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buttoned so she could nurse Nicole at any minute. I don’t know how she did it; she had three children, she was worn out, and she was carrying a profound sorrow. Her grandmother had died in Venezuela and she hadn’t been able to tell her good-bye because her visa would not allow her to leave and then reenter the country. That grandmother, who treated everyone brusquely—except for Celia—had looked after her for three years when her parents were in the United States to work on doctorates in geology. When they returned, Celia didn’t know who those people were that she suddenly had to call Mamá and Papá. The pole star of her childhood had been her grandmother; she’d always slept with her, she told her her secrets, and only with her did she feel safe. A brother and sister were born after their return. Celia continued to be very close to her grandmother, who lived in an addition her parents built to their house. Celia’s childhood in a strictly Catholic family could not have been easy given her rebellious and defiant character, but she submitted, and as an adolescent she had lived in an Opus Dei residence where the penances included self-flagellation and hair shirts with metal barbs. Celia says she didn’t go to those extremes but she had to accept other rules meant to subdue the flesh: blind obedience, avoiding any contact with the opposite sex, fasting, sleeping on a board, spending hours on her knees, and other mortifications that were more frequent and more severe for women, since it is they who since the time of Eve have embodied sin and temptation.
    Among the thousands of available young men in the university, Celia fell in love with Nico, who was precisely the opposite of what her parents had wanted in a son-in-law: he was Chilean, an immigrant, and an agnostic. Nico had been educated in a Jesuit school, but the day after he took his first communion he announced he did not plan to set foot in a church again. I met with the principal to explain that I would have to withdraw my son from the school, but the priest burst out laughing. “That won’t be necessary, señora, we don’t force anyone to go to mass. Your little guy is only nine years old, after all, and he may change his mind, don’t you agree?” I had to admit that I didn’t think so, because I know my son very well: he isn’t one to make hasty resolutions. Nico completed his education at San Ignacio and fulfilled his word never to enter a church—with a few exceptions such as his religious wedding to Celia, and a few cathedrals he has visited as a tourist.
    Celia had not been able to be with her grandmother as she died or weep at her death, for the truth is, Paula, you left no room for other mourning. Nico and I hadn’t realized the magnitude of Celia’s grief, partly because we didn’t know the whole story of that period of her childhood and partly because Celia, taking pride in her fortitude, hid her pain. She buried that memory to cry over later, in the meantime performing the thousand tasks of maternity and matrimony, her job, learning English, and surviving in the new land she had chosen. During the few years we had shared, I had learned to love Celia, despite our differences, and after you were gone I clung to her as if she were another daughter. I was worried about the way she looked; her color was bad and she had no appetite, and she was suffering attacks of nausea as bad as the ones in the worst months of her pregnancy. Cheri Forrester, the family physician who had attended you, though you can’t know that, said that Celia was physically worn down from having the three children in such close succession but that there was no physical cause for her vomiting, and that surely it was emotional; perhaps she was afraid that the porphyria would be repeated in one of their children. “If she doesn’t improve, I’ll have to keep her for a while in a clinic,” she