The End of Something // Ana Rodriguez Machado

Nostalgia vibrates through most of the words I write. An imagined future, a re-envisioned past, all reframed and dimly lit, just out of reach. Here, I write from the perspective of a woman who is taking stock of her life, her decisions, the way her choices veered her path this way and that. This woman is my mother and she is not my mother. Fiction allows for that ambiguity, which allows me to stay sane. In writing, and in life, I am nostalgic for stories. The way things really are, the way they could have been, the way they could someday be if we all dared to tell each other the truth. It is not to be punished but explored. Nostalgia is nefarious, yes, but she is also serene and full of promise. I’m not a fatalistic woman, but if I learned anything at all in this life it’s that death always comes in threes. I know what you’re thinking. When I was young, I would have laughed in the face of la loca who would say something like that. But over the years, I’ve seen superstitions survive for decades, like long-legged spiders in the tallest corners of your abuela’s house. They manage to stay alive. They hum with truth. I think choices hang in front of us like ghosts. That’s the truth. If we could only see them, we would recognize the right one and pull it down. Maybe life is just a series of encounters with ghosts we have to choose from. A collection of the versions of ourselves we must destroy with each choice we make, so that only one can survive. I spent my life manejando the temperaments, the expectations, the mistakes of other people. Mis padres, mis esposos, mis hijos. Each time a choice stood before me, its ghosts clamouring above some soft point in the horizon, calling me to choose them, I pulled one down and the rest flew out of sight. A version of the kind of person I could have been—the kind of woman, the kind of mother, the kind of wife—disappeared. Like a branch from a yagruma tree, it was hacked down with a machete and discarded. I couldn’t follow it. I couldn’t see where its leaves could have taken me. In my life, I have lived through three of these deaths. I’ve chosen one path and destroyed the others. I’ve pulled one ghost down from the tree and hoped to whatever god there is that I picked the right one. My first death was the end of my marriage.

*

August, 1981 I’m leaving in the morning. I’m taking the baby, a bag of diapers, a bucket of potatoes, and I’m gone. Those are the only things I’ll need back at Papi’s house. They never have any food that isn’t rotting and I’ll need to make purees for the baby. The rest I’ll come back for later. Manolo won’t hear me get up from the bed. He won’t know I’ve decided until it’s done, until we’re gone. Or maybe I’ll wake him, let him know I’ve decided. I shouldn’t leave and take his son with me without telling him this is it, right? The final moment, no more talking or weaving in and out of the same and the same. No, none of that is going to fix it. I can’t take it anymore. Even the sight of him. The smell. What have I done. What will I do. This little boy smells like what heaven must smell like, if I believed in that sort of thing. Do they tell you how heaven smells in the Bible? I should ask someone. Who are you supposed to ask when they’ll put you in jail for admitting you’re Catholic, ban you from la Juventud for walking your dog in a convent yard. Maybe I’ll write a letter to my Tía Nena in Puerto Rico. She’ll know. She’s probably holding her rosario in her right hand now, rotating the beads between her fingertips, whispering to herself for God to save us, to save this family, to save the baby. God sure is taking his sweet time though. Been at it for twenty years now, what’s another twenty more of this mess? We get it now. Either fight the cabrones or sleep through the mess. I guess we’ve chosen to sleep. Or keep living. I can’t tell the difference.I got married at 22 and couldn’t imagine how long forever would be. After two abortions, I just couldn’t do a third. And how was I going to hide it from Manolo? No, I kept the baby and convinced myself I wanted him. Him. It was a boy, a beautiful baby boy and we named him Manolito and we could have named him I Hope You Save This Marriage Niñito Because This Is It. He didn’t and it was.How do you describe the end of something? I think it’s the feeling that comes after it’s already happened. You think you’ll see it coming, that it’ll hit you like an overflowing jimagua bus driving down Ave. 41, and it’ll be so obvious, so big and loud and painful that you won’t be able to miss it. But you do. It comes quietly, like a gas leak in the kitchen. At first, you can barely smell it, maybe a hint of it once or twice. But it’ll pass, and your nose will get used to the strange odour floating in from down the hall. So you continue. Open the windows to let the air in. You keep breathing and the gas keeps filling each room you exhale in, sleeping under the covers with you, hiding in the corners of your mind.You only know it’s over after the house burns down.

Ana Rodriguez Machado lives and writes in Toronto.