The Noise of Infinite Longing by Luisita Lopez Torregrosa Page B
Authors: Luisita Lopez Torregrosa
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practiced in front of my bedroom mirror, a mean look, a lift of the leg, my arm thrown back.
L
ife on a miserable rural road had little to offer my mother, who had her social airs and her work in the capital. Even when she
was in the last months of pregnancy with her fourth child, she insisted on working, putting herself through a grueling drive every day, sitting in the back of a stifling car with other passengers and their smells. She was home from work at sundown, her blouse damp from the plastic-covered car seat, her skirt wrinkled. She called out for us and was full of kisses, her arms around us, asking about school, listening to the stories of our day and the catechism lessons we were taking for our confirmation. She didn’t talk to us about her work, but I imagined an office in the Supreme Court, her desk piled high with those heavy books with frayed bent spines that she had inher- ited from my grandfather.
My parents had nothing to do with the people of the road but occasionally people my father knew came for the evening—doctors he worked with, and men from his days in the sugar mills, men he had dealings with in town. They came with their wives, and mother fixed her elaborate dinners (tablecloth, fine china, fine silverware). The men drank, and when mother talked to the wives about her work and her family, they looked at her with blanks in their eyes.
Few of my mother’s friends ever came to visit. They lived in San Juan, and she didn’t want them to see that she lived on a dirt road. Thirty-two years old and married ten years, with three children and another one on the way, she was making more money than my father, far more than many of the women of her time, and she talked to us (during those late afternoons when my father didn’t show up) about building her own house in San Juan, near grandmother and Tití. She kept up her connections, her membership in the women’s clubs in San Juan and in the Colegio de Abogados. She shopped for clothes in San Juan and read the San Juan newspapers and talked about the theater and politics as if she lived in San Juan, in her cir-
cles. But after a day’s work, she came home to a cold-water shower and the tiresome chores of the house, checking in on dinner, notic- ing the spot of dust on the armchair, the milk stain on the dining room table.
We were her little soldiers, obeying her every glance, fearing her mood those nights when dinner got cold, and she would sit on the porch, in her heels and her perfume, and wait for my father. I avoided her when I saw her like that, and avoided my father, too, when he came home late.We were in bed by the time the tires of his car rolled up the driveway and the car door slammed shut and the front door opened.
His footsteps were steady, deliberate (he never weaved or stum- bled, no matter how drunk). I listened for my mother’s whispery voice, hoping to hear laughter. One night they were quarreling in their bedroom, another fight I tried to ignore. But she was crying hysterically, her shrieks coming through the walls to my bedroom. I got out of bed and walked down the unlit hallway and stood at their door. He had grabbed her by her forearms and was shaking her. She was sobbing. He raised his right arm and the blunt palm of his hand came down and slapped her across the face. I screamed. He let go, and came toward me, ordering me to go to bed, and shut the door.
I
n the last weeks of mother’s pregnancy, my grandmother came to stay with us, and for a while there was calm in our house. But I brought home a bad report card and my parents were livid.The nuns and Mother Superior, her pockmarked, potato-shaped face reddening with anger, had warned me and had slipped a note to my parents. I had a C in deportment, my first C ever, like a neon sign at the bottom of a row of A’s. Talked too much in class, the nuns said, interrupted the teachers, disturbed the other students. My mother cried, shaking me
by the shoulders, and when
L
ife on a miserable rural road had little to offer my mother, who had her social airs and her work in the capital. Even when she
was in the last months of pregnancy with her fourth child, she insisted on working, putting herself through a grueling drive every day, sitting in the back of a stifling car with other passengers and their smells. She was home from work at sundown, her blouse damp from the plastic-covered car seat, her skirt wrinkled. She called out for us and was full of kisses, her arms around us, asking about school, listening to the stories of our day and the catechism lessons we were taking for our confirmation. She didn’t talk to us about her work, but I imagined an office in the Supreme Court, her desk piled high with those heavy books with frayed bent spines that she had inher- ited from my grandfather.
My parents had nothing to do with the people of the road but occasionally people my father knew came for the evening—doctors he worked with, and men from his days in the sugar mills, men he had dealings with in town. They came with their wives, and mother fixed her elaborate dinners (tablecloth, fine china, fine silverware). The men drank, and when mother talked to the wives about her work and her family, they looked at her with blanks in their eyes.
Few of my mother’s friends ever came to visit. They lived in San Juan, and she didn’t want them to see that she lived on a dirt road. Thirty-two years old and married ten years, with three children and another one on the way, she was making more money than my father, far more than many of the women of her time, and she talked to us (during those late afternoons when my father didn’t show up) about building her own house in San Juan, near grandmother and Tití. She kept up her connections, her membership in the women’s clubs in San Juan and in the Colegio de Abogados. She shopped for clothes in San Juan and read the San Juan newspapers and talked about the theater and politics as if she lived in San Juan, in her cir-
cles. But after a day’s work, she came home to a cold-water shower and the tiresome chores of the house, checking in on dinner, notic- ing the spot of dust on the armchair, the milk stain on the dining room table.
We were her little soldiers, obeying her every glance, fearing her mood those nights when dinner got cold, and she would sit on the porch, in her heels and her perfume, and wait for my father. I avoided her when I saw her like that, and avoided my father, too, when he came home late.We were in bed by the time the tires of his car rolled up the driveway and the car door slammed shut and the front door opened.
His footsteps were steady, deliberate (he never weaved or stum- bled, no matter how drunk). I listened for my mother’s whispery voice, hoping to hear laughter. One night they were quarreling in their bedroom, another fight I tried to ignore. But she was crying hysterically, her shrieks coming through the walls to my bedroom. I got out of bed and walked down the unlit hallway and stood at their door. He had grabbed her by her forearms and was shaking her. She was sobbing. He raised his right arm and the blunt palm of his hand came down and slapped her across the face. I screamed. He let go, and came toward me, ordering me to go to bed, and shut the door.
I
n the last weeks of mother’s pregnancy, my grandmother came to stay with us, and for a while there was calm in our house. But I brought home a bad report card and my parents were livid.The nuns and Mother Superior, her pockmarked, potato-shaped face reddening with anger, had warned me and had slipped a note to my parents. I had a C in deportment, my first C ever, like a neon sign at the bottom of a row of A’s. Talked too much in class, the nuns said, interrupted the teachers, disturbed the other students. My mother cried, shaking me
by the shoulders, and when
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