Gratitude

by Fabiana Elisa Martínez

Perhaps ninety years ago, her great-grandmother had visited the house with the green door. Her grandmother had described that house, or at least the antechamber behind the green door, as a living museum of herbs and potions that the owner offered to any woman in the vicinity for the little change they could spare from their meager economies and parsimonious husbands. Ninety years and a circle, Andréia thought, trying to ignore the absence of smells in this immaculate office with its penetrating metallic light and solemn receptionists.

According to her grandmother, the little house of Maria Mari in her minuscule Alentejo town had been a shelter for women, rich and poor, a secret silent embrace that the mothers, sisters, and cousins of the town needed when the verdict of love or lust was too indomitable.

“Abad Villanova?” an atonal voice called.

Andréia stood up and walked to the desk, smiling timidly.

“Let me see…” continued the efficient receptionist, reviewing various notes without looking at her. “Yes. You were here three days ago... You are 42… You received the paperwork... You filled it in… You waited the required time… All looks good. Do you have any last-minute concerns?”

Andréia felt an immense gratitude when the impersonal woman raised her eyes at her to accentuate her question.

“No, thank you. How long do you think it may take?”

“You shouldn't be in a hurry today, dear,” she replied, looking back at her screen. Maybe half an hour until they call you. Please do not drink anything, OK?”

Andréia sat again in a gray plastic chair and took a book from her purse. Processing the labyrinth of fiction under this light and at this moment would be an unnecessary waste of emotions and energy. But the book worked as a last brick of certainty, possibly the only object in her present life connecting the past and the future. After leaving this place alone some hours later, whenever she could read the book again, cuddling next to Victor under the amber light of their bedroom, her real story would have started a new chapter.

She was indeed thirsty. The receptionist knew the odds. Andréia could certainly have a glass of water, or a little port wine swaying in a golden goblet irradiating garnet luminescence. Or better still, a cup of hot chocolate, even if it were far from those perfect concoctions with cocoa and cinnamon that her mother made for her in the convent when the world was calm and the only tragedy in Andréia’s infant world was to find a dead bunny in the cat’s den.

Ninety years back her great-grandmother had visited the house of Maria Mari, seventy years ago her grandmother had brought into the world a deaf baby who, thirty years later would express love to her own daughter, little Andréia of the big braids, little drinker of chocolate, by tracing the girl’s features with the tip of two fingers, without any possible words and without tears. And now, after the atoms of all those brave women had vanished and fused into the memory of their last descendant, Andréia was only able to face the green wall of an impersonal Portuguese public office, waiting for her name to be called and her future redesigned forever.

She glanced at the other women in the room. All seemed younger than her. A gorgeous brunette with angular jaws, possibly the youngest vestal dedicated to this undisclosed ceremony, kept counting with her fingers and doing math before completing the form that Andréia had signed three days ago. Math was soothing too, not only literature. And math is more mechanical, precise, and transparent than words. Andréia could count the years between the good and bad decisions made by her ancestral women over four generations. She could use two fingers to cover the months since Henry had kissed her for the last time. She could sum in her imagination the future, multiple pages of the calendars covering the years she would live next to the man who really loved her. Next to Victor and the smoke rivulets of his French black Gitanes.

“Abad! Ready?” asked a blonde Walkerian nurse from the back of a side hallway.

Andréia’s chair made a shrieking sound against the thin wooden floor. Her legs trembled as she walked toward the corridor. She smiled at the nurse from afar, but the woman kept checking her charts and release forms. The hallway seemed interminable, like the cat’s burrow at the convent where toys, wilted flowers, and dead bunnies could be found. Andréia fumbled in her bag as she tried to return her book to its cozy shelter without letting the page marker fall. A long unknown number was blinking on her phone screen. A corner of the book almost canceled the unexpected call. But she finally picked up more out of fear for the ominous walk than out of curiosity. The nurse shot a reprimanding look at her and entered the examination room without waiting for her patient.

“Is this Andréia?”

Andréia stopped and placed a hand on the green granulated wall. This was an international call. She remembered the voice.

“Andréia, this is Ben. I hope you remember me…”

“Hi, yes…” Andréia mumbled in English while trying to find the room the nurse had sneaked into.

“Andréia, I’m so sorry. It took me days to find a way to contact you. I’m so sorry to be the one bringing this news to you. Henry died last week in an accident. We…”

In reality, much like in novels and movies, there are sequences that the mind deletes due to decorum, elegance, and finesse. For the rest of her life, Andréia would never be able to retrieve the narrative of the minutes after that tragic and miraculous call. She would only remember the severe warning of the receptionist. “You know very well we won’t be able to help you next week. That’s the limit, the law. Are you sure you are changing your mind, dear?”

Many years later, tying the ribbons on two golden braids, Andréia would answer a question from her only daughter. Carla would ask naively how she had announced to Victor that a baby was coming. Andréia would reply with the truth. “I called your dad from an obstetric clinic with green walls, an empathic receptionist, and a hurried nurse.” She would edit the superfluous details of the story with curls of invisible red ink over a long text made of love, errors, and ultimate corrections. Her big-eyed girl, who inherited not only Henry's wheat hair and green irises but the noblesse and the gestures of the smoker of Gitanes, would never know that she had been conceived twice, in an American city of snow and a European city of pasteis and sweet wine. Or that her mother had loved two men, adored one of them –but we do not know which one–, and was infinitely thankful for the somersaults of death and life.