The Mortifications by Derek Palacio Read Free Book Online

tangentially—namely, to distract them. He started by suggesting to Soledad that she take her first vacation. They would travel west to the Grand Canyon by train. The trip would be long, it would take them to a place as contrary to Hartford as Willems could imagine, and it would bypass Soledad’s acute fear of flying.
    Soledad agreed, but only if she could see the news die down in the papers. The reporters remained vigilant outside their house, lurking with notepads, cameras, voice recorders, swarming the mother and son in the street:
Are people now safe? Was the Death Torch put away where she could no longer molest the dying? Should she be put farther away, perhaps in a prison rather than a modest but comfortable convent?
    Feeling trapped inside the house, Soledad resurrected her sewing kit and began stitching a new set of clothes for her daughter. In the first week of Isabel’s absence, she had tried to cart from home to convent the girl’s entire wardrobe, but Isabel claimed that the T-shirts and corduroys she owned were too childish among habits and ankle-length skirts. The new wardrobe would be a gift, a reminder to Isabel that she was loved and wanted at home, and that the choice, the devotion to God, was still hers to make.
    Ulises thought of his mother’s actions as permissive and enabling, and he chastised her in the early mornings before going out to the tobacco fields. Willems had put Ulises in charge of four leased farms that summer, hoping to distract him with work the same way he distracted Soledad with their imminent holiday.
    You only encourage Isabel when you bring her those clothes, Ulises said. She wants to stay at the convent. The Death Torch, even when the fervor has died down, will not come home.
    Don’t call her that, Soledad said. She needs to know that she doesn’t have to choose between us and God.
    She already has, Ulises said. He quoted Matthew:
Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
    Bullshit, Soledad said.
    And she would say no more on the subject, would change rooms to escape Ulises’s persistent nagging, and that left Ulises with no one but Willems with whom to discuss the matter of his sister. Over cigars, the two men formed an evening routine: Ulises would broach the subject of Isabel’s devotion, questioning the veracity of her faith, and Willems would deflect.
    We can’t tell people what to do or how to live, Willems would say. We can’t be afraid of what we don’t understand. It’s not your sister’s job to explain herself.
    But those careful responses even Willems grew tired of, which is how he came to bring with him several cigars instead of just two, thinking he could stanch Ulises’s obsessive rants by plugging stogie after stogie into the young man’s mouth. Ulises, recognizing immediately Willems’s tactic, decided to coax the man into a discussion of himself rather than force one about Isabel.
    It was July, the vacation now postponed until August, when Ulises, lighting a Maduro, asked, What about your mother?
    She was Portuguese, Willems said. Her name was Rute. She came from a fishing village not far from Coimbra, somewhere at the mouth of the Mondego River. Her father was a merchant, and they came to the Caribbean for the same reasons most did: for easy wealth. They traded mostly sugar. My mother met my father in Cuba, where he was recruiting workers. He took her to Amsterdam for the first two years of their marriage so he could close the company offices in Bovenkerk. They were relocating the whole enterprise to Gonaïves. They had me during that period.
    I like the taste of this one, Ulises said. Sweet, I think.
    Willems puffed and explained, The leaves are from the base of the stalk, so it’s milder. You have my taste in cigars, which is for soft.
    Where is your mother now?
    She passed away a few years after my father started making cigarettes. Cholera