rhubarb magazine

34 Rhubarb
as she had a job, and money.
Liese drew one of the perfume packets
out of the drawer. She opened it. She
slipped the paper out of its sheath, held it
to her nose. It gave off a whiff of sophistication.
She waited, contented, sitting on
the bed, hands in her lap, her eyes assessing
the low-ceilinged room. She liked its
simplicity, its coolness, its dimness. They
didn’t have many basements in the Chaco.
A basement, she thought now, was like a
cave, like a cocoon, in which to rest and
gain strength to foray in a long-awaited
world.
She heard Nettie’s eager voice—the
call for supper. Liese rubbed the scent
of the paper onto
her wrists and ran
upstairs, arriving at
the table breathless
and smiling. The
cousins smiled back
at her. Their hands
were already folded
for the table prayer.
If they told her she
smelled nice or
questioned her for
wasting a packet,
she’d decided, she’d
compliment them
by declaring this was one of those special
evenings Nettie had mentioned. Her first
in their house.
Neither remarked on the perfume,
however. The dose available on paper must
have been too weak to last.
It didn’t matter. The sensation of the
strip against her skin, the brief aroma of a
new Canadian ritual lingered with her as if
it rendered her more exotic than ever, even
to herself. She was hungry and agreeable to
everything. The homemade tomato soup
and bread were delicious.
After supper, Liese helped with the
dishes, then admitted, to Alvina’s persistent
inquiries, that yes, she was tired.
The cousins’ voices wove around her like
a lullaby, sung in duet, suggesting she get
her night clothes, take a bath, go to bed.
The women showed her the bathroom.
Nettie asked Liese if she knew how to turn
on the taps and Liese said, yes, she did. Of
course, she did, she added, though she kept
her tone light and gracious; they certainly
had taps in the Chaco, she said. She didn’t
mention that they’d installed a water line
into the kitchen just a few months ago,
such a help to her mother, who had always
drawn from a tap on the porch, but she did
say that water was generally scarce in the
Chaco, so they showered instead of bathed,
using a pail of water overhead—a pail with
holes in it. Nettie and Alvina seemed to
find this interesting.
Then the cousins withdrew, pulling the
bathroom door closed behind them like a
final caring cluck. Liese secured her hair in
two loose braids. She took off her clothes.
She drew an inch or two of tepid water and
knelt in it, dabbing the water to her body
until every part of it was moistened. Then
she got out and dried herself and pulled
on her thin summer nightgown. She padded
downstairs and crawled between the
starched and flawless white sheets of her
basement bed. There she lost the last of her
vivid daydream of the future.
It had begun to disappear the moment
she landed—she knows this now—but
the last of it disappeared in that prim Canadian
bed. What was she thinking as her
eyes closed? What did she release with a
satisfied sigh, just before falling away—so
carelessly—from everything, new and old
colliding, into slumber?
She can’t remember.
She should have written something
down. She should have had a notebook
on the flight , blocked that pesky girl from
her lap, set down what she visualized ahead
of her as her gaze and dreams locked into
the clouds. On the airplane, suspended in
that space between ending and beginning,
she must have known—in that clear way
one sees what one wants before one has
it—what she hoped for, what she expected.
She was starting life over in a way more
definite, more decisive, than people usually
attempted. Not escaping, but choosing.
Switching countries. Separating destiny
from origin.
If she’d recorded this, she thinks now,
she could decide whether anything came
true in the manner she hoped. She reminds
herself the landscape of her former desires
can never be fully recovered. It still adheres
to a girl who hid, who watched, who envied,
and then a young woman wrapped in
memories of white. Liese no longer thinks
of herself as an immigrant and her reasons
for coming are thin. As good as gone. She
may never know, at this distance, if they
were good enough. R