Page 157 of The Seven Sisters
‘Senhora Beatriz is in here.’ Yara indicated a door at the end of the corridor. ‘I will just go and see if she is prepared.’
I sat on the bench outside, thinking that no matter what Beatriz told me today, it would not bring me down. The past was the past, and yesterday I’d finally begun to have a future.
The door to Beatriz’s room opened and Yara beckoned me in. ‘She’s very alert this morning. She told the nurse she didn’t want any drugs until she’d spoken with you so that her mind would be clear. You’ll have about an hour until the pain will be too much for her.’ She ushered me into the room, which was bright and airy with a beautiful view of the mountains and the sea below. Even though Beatriz’s bed was of hospital design, everything else resembled an ordinary bedroom.
‘Good morning, Maia.’
Beatriz, who was sitting in a chair by the window, greeted me with surprising warmth. ‘Thank you for coming to see me. Please, sit down.’ She indicated a wooden chair opposite her. ‘Yara, you can leave us now.’
‘Yes, senhora. Press the bell if you need anything,’ Yara said as she left the room.
While mistress and maid had been conversing, I’d taken the opportunity to study Beatriz. And after what Yara had said about her, I attempted to see her in a new light. Certainly physically, she didn’t resemble Izabela, her mother, without doubt leaning more towards the paler, European features of her father. I also noticed for the first time the still vivid green of her eyes, huge in her emaciated face.
‘Firstly, Maia, I want to apologise to you. Seeing you walk into my garden, looking as you do – the living image of my mother – was a shock. And of course, the necklace you wear . . . I, like Yara, recognised it immediately. It was left to me by my mother, Izabela, and is the same one I gave to my own daughter on her eighteenth birthday.’ Beatriz’s eyes clouded suddenly with pain or emotion – I wasn’t sure which. ‘Forgive me, Maia, but I had to take some time to decide what was best to do about your sudden arrival, so close to my own . . . departure.’
‘Senhora Beatriz, as I said to you before, I’m not here for money or an inheritance or—’
Beatriz held up a shaking hand to silence me. ‘Firstly, please call me Beatriz. I think, sadly, that it’s a little late for “grandmother”, don’t you? And secondly, although I was aware that the timing of your visit seemed rather too convenient to be a coincidence, that did not worry me unduly. If necessary, it is possible these days to take tests to prove a genetic link. Besides, your heritage shines out of every feature. No,’ she sighed, ‘it was something else that made me hesitate.’
‘And what was that?’
‘Maia, every child who is either adopted or loses a parent young is able to place their biological creator on a pedestal. I know I did with my own mother. In my imagination, Izabela became a madonna, a perfect woman. Although I’m sure that in reality, she had many faults, as we all do,’ Beatriz admitted.
‘Yes, I suppose you’re right,’ I agreed.
She paused for a moment, studying my face thoughtfully. ‘So, when I saw your understandable desperation to know of yourownmother and the reasons why she had put you up for adoption, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to lie to you if I agreed to answer your questions. And that if I told you the truth, then I would sadly destroy any image you had naturally built up about her in your mind.’
‘I’m beginning to see what a dilemma it must have been for you,’ I said, trying to reassure her. ‘But perhaps I should tell you that up until my adoptive father died, I’d rarely thought about who my real mother was. Or my father, for that matter. I had a very happy upbringing. I adored my father, and Marina, the woman who brought me and my sisters up, could not have been more caring. And still is,’ I added.
‘Well, I suppose that helps somewhat,’ Beatriz agreed. ‘Because I’m afraid to say that the story leading up to your adoption is not a pretty one. It’s a dreadful thing for a mother to admit that she struggled to like her own child, but I’m sad to tell you that is how I came to feel about Cristina, your mother. Forgive me, Maia, the last thing I want to do is to cause you further grief. But you are obviously an intelligent woman and it would be wrong for me to throw you platitudes and lies. You would see through them, I’m sure. But you must remember that, just as parents can’t choose their children, neither can children choose their parents.’
