Antigua and My Life Before by Marcela Serrano

Author:Marcela Serrano
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781400032754
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2000-10-10T00:00:00+00:00

Once we were asked, in my new school, to fill out a form about our antecedents and family: the number of brothers and sisters, the father’s activities, the mother’s, and so on. In the box that said father’s profession, I wrote baker. My schoolmates laughed at me. They had all proudly written lawyer, engineer, doctor. Josefina’s father is a baker! They whispered and shot sidelong glances at me. When I told my mother she turned pale; her upper lip trembled as it did only when she was irate.

“Whatever made you put that! Entrepreneur, you should have written. Entrepreneur!”

She did not speak to me all afternoon. My mother was poisoned with impotent bile she could not direct toward any individual, only toward life in general, when things are not as one would like.

The difference in the way my mother and I felt about being poor is that I didn’t feel dishonored by it; I saw poverty as a passing phase, an illness that does not leave any scars.

When I began to show a gift for music, I asked to take classes at the Conservatory of Music. My father thought it was a whim, and laughingly said, “And how will you do that, Josefina? Where’s the money coming from?” My mother, in contrast, took it very seriously. What grieves me today is that though she made the effort, it wasn’t for love of music or to make me happy. No, her determination was directed toward a possible way for me to become “somebody.” For three years my mother sold eggs and cheese, house to house, to pay for the famous Conservatory.

Marta Aliaga went to such lengths so that I could glide smoothly toward the world of the wealthy. But her perseverance and her eagerness caused me to stumble, not glide; it set me on guard; it made me feel it was a privilege to be where I was. Not natural.

When I won that first prize in the Festival of Song in Viña del Mar, when no one had expected it—I least of all, and made the leap to “celebrity” overnight, I was grateful almost exclusively for my mother; it was my gift to her voraciousness. Also for her were my thoughts when I held the cover of my first record in my hands. A prize for her, I said to myself. I could have said, in more straightforward terms, a prize for her social ambitions. But . . . it isn’t easy for a daughter to recognize her mother’s defects, especially such a revolting one.

In my opinion, I have paid her back, with interest. I do not feel indebted to her. First it was the singing. And then, the thing that crowned all her ambitions: Andrés. Deep down, I thought, fame wasn’t enough. It was fame added to prestige that would finally provide serenity. And that I gave her when I married a lawyer, Andrés Valdés.

At last I have made her happy.

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