The Years with Laura Diaz

“How well you understand things, Laura.”

“Know something, Auntie?” she dared to say to Maria de la O. “Sometimes I miss life in Veracruz. It was more fun.”

The aunt did not agree, simply looked attentively at Laura, and then Laura laughed as if to say the matter was of no importance.

“You stay here with the boys. I’ll go to the market.”

It was not a bother; she found it amusing to go to the Parian in Colonia Roma, because it broke the household routine, which in truth was no routine. Laura loved her aunt, adored her sons, and was delighted to watch them grow. The market was a miniature forest where she could find all the things that delighted her, flowers and fruits, so various and abundant in Mexico, the azucenas and gladiolas, the Madonna lilies, the “clouds” and pansies, the mangos, papaya, vanilla that she thought about when she made love: the mamey, the quince, the tejocote, the pineapple, limes and lemons, guanabana, oranges, the black zapotes and the little zapotes: the tastes, shapes, flavors of markets filled her with joy and with nostalgia for her childhood and youth.

“But I’m only thirty years old.”

She was pensive as she returned from the Parian to Avenida Sonora and asked herself, Is there something more? Is this all there is? She answered herself with a slight shrug of her shoulders and walked faster, not even thinking about the weight of the baskets. If there was no more automobile, it was because Juan Francisco was honorable and had returned the gift to the CROM. She remembered that it had not been his idea to return it. The comrades had asked him to do it. Don’t accept gifts from the official union. Don’t become corrupt. It hadn’t been a voluntary act on his part. They’d asked him to do it.

“Juan Francisco, would you have returned the car if your comrades hadn’t asked you to?”

“I serve the working class. That’s that.”

“Sweetheart, why do you depend on injustice so much?”

“You already know I don’t like-”

“My poor Juan Francisco, what would become of you in a just world?”

“Spare me the condescension. Sometimes I just can’t figure you out. Hurry up and make breakfast, I’ve got an important meeting today.”

“Not a day passes without an important meeting. Not a month. Not a year. Every minute there’s an important meeting.”

What did he think of her? Was Laura only a habit of his, a sexual rite, mute obedience, expected gratitude?

“I mean, how good it is that you have people to defend. That’s your strength. It pours out of you. I love to see you come home tired.”

“You’re incomprehensible.”

“What are you talking about? I love it when you fall asleep on my breasts, and I love the idea that I restore your strength. Your work drains you even if you don’t realize it.”

“You’re so flighty, you make me laugh sometimes, but other times-”

“I annoy you… I just love the idea!”

He left without another word. What did he think of her? Did he remember the young woman he met at the Casino ball at Xalapa? The promise he made her that he would educate her, teach her to be a woman in the city and in the world? Would he remember the young mother who wanted to accompany him in his work, identify herself with him, prove that in their married life the two of them shared the life of the world, the life of work?

This idea weighed more and more on Laura Diaz. Her husband had rejected her, had not carried out the promise that they would be together in everything, united in bed, in being parents, but also in work, in that part of the whole that eats up the life of each day the way children eat the sections of an orange, transforming all the rest-bed and being parents, matrimony and dreams-into minutes to be counted and finally into empty skins to be discarded.

“The mute obedience of impassioned souls.”

Laura blamed herself. She remembered the child from Catemaco, the girl from Veracruz, the young woman from Xalapa, and in each she saw the growing promise that culminated in her wedding eight years before. Ever since then I’ve shrunk instead of growing, I’ve been turning into a little dwarf, as if he didn’t deserve me, as if he’d done me a favor, he didn’t ask me to do it, he didn’t impose it on me, I asked for it, and I imposed it on myself in order to be worthy of him. Now I know I wanted to be worthy of a mystery, I didn’t know him, I was impressed by him physically, his way of speaking, of taking control of the monster of the crowd, I was impressed by that speech he gave in our Xalapa house in honor of the Catalan woman. That’s what I fell in love with-to jump from my love to knowledge of the person I loved, love as a trampoline of knowing, its labyrinth, my God, I’ve spent eight years trying to penetrate a mystery that isn’t mysterious, for my husband is what he seems to be, not more, what appears is what he is, there’s nothing more to discover, I’ll ask the audience whom the leader Lopez Greene speaks to, the man is for real, what he tells them is true, there’s nothing hidden behind his words, his words are his entire truth, every last bit, believe in him, there is no one more authentic, what you see is what he is, what he says is nothing more.

From Laura he demanded out of habit what had satisfied him before. Little by little, she stopped feeling satisfied with what had once satisfied both of them.

“When I met you, I thought I didn’t deserve you. What do you think of that? Why don’t you answer?”

“I thought I could change you.”

“So what you bought in Xalapa seems pretty paltry to you now.”

“You don’t understand. We all progress, we all can either better ourselves or get worse.”

“Are you saying you wanted to change me?”

“For the good.”

“All right then, tell me something, honestly. Am I a good wife and mother? When I wanted to work with you, didn’t you stop me with that little stroll through hell you set up for me? What more did you want?”

“Someone to confide in,” said Juan Francisco, and first he got out of bed, but then quickly looked back at Laura with shining eyes and, with a grimace of pain, threw himself into his wife’s arms.

“My love, my love.”

That year, President Obregon was succeeded by Plutarco El as Calles, another Sonora man, another one of the Agua Prieta triumvirate. The Revolution had been carried out to the chant of FREE VOTES, NO REELECTION because Porfirio Diaz had kept himself in office for three decades with fraudulent reelections. Now, ex-President Obregon wanted to abrogate his own ineligibility and return to the throne of the eagle and serpent. Many said it would betray one of the principles of the Revolution. But the rationale of power had its way. The Constitution was amended to allow a former president’s reelection. Everyone had been certain that the three Sonora men would take turns at being President until they died of old age, just like Don Porfirio D az, unless another Madero, another revolution, came along.

“Morones wants us union men to back General Obregon’s reelection. I’d like to discuss it with you,” said Juan Francisco to the union leaders gathered once again in his house, as they did every month of every year. In the little living room, Laura put aside her book.

“Morones is an opportunist. He doesn’t think the way we do. He hates the anarcho-syndicalists. He adores the corporate unionists who thicken the government’s broth. If we support Obregon, our independence is over. He’ll turn us into little lambs or he’ll lead us to slaughter, which is pretty much the same thing.”

“You’re right, Palomo. What are we going to be, Juan Francisco, independent, militant unions or corporate sectors of the official labor movement? I want all of you to tell me,” said another of those faceless voices that Laura struggled vainly to link, when they came in, when they left, with the faces filing through the little living room.

“Dammit, Juan Francisco-and begging the pardon of the lady in the next room-we are the heirs of Light, of the Red Tribunal, the House of the Workers of the World, the Red Battalions of the Revolution. Are we going to end up as lackeys to a government that uses us just to put on fancy revolutionary airs? Revolutionary? Hooey is what I