Becoming Marta Read online

  She went to see Juan Órnelas Montesinos, who had been her father’s attorney. His son, who had the same name, now managed the practice and helped Marti with her affairs.

  “So you don’t think Marta is capable?” he asked.

  “Not right now, no.”

  “What about in ten years?”

  “Oh, Juan, for God’s sake, don’t torture me. Who knows what’ll become of her in ten years? I won’t be there to take care of her.” Her eyes filled with tears as she let out a cheerful laugh. “You see what I’m like. I have no imagination.”

  They discussed various strategies. They called in an estate specialist and agreed to establish a trust fund in perpetuity. All of Marti’s estate, the company, the bank accounts, the real estate, and other assets, all of it would be put into a trust fund to be jointly managed by Juan, Father Patrick, two accountants, and Marta. Marti felt reassured knowing that if Marta wanted to do something sensible, Juan and Father Patrick would support her. In the meantime she would receive a stipend each month, as would her children if she ever had any, and the children of their children, and so on, in perpetuity.

  “Should there come a time when an adviser is missing, the remaining ones will name another adviser and continue doing so successively,” said the lawyer. “We have managed this type of inheritance for many years with great success. Do you remember Dionisio Gómez Sánchez? Well, he is one of the beneficiaries of Don Gustavo, who put everything in a trust fund just like the one I’ve laid out for you.”

  How was it possible that Marti’s life, or what remained of it, had been reduced to this? Her maternity clinics would continue to operate. That had been the great work of her life—to give indigent people a modicum of dignity. But now her work was to ensure that little Marta would inherit her fortune. Would that girl realize what Marti had done for her? Had it been worth the effort to save her?

  Marta spent the final days of her mother’s life at her side, attending interminable meetings with lawyers, notary publics, accountants, and business managers.

  Marta noticed that Marti’s face warmed into a soft smile each time she reiterated that she was not leaving any assets to Pedro. But it was not until Marta found out about Gaby that she understood her mother’s reasoning. Her mom had always known about Pedro’s betrayal, and she had prepared her revenge with great care. Now it was up to Marta to carry it out.

  7

  The New Wife

  In her first self-esteem class, they told Gaby that she needed to value herself. They spoke of the two contrary but coexisting forces yin and yang. Later she took a course on crystals and another on philosophy. She memorized her chakras and the seven types of energy. She learned to find her solar plexus and her third eye. Most of all, she learned how to breathe, because prana was everything.

  She’d worked hard to get to where she was now. She was raised to be quiet, bathe every day, make salsa verde, and mop the floors. She took her first English lesson when her parents—a factory worker and a seamstress—realized that their dreams had come true. Their daughter, who had the greenish eyes of her grandfather, would marry an engineer and never need to work another day in her life.

  Her parents had simple dreams: cover the rent, go to Mass on Sunday, and pay for their own funerals. For three generations, as far back as they could recall, they had lived in Morelos. Before that there was talk of a hacienda where their great-grandfather or great-great-grandmother had freed the horses and given them all to Pascual Ortiz Rubio, a hero of the Revolution. From there they’d gone to the ejido, a communal farm, and then to the city. They had never lacked for anything, but they had always needed to work. Gaby’s family held two words sacred: Sunday and retirement. Gaby suspected that they believed in God solely because he’d created Sunday, and anyone who could give them a day of rest had to be divine.

  “When I retire,” her father would say on Sunday mornings as he opened the refrigerator to count the two cases of beer that he bought without fail as soon as his Saturday shift was done, “everything will be pure pleasure.”

  Gaby tried to recall other words her father spoke with some frequency, but nothing came to mind. Sundays, after having breakfasted on beef head tacos, they went to Mass. When they returned from church, her father sat alone in silence, drinking one beer after another. Around six in the afternoon her mother served pozole, which they ate without making a sound, listening to the radio tuned to the ranchera station.

