“Why are you dressing up as if you were coming from the beach?” Bolivia often asked him.
“I’m not dressing up, it’s who I am.”
Deep down, I always liked this Miguelito, call him Mike, better than any of the scum we had to put up with later. This guy had character, that can’t be denied. He was the owner of a packaging company and that may have been the reason Bolivia said yes one of those Sundays at the Copacabana; she’d later be less subtle about her reasoning: if this man supported her, she could save the money to bring her girls. And what was said was done. Maktub. The new apartment was a dream, more beautiful than she could have imagined, but living with her new boyfriend was more difficult than she had suspected. Until you sleep beside a severe asthmatic, you have no idea what a torment the night can be, for the afflicted and the partner. Bolivia came to understand that for Mike the bed wasn’t a place to lie down, because he’d sit up almost at a right angle with a bunch of pillows propped up behind him, and he’d snore like a seal if he happened to fall asleep, or wheeze all night if he didn’t. Sometimes she pitied him, and tried to help him by boiling eucalyptus leaves, getting him the inhaler, massaging his back, and begging him to stop smoking. Other times, and these were more frequent, she thought of him as a giant and clunky noisemaking machine. She couldn’t forgive all the horrible nights and the days she struggled through at the factory because of him, overcome by such sleepiness that she shut her eyes even though she was holding a hot iron. But my mother withstood this respiratory drama for seven months, during which she was able to save the money she needed. She sent us the tickets and said she’d be here waiting for us, and ten days before we arrived, she left Miguelito, called Mike, without offering too much explanation. According to Bolivia herself, she told him as he served her the morning coffee. Ciao, Mike, I’m not coming back tonight, I’m going to live with my daughters who will soon arrive. She had warned him previously that the setup would last only until her daughters arrived. Then good-bye forever. That very afternoon, Bolivia sublet two rooms with a bathroom in an apartment of Colombians, far from Spanish Harlem, near the East Village, which was cheap then.
Her roommates were single and pleasant, students, or so they had told her, and she believed them, or had to believe them because she had no other choice. That’s the way my mother thought: if I can’t afford another place, then this is the best place. It wasn’t huge or pretty, safe or peaceful, no wall-to-wall carpet or grand piano, and in the end wasn’t even private because the entrance and kitchen were shared. The money she had saved was enough to buy a whole other round of used goods, three simple mattresses, a table with four chairs, a black-and-white television, and a set of picture frames.
“The two rooms turned out very lovely,” she told me. “Like a dollhouse. I was very lucky to have a place to receive you. All that was missing was a vase and the towels and sheets I had left at Mike’s.”
Our plane arrived on a Monday night at eight and Bolivia had asked for a week off from work, so that she could show us our new American home. That Monday as we were about to board at the airport in Bogotá, she got up at six to finish ironing the blankets, cleaning the whole place, going to the market for crackers, food, eggs, cereal, maizena, soda, flowers, and at around noon she went to get the rest of her luggage from Spanish Harlem. Returning in a cab, she noticed the commotion of sirens near her block, and when she got closer she realized it was directly in front of her building. She asked the cabdriver to stop, got out at the corner, and went into the deli to find out what had happened.
“Get out of here, woman, they’re searching your apartment,” the store clerk told her. “Get out.”
“But why?”
“For the same reason as always, drugs. Get lost, woman, before they grab you as well. Did you leave your papers up there?”
“No, I have the papers right here in my purse. But I have my furniture in there, stuff for my girls. I’m going to go see if I can get my stuff. I’ll explain to them I have nothing to do with these drugs,” Bolivia resolved.
“Oh no you won’t,” the man detained her. “Over my dead body. I won’t let you go.”
“What about my things, my girls?
“Your girls are lucky there’ll be someone waiting for them at the airport tonight. Their mother was almost taken away by the feds. Thank God and get lost. Now, what are you waiting for?”
The rest of her belongings were in the taxi, and the taxi driver was cursing because of the delay as he emptied the trunk of the car, leaving Bolivia’s things on the sidewalk.
“Now what do I do?” she asked the store owner. “I have nowhere to put my things.”
“Come. Leave them down here until you get set up. There’s room in the store.”
Bolivia could not have been more grateful. May God repay you, as they say in Colombia. She stacked her belongings in one corner of the store and set off on foot to look for a place to rent, because in a few hours we would arrive, and she had no place to put us. How would she tell us she had no place for us to sleep? All the promises of the good life in America, so much waiting for the great moment. But where was my mother going to find someone who would open their doors, just one someone who would take pity on them and say come on in, comadre, bring your daughters and make yourself at home, where two fit so do three, where three fit so do four, and if we have to water down the soup, so be it. That’s how Colombians welcome each other. But in New York, no one told her these things, and Bolivia couldn’t find a place, and she had to suspend the search to come get us.