Mom’s Legs

On the day her daughter turned fifteen, Estela started feeling sick. At first, she thought it was a simple headache brought on by her daughters’ insolence; with the festivities over, the girls had gone off to bed sobbing over some petty disagreement. Not a day passed that they didn’t argue. When they were little, they would fight over toys and sweets. If one had ice cream the other one wanted it too; even if she gave each girl the exact same cones, one was inevitably smaller, more melted, or better. A typical morning went like this: Victoria asked for a braid while Veronica wanted a ponytail. As soon as they saw the other’s hairdo, each girl wanted that one instead. Estela did her best to comply with their demands, sometimes changing their hairdo three or four times, until she got fed up and refused to redo them again. Sometimes the girls would mess up their hair in a rage and leave the house unkempt, and no one except Estela knew they’d spent over an hour attempting to look presentable. Over time they came up with a system where one day Victoria chose the hairdo and the next day Veronica decided. Then people started to notice that the sisters always looked presentable, although they thought it odd that both girls had the same hairdo, since it was already difficult to tell them apart. Most people considered Veronica, with her thick black eyelashes and green eyes framed by bold eyebrows, the prettier sister. But others preferred Victoria, who stood a few inches taller, had a narrower waist and fuller lips than her sister.

Estela would have preferred to buy the girls different clothes and to have her daughters share them, thus doubling their wardrobe, but each time she bought something different, even if the item varied only in colour, it set off an argument that lasted several days. She finally opted for giving them money, the same amount each, so they could buy whatever they wanted. But Veronica was cleverer at finding bargains and had better taste. Victoria envied her sister, who was able to do more with less.

‘It’s not fair,’ she’d say. ‘She always gets better things than I do.’

‘It’s not my fault you don’t shop more carefully,’ Veronica would reply. ‘I wait for the sales and buy second-hand items.’

‘I never find anything,’ Victoria would complain on the verge of tears.

Estela observed them with distress.

When Veronica turned seventeen, Estela moved the family to a three-bedroom apartment so each girl could have her own room. This did nothing to calm their arguments, nor her now frequent migraines. On the contrary, now that the sisters had their own space, they would charge with horns thrust, like bulls in a bullfight or rams in heat, the moment they saw each other: who got which spot at breakfast, who got the first piece of toast, which bread was crispier, who’d said what to the other one’s friend. Sometimes all it took was a look to unleash an argument that deteriorated into tears, screams or door slams.

When Victoria turned eighteen, Estela’s migraines became debilitating and her doctor recommended a tomogram. The results were conclusive: a substantial tumour near the hypothalamus. The doctors were stunned – a tumour that large should have affected more than her intracranial pressure, and its metastasis should have caused organ failure. The biopsy results were also positive, or negative, depending on your point of view: positive for the cancer and negative for her. From then on, her doctors offered only vague comments. She might live for just a few months, or for many years; she might have pain, or not; the cancer could spread, but it had not yet entered the lymph nodes; it would probably affect another part of her body, but they could not say which. One thing was certain – every doctor confirmed it: the tumour was neither operable nor curable. Although one doctor did say: ‘I don’t believe in miracles, but I have definitely witnessed a few. If you have faith, you never know.’ The only miracle she wished for, throughout the gruelling appointments and long waits, was that her daughters would come to a truce. But neither their mother’s agony nor her pleas had any effect on the sisters.

Estela had time to carefully consider her decision, taking into account the medical and legal implications of the procedure. She hoped something would happen, some indication or sign that would change her mind. But it was not to be. During the final six months of her life, her daughters Veronica and Victoria continued fighting just as they always had. In the end, nothing and no one could change her mind: she would amputate her legs and give one to each daughter. Each leg would be preserved and then sheathed in a stocking and her most elegant shoe for a lovely sendoff. She hoped that her daughters, seeing her confined to a wheelchair, would feel sorry for her and, perhaps, find it in their hearts to give her a hug. Estela understood that her daughters were not fighting over a blouse or their place at the table; they were competing for a place in her heart. She hoped they would keep a leg for the rest of their lives as a reminder of the devotion she felt towards them.

And that’s what happened.

Except Estela was not there to witness it. She developed gangrene in her stumps which ended her life before the brain cancer could. For several weeks afterwards the girls continued arguing.

‘It was your leg that killed Mamá.’

‘No, it was yours.’

The doctor never told them which stump had caused the infection.

Veronica graduated from college. She found a job working as an accountant and moved to the guesthouse. Victoria quit her studies and began renting out empty rooms in the apartment. She hid her mother’s leg in a closet, behind some bed linens in a place where it was unlikely that anyone would find it. Veronica, on the other hand, had a canvas bag custom made so she could store the leg under her bed.

Victoria was so successful with her rentals that she convinced neighbourhood widows with empty rooms to let her rent them out on their behalf, and in time she managed a number of properties. Veronica married a colleague from work and went to live in a distant neighbourhood.

