Perla (31 page)

Six years. Of course I am still becoming myself; becoming is an infinite road. But I am a different person now from that scared and broken girl who ran from a house in the suburbs in an effort to save her own life. As a psychologist, each time a new client walks into my office I am floored by their trust and by the way our conversations slowly push open their inner maze of light and darkness. My work rivets me and makes me larger. So does my marriage. Because a marriage, it turns out, is not merely the empty space between two people, the passive sum of two parts, but a beast all its own, with its own breath and muscle, its own insistent rhythms, its own inimitable sounds. It vexes us. It makes demands. It startles with its beauty. It carries us when we are lost or tired. That is what Gabriel and I have formed: a connection so intense it has its own life and motion.

This is truer than ever since I started carrying you.

How perfect you are. How you sussurate of almost unbearable perfection. A toe, a spine, an eyelid, each part of you a revelation; where did my body store the knowledge to create you? How many bodies have passed such knowledge down through eons so that you could curl inside me now, small and complete, ready to be born? Soon after I became pregnant, I learned that baby girls have all their eggs already formed in miniature while they are in the womb. So that the
egg of you was in me before I was born. So that when I was in my mother, whose face I never saw, a fleck of you was there, a fleck inside a girl inside a woman. Which means that when she disappeared we both disappeared with her, and every reappearance—yours, mine, into the future—belongs to all of us as well. That is why I’ve spent the night here at this window, telling you this story, preparing you for the world or perhaps preparing the world for you. It is your story as much as it is anyone’s, and your existence has already brought new understanding: having carried you, I see the depth of what was lost. Carrying you has brought new floods of grief. But it has also helped me see the depth of what cannot be lost, the unbreakable threads, invisible to the mind, indelible to the body.

The body is the first gift you receive; the second is your name. And you already have yours, Gloria. You have everything you need to face this world, and you are ready now to enter it, I know this from these early contractions that press and shiver through me. They both hurt and thrill. I am not large enough to hold you inside anymore, you want more space now, don’t you? It’s time for me to give you, as they say, to the light.

I was afraid of birth, at first, but I’m not anymore. I don’t know that I’m ready to be a mother but I do know that there is nothing, nothing I want more than to meet you face-to-face, to hold you against me, to look into your eyes. The world is going to begin again with you inside it. I know, that sounds extreme. Yet every new mother believes this, and—who knows?—perhaps all of us are right, perhaps it happens every time, millions of times a day around the globe. A child born, a world renewed. And that is what will happen later today, when you burst out of me, and I know it will happen before midnight because I always suspected that you would arrive on March 2, which was why I was not at all surprised when the contractions began last night, after your father had gone to sleep and left me alone to sit here on the balcony, gazing out at the streets of the city that is about to become your city, Gloria, and sifting through the past, for your sake and for
mine. The waves are coming closer together now; you are roaring to be born. I will be reborn with you as mothers always are and Gloria there is still so much to tell you about these recent years, about the long past and even longer future, but it will not be told tonight because it is time for us to leave. Gabriel is still sleeping in the other room, with the suitcase in arm’s reach for our sojourn at the hospital. He packed it with the utmost care, as if your safe passage depended on his perfectly folding miniature pajamas. He unpacked and repacked the suitcase several times, rearranging its contents, until finally I said, Gabo, don’t worry, everything is in its place, the suitcase is perfect, you’re going to be a wonderful father. And then for a moment he looked more terrified than I’ve ever seen him, even with everything we’ve been through, so I took his head in both my hands and bent it toward my belly so he could feel your kicks against his cheek. He never gets tired of your kicks. Just wait until you meet him—though there’s no need to wait, of course, as it will happen very soon. There’s more I want to tell you, but the surges are too great now and in any case there will always be more, the story has no end, it will circle and circle the whole of your life while I am here with you to tell it, so let me just give you this last piece and then we’ll go and wake your father:

Two months after I left Héctor and Luisa’s house, the call came in. I was in the kitchen, boiling squash for Lolo.

“Perla?”

“Yes, hello.”

“It’s me, Marta, at Las Abuelas’ office.”

“How are you?”

“Wonderful,” she said, her voice buoyant, a rising balloon. “We’ve found a match.”

I stared at the pot, which was boiling now, bubbles roaring quietly to the surface.

“Your mother’s name is Gloria.”

The steam writhed upward and I could not move.
“Gloria Rossella Ramos. Her parents have been looking for you, and so have your father’s. Your father is Adelmo Rossella.”

Adelmo
, I thought, and wished he would come back right then so I could tell him what I’d found, restore it to him.
Here it is, your name, take it back. Adelmo
. The woman was still talking, but I could barely hear her through the shimmering steam that seemed to fill the room and fill my skin and climb up to the ceiling and beyond it, through apartments through the roof into the blue vault of the sky.

“Perla? Are you there?”

“I’m here. I’m here.”

“I know this can be overwhelming, but—your grandparents can’t wait to meet you. And aunts, and uncles. Cousins. Do you still want to meet them?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“When can they?”

“Anytime. They’re ready. It’s up to you.”

“Today?”

“If you want.”

“At seven o’clock?”

“If you want.”

The water seethed over the sides of the pot, spilling onto the stove. I turned the fire down. “Yes. I want.”

We said good-bye and hung up. Gabriel appeared in the doorway, naked hope on his face. “You found them?”

I nodded. “They found me. We found each other.”

“Perla,” he said, then stopped, as though no other words could hold this moment.

“I’m going to meet them tonight.”

“Do you want me to come with you?”

I shook my head. I knew that, on that night at least, I had to go alone. Nobody could walk through that door with me, not even Gabriel.