  “It’s so that we may have good dreams,” her mother would say, “and energy for the week ahead.” Three or four beers later, her father would lower his head onto the table. Between the two of them they would carry him to bed, leaving him in his underwear. Her father’s strong and hairless body remained as motionless as a rag doll filled with lead.

  Gaby rarely saw her father during the week. She’d hear him wake up early in order to punch his timecard by 7:00 a.m. She knew that the factory was far away, that her father played on a soccer team, and that he was a union member—his promotion to assistant secretary had been cause for celebration. But she knew nothing else about him. There were vacations at the company’s sports complex, which had small single-family cabins, a soccer pitch, a pool, and zip line. There were uncles and a few compadres, who despite their constant presence had left no mark.

  It was in a spiritual center near San Miguel de Allende that a Tibetan nun with an Argentine accent made Gaby recall her mother. The retreat lasted a week. The first night, in order to purge themselves they were given a dinner of nopal cactus juice with spirulina. Some participants managed to fall asleep on the wood cots, but the majority spent the night by the latrine, fending off mosquitoes under a star-crammed sky.

  The activities began at four in the morning, which was when the stars aligned and conditions were most conducive for the flow of energy. It was difficult to be skeptical amid so many stars. From six to eight they worked: sweeping, planting, weeding, cleaning, washing, preparing a breakfast that consisted of carrot juice. Throughout the day they were only allowed to drink tea. The goal was to cleanse the body and free up the positive energy that all people had inside them but which was trapped by the awful toxins around them. They had to keep silent. The nun led them in chants, prayers, and readings during meals, frequently conducted in Sanskrit.

  On the third day they each had a private interview with the spiritual leader, for which they were instructed to arrive fully purified. Three days without sleep or food guaranteed total cleansing. There were rumors that some people had snuck out into town at night for snacks. Gaby could not understand how they could be so foolish, given how much they were paying. As soon as Gaby sat with the guru, she started to cry. She tried to contain her sobbing. She had not gotten this far to waste her allotted half hour crying. Zati Satya Narayama remained completely still in front of her, seated in the lotus position with her back perfectly straight and her blue eyes nearly transparent.

  “Lie down,” she said in a firm voice. “Think about your mother. Recall her, and when you’re finished remembering her, let her go. Your destiny is different. So is your karma. You do not have to purge yourself of her sadness. Open yourself up and accept it.”

  In that moment Gaby saw her mother sitting at the sewing machine, busy at the stove, asleep on the living room sofa, where she would stay “so as not to bother your dad.” Late into the night, with piles of pants and blouses to mend, she’d say, “The good thing is that I never lack for work.” At a rate of ten pesos, which she never increased, there were always hems to mend.

  Her mom didn’t know the true meaning of the words “retirement” and “Sunday,” and she never asked Gaby for help because at some point she, too, realized that Gaby had a different fate.

  8

  The Artist

  Adriana walked hurriedly toward the taxi stand at Parque México. She hated taxi-stand cabs and had left her apartment hoping to find an ecotaxi. One of those vochitos that she liked so much, like the Volkswagen Beetles Damián Ortega had deconstructed. Now,
that was art. That was brilliant. What was more Mexican than a vochito? More visible? Better known? More kitschy? Damián had taken the cliché and, piece by piece, raised it high, as though the parts were floating in space—the vocho made universe—simply by removing the screws and gravity. Fantastic. And now there wasn’t a single one on the street, so she’d have to pay three times as much for some lousy taxi to take her to the airport.

  She liked the brisk early-morning air. Although she wasn’t the only person on the street, there was still a calm that would soon be replaced by a filthy ruckus. She made a mental note: she should set out walking earlier, exactly at this hour, before the city awoke and while it still resembled that mythical and transparent Mexico that Diego and Frida lived in back when the volcanoes still could be seen. As she neared the orange taxis lined up along the edge of the park, a man broke from the circle where the drivers were chatting, put out his cigarette, and opened the car door.

  “Toluca Airport, please.”

