Afterlife

by Julia Alvarez

Occasionally, she takes sips of sorrow, afraid the big wave might wash her away.

Who now to champion her way of being in the world?

Everyone knows Dr. Sawyer’s wife is Spanish. Not really Spanish Spanish, she used to correct them. But she’s given up trying to explain the colonial intricacies of her ethnicity.

Sí, patrón, sí, Mario answers, in a voice so submissive it pains Antonia to hear it.

A part of you dies with them, Antonia now knows, but wait awhile, and they return, bringing you back with them. So, is this all his afterlife will amount to? Sam-inspired deeds from the people who loved him?

In spite of her efforts, the big wave hits, the anger turns to tears, soul-gouging sobs of someone who has been holding back her sadness, her fears for months.

as a year in the life of a dog is equivalent to seven human ones—so she has heard from Mona, the dog lover—poverty years have to be more aging than affluent ones.

The landscape of grief is not very inviting. Visitors don’t want to linger. The best thing you can do for the people who love you is to usher them quickly through it. She does not want to become “poor Antonia.”

Maybe you are the one carrying the doubts in the relationship? Maybe your husband needs the balance of a highly sensitive wife? Maybe Sam isn’t all that sure himself where Burkina Faso lies?

Who am I going to be anymore? Antonia had asked Tilly in the wake of the wake. No longer a teacher at the college, no longer volunteering and serving on a half dozen boards, no longer in the thick of the writing whirl—she has withdrawn from every narrative, including the ones she makes up for sale. Who am I? the plaintive cry.

Sturm und Drang.

All those moments she was too busy to help Sam dig up his potatoes in the garden, to come quick to the window and see an unusual bird that just landed on the feeder. There will be a lot of these little kicks at her heart in the days, months, years to come.

They bus their own table, still Mami’s daughters long after there is a mother to be daughters of.

Unlike its positive effect on Tilly, all this friendliness is getting on her nerves.

Nobody’s perfect in an elder exercise class—everyone’s fat, hurting from arthritis, needing to recover some skill they’ve lost. We love each other as we are, Tilly brags.

But even so, she can’t seem to ward off the dragons of the world. An ongoing problem, which is why she tends to be reclusive, constructing the firewall that others must have inbuilt as part of their healthy emotional operating system.

Even with Troy burning, the sisterhood can’t help throwing fuel into the fire.