Chapter 3 #3
Perla thinks of the shiny green leaves of coffee bushes glistening along the mountain slopes, as green as any emerald, and scoffs at her brother. “You want to be a student with ink-smeared fingers? Or a clerk trapped in an office, bent over invoices, going over your addition?”
“Father’s time is spent sitting at his desk bent over invoices,” Natito replies. “He’s certainly not picking coffee beans in the fields.”
“He does far more important work than picking beans or sitting at his desk. He’s the most notable coffee grower in these parts.”
“He is who he is, and I am who I am. I want my own life. There are other places to see than Puerco Ahogado, and more to do than washing coffee berries.”
Perla doesn’t like Natito’s tone, or the way Encarnación looks admiringly at their brother, as if he’s a hero from an epic poem for speaking so disrespectfully of the family business.
In 1918, after eight years of war have devastated the country, with her father edging closer to financial ruin, the Spanish flu reaches the port of Veracruz and spreads through Mexico. It attacks the young more virulently.
Perla is spared the malady, but Natito falls ill and so does Encarnación. The doctor administers quinine to lower the fever, and when that doesn’t work, the siblings ingest a mix of huachichili and tabardillo with lemon juice and a spoonful of rum. They’re fed a bland diet of atole and milk.
Perla dips gauze into a bowl of water and wipes the sweat off her siblings’ foreheads. She rubs their feet with salt and wraps their bodies in warm blankets. Castor oil, crushed garlic, mustard plasters, and whatever other remedy people mutter about, they try them all.
Encarnación recovers. Natito dies, aged twenty.
His death leaves Perla’s sister in a stupor and the house as silent as a mausoleum. They spend the entirety of 1919 in mourning, dressed in stifling black, praying rosaries for her brother’s soul while their father locks himself in his office and their mother weeps.
Perla feels as if she’s been abandoned on a deserted island. Her father takes his meals in his room; their mother ingests laudanum early in the morning and remains in bed until the evening, with bouts of crying when she hasn’t been rendered numb by the tincture.
Encarnación is there in body, but her spirit seems to have flown away, somewhere far off, as if her soul is resting next to Natito’s grave.
When Perla watches her, so quiet in the evening, with needle and thread in hand, she sometimes gets the desire to pinch her violently until she screams. To cause a reaction, to make her sister say something other than yes or no.
To make her weep, like their mother weeps, because Encarnación doesn’t shed tears, she sits in a corner, darning socks and carefully stitching a shirt while Perla feels she might go mad, digging her nails into the palms of her hands.
In December their father informs the girls that he has arranged for them to spend time in the city with their aunt. The fresh sea air and the atmosphere of the port will lift their spirits.
“There’s a young man there you will meet. Your aunt will see to it,” he tells them.
Perla looks up at her father in surprise. “Who?”
“Norberto Bustillo, Lope Bustillo’s eldest boy.
He owns La Ideal. If we joined forces, we’d be unbeatable.
The coffee producers that are weathering this economic mess are the ones who are consolidating their businesses.
Zardain and Sainz Pardo already merged their operations and restructured their offices, and they’re doing fine.
“It’s time you were married,” he continues. “Without Natito, I’ll have to depend on a son-in-law to manage the business. It will be a distinguished match.”
“Then it’s all been arranged?”
“For the most part. Lope thinks it’s a terrific idea, but Norberto must agree to it. I’m sure he’ll like you.”
Later, they lie in their beds, in the room they’ve shared since they were babies. Encarnación speaks, and her voice is soft and timid in the dark.
“Do you want to be married?” she asks.
“What a silly question. You heard Father, it’s time I married,” Perla says firmly, staring at the ceiling, although her heart has been beating nervously since their father spoke to them that evening.
“I know. I’m wondering what he’ll be like, I suppose. And what it’ll be like if you’re not around the house.”
“I’ll visit often,” Perla promises. “Besides, it’ll be good to see our aunt. We’re getting new dresses, did you hear? And shoes. We haven’t had anything new in ages.”
Everything has been black and gray, prayers for the departed and quiet misery.
With their father’s financial troubles and the war, luxuries vanished from their household.
No chocolates, or perfumes, or pretty pearls to adorn their earlobes.
But the conflict will end soon, everyone says so, and their father’s debts will be paid and the strain on their family eased.
“I’m going to marry a king, and I’ll be a queen. Like Father told us when we were little.”
“I remember,” her sister says. “I’m happy for you.”
Perla smiles and waits, breathless, for the end of 1919 and the beginning of a wonderful new decade.