“Sophia is giving you these clothes. She doesn’t wear any of it anymore. Don’t ask me any questions. I do not know why she’s giving you these clothes. I know she’s not your size, so I brought you this needle and thread and these safety pins, too,” she said, dropping them next to the clothes. “When you’ve found something you c
an wear and you’re dressed, go down to have some breakfast. That’s all I’ve been told. I don’t know why you’re in here now or what else is going on. This is a crazy house,” she added, and marched back out, closing the door sharply.
I rose slowly and started to look over the clothes. She was right, of course, most of it was either too small or way too big for me, but I found a skirt I could wear and a blouse that didn’t swim around me as much as the others with a little creative pinning. I would have to ask that someone go get my own clothes, I thought.
Just as I stepped out of the bathroom to go downstairs, the door opened again, and my aunt stepped into the room. She closed the door behind her and glared at me. Then she smiled.
“Señor Baker called and told me what happened, how you tried to seduce him so he would tell me nice things about you. It doesn’t surprise me that you won over Edward so quickly, Delia,” she said in perfect Spanish. “Like most men, he is easily impressed. What’s that stupid proverb, dichos your grandmother, your father’s mother, would quote at me all the time? It’s not the fault of the mouse but the one who offers him the cheese? Of course, her precious son could do no wrong. It was girls like me who were offering the cheese.
“If anyone knows how untrue that is, it’s your mother. Or I should say, it was your mother. She’s been dead to me so long I forget she just died.”
“Why was she dead to you?” I dared ask. It wasn’t that I had suddenly become brave; it was my raging curiosity. How could anyone turn against her own family so much?
She smiled at me again and moved across the room to the window. With her back to me, she asked, “Your mother has never told you why?”
“No, Tía Isabela.”
She spun around.
“Tía Isabela,” she wailed, her grimace deepening. “You should be calling me Madre, not Tía.”
The look on my face made her laugh.
“Don’t worry. You’re not really my daughter, Delia. But,” she said, returning to that burning face of anger, “you should be.”
I shook my head. None of this made any sense.
“Why should I be?”
“Your father should have been with me, not your mother,” she replied. “I found him first. He was my boyfriend first, don’t you know?”
I shook my head.
“That was before I got smart, before I realized what a hole I was living in and where I could go if I made an effort. Your parents, their parents, the whole lot of them, were content to wallow in their poverty, in their hand-to-mouth existence, blaming everything bad on the devil and giving every extra peso to the church. The church, the church, the church…cooking for the church, working to rebuild and repaint the church, cleaning the church.
“Your father was always upset with me because I complained so much about the way we all lived, and he didn’t like my looking at any other men. He would go to complain to your mother, and she was smart. She was his shoulder on which to rest his poor, troubled head. I knew what she was doing. She didn’t fool me.
“‘Oh,’ she cried, ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you, Isabela. I didn’t mean to steal your lover. It just happened.’”
She laughed.
“It just happened? Like a bolt of lightning hit them both? One day, he couldn’t live without me, couldn’t breathe if I didn’t love him, and the next day, he was in love with your mother? And they accused me of being the flirt, the loose one? Oh, yes, your mother, my sister, was always the good girl, and I was always the bad, but she was the one who slept with your father before they were married, not me. I didn’t give it away that easily, no matter what people said or thought.
“Don’t look so shocked, Delia. Your mother was far from the sainted woman she pretended to be. She wanted the same things I did, but she was more hypocritical about it. I saw no reason to be a phony.
“Yes, I enjoyed twisting young men around my finger, leading them along, giving them hope, but I was not stupid, Delia. I don’t know if you are or have been, but let me tell you one thing, once you give away your mystery, you are forever at their mercy.
“Forget all this talk about equality of the sexes. Men still lord it over women, even here where they are supposed to be so liberated, and these women, like dumb burros, put up with it. Believe me, I made my husband beg and give me everything before he enjoyed himself with me.
“In her own way, your mother was just as conniving. I know you don’t want to believe it, but she was. After she and your father came to me and confessed their love for each other, I laughed in their faces and went off to find and marry a man who would take me so far away and so high above them they wouldn’t be able to see the soles of my feet.”
She paused and studied me.
“You remind me more of myself than you do your mother, even though your mother was as sneaky as could be.”
I started to shake my head. “It’s not true,” I said. “That was not my mother. She was not sneaky and conniving.”
“Believe what you want,” she said, waving the air as if my words were like flies to chase off. “I certainly would have given your father more children. Maybe I was lucky, after all. It doesn’t matter to me anymore.”