Chapter 1 chapter 1 Angustias For generations, the women in the Olivares family attempted to change the course of destiny through the power of names. Despite being renowned experts on stubbornness, each of the Olivares women underestimated the extent to which destiny shared this trait. As a result of their oversight, the Olivares women failed to control their lives and, most importantly, their daughters' lives, in every single attempt. The Olivares women's unsuccessful efforts began on the 18th of June 1917 when Justa Olivares, a quite cruel and unjust woman, decided to name her daughter Calamidades. Justa believed that if life had been unkind to her, there was no reason for her daughter to have it any better. Justa chose not to see the wickedness in her name choice. In fact, she convinced herself that it was a gift, for calamities could bring wisdom and resilience if one put in enough effort to see beyond the pain. Calamidades Olivares did not experience a single calamity in her life, except for the night of her birth when her mother passed away with Calamidades sleeping in her arms. Calamidades was adopted the very next day by her wealthy and lonely aunt, Daría, who appointed her as the sole beneficiary in her will. Because Daría provided her niece shelter, wisdom, and love, the three ingredients needed to prevent a bitter heart, Calamidades grew up without resentment toward her mother and her name. Justa, Calamidades believed, had been right. Calamities could be a gift, but it was one she never received. Life made a point of protecting Calamidades from disaster. When a hurricane hit the northeast of Mexico, Calamidades's coastal hometown, Matamoros, remained completely untouched. Ten years later, when a five-year drought hit the region, rain fell over Calamidades's house, and only her house, once a month without fail. Six years after the end of the drought, a swarm of deadly wasps invaded the county, but if you asked the people of Matamoros what the monstrous insects looked like, they could not say. The wasps flew right around the city's outer limits, leaving no victims or remnants of despair. At the age of twenty-six, Calamidades was blessed with a beautiful daughter whom the doctor declared to be the healthiest baby he had ever delivered. Calamidades named the baby Victoria so that she could triumph in every task she set out to complete. With the belief that her daughter was safe and sound and destined to be victorious, Calamidades passed away peacefully in her sleep on her thirtieth birthday. Victoria Olivares was not successful in anything that she did, which was quite unfortunate when the stakes were high. She failed almost every exam in school, was always chosen last when forming teams in the playground and lost every game of damas chinas she played with her great-aunt Daría in the ten years she got to spend with her before the woman passed away from old age. No matter how much effort she put into a matter, and it was quite a lot of effort considering how much her spirit should have been crushed by the circumstances of her life, Victoria could not help but fail. At the age of five, she attempted to fly, fell, and broke her arm in three places. At the age of fifteen, she attempted to cook for herself for the first time and burnt down her house. And at the age of eighteen, Victoria became addicted to gambling and lost every single cent she inherited from her great-aunt. Because Victoria had done so poorly in school, she was unable to find a job that paid enough to help her pay her gambling debts. Loans became her lifeline, and when she realized they would also be her ultimate demise, Victoria sought divine aid. To change her fortune, Victoria named her daughter Olvido, after the saint Nuestra Señora del Olvido, so that all her sins, worries, and most importantly her debts, could be forgiven and forgotten. But they were neither forgotten nor forgiven, and Olvido was forced to immigrate to the United States to escape the loan sharks who demanded more and more money even after Victoria's death. With the repercussions of her mother's mistakes looming over her head, Olvido grew up to be a very unforgiving woman. She did not forgive nor forget life's injustice, her mother's selfishness, her husband's imprudence, and later on, her own daughter's blunders. The only mistake Olvido learned to accept was Americans' mispronunciation of her name. "Old-vee-dough," she grew accustomed to saying to the restaurant customers she served. "But without the D in Old." "Ol-vee-do," the customers would repeat. "So beautiful. What does it mean?" "Oblivion." The customers would exchange curious glances and chuckle. "That can't be a real name." "It is real," Olvido assured them by patting her name tag. "Go to Mexico. You'll hear worse. Now, would you like corn or flour tortillas?" To ensure that her daughter did not become as reckless as Victoria Olivares, Olvido named her Angustias. Olvido hoped that a constant state of uneasiness would force her daughter to think twice before acting and prevent more