“You’re not even having a wake.”
“You can’t have a wake when a man killed himself. Father Anselmo would be livid.”
“But—”
“We’ll get him flowers. That and the burial should be more than enough,” she said, frankly relieved that they wouldn’t have to open their house to gossips and meddling neighbors, that they wouldn’t have to serve atole and tamales and pray the rosary.
Too many times death had waltzed into Perla’s house; she’d spent years dressed in black. For her brother, for her sister, for her mother, and finally her father. There were people who adored funerals, who looked forward to the food and the conversations. She did not understand this affinity for such macabre events.
Perla had no desire to remember the dead, to dwell on days gone by.
Inés’s mouth trembled. For a moment Perla wished to embrace her niece, to offer the comfort of her arms, but the young woman’s grief suddenly reminded her of that day by the stairs, long, long ago, and she was assailed by revulsion.
“He was an old drunk and now he’s dead, it’s no surprise. You can’tbe falling to pieces. These things happen, God knows they happen, and we soldier on,” she said firmly, and walked past the girl.
When she reached her bedroom, Perla looked up at her father’s magnificent oil portrait. She looked at him, but she thought about Encarnación.
—
Encarnación’s return to Puerco Ahogado feels like the detonation of a bomb. At first, Perla does not believe she will be able to withstand the stares of the people on the street, the talk of her impudent sister and her child, but as the days and weeks go by, the loud chatter becomes a murmur. The novelty fades, giving way to a tacit acceptance, though never an approval, of the younger of the Inclán sisters. It’s the same way the farmers accept the blight of their crops during the bad seasons; some things simply happen, and life must continue.
Their mother is pleased by the arrival of her younger daughter. Osorio Inclán, on the other hand, remains lukewarm toward his daughter and his grandchild.
Perla, for her part, finds Encarnación much changed. Not only does she paint her lips in the shape of a Cupid’s bow and pluck her eyebrows, which is still a novelty in Puerco Ahogado, but the way she carries herself evidences a maturity Perla had never glimpsed in her sister before. Encarnación is still quick to laugh, quick to tease, but that restlessness of a hummingbird she’d possessed, as if she were flitting from flower to flower, has markedly decreased.
Her clothes are different too. She wears a small, smart hat that almost covers her eyes, of a style alien to Perla. It’s much too bold.
“I don’t intend to stay forever,” Encarnación tells her the night of their arrival, once her child has been put to bed. “I have a friend who makes costumes for actresses in Mexico City. She’s promised to find me a position at a studio there.”
“Where would you have met someone who works in the movies?” Perla asks, surprised by her sister’s words.
“We both made clothes in Puebla, and then she went to Mexico City to work there.”
“That’s what you did in Puebla? Make clothes? Didn’t he support you?”
She’d thought that Rómulo would have set her sister up in her casa chica. That was what all those disgusting men did with their mistresses, they paid for their apartment and their food and clothes.
Her sister blushes. “In the beginning he did, but we quarreled often because he wouldn’t leave his wife and marry me. I wanted a proper father for Inés. We had an awful row one time, and I tossed him out and changed the lock. He’d still come around after that, but something was different between us. He came less and less after he had children with his wife.
“Then his father-in-law’s business took a turn for the worse and he wasn’t much help financially. I had to earn a living. I started sewing at home so I could keep an eye on Inés and make money. But lately I haven’t had much luck. They increased the rent, and all the work has dried up, and Rómulo is not contributing a single cent anymore. I thought maybe I’d be better off here for a bit. I hope that position in Mexico City becomes available and I don’t bother you for too long. Mother and Father are so changed, but you look well.”
“You never wrote,” Perla says accusingly.
“I didn’t think you’d want to hear from me. I was afraid you’d hate me.”
Of course she hates her! She hates her for leaving her behind to mind the crumbling house and their parents. To weather financial battles, but most of all, she hates her for the loneliness that has taken root inside her heart. She’s had no confidante late at night, no shoulder on which to rest her head.
“I wish you’d written. There has been no one for me to talk to,” Perla says, and her voice sounds brittle.
Wordlessly, Encarnación extends her hand and rests it upon Perla’s own.
The sisters embrace.
—
The child is odd and poorly educated. She places her elbows on the table when they eat, hollers at the top of her lungs, wants to run up and down the stairs all day long. She has no patience for the piano, though she does sit, uncomplaining, with Encarnación when she’s mending a dress.
“You’ll never be able to make a lady out of her,” Perla warns her sister.
