Read Online Beautiful Maria of My Soul by Oscar Hijuelos - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Oscar Hijuelos
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little sister’s tears; and with tenderness kissed her pretty face a dozen times over, telling her, as they later sat out watching the stars, “You see, Teresa, everything’s going to be all right, because I love you, and Papi and Mami love you, and nothing bad is going to happen to you while we’re around.” That’s what they all wanted to believe. Local healers, examining her the next day, provided Teresita with some natural calmantes by means of a specially brewed tea containing equal parts of jute, ginger, and cannabis, among other local herbs, and suggested they sacrifice an animal to San Lázaro, but this advice was ignored. Papito told her to drink a cup of rum, whose taste she found burning and metallic, but, even after she had been administered a santera ’s cleansing, by means of burning roots and tobacco, as an added precaution, when she began trembling again a few days later, there remained no doubt that Manolo would have to fetch a doctor from San Jacinto or, failing that, from the sugar mill, a day’s ride away.
He’d do anything for his daughters, of course, and though it made him sad to pay the fee—what was it, a dollar?—he truly believed that the doctor, a certain Bruno Ponce, so sanguine of manner, and slightly jaundiced with sunken eyes behind wire glasses, would find a cure. Her papito ’s hopefulness, however, didn’t quite work out. Apprised of her symptoms and examining her, the doctor determined that Teresita had suffered from a grand mal seizure (a tonic-clonic episode or status epilepticus, as her namesake, Doctor Teresita, would identify it, from her mother’s descriptions, decades later), a condition related either to epilepsy or to a tumor within her skull. As treatment, he prescribed a twice daily dose of phenobarbital, a sedative they could find at the farmacia in town. Its proprietor, whom María would never forget for his homely but kind face, Pepito el alto, as he was known to everyone, never even charged them for their monthly amber bottles of the stuff, so sorry did he feel for those guajiros with the lovely daughters.(In fact, that wonderful man, a widower, formed an attachment to María and actually took Manolo aside one afternoon to discuss the possibility of a marriage between them, even if he was in his fifties. While such arranged marriages weren’t unheard of, and it would have made their lives easier, her papito just couldn’t bring himself to subject his thirteen-year-old daughter to life with an old man. To the pharmacist’s credit, he never held anything against them; though, whenever María entered his shop to get Teresa’s pills, he became solemn in his demeanor, and, more often than not, while stepping back into the shadows, he’d let out with a sigh. Years later, with a wistfulness about la Cuba que fue, she’d wonder whatever happened to him.)
For a while several of those bitter pills daily seemed to do the trick. Still, with their foul taste, Teresita dreaded the very idea of having to take any medicine, and whether she took those pills or not as instructed, she seemed just fine.
A few months later, several days before the Christmas of 1943, they were out at the bodega by the crossroads, where trucks from distant cities sometimes stopped, dancing for a crowd of rum-soaked guajiros, who were whooping it up on one of those nights when the poorest of the poor pretended to be rich, the tables covered with all kinds of victuals—succulent lechón and pit-roasted chickens and doves, rivers of aguardiente and beer flowing like the Nile, their roosters and hounds meandering about, droppings left everywhere, as if anyone, some dancing barefooted on those sagging pine floors—covered in sawdust in the corners—gave a damn. On that night with their papito in good voice and on a little makeshift stage with a few of his musician friends from around—what were their names?—oh yes, Alvaro and Domingo, and a third fellow, the one-eared Tomaso, who played a
He’d do anything for his daughters, of course, and though it made him sad to pay the fee—what was it, a dollar?—he truly believed that the doctor, a certain Bruno Ponce, so sanguine of manner, and slightly jaundiced with sunken eyes behind wire glasses, would find a cure. Her papito ’s hopefulness, however, didn’t quite work out. Apprised of her symptoms and examining her, the doctor determined that Teresita had suffered from a grand mal seizure (a tonic-clonic episode or status epilepticus, as her namesake, Doctor Teresita, would identify it, from her mother’s descriptions, decades later), a condition related either to epilepsy or to a tumor within her skull. As treatment, he prescribed a twice daily dose of phenobarbital, a sedative they could find at the farmacia in town. Its proprietor, whom María would never forget for his homely but kind face, Pepito el alto, as he was known to everyone, never even charged them for their monthly amber bottles of the stuff, so sorry did he feel for those guajiros with the lovely daughters.(In fact, that wonderful man, a widower, formed an attachment to María and actually took Manolo aside one afternoon to discuss the possibility of a marriage between them, even if he was in his fifties. While such arranged marriages weren’t unheard of, and it would have made their lives easier, her papito just couldn’t bring himself to subject his thirteen-year-old daughter to life with an old man. To the pharmacist’s credit, he never held anything against them; though, whenever María entered his shop to get Teresa’s pills, he became solemn in his demeanor, and, more often than not, while stepping back into the shadows, he’d let out with a sigh. Years later, with a wistfulness about la Cuba que fue, she’d wonder whatever happened to him.)
For a while several of those bitter pills daily seemed to do the trick. Still, with their foul taste, Teresita dreaded the very idea of having to take any medicine, and whether she took those pills or not as instructed, she seemed just fine.
A few months later, several days before the Christmas of 1943, they were out at the bodega by the crossroads, where trucks from distant cities sometimes stopped, dancing for a crowd of rum-soaked guajiros, who were whooping it up on one of those nights when the poorest of the poor pretended to be rich, the tables covered with all kinds of victuals—succulent lechón and pit-roasted chickens and doves, rivers of aguardiente and beer flowing like the Nile, their roosters and hounds meandering about, droppings left everywhere, as if anyone, some dancing barefooted on those sagging pine floors—covered in sawdust in the corners—gave a damn. On that night with their papito in good voice and on a little makeshift stage with a few of his musician friends from around—what were their names?—oh yes, Alvaro and Domingo, and a third fellow, the one-eared Tomaso, who played a
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