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y spasms and violent convulsions.<br />
At first, Tita and John had no explanation for<br />
this strange death,<br />
since clinically Mama Elena had no other<br />
malady than her paralysis.<br />
But going through her bureau, they found the<br />
bottle of syrup of ipecac<br />
and they deduced that Mama Elena must<br />
have been taking it secretly.<br />
John informed Tita that it was a very strong<br />
emetic that could cause<br />
death.<br />
Tita couldn't take her eyes from her mother's<br />
face during the wake.<br />
Only now, after her death, she saw her as<br />
she was for the first time<br />
and began to understand her.<br />
Anyone looking at Tita could easily have<br />
mistaken this look of<br />
recognition for a look of sorrow, but she<br />
didn't feel any sorrow.<br />
Now she finally understood the meaning of<br />
the expression "fresh as a<br />
head of lettuce"-that's the odd, detached way<br />
a lettuce should feel at<br />
being separated abruptly from another<br />
lettuce with which it had grown<br />
up.<br />
It would be illogical to expect it to feel pain at<br />
this separation from<br />
another lettuce with which it had never<br />
spoken, nor established any<br />
type of communication, and which it only<br />
knew from its outer leaves<br />
unaware that there were many others hidden<br />
inside it.<br />
She could not imagine that mouth with its<br />
bitter rictus passionately<br />
kissing someone, nor those yellowing cheeks<br />
flushed pink from the heat<br />
of a night of love.<br />
Still, it had happened once. Tita had<br />
discovered it too late and<br />
entirely by accident. Dressing her for the<br />
wake, Tita had removed from<br />
her belt the enormous keyring that had been<br />
chained to her as long as<br />
Tita could remember. Everything in the<br />
house was under lock and key,<br />
strictly monitored. No one could take so<br />
much as a cup of sugar from<br />
the pantry without Mama Elena's<br />
authorization. Tita recognized the<br />
keys for all the doors and nooks and<br />
crannies. But in addition to that<br />
enormous keyring, Mama Elena had a little<br />
heart-shaped locket hung<br />
around her neck, and inside it a tiny key<br />
caught Tita's attention.<br />
She knew immediately which lock that key fit.<br />
As a child, playing<br />
hide-and-seek one day, she had hidden in<br />
Mama Elena's wardrobe.<br />
Tucked among the sheets, she had found a<br />
little box. While she waited<br />
for them to find her, she had tried to open it,<br />
but it was locked and<br />
she couldn't. Mama Elena hadn't been<br />
playing, she wasn't one of the<br />
seekers, yet she was the one who<br />
discovered Tita by opening her<br />
wardrobe door. Mama Elena had come to<br />
get a sheet or something and had<br />
caught Tita red-handed. Tita was punished<br />
in the cornloft, where she<br />
1); `-"i; had to take the kernels off a hundred<br />
ears of corn. Tita had<br />
felt that the punishment didn't fit the crime,<br />
hiding with your shoes<br />
on among the clean sheets wasn't that bad.<br />
Now, with her mother dead,
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