Page 31 - WTP Vol. IX #10

band. He refused to consider surgery for his beloved wife and life companion, even as her beauty began to be compromised by time and gravity and sun. He was scared for her. Why should she take such a risk for something so trivial? It seems that deep down, rather than loving her beauty, he loved her—her essence, her core, her soul.
My aunt and uncle married when she was only sev- enteen and he twenty-three. She never finished
high school. Instead, the young couple relocated
to an hacienda his family owned a few hours from the city. Since then, they are always together, seek- ing each other like homing pigeons; to this day, like magnets, they become uncomfortable when too
long apart. Early in their marriage, my uncle went
to North Carolina for a year to complete a degree
in agriculture. Before a month had passed he called for his wife to come to him. Without her, he couldn’t sleep and broke out in hives. In less than a week she arranged for her two young children to stay in Lima with her mother and sister and flew out to the States to be with her husband. Much later, on our yearly visits, my uncle often acted as our chauffeur, driving us here and there and waiting for us patiently in the car, dropping us off at a ladies’ lunch or picking us up from the peluquería where we got our hair and nails done. Even last year, too old for chauffeuring, if my aunt took my mother and me shopping to Lana, the alpaca store, or Ilaria for silver, my uncle would call her, wanting to know where she was and when she would return to the house: ¿Donde estás? ¿Quando re- gresas? Although she seemed to be having fun, to en- joy browsing among the silken scarves or hammered urns, my aunt would hurry home to make sure my uncle had his lunch: Quiero darle su almuerzo a mi Josito. Está muy flaquito.
The siren song, then, never really had power over her, could never really have power over her, although she was exposed to it, although its music surrounded her every day as she grew older and technology continued to advance. For her, the song of beautifica- tion and resurrected youth falls flat—she has what she wants, what she needs, what she deserves: the unconditional love of her most beloved.
Marlowe lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. After devoting many years to academic writing, her focus now is creative nonfiction that explores issues of gender identity, motherhood, feminism, cultural hybridity, and more. Her short memoir has been published in Hippo- campus, Eclectica, Motherwell, Sukoon, Mutha Magazine, and The Acentos Review, among others. She is currently at work on a memoir in stories titled Portrait of a Feminist.
“T
because I know I will want to return to it time and again, especially when my aunt and uncle are gone.”
his one I save to
my phone album
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