  “That’ll be four hundred pesos, miss.”

  “Four hundred! It’s only one hundred and fifty to the other airport.”

  “If you prefer, I can drop you off at the minibus.”

  “Which minibus?”

  “One leaves Santa Fe for the airport every fifteen minutes.”

  “How much does that cost?”

  “I don’t know, miss, but I’ll only charge you two hundred to go to Santa Fe.”

  Adriana scanned Mexico Avenue one last time, hoping to find a green taxi that would take her to the end of the world for a hundred pesos. She tried to recall the name of the artist who had done exactly that—traveled all the way to Tijuana in an ecotaxi, photographing and videotaping the entire trip.

  “Fine, take me.”

  That’s what she got for always booking the cheapest flight, even though her mother had offered to buy the ticket.

  Adriana made sure that the taxi was taking a familiar route. Once she was certain of their trajectory, she stopped worrying. The taxi went through the Lomas area via Reforma Avenue on its way to Santa Fe. Traffic was starting to pick up. Seeing the homes of the wealthy made her think of her mother.

  Adriana had drawn her mother for the first time when she was five years old. She’d already stopped painting with colors and had become interested in pencil. She had a notebook of white card stock that her mother bought for her on the first Sunday of each month. Years back her mother had realized that she needed to ration the paper because while Adriana’s little hobby was not exactly expensive, it could turn into a luxury if she let the girl pursue it without limits. On the other hand, she bought her big rolls of rollout paper that she found for three pesos at La Merced. Even then Adriana made it a habit to sketch on rollout paper and then transfer her finished drawings to card stock. The first portrait of her mother showed her standing barefoot. The five toes on each foot looked superimposed, as though seen from above, because she had not yet mastered perspective. Her mother’s dress was meticulously outlined and filled in with pale-blue pencil—the only color in the entire drawing. There was also an apron with a well-executed pleated waist. Adriana tried to give the face dimension by drawing a somewhat exaggerated oval. She was already painting almond-shaped eyes, pupils with irises, eyebrows, and eyelashes. She recalled how important it had been for her back then not to leave out a single element. The drawing featured ears, earrings, and her mother’s hair the way she wore it: pulled back in a ponytail and fastened with two clips.

  Adriana had always been a close observer of her mother, especially when she did the quehaceres. Quehaceres. What a wonderful word, she thought: those + tasks. That’s what they were—tasks that had to be done every day: cleaning the bathroom, making the beds, sweeping, replacing a light bulb, paying the gas, and dusting. Tedious and seemingly trivial things that didn’t merit naming.

  Adriana wasn’t sure if she still drew for pleasure. Perhaps, but at the same time she recognized that it was a custom she’d picked up as a girl, when she sensed that she shouldn’t be a bother, that her mother already had enough work to do, and that it was better if she remained still and quiet. Drawing didn’t bother anyone. Until she started drawing things that pissed off people, and she became aware of her power. But that was later.

  Her mother started working when Adriana was ten years old. She took off her apron, loosened her hair, added blond highlights, and painted her eyes; eventually, she even tattooed her eyelids and the outline of her lips. Adriana had just discovered pastels. She did another portrait of her mother, softening her face, this time in three dimensions. It was a three-quarter profile, her mother’s wavy and yellow hair reflecting the recent highlights, her lips painted in pink tones. She drew green and yellow sparkles in the eyes, for she’d discovered that her mom’s eyes had rays, like the sun.

  Adriana had learned to wash and iron her uniform and to prepare her meals. After school, at home alone, she would turn on the television, do her homework, and draw sketches of soap-opera actors. She sold one of Rogelio Guerra at school.

  Around that time her mom became talkative, but it was too late. Adriana was not interested in the details of her job or in giving opinions about which dress best suited the occasion. She’d discovered books, and she had a group of friends with whom she could discuss the things that interested her: art, life, politics. She’d read Carlos Castaneda as easily as Nietzsche, and José Agustín alongside Thomas Hardy. She’d cut classes and spend entire days in the Gandhi Bookstore, drawing the old men who played dominoes. Her friends played guitar, smoked pot, and went to Coyoacán. Adriana did not talk about any of this with her mother.

