Read Online Beautiful Maria of My Soul by Oscar Hijuelos - Free Book Online
Authors: Oscar Hijuelos
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such a homely appellation. Perhaps that’s why, years later, María had so many silk flowers in her home, and why certain scents from the little garden she kept outside her house always made her cry, or come close to it, because such natural perfumes made her think about Teresa, Cuba, and her own youth. No matter how jaded she otherwise had become, María still missed the wonderment she had felt as a girl when each morning seemed to bring even more of those incredible flowers into the world, and gushingly so, as if God, peeking out from his religious stillness, had pointed a finger and made their pistils, tendrils, and petals suddenly ooze from the ground and up the moss-covered trunks of trees, all effortlessly coming into existence in the same mysterious manner that her own body had changed.)
That cascada flowed out of a massive cave, its roof dripping with stalactites, bats flitting in and out of the darkness. While stony drafts of cool air, redolent of guano and clay, came wafting out its entrance—so wonderful on a hot afternoon—they’d slip off their dresses and, down to their breeches, lie on the granite ledge, luxuriating in the torrents, as delicious as any aguacero or tremendous storm. A sheath of water pelting their bodies, the sisters held on to each other the way they did at night while sharing a bed, all the while whispering about how, as little old viejitas, they would remain close forever and forever like angels, amen.
They must have gone there hundreds of times since they were children, with very little changing in their routine, but on one of those afternoons, as they were walking home, Teresita, then twelve years old, in the midst of a smile and midstride while sidestepping some jasmine blooms— “¡Qué bonitos son!” —stopped suddenly as if she had hit a wall. Her eyes rolling up into their sockets, she bit her tongue, her teeth chattered, and her limbs began shaking so violently she bloodied the knuckles of her right hand while striking it against a rocky ledge—all that even before she dropped like a stone to the ground. And with that María fell to her knees, smothering her younger sister’s body with her own, as if to protect her from los castigos de Dios —the castigations of God, as her mamá used to call such visitations of unexpected misery. But they still came floating down from heaven like the black ashes of a cane field fire, no sweetness in the air, María holding her sister as tightly as she could without hurting her, her right hand cushioning Teresita’s head as it whipped from side to side, María’s own knuckles soon bleeding from smacking against the ground in the effort to keep her sister still, a weeping mist settling around them.
LATER, WHEN TERESA’S TREMBLING HAD PASSED, AND MARÍA HAD gotten her papito, who had been strumming on his guitar with a friend, they carried that inocente back through the forest to the shack, where they laid her down on her papito ’s cot. Finally coming around, Teresa hadn’t the slightest idea of what had happened—and yet her cuts and bruises and aching teeth and bit up tongue told her otherwise—she just knew. One moment by the grotto, the next in that bohío. The first face she saw, so beautiful and sad and concerned, was María’s, then her papito ’s and Mamá’s, a rosary in hand. One of their neighbors—maybe it was Apollo—peered in from the doorway and sipped from a tin cup of whatever her papi had poured to settle his nerves. He smiled broadly, being the rare guajiro with fantastic teeth, as if that would somehow make things better.
Just then that room, where their older brothers had died, seemed thesaddest place on earth. Nevertheless, Teresita, always a sweet-natured soul, managed to sit up and ask: “Why’s everyone looking so sad?”
And that made them laugh, even if her sudden illness was yet another of those tragedies they’d have to accustom themselves to. With pure affection, María wiped away her
That cascada flowed out of a massive cave, its roof dripping with stalactites, bats flitting in and out of the darkness. While stony drafts of cool air, redolent of guano and clay, came wafting out its entrance—so wonderful on a hot afternoon—they’d slip off their dresses and, down to their breeches, lie on the granite ledge, luxuriating in the torrents, as delicious as any aguacero or tremendous storm. A sheath of water pelting their bodies, the sisters held on to each other the way they did at night while sharing a bed, all the while whispering about how, as little old viejitas, they would remain close forever and forever like angels, amen.
They must have gone there hundreds of times since they were children, with very little changing in their routine, but on one of those afternoons, as they were walking home, Teresita, then twelve years old, in the midst of a smile and midstride while sidestepping some jasmine blooms— “¡Qué bonitos son!” —stopped suddenly as if she had hit a wall. Her eyes rolling up into their sockets, she bit her tongue, her teeth chattered, and her limbs began shaking so violently she bloodied the knuckles of her right hand while striking it against a rocky ledge—all that even before she dropped like a stone to the ground. And with that María fell to her knees, smothering her younger sister’s body with her own, as if to protect her from los castigos de Dios —the castigations of God, as her mamá used to call such visitations of unexpected misery. But they still came floating down from heaven like the black ashes of a cane field fire, no sweetness in the air, María holding her sister as tightly as she could without hurting her, her right hand cushioning Teresita’s head as it whipped from side to side, María’s own knuckles soon bleeding from smacking against the ground in the effort to keep her sister still, a weeping mist settling around them.
LATER, WHEN TERESA’S TREMBLING HAD PASSED, AND MARÍA HAD gotten her papito, who had been strumming on his guitar with a friend, they carried that inocente back through the forest to the shack, where they laid her down on her papito ’s cot. Finally coming around, Teresa hadn’t the slightest idea of what had happened—and yet her cuts and bruises and aching teeth and bit up tongue told her otherwise—she just knew. One moment by the grotto, the next in that bohío. The first face she saw, so beautiful and sad and concerned, was María’s, then her papito ’s and Mamá’s, a rosary in hand. One of their neighbors—maybe it was Apollo—peered in from the doorway and sipped from a tin cup of whatever her papi had poured to settle his nerves. He smiled broadly, being the rare guajiro with fantastic teeth, as if that would somehow make things better.
Just then that room, where their older brothers had died, seemed thesaddest place on earth. Nevertheless, Teresita, always a sweet-natured soul, managed to sit up and ask: “Why’s everyone looking so sad?”
And that made them laugh, even if her sudden illness was yet another of those tragedies they’d have to accustom themselves to. With pure affection, María wiped away her
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