Excerpts from

Verónica’s Diary,

The Journey of Innocence

( What people are saying about Verónica's Diary )

PORTUGAL
Lisbon (Lisboa)

Spring of 1944

   After a long and difficult night of labor, my mother finally gave birth on May 7th, a little after three in the morning. Verónica Leah Toledano Esaguy Wartenberg came out screaming her head off, as Mama described it, later on. After a week in the hospital recovering from my birth, it took a few more months at home to completely establish her health and it was during that time that my grandmother Mutter (my father’s mother) took over the job of caring for me. She was the one that picked my first name; thank God for that, because my mother wanted to call me Marilia.

Summer of 1949

Mama woke me up early in the morning to go to the Santa Cruz hospital with her. Supposedly she had to see her doctor. Usually we go to Uncle Augusto’s office where she takes diathermy treatments for her tummy, because once a month her tummy hurts a lot. She would not tell me much about this visit to the hospital. She is always very mysterious about everything. While walking to the hospital I hopped up and down like I do when I feel happy and I ran up in front of her humming a few tunes. When crossing the street I held her hand. I was happy to go out with Mama.

We entered the stagnant, smelly, hot hospital’s large waiting room packed tight with sick people. There were no fun tables or chairs to run under, like in Uncle Augusto’s office. There were a lot of children in the waiting room, some were sneezing, others were coughing, and that weird acid-like smell I hate, the hospital’s smell of blood and tincture of iodine and chemicals were all around us. I have noticed that the mortuaries, with saints made of wax and candles of all sizes, are always close to the hospitals.

We didn’t wait long; a woman dressed in a long white coat with grayish hair pulled back tight, thick glasses, and a frowned face, asked me to go with her.

I looked at Mama questioningly and she just said, “Go with the nurse. I’ll be waiting here for you.”

I followed the nurse as I was told, but as soon as I entered the room behind closed doors I knew I was in trouble. I ran for the door but the gray-haired woman grabbed me from the back of my dress. I started to scream and called out for Mama to help me. Two other men in white coats came to help her. I kicked them in the shins as hard as I could and they got very angry and dragged me to a chair, while someone else tied my legs down. With my arms held behind my back by the nasty woman and some other nasty mean people, they asked me to open my mouth to a man with some kind of round light bulb on his forehead and a pair of pliers in his hand who also impatiently asked me to open my mouth. No way was I going to open my mouth! But then they squeezed my nose and held my head still between their hands and arms and they pulled my hair back. I had to open my mouth in order to breathe. As they held my jaw open, one of the men in white coats started cutting the inside of my throat off with pliers. It was hard to breathe and blood was coming out and I was gagging from it. Then they let me free. I came out of the room and Mama just took me out by the hand outside to the street. I wanted to ask Mama why this happened to me but I couldn’t talk and she was not talking to me either. She didn’t even ask me what happened. Obviously she had taken me there on purpose. What could I have done wrong to deserve such punishment?

She waited for a taxi to go by, and we got in, while I held to my mouth the handkerchief she gave me, blood was coming out of my mouth. When we got home she put me in bed. She didn’t hug or kiss me. I was crying, in pain and with no idea of what had just happened. Then she said, “You just had your tonsils out, now you won’t be so sick anymore.” And she added, “God punished you, for being happy that your mother was going to the hospital.”

I wanted to talk and defend myself from such accusations that I felt were completely untrue, but I couldn’t make a sound. I wanted to tell her that I hated her for lying to me. And then she offered me vanilla ice cream. I felt she was doing that on purpose, since I could not even swallow my own spit and I hated her. The only thing that I am happy about is that my bedroom is now in the front room of the house, where the sun comes in and lights it up. Mama told me that tomorrow I can try and eat ice cream since my throat ill not hurt anymore.

Summer of 1956

 Something very strange and wonderful happened to me today, when everybody at home was taking a nap after lunch as customary, I decided instead to take a walk up to the Fonte Luminosa, just a few blocks from our house.

Now that I am twelve years old, I am allowed to walk in the city by myself as long as I am not too far away from home. The Fonte Luminosa is an inviting fountain to cool off, and I like to stare at the bigger-than-life marble statues of beautiful naked women and men on horses. From the top of the fountain, a cascade of waterfalls fills up the pool below with cool water and if I am lucky to be in the way of a breeze, the waterfall turns into a misty shower around me. I like taking my sandals off and sitting on the fountain’s edge dangling my feet in the water. It feels refreshing.