The sisters only saw each other on the anniversary of their mother’s death. Victoria arrived at the cemetery early while Veronica came in the afternoon, but they always ran into each other. Veronica wondered if Victoria lingered about in order to see her. Victoria harboured similar thoughts, suspected that her sister arrived early for that same purpose. The grave had two niches, and each sister arranged flowers in one of these without ever arguing about it or coming to an agreement. On one visit to the cemetery, Victoria could see that Veronica was pregnant. It took Victoria less than two weeks to find an excuse to spend the night with her most attractive neighbour and, in under a month, she too was expecting. Not long after that, Veronica miscarried. Ignorant of this fact, Victoria continued with her scheme and gave birth to a girl in October whom she named Estela after her mamá. The next year, when they again visited the grave, nothing about Victoria’s body gave away that she had become a mother. Hence, Veronica did not know that she was an aunt. Likewise, Victoria did not know that she was not an aunt. The following year, Veronica once again showed signs of being pregnant. Victoria found herself another neighbour to bed. This time she had a son. Veronica had a daughter. They were born three months apart.

In the meantime, Victoria owned an entire building with tenants, and had three children – the following year she’d decided to beat her sister to the punch and have another baby with a third neighbour. The neighbour, who had a big heart, proposed marriage, along with an offer to serve as father to her first two children. His name was Joaquin. He’d come to the city to study law and soon found success. His generous spirit pleased both his clients and his opponents. He was the type of person who resolved disputes, leaving both parties, if not exactly happy, at least satisfied and aware that much worse outcomes were possible.

One afternoon, as Joaquin arrived home from work, Victoria announced her fourth pregnancy and, without meaning to, broke into tears

‘We could have been so happy,’ she repeated time after time, while crying inconsolably, sniffling snot and dropping the tissues that Joaquin graciously handed her to the floor. After a while, she grew calm.

‘There’s something you should know,’ she told him.

She proceeded to relate the entire story of her mamá and sister, a story she had avoided discussing until then. She’d never lied about it, but had only told her husband that her mamá had died without ever discussing the cause of her death.

‘Where did you put her leg?’

‘In the closet of Estela’s bedroom.’

Joaquin did not say much the rest of the day. They celebrated Victoria’s pregnancy and attended to the children, who were by then four, three and two years old. They slept like the hardworking and tired parents they were. The following day, Saturday, after coffee, Joaquin asked Victoria to see her mother’s leg. Taken aback by his request, she pulled out the folding stepladder because the leg, wrapped in sheets, was in the back of the highest shelf of her daughter’s closet. She was surprised by its heft and had to ask Joaquin for help getting it down. He unwrapped the leg on the bedroom floor. The black-heeled shoe suggested an odd optimism on the part of his mother-in-law. The stocking was in good condition. They attempted to stand it up, but to no avail.

‘I think we should put it in the living room,’ said Joaquin. ‘I know a place in Lagunilla where they manufacture lamps. They could build a base and a shade for the bulb. What do you say? I think your mamá would have wanted us to exhibit it. I mean, such a huge sacrifice only to end up hidden away.’

That very Sunday Joaquin went to Lagunilla. He put the leg in his son’s wagon, and took Estela, the eldest child and the only one who could walk, with him. He reasoned that if she got tired on the way back, he could let her sit in the wagon. Victoria stayed at home with the two smaller children. She’d imagined that she would feel relieved when the leg left her house, but the opposite happened. Not even the incessant demands of her two children could fill the void that overcame her. When the children took their naps, Victoria threw herself on her unmade bed and tried to smell her husband’s scent in the wrinkled sheets, to find the shadow of his silhouette. The only thing she perceived was his absence. She fell asleep, wishing he would return soon. She woke up in a sweat from a dream she could not recall, roused by the cries of her youngest child. Joaquin arrived shortly after. She tried to recall her dream while he described his odyssey. Before they could reach the lamp store, two curious passersby had approached him and offered to buy the leg. One commented that it was a fine specimen. Victoria had to admit that her mother’s legs, especially taking into consideration her age, were not ugly. The other stranger told Joaquin that stuffed body parts were in fashion again.

‘What did he mean “again?”’ asked Victoria.

‘He was an eccentric type, with long grey hair.’

Those types of encounters only happened to her husband. It was as though people sensed his large heart and came up to him. Had Victoria taken the leg, they would have undoubtedly looked at her disapprovingly; the only attention she’d get would be uncomfortable stares. The man explained to Joaquin that because of the Internet, many people had gained a renewed interest in relics and the preservation of human remains. There were thousands of inspirational stories on the web. Didn’t he know that Juana la Loca had kept the body of her dead husband for years? Didn’t he know that the widow of Sir Walter Raleigh would carry around her husband’s head everywhere she went? That the one-armed Obregon, that the leg of Iturbide … and so on. The man provided at least five additional famous examples that Joaquin could not recall in the moment. When Joaquin arrived at the lamp store, the staff was not surprised by his request. A few weeks prior, a man had brought in the stuffed breasts of his wife who had undergone a double mastectomy to have them install red lights in place of her nipples. He’d mounted the breasts on a wooden frame and planned to hang them on the headboard of their bed as a tribute to his wife, and to remind her that he would always be faithful to her, with or without breasts.

