Cellophane by Marie Arana

Author:Marie Arana
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780440336921
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2007-05-01T00:00:00+00:00

Graciela flew upstairs, her sandals hardly touching wood. She headed directly for her mother’s room and opened the door gently. Doña Mariana lay alone on the big brass bed, her dress unfastened and her feet—still in boots—delicately crossed over a small straw mat.

“Mamá,” she said, stepping into the room tentatively.

“Yes, mi amor.” Doña Mariana opened her eyes.

“Where is my father?”

“In the factory, I suppose. Or in his workshop. You know how he is these days. Full of nerves. No time for siestas.” She propped herself up on one elbow and frowned into the light. “Why?” the mother said, worried now. “What is that look on your face?”

“Mamá,” Graciela said. She ran in now, unable to contain herself.

“What is it, child? What have you done?”

“I’m in love.”

“In love!” Doña Mariana sat up.

“Yes,” Graciela said, sitting down on her mother’s bed. “God help me, yes. With Luis Miller. I can’t hide it any longer. He is the one I want.”

The words sent her mother to her feet. Even as she fastened the hooks that ran down the side of her black muslin dress, Doña Mariana began lecturing her daughter. A woman has an obligation to her children, she said, a sacred duty to her family. Only a hussy is ruled by wants. “Don’t hold yourself cheap, Graciela!” she told her. “Don’t go breaking your heart!”

For thirty-six years, Doña Mariana had struggled to create a proper home in that jungle: The Sobrevillas were gente decente, the kind of respectable household she had never had. Here, in an unruly land where men took multiple wives, where women ran naked, and offspring were spawned like so many mosquitoes, she and Don Victor had run a civil establishment. They expected their children to comport themselves with a minimum of manners, help build a wall of decorum against the godless flotsam the river threatened to spew into the hacienda. But things had begun to change. When she had exhorted her children to make love, to revel in life’s embraces, she hadn’t meant to encourage wantonness. Now Graciela was talking about adultery, admitting she wanted to give herself to a total stranger. A foreigner! It was too much to bear.

“Desire!” Padre Bernardo nearly shouted when Doña Mariana told the priest that someone in her house was contemplating infidelity. “There is no calamity greater than desire, my dear woman. As someone much smarter than I once said, we desire nothing so much as the very thing we should not have!”

“Padre,” Doña Mariana said, eager to get to her point, “if a señora is seeking love…”

“A señora? Outside the bonds of her marriage? Why, that is a mortal sin.” He began a mental scan of the house’s residents, wondering who this señora might be.

“Yes, but…”

“Ah!” he said, stumbling suddenly on the image of the cook twisting cellophane into the Virgin’s skirt. “I take it you mean Boruba!”

“Boruba?” Doña Mariana’s eyebrows lifted with surprise.

“Yes!” he said, seeing the image in full now, with the genial gardener alongside. “Boruba is a widow. In her case, seeking love would not be sinful.

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