Understanding what Beatriz was trying to tell me, I wavered for a few moments, wondering if it was best, after all, if I didn’t know. But I’d come this far, and perhaps, for Beatriz’sownsake, she should be allowed to explain. I took a deep breath. ‘Why don’t you tell me about Cristina?’ I said quietly.
Beatriz saw I’d made my decision. ‘Very well. Yara says she’s told you already about my life, so you will have heard that my husband – your grandfather – and I were very happily married. And the icing on our cake was when we discovered I was pregnant. Our first son died a few weeks after he was born, so when I finally gave birth to Cristina a few years later, she was even more precious to us.’
I took a deep breath, my thoughts flying momentarily to my own lost son.
‘And after the experiences of my own childhood,’ Beatriz continued, ‘I was determined to make sure that my baby would be brought up with as much love as I and her father could give her. But to be blunt, Maia, Cristina was difficult from the day she was born. She rarely slept through the night, and by the time she was a toddler she had become prone to huge tantrums which would sometimes last for hours without abating. When she went to school, she was constantly in trouble, her teachers sending letters home saying she had bullied this girl or that and reduced them to tears. It’s a terrible thing to admit’ – Beatriz’s voice was quavering now at obviously painful memories – ‘but Cristina seemed to have no compunction about hurting people, no remorse at all after the act.’ She looked up at me, her eyes full of agony. ‘Maia, my dear, please tell me if you wish me to stop.’
‘No, keep going,’ I encouraged numbly.
‘And of course, her teenage years were the worst. Her father and I despaired of her total lack of respect for authority, whether it was us or anyone else who had dealings with her. The tragedy of it all was that she was extremely bright, as her teachers never stopped reminding us. Her IQ had been tested when she was younger and it was far above average. In the past few years, as mental health issues have been investigated more thoroughly, I’ve read articles about a syndrome called Asperger’s. Have you heard of it?’ she asked me.
‘Yes, I have.’
‘Well, apparently the sufferer almost always has a high level of intelligence, and they also seem to show little sensitivity or empathy towards others. And that is the best way I can think of to describe your mother. Although Loen, Yara’s mother, always told me that Cristina reminded her of my grandmother, Luiza, whom I barely remember. She died when I was two, you see, at the same time as my mother.’
‘Yes, Yara told me.’
‘So, whether it was genetic, or would these days be termed a syndrome – or perhaps a mixture of both – Cristina’s personality made her almost impossible to deal with. And none of the many experts we consulted could offer any solutions.’ Beatriz shook her head sadly. ‘When she was sixteen, she began to stay out, frequenting some of the seedier bars in the city and falling into the wrong company. Which, as you can imagine in Rio – especially thirty-five years ago – could be extremely dangerous. On more than one occasion, she was brought home by thepolícia, drunk and dishevelled. They threatened her with prosecution for underage drinking and that calmed her down for a while. But then we discovered that she was not attending school, and instead meeting her friends – many of whom lived up in thefavelas– and spending her time there with them.’
Beatriz paused and stared out of the window at the distant mountains before turning her gaze back to me. ‘Eventually, the school had little choice but to expel her. She’d been caught with a bottle of rum in her school bag and had plied the other girls with it. Subsequently, they’d all arrived for afternoon lessons drunk. Her father and I employed a private tutor so that she could at least finish her examinations and we could keep a closer eye on her activities too. Sometimes, we even resorted to locking her in her room when she insisted she wanted to go out for the night, but the rages that ensued would be cataclysmic. And besides, she would always find a way to escape. She was completely out of control. My dear, could you possibly pass me the water from my bedside table? All this talking is making my mouth quite dry.’
‘Of course,’ I said, going to fetch the beaker and straw from the table and handing it to her. As she attempted to hold it, I saw her hands were shaking too much to do so, so I put the straw to her lips and held it there while she sucked.
‘Thank you,’ she said, as her green eyes looked up at me in distress. ‘Are you sure you can cope with hearing more, Maia?’
‘Yes,’ I said, putting the cup down and returning to my chair.