misfortune in the family, but the opposite occurred. Angustias Olivares grew up to be a joyful and carefree girl. While other students cried on their first day of kindergarten, worried about the prospect of leaving their parents, Angustias comforted her mother and assured her she would be all right. While the neighborhood children panicked before a hurricane, discussing to no end how their parents had bought an infinite amount of food and boarded up their houses to survive the end of the world, Angustias played outside until the wind began to drag her feet. On the evening of Angustias's first hurricane, Olvido had to carry a kicking and screaming Angustias back into the house and tape the door locks to prevent her from escaping. Angustias always arrived at school at the last minute, studied for exams at the last minute, and apologized to teachers at the last minute, barely saving herself from a trip to the principal's office all without an ounce of worry in her heart. Angst was a foreign concept to Angustias, so when her sixteenth birthday rolled around, and she discovered she was pregnant, Angustias was ecstatic. Olvido was mortified. Angustias's daughter's name came to her through divine intervention. She was sitting in the passenger's seat of her boyfriend's car rambling about the movie they were on their way to see when she had a sudden craving for sour pickles, sour gummy worms, and a jumbo sour slushy. She ordered her boyfriend to stop the car and turn around--they had passed a gas station a few miles back. Her boyfriend refused--they would be late for the movie. Frantic, Angustias unlocked the car door and made a show of pulling the handle toward her. She didn't push the door open, but she had every intention of doing so. Her cravings had become so intense, she threatened to jump out of the car and walk all the way to the gas station if he did not take her there immediately. "No quieres que tu hija salga con cara de pepinillo, ¿verdad?" she warned. Her boyfriend stared at her perplexed. He understood Spanish fairly well, but Mexican sayings always went over his head. "If you don't satisfy your pregnancy cravings," Angustias explained, "your child will be born looking like the food you desired." Angustias's boyfriend scrunched his nose. "That doesn't make any sense." "Yes, it does," Angustias argued. Mexican sayings sometimes sounded silly, but they carried the wisdom of a hundred generations. One could not possibly fight a hundred generations worth of wisdom unless they were dumb and reckless, and Angustias was reckless but not dumb. "So, let's say you're craving mangos." "The baby will have jaundice." Angustias's boyfriend laughed. "That's not funny. This," Angustias said, pointing at her belly to indicate both the baby and her stomach. "Is a serious matter." "So, if you think the baby will look like a pickle, it'll... have acne?" he reasoned. "Perhaps," she said. "And what if she gets bullied for it? Will you be able to live with the guilt?" Her boyfriend rolled his eyes but shook his head. One illegal turn and ten dollars later, Angustias had her hands full of sour delicacies. With her brain empty of desperation, she was able to consider the meaning of her cravings more thoughtfully. "Maybe it's not literal," she said between slurps of her jumbo sour slushy. And, just as abruptly as her cravings had appeared, she was struck by the meaning of her sign. Angustias gasped with such horror, her startled boyfriend swerved into the left lane and came inches away from hitting an oncoming car. The universe or God or whoever is in charge of signs, was informing Angustias that her daughter was going to be a sour person, quite sour, judging by the intensity of her cravings. Angustias could not bear the thought of such a dreadful prophecy being fulfilled, so she decided right then and there that her daughter would be named Felicitas. Felicitas Olivares did not grow up to be a grumpy child as the divine sign had indicated. However, she was born with a sour face. On the day of her birth, when she looked upon Felicitas for the first time, the obstetrician felt an immediate sense of judgment and wondered if the baby had not wanted to be delivered just yet. While bathing and clothing Felicitas, the nurses constantly doubted their techniques. They must have been doing something incorrectly for the baby to have looked so upset. One of them vowed to think twice before having a child of her own. If she could not handle the dissatisfied and disappointed look of a stranger's baby, how would she handle the disapproval of her own? Now, at least three times a day, Angustias has to rub her daughter's forehead to remind her to remove her frown. "You will be the first girl in the history of the world to develop wrinkles at the age of ten," she says to Felicitas one morning before she leaves for school. She reaches over the kitchen table and pushes against the crinkle between her daughter's brows. "That's fine," Felicitas says, swatting her mother's hand away. "Wrinkles are a sign of wisdom." "And how would you