it toward her, and how, with equal determination, she had refused to reach for it, still being too raw from José’s abandonment to participate in the fantasy of someday finding her own perfect mate.

“You know where your room is,” Franci called over her shoulder as she headed for the kitchen. Celia did, but tossed bag and briefcase onto the sofa and followed them into the kitchen. Franci put on the coffee. When Philip went to take eggs from the refrigerator, Franci leaned past him for the milk, rubbing one well-endowed breast provocatively against his arm.

“Phe-leep! Franc-ee!” The high-pitched decibels of Renée Morceau rippled through the open kitchen window like an opera singer’s aria. “Is the café ready?”

Celia looked in the direction of the voice in time to see Philip’s mother retreat back into her apartment over the garage. Surprised that she had not come down to join them, Celia asked, “Is your mother ill?”

“No,” Philip sighed. “It’s her latest manifestation of the Scarlett O’Hara syndrome. She wants morning coffee served in bed.”

Franci hacked off a piece of bread and placed it, along with a dish of guayaba marmalade, on a tray. She added the requested coffee and a large bowl of sugar.

“It’s not that I mind taking it up to her,” she said in a tone that suggested that she did. “It’s the way she always says, ‘Franci, ma chérie! I didn’t expect you to bring it up.’ As if I might have sent one of our non-existent servants!”

Philip reached for the tray. “I’ll take it.”

“No, you go ahead with the omelettes.”

“Let me.” Celia lifted the tray with a firmness that caused both to relinquish their hold on it. “I want to say hello anyway.”

“Good idea,” Philip said. “But tell her you can’t stay; breakfast will be waiting.”

“Shall I call her tía like always?” Celia asked. “Or should it be madame?”

“Oh, these days it’s definitely madame,” Franci clarified. “But still tía for my mother. That will make them both feel superior.”

Celia climbed the steps to the apartment over the garage. The old lady, hearing her pause outside the door, called, “Entrez.”

Celia stepped into the room and saw Philip’s mother propped against the headboard of a large bed, her bottle-bright hair vivid as a child’s orange crayon against a pillowcase printed with pink rosebuds. “Bonjour, Madame.”

“Celia, ma chérie! Tu parles la langue de mon père!” Renée Morceau responded in such an atrocious accent that Celia almost laughed aloud.

“A few words,” Celia acknowledged, placing the tray before her. She brushed the woman’s cheek with her own, noticing, as she did so, that only one side of the wrinkled face had received the dubious benefits of heavy-handed powdering. “I am sorry I can’t stay, but breakfast is ready downstairs.”

“Go, go.” Renée Morceau already had knife in hand and was attacking the bread and jam. “We shall chat later, n’est-ce pas?”

Celia slid into her chair at the kitchen table. Philip eased a perfect fresh-herb omelette onto her plate. “Um!” Celia murmured appreciatively. “You can deny your French heritage all you want, Philip, but you did not get your flair for elegant cuisine from the Cubans.”

“Didn’t I tell you that’s why I married him?” Franci poured coffee all around. “As soon as I found out he liked to cook but didn’t know how to make rice and beans.” Again the shared laughter at what had to be an old joke between them.

Philip divided the second omelette and slid one half onto each of his and Franci’s plates with a practised air that suggested this was their breakfast routine. Philip ate quickly, saying apologetically, “Sorry, but duty calls.”

Guilty for her dawdling, Celia pushed another bite of omelette into her mouth and washed it down with a swallow of orange juice.

“Take your time,” Franci admonished. “Philip is in a hurry, not us. When you’re finished you can take a shower and I’ll drive you to the campus.”

“It’s so close,” Celia protested. “I can walk there easier than Philip can walk to work.”

“I don’t walk!” Philip crossed the living room to where a shiny Flying Pigeon bicycle was parked. Striking a pose beside it, he told Celia, “I fly. ”

When he had gone out, Celia and Franci relaxed over a second cup of coffee. “Does he always bike to work?” Celia asked.

“Except when it rains,” Franci said proudly. “And what it’s done for his body! Maybe you noticed? He’s got the buns of a twenty-year-old.”

“And if I had noticed, would I tell you?” Celia teased. “You think I have forgotten the time you threatened to run one of my A-cup bras up the flag pole if I kept flirting with some creep you had a crush on?”