‘The lamp is going to turn out well,’ Joaquin said. ‘We’ll put it in the living room.’

‘It’ll be the first time that I’m on trend,’ mumbled Victoria.

Veronica returned to work shortly after the birth of her daughter, whom she had named Estela after her mother. She hired a nanny who had come highly recommended and enrolled the baby in a day care close to home. Both she and her husband had successful careers and saved diligently. After a few years, they decided to move to a pretty, new house with two floors and a lovely terrace. She had never forgotten her mother’s leg, which remained in the canvas bag. When the move was imminent, she decided to get rid of the leg once and for all. Though she had been long convinced that it would be best to bury it near Mamá, she had never gotten up the courage to do it. Now she was determined. Over the years, on her visits to the cemetery, Veronica had worked out how to go about it: she would get there at night with a shovel, slipping past security. It was best to work alone, even if she would not be able to dig very deep, and right beside the grave where there was a sort of garden. She’d heard stories about couples who made love on top of the graves. She didn’t care if they mistook her for a necrophiliac. She would risk it. She withdrew several thousand pesos from the bank in two-hundred-peso bills in case she needed to bribe someone. She decided that a Monday would be the best day. She told her husband that they were in the middle of a major audit and that she would be working late to ensure the job was done properly.

The night before, while the others slept, she pulled out the bag from underneath the bed and stuffed it in the trunk of the car she shared with her husband. Days earlier, using her late work hours as an excuse, she’d asked him for the car. Normally, he drove her to the office – his office was further away – and picked her up when he finished work. This Monday, since Veronica would be driving and the day care opened at nine, they asked the nanny to arrive early so they could beat the traffic. As they were leaving the house, her husband wanted to put his briefcase in the trunk. Luckily, she was holding the keys and was able to convince him that it was more practical to leave it on the rear seat.

She left the office as late as possible, which wasn’t difficult since she always had a lot of work to do. Although it was eleven o’clock when she finally set out, she realized the city would never be sufficiently dark. Arriving at the cemetery, she was surprised to see so many parked cars; it hadn’t occurred to her that a wake might be taking place. From the looks of it, the deceased was someone of great importance. It was impossible to take the bag from the car without arousing suspicion. She would have to return another day, or even change her plan. Arriving at home, she informed her husband that they’d given her an extension and that tomorrow was the new deadline.

The next day, she dropped him off at work and headed to the Jamaica market to buy two bouquets of giant gladiolas that required three people to carry to her car. She then drove to the cemetery and stuffed the bag with the gladiolas, leaving the zipper open so the flowers could overflow. With great effort she dragged the bag bursting with flowers to her mother’s grave. There she began digging a hole, in broad daylight, as though preparing to plant the flowers. She placed the leg in the hole and covered it with the flowers, and then she added a layer of dirt. Finally, she spread the stems over her mother’s grave and covered it. Satisfied with the results, she returned to her office, ready to restart her life. That afternoon it rained heavily, but when her thoughts turned to whether the leg remained concealed or if the flowers survived the downpour, Veronica pushed these aside by focusing on the new house and how she would decorate it, or tallying accounts in her head, or working on complicated budgets. Anything to distract her from ruminating on what was to her a fait accompli.

For Victoria, the heavy rains coupled with the anticipation of her lamp helped trigger feelings of nostalgia for her mamá. She decided, a few days after Veronica had buried her leg, to visit the cemetery. As she approached the grave, she could see that something was amiss. The rain had lashed an enormous pile of gladiolas, and a gardener was carefully raking the dispersed flowers. He had a red wagon to complete his task. With her heart pounding and her face crimson with rage, Victoria approached the grave, all the while cursing her sister’s ideas. How could she dump so many flowers on top of Mamá? Why did the flowers look tossed, wet and muddy? Just then she noticed the mud around the grave, which had already ruined her shoes, and glimpsed the tip of the heel of her mother’s leg sprouting from the earth like a new shoot in spring. Blinded by fury, she did not consider the consequences of her actions. Under the stunned gaze of the gardener, Victoria dropped to her knees and dug out the leg using her hands. It didn’t take long, because the dirt was loose from the recent downpour, and Veronica had not buried it very deep. Victoria threw the leg over her shoulder, carried it to the car, put it in the trunk and headed to Lagunilla. The slow-moving traffic gave her time to calm down. A smile spread slowly across her face. Her living room would have a matching pair of lamps.