different. The only French thing I could point to about him was his language.
“And yet that’s everything.”
“Maybe in your generation. Not in mine.”
“Chérie, a wise man once said racists, misers, and saints are always the last to be aware of their condition.”
“What wise man?”
“My Théophile. He was very wise sometimes.”
“I don’t think it matters who his father is.”
“Of course you don’t.
Your
father is the Colombian Oliver Twist.” She laughed, and I sensed that it wasn’t the first time she’d spoken of my family that way. “You don’t understand lineage and bloodlines and why these things matter. I am starting to think it might be too late for you, Leticia. You might never catch on.”
“We can’t choose our fathers just like we can’t choose our children.”
Though I’d been offended, I regretted my words instantly.
“I’m sorry,” I said but somehow my apology didn’t translate, and Séraphine stared at me, shaking her head slowly.
“You are very young, Leticia. Life has a way of humbling the arrogant. And I am reminded that I am an old, old woman when I look at your face and know that you will not listen to a word I have said.”
I thought of my parents, the moment my mother said she knew she would spend her life with my father. She saw him from her window in the convent. It was an overcast Bogotá day, and he worked on that fence for hours before stopping to eat under a tree on the edge of the convent garden. She couldn’t make out his face, but she said she might as well have been blindfolded, because the feeling had come to her even before he arrived that morning, the knowledge that he was whom she’d been waiting for. They didn’t speak until many weeks later when his work on the fence was nearlycompleted and she’d gone out to the garden to bring him a piece of cake left over from a birthday celebration for one of the nuns. To hear it from my father is to hear a recipe, a poem he spoke to the sky every night that he slept in the bed made of old car seats in a corner of his boss’s garage. He’d asked for a woman adrift like him, a woman with whom he could start a family, craft a dream, a woman within whom he could find his purpose, and himself.
My brother and I used to laugh at our parents’ old-world love story. We understood how they’d found refuge in each other, but I think we thought ourselves better than to naively surrender to a divine providence. With our American privilege had come a certain sterility and cynicism that I was surprisingly pleased to now be shedding. It was as if my blood had been moving slowly through me for years, and with Cato my pulse had been altered, changing course. No matter what I was told about the family name that preceded him, I knew I’d found a new piece of my life in Cato, stepping into my fate as if claiming a part of my inheritance.
7
I’d already been to the Rodin Museum with Loic. Cato didn’t want to go inside the museum, only toward the back garden, through the pebbled pathways along the tree-lined perimeter, around the fountain to the sphere of benches dappled with tired travelers and local lovers resting their heads in each other’s laps. He stopped to buy a sandwich from the café by the hedge and we settled onto a vacant bench at the far end of the museum grounds.
He offered me half of the sandwich and I took it.
“I’m leaving tomorrow, Lita. I have to go home.”
“Do you have a job waiting for you?”
“Yes, but that’s not why I need to go back.”
“A girlfriend?”
“No.”
“What then?”
“I love being with you.”
The word
love
from his lips, vertiginous.
“But …”
“But what?”
“I can’t stand Paris.” His face was suddenly shadowed. “This city makes me ill.”
“What do you mean?”
“Every day that I’m here I search for the horizon and I can never find it through the buildings. I look for earth but there’s only concrete. I can’t get the noise
“And yet that’s everything.”
“Maybe in your generation. Not in mine.”
“Chérie, a wise man once said racists, misers, and saints are always the last to be aware of their condition.”
“What wise man?”
“My Théophile. He was very wise sometimes.”
“I don’t think it matters who his father is.”
“Of course you don’t.
Your
father is the Colombian Oliver Twist.” She laughed, and I sensed that it wasn’t the first time she’d spoken of my family that way. “You don’t understand lineage and bloodlines and why these things matter. I am starting to think it might be too late for you, Leticia. You might never catch on.”
“We can’t choose our fathers just like we can’t choose our children.”
Though I’d been offended, I regretted my words instantly.
“I’m sorry,” I said but somehow my apology didn’t translate, and Séraphine stared at me, shaking her head slowly.
“You are very young, Leticia. Life has a way of humbling the arrogant. And I am reminded that I am an old, old woman when I look at your face and know that you will not listen to a word I have said.”
I thought of my parents, the moment my mother said she knew she would spend her life with my father. She saw him from her window in the convent. It was an overcast Bogotá day, and he worked on that fence for hours before stopping to eat under a tree on the edge of the convent garden. She couldn’t make out his face, but she said she might as well have been blindfolded, because the feeling had come to her even before he arrived that morning, the knowledge that he was whom she’d been waiting for. They didn’t speak until many weeks later when his work on the fence was nearlycompleted and she’d gone out to the garden to bring him a piece of cake left over from a birthday celebration for one of the nuns. To hear it from my father is to hear a recipe, a poem he spoke to the sky every night that he slept in the bed made of old car seats in a corner of his boss’s garage. He’d asked for a woman adrift like him, a woman with whom he could start a family, craft a dream, a woman within whom he could find his purpose, and himself.
My brother and I used to laugh at our parents’ old-world love story. We understood how they’d found refuge in each other, but I think we thought ourselves better than to naively surrender to a divine providence. With our American privilege had come a certain sterility and cynicism that I was surprisingly pleased to now be shedding. It was as if my blood had been moving slowly through me for years, and with Cato my pulse had been altered, changing course. No matter what I was told about the family name that preceded him, I knew I’d found a new piece of my life in Cato, stepping into my fate as if claiming a part of my inheritance.
7
I’d already been to the Rodin Museum with Loic. Cato didn’t want to go inside the museum, only toward the back garden, through the pebbled pathways along the tree-lined perimeter, around the fountain to the sphere of benches dappled with tired travelers and local lovers resting their heads in each other’s laps. He stopped to buy a sandwich from the café by the hedge and we settled onto a vacant bench at the far end of the museum grounds.
He offered me half of the sandwich and I took it.
“I’m leaving tomorrow, Lita. I have to go home.”
“Do you have a job waiting for you?”
“Yes, but that’s not why I need to go back.”
“A girlfriend?”
“No.”
“What then?”
“I love being with you.”
The word
love
from his lips, vertiginous.
“But …”
“But what?”
“I can’t stand Paris.” His face was suddenly shadowed. “This city makes me ill.”
“What do you mean?”
“Every day that I’m here I search for the horizon and I can never find it through the buildings. I look for earth but there’s only concrete. I can’t get the noise
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