Five hours later I was on the subway, staring at the people around
me—the solemn ones, the harried ones, the closed and proud and groomed and lonely ones—as if I had just arrived on their planet, in their city,
good sir can you tell me what to make of this place?
The train sped through its dark tunnels to my station and released me from the underground into the light. The sun hovered above the tops of downtown buildings and I could have shouted at sky and roofs
my mother’s name is Gloria
, but I held the shouts inside and let them roil there as I reached the building where the office of Las Abuelas waited for me on the third floor. I opened the baroque wooden door that had swung open and closed for hundreds of years of this nation’s history, pushed the button for the elevator and held my breath when it arrived for me and did not exhale as the doors closed and I rose to the second floor, the third, until the doors slid open on both sides and there, in the wood-paneled lobby, stood a crowd of people I had never seen before who stared at me with palms open and expressions on their faces like the ones that Lazarus’ loved ones must have had when he returned from the grave. The faces hovered at the brink of cheers or sobs or exclamations, waiting for me to step out of the elevator into their midst, and when I did the sounds poured out in all their joy and unclasped sorrow. Two women rushed toward me first. The relatives around them made room as if their forward motion were the only possible step in an ancient choreographed dance. They were white-haired, two grandmothers, in gold earrings and their best blouses, arms outstretched in unison, both smiling, both weeping, and they enfolded me together from both sides, saying
It’s you, it’s really you
. Though soon there would be food and names and bellow-laughs and infinite conversation, for now these women’s arms became the world. I let myself lean into their embrace, a long and fierce embrace that spoke and spoke to me of things long gone and things to come and what had never been let go. We did not let each other go. We held each other tightly, and our bodies kept on speaking as the late sun gathered in a mantle all around us.

Acknowledgments

In his story “The Library of Babel,” Jorge Luis Borges describes a universe in which infinite bookshelves contain all the written expressions of which human beings are capable. Only there could I ever hope to find a full record of my gratitude. It is that large and intricate. For now, until that library appears, I will make do with this humble sketch of my thanks.

With regard to research: my aunt Guadalupe López Ocón for accompanying me up and down the streets of Buenos Aires in search of traces of this story, and for the words with which she inscribed my personal copy of
Nunca más
; my aunt Cuti (Ester María López Ocón) for her wide-armed hospitality, and for walking beside me among the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo; my aunt Mónica López Ocón for her literary knowledge; Daniel Batlla, Claudio Batlla, Diego Batlla, and all my other relatives on the Argentinean side, for hosting, teaching, and embracing me during the hunting-and-gathering stage of writing this novel.

Vanesa González-Rizzo and Natalia Bruschstein for sharing their intimate stories over the course of one long Mexico City night. Evelyn Rinderknecht Alaga for the books. Las Madres y las Abuelas, for every drop of what they have done, and continue to do. Horacio Verbitsky, Ernesto Sábato, Marguerite Feitlowitz, Jacobo Timerman, and all the other writers whose courageous and unyielding pens have provided me, and the world, with indispensable sources. The filmmakers Estela Bravo and Peter Sanders, for sharing copies of their powerful documentaries
¿Quién soy yo?
and
The Disappeared
, respectively.

With regard to writing, I am indebted to Micheline Aharonian
Marcom, under whose brilliant mentorship this book was born. I am also indebted to Daniel Alarcón, for his luminous insights and guidance. I thank the Mills College M.F.A. Program, the Hedgebrook Residency, and the Macondo Workshop for the space and support to work on this book, as well as Fernando Sasco and Enrique Loedel of the Uruguayan consolate in California for their steadfast generosity. I also thank the following friends for reading drafts or offering help along the way: Leila Abu-Saba (we miss you,
querida
), Eduardo Cabrera, Sara Campos, Héctor Mario Cavallari, Aya de León, Marcelo de León, Jenesha de Rivera, Frances Hwang, Shanna Lo Presti, Marc Anthony Richardson, Julia Azar Rubin, Cleavon Smith, Joyce Thompson, and Allison Towata. You are all fantastic.

In the publishing world, unending thanks to Victoria Sanders, stellar agent and human being, whose powers are so formidable we should all be grateful that, like a Jedi, she uses them only for good. Thanks also to her wonderful associates, Chris Kepner, Bernadette Baker-Baughman, and Benee Knauer, who make so much happen every day. Chandler Crawford, foreign agent extraordinaire, for working ceaseless miracles. And Sara Nelson, who humbles me with her great support of, and belief in, my books.

As for my editor at Knopf, Carole Baron: her passion, genius, and dedication are without equal. What a difference—what a joyous difference—she has made for this book. My deepest thanks to Sonny Mehta, as well, for his leadership and peerless vision. Emily Milder, another member of the editorial team, provided incisive comments, for which I am most grateful. And really, the whole team at Knopf and Vintage, not to mention at my fifteen-plus international publishers: you are superheroes. You should wear red capes to work.

Finally, vast thanks to my family, beginning with Pamela Harris, wife, soul sister, without whom none of this would be—and stretching out all over the world to the whole sprawling De Robertis–Marazzi–Canil–Martínez–Grimaldi–Batlla–López Ocón–Pascal–Aldama–Edwards–Friarson tribe. A map of my heart would be full of roads to you.

A Note About the Author

Carolina De Robertis grew up in a Uruguayan-Argentinean family that immigrated to England, Switzerland, and California. Her first novel,
The Invisible Mountain
, was an international best seller translated into fifteen languages; an
O, The Oprah Magazine
2009 Terrific Read, a
San Francisco Chronicle
Best Book of the Year, and the recipient of Italy’s Rhegium Julii Prize. Her translations of Latin American fiction have appeared in
Granta, Zoetrope: Allstory, The Virginia Quarterly Review
, and elsewhere. She lives in Oakland, California.