know?" Angustias asks. Ignoring her daughter's protests, she runs her thumbs over Felicitas's brows to separate them. The frown reappears as soon as Angustias sits back down. She's not too worried. Felicitas's morning frown is a bad habit, but not a sign of anger. Angustias can tell by the cool, pale-yellow cloud that hovers over the crown of her daughter's head. A warmer tone would be ideal, but it's early and a school day. Any shade of yellow is a blessing. "Abuelita Olvido is a very wise woman," Felicitas explains. "Or so she claims, and she's more wrinkly than a dried prune. The bus is here. I gotta go." Felicitas carries her dirty dishes to the sink, plants a kiss on her mother's cheek, and runs out of the apartment, leaving the door wide open. Usually, Angustias yells after Felicitas to remind her to close the door and to have a nice day at school, but something feels different today, something Angustias can't explain. A small seed of concern sprouts within her. Its leaves push against the inner walls of her gut and makes her wonder if she's going to be sick. She sniffs the leftover milk in her cereal bowl. It doesn't smell unusual. This isn't food poisoning. Angustias sits in the kitchen and watches as Felicitas runs toward the school bus parked on the opposite side of the street. She remains in that position even after the street becomes deserted and all she is left with is the view of her neighbor watering his plants. The neighbor waves at Angustias. She stares back blankly. The banging of the rebounding door brings Angustias back to reality, but only for a moment. As she carries her own empty plate to the sink and washes the dirty dishes, she goes right back to questioning how it is possible for Felicitas to know what her grandmother looks like. Felicitas has not seen Olvido since her first month of life. The only mental image Felicitas can possibly hold of her grandmother is that from an old photograph of Angustias's first birthday. Olvido was thirty-six years old at the time. Not a wrinkle in sight. Perhaps she misinterpreted Felicitas's cloud and mistook a pearl-white indifference for the pale yellow that signaled the brink of joy. Is that how Felicitas felt about her grandmother now, indifferent? Indifference was good, much better than resentment. And what was that at the border of Felicitas's cloud? The gradation was so soft, Angustias cannot be sure, but she thinks she observed the appearance of a slight mischievous red orange when Felicitas mentioned Olvido's looks. Maybe that was the joke. Felicitas cannot know what Olvido looks like, so it is funny that her guess is a face "more wrinkly than a dried prune." Angustias's trance is broken once again by the shrill ringing of her cell phone. Grateful for the distraction, she merrily reaches for the phone and does not bother checking the caller ID before answering. It takes only a short exchange of words for Angustias to regret her actions. "Oh," she gasps. Her hand shoots up to her trembling lips. "Yes. Yes, I'm here. I--I understand." With every burning tear that rolls down her cheeks, Angustias wishes for a change in circumstance that can take her out of that moment. She wishes she could rewind time. She wishes she could tell her past self to not answer the phone, to not wake up, to pretend that her hearing had momentarily failed her. But Angustias answered the phone and heard the dreadful news that made her drop to her knees and cry out in pain. She cries until a puddle forms beneath her. The puddle transforms into a pond, and the pond becomes a lake. It is a miracle she stops crying. Three more tears and she would have flooded the neighborhood. Angustias remains on the floor for what could be fifteen minutes or fifteen hours. Once her clothes have soaked up every drop of her sorrow and no more tears spill from her eyes, she stands up, walks into the bedroom, makes a few calls, sends some emails, and packs all of her and Felicitas's belongings. She moves on to the kitchen and living room, packs the remaining items around the house, and carries six boxes, two suitcases, and a dying plant out to her rusty but trusty green car. She drives off and stops only twice, once to drop off the apartment keys with her furious and confused landlord and again to pick up Felicitas from school. By the time Angustias reaches the pick-up area where Felicitas stands carrying her black backpack and an armful of library books, the tears on her clothes have evaporated. The sadness she carries in her heart has not. "What's going on?" Felicitas asks as she clasps her seat belt. Angustias gives her a reassuring smile and looks into the rearview mirror before backing up. There is danger behind her. Impatiently sitting in the backseat is a threat to her peace of mind, the one who cursed her heart, but she is invisible to Angustias's eyes. Nonchalantly, Angustias blows a kiss goodbye and presses down on the accelerator. Excerpted from My Mother Cursed My Name: A Novel by Anamely Salgado Reyes All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
