Beyond the Snows of the Andes by Brusic Beatrice

Author:Brusic, Beatrice [Brusic, Beatrice]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Beatrice Brusic
Published: 2011-02-04T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

Weeks pass and Fernando doesn’t answer me. I have lost him and I feel as though somebody has died. My aunt notices my red, swollen eyes in the mornings and tells me that love always hurts and that crying is good for the soul. She says that some day, when I look back on this bittersweet experience, I will be glad it happened because it will make me stronger for the real thing, but I doubt it because I’m desolate, and I don’t see how I can ever be glad. She says it is all part of the grieving process and that time will eventually erase him from my mind because no malady lasts forever.

I spend the following weeks filling out the necessary papers for the once coveted visa, marveling at the ironies of life because before meeting Fernando nothing would have made me happier than getting my passport, moving ever closer to my dream, and here I am now halfheartedly going through the motions.

An unsavory incident occurs with mother during one of my weekend visits because I find her nervous, angry and ready to take offense. She accuses me of deliberately ignoring her on the bus a few days ago, when I was doing a few errands for my aunt.

“But I didn’t see you,” I protest loudly. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“Why should I? You’re obviously ashamed of me.”

“You’re not making any sense, ma; we don’t even take the same buses.”

“I was going to see Mrs. Gotia, to find out if anything sold, and I was in the front seat of the bus so you couldn’t possibly miss me, yet you passed right by me and sat a few rows away, like you were blind or something.”

Absent minded and distracted as usual I hadn’t even realized she was there. The logical thing would have been to call my name but she wouldn’t do it. She felt slighted and hurt, reading a million motives in an innocent oversight. She had sat there stewing and now her pent up hostility and rage is bubbling over. She cries and complains for hours, wringing her hands and saying that her friend Luisa was right in telling her to rob a bank if necessary, but not to resign herself to a life of poverty because her own children would be ashamed of her some day. We haven’t had lunch yet and I’m starving but I can’t take it anymore. I get up to leave and she makes no effort to stop me. Oscar follows me outside and begs me to come back.

“I can’t,” I tell him angrily. “She looks for motives to be miserable. She knows damn well I didn’t ignore her on purpose.”

“Things are bad,” he says beginning to cry. “She hasn’t sold any of her knits and she owes money to everybody. We work hard knitting but nothing sells, she’s been crying all night, she puts on a front for you but we’re pretty desperate.”

I put my arms around him and try to console him.

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