  Now she regretted it. Her mother was going off to live in one of these houses, and Adriana didn’t know who her mother had become. She thought about getting to know her. She didn’t have time. It made her sad to think that she didn’t have enough time to get to know her mom, but at least she’d agreed to spend the weekend with her.

  “This is where I’ll leave you, miss,” the taxi driver said as he pulled up to a terminal with parking spots instead of runways. “Look, that’s the minibus you should take.”

  Counting her money carefully, Adriana thanked the driver and paid him. She had two hundred pesos left and hoped to arrive at the Tordella de la Vega home without having to hit an ATM. She thought about doing an installation with ATMs. Maybe viewing them from within. They saw us. They had security cameras. They knew our names, and they gave us money. What was the relationship between ATMs and us? Maybe she would set up an ATM that ate people’s cards and then film their reactions. No, that was too Candid Camera. She needed something more profound. Maybe imagine an ATM loaded with dough, flirting with another one, asking it for its balance to determine if the other ATM was a good catch. Maybe a performance piece with a chain saw splitting an ATM in half, bills flying everywhere and the noise. Sparks.

  9

  The Surgery

  From the twenty-eighth floor of Lomas Altas Hospital, located at the end of Avenida Reforma, Gaby could observe the entire city. The two volcanoes, Popo and Itza, were visible in the distance, and Gaby tried to identify at least one building. The Peli Towers in Polanco? The Reforma Tower? She could pick out the National Auditorium and Campo Marte, but the rest were indistinguishable gray and brown cubes. A thin layer of smog spread out over the entire landscape, but it was still an exceptionally clear day.

  Gaby was wearing a white linen suit over a white silk blouse with wide fuchsia stripes. A thousand times over she’d heard that simplicity was synonymous with elegance. Pedro for one never stopped repeating it, which was why she’d chosen the white suit over the one with the flowery print, even though the latter seemed more cheerful and practical. This suit had to be dry-cleaned after each use. But she wanted to look elegant and full of life. That’s why she’d come here. It was her secret. No one knew her whereabouts, and with a little luck they would not find out.

  “A few days recovering at home,” was the only thing the doctor had said.


  Gaby thought of her oft-repeated mantra: I won’t get in the way.

  She could not recall exactly when she’d decided to take charge of her life. It seemed like a gradual process, a series of small steps in a clear direction; this procedure was but another small step.

  Using a computer, the doctor had demonstrated how her breasts would look after the operation: large, round, sensual, defying gravity and age. He’d also give her a few injections to reduce the wrinkles on her forehead, and, he said, a little collagen on the lips and cheeks would make her appear twenty years younger.

  Who could have imagined that she’d get this far? The wife of Pedro de León! Her days of worrying were finally over, and after years of scrimping she could spend her savings on frivolous things.

  Until recently their encounters had been restricted to restaurants, her apartment, and that trip they’d taken to Villa del Mar. But now she would occupy her rightful place as the wife of de León, not just his lover. She would attend parties and receptions; she would travel. It was her duty to look good.

  10

  The Door

  It seemed to Adriana that they had just taken off when they landed. The intense heat took her by surprise; it felt like being thrown inside a hair dryer. The hot-as-hell air caused her to sweat immediately, and she wanted desperately to peel off her clothes. For now, taking off her leather jacket would have to do. She rummaged through her backpack for sunglasses. The light was blinding. She had packed only a black bikini and two cotton dresses, but it took a while to find the sunglasses thrown in with everything else. Once inside the airport, which was dark and icily air-conditioned, she’d had to reverse the process, removing her sunglasses, wisely resting them on her head, and putting on her jacket. She was pleased to see a driver waiting for her at the gate.