Page 28 - WTP Vol. IX #10

I’m looking at a photograph taken by iPhone in Lima and sent to me in California. It shows my aunt and uncle sitting in their living room on their low cream couch, a leopard print cushion in the corner and an antique oil painting of the Archangel Rafael in rusts and reds and golds hanging behind them. I wouldn’t have thought that the animal print would go with the Catholic imagery, but it does, the luxury of the col-
ors and the historical undertones—gilt frame, Papal riches, safari hunting—brings it all together in an edgy way that seems right to me, having grown up surrounded by the aesthetics of Spanish colonialism.
This one I save to my phone album because I know I will want to return to it time and again, especially when my aunt and uncle are gone. They are, as of the taking of this picture, eighty-seven and ninety- two years old, respectively. They sit close to each other, as is their wont, embodying what I consider to be one of the great love stories in my family, if not the only one. They lean into one another, and her hand presses his as it rests on his leg. I have grown up watching my aunt touch my uncle constantly, sitting next to him at the dining table for instance, rubbing his arm and plucking his skin gently with her thumb and forefinger as she talks to my moth- er—pluck, smooth, pluck, smooth, pluck, smooth. Once when we were teens my sister entered their room with a question after everyone had retired for the night; she found them in bed gazing into each other’s eyes as they caressed each other’s faces. Who does that at sixty-plus years old? After forty- plus years of marriage and seven children?
But what strikes me about this particular photo is my aunt. Of course I notice that she is elegantly dressed, her hair styled, a dramatic silver necklace around
her throat. That is normal. What is also normal, but what I end up still mulling over later, is her face. It is wrinkled. She has the kind of skin that shows its age in webs of fine lines, especially around her eyes and mouth. She is an animated talker, charismatic and exuberant, and when she laughs or smiles, her mouth moves and her eyes crease. A lot. My mother, her younger sister, is less dramatic. She is quieter, shyer, more self-conscious. Her face has moved less, let’s put it that way. And her skin is different, thicker, less fragile. My mother has hardly any fine lines.
Growing up, I spent weeks and sometimes months of my school vacations in Lima, visiting my mother’s
family. Like my mother, I am more quiet and shy
than my aunt, and was especially so as a child. Often, instead of playing or even reading, I would watch my aunt and observe her style, noting how she talked and moved, what she wore, how she decorated her house and instructed servants. One of her favorite hobbies around this time was gardening. She loved her garden, creating it, tending to it. She loved order- ing the gardeners around, telling them where to dig ditches and holes, how to plant the palms and ferns and acacias. She also loved watering the trees and flowers. That love she shares with my mother and me. As an adult I’ve realized how we three share the satisfaction of wielding a hose, adjusting its nozzle, giving water to thirsty plants and grass that will take that water and thrive, populating our surroundings with texture and color and scent.
I can see my aunt in my mind now, much younger, maybe forty-five years old. She rolls up her slacks and steps out onto her lawn with a long hose that unfurls as she walks. Her feet are bare but her hands stay adorned with diamond rings and gold bracelets. Although her hair is done and her face made up, she is not fastidious like her oldest daughter or even her mother: she keeps her nails short, and her hands
are strong and broad—the better to play the piano, comfort a child, or repot a flower. I once watched her jump into a pool, clothes and jewelry and all, to rescue a flailing toddler; I can still see her tanned hand clasping his arm as she lifted him to safety. In my memory of her in the garden, my aunt strides out, watering as she goes, paying special attention to the ferns and orchids that fill the shadier corners. If a gardener crosses her path, she gesticulates toward the jobs she wants done. I also remember going with
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Wrinkles
MaRianna MaRLowe