Sleeping in the middle of the day is impossible for me, and this time of the day it’s more like torture since I can always hear the snoring coming from my parents’ bedroom. It is an irritating annoying sound. Papa sounds like a rolling train with brake trouble, and Mama whistles. Everything closes down at this time of the day and for two hours the city sleeps. This was going to be the perfect time for me to escape.
I never reached the fountain. It was hotter than I thought. As always when it gets too hot, I got a pounding headache. The sun was unmerciful, heating the top of my head to feel like a bursting volcano. I could barely see except through the slits of my eyes as I squinted through the unbearable sunlight, trying to see the street pavement below my feet. The further I walked, the more my hands got puffy and stiff, and I could hardly close them. There was no shade; just long stretches of cobblestone streets. I kept thinking that I should turn around and go back home, but like Mama says, I am hard-headed and once I put my mind to something there’s no turning back. The heat from a broken-down brick wall showed me how hot it was when I barely rested my back against it. Nothing was living around me except a tiny salamander running up the wall.
Beyond the tall wall and through the cracks and holes I tried to see what was on the other side. Except for some spots of burned-out weeds and dried-up grass, the soil was just a huge canvas of desert ground. After a few more steps, I looked again beyond an old metal rusty door with a lock and metal chain around it which meant that it was off limits to enter. In the distance I could see a huge home that, by its neglect, must have been abandoned many years ago. It looked desolate, as if crying in the loneliness of its surroundings. What had happened to its owner? I wondered. Was the ground salted so that nothing could grow there, like they used to do a few years back to the enemies of the state? Perhaps a girl my age and her family had been killed for political reasons; it would not be the first time. Everybody knows that our president Salazar, is a dictator and as such he is merciless against his enemies.

I looked around. Not a soul walking or a car going by; only silence and the sun burning my skin and my vision. I was thirsty and tired of walking, when I smelled roses. Not just the smell of roses, but the smell of tiny little baby roses.

There it was, one wild little pink button-rose escaping from the dead garden and squeezing itself through the cracked wall and peeking out into the world outside. A few steps down where part of the wall had fallen, the same rosebush was sprouting all over, covering the ugly wall and screaming how beautiful life is. I stayed there next to it, taking one deep breath after another and immersing myself in the scent. There was a complete sense of being; the sense of what it feels like to have God all around. I laughed and screamed from outside inwards. The sound of silence was loud and clear within me, and the feeling was joy to my soul, running through my skin and inwards again, from my eyes and from my mouth and lungs. I was breathing in life.

I am not telling anyone about this; no one would believe me, and they would think that I am a sissy. This is my secret, my very intimate secret; I no longer have to look for God in a temple, or in a church, or any specific place, because God is everywhere. I will never be alone again.

Spring of 1960

Mama dictated to me a letter in Spanish to send to my cousin Alberto, asking if Aunt Nelly had gotten home all right since it’s been a week and we have not heard from her. I thought the whole idea was dumb and I didn’t want to do it. “It’s been only one week!” I argued back to Mama.

“So what?” She insisted, “You write exactly what I am going to dictate.”

So I did, and in Spanish! My goodness, I don’t like Spanish and don’t understand Spanish.

Mama said the English I am learning in high school would not be enough to make me a writer, and Alberto doesn’t understand Portuguese.

“Makes more sense that we write in Spanish,” she said again. “Nelly lived with her mother-in-law who was from Morocco, and they only spoke Spanish at home. Therefore, Alberto most likely can read Spanish,” she continued to reason, “If he doesn’t understand Spanish, Nelly will translate for him.”
Against my will I wrote in Spanish, “Dear Cousin Alberto, I am very worried. Something horrible must have happened to Aunt Nelly. I have not slept for the last three days concerned about her health. I know she has a bad heart, will you write to me at once with news of her condition?” I signed, “Your worried and distressed cousin Verónica.”

I hate being manipulated by Mama to do things that I don’t want to do.

A letter written in Spanish arrived the morning after I sent out Mama’s letter to Cousin Alberto. Alberto had seen my pictures and home movies that Nelly had taken back with her to North America, and he would like me to write to him, because he liked me a lot. Obviously, the letter written by Mama in Spanish wondering about Nelly arriving safely had not arrived to North America yet.

Mama said we should wait for his next letter before I answered this one. Then Mama gave me a little piece of paper that she had kept hidden since I was born. Supposedly Alberto had written to me when he was twelve years old congratulating Mama on my birth, and on the other side of the small paper he had written in English, “I heard that you are a beautiful baby with green eyes and dark hair, will you marry me when you get older?”

His mother must have forced him to write such a note; no twelve-year-old boy would ask a baby girl to marry him. Just in case he did do that on his own, even though I doubt it, I put his note proposing marriage away in my jewelry music box, as my first love letter ever received and read.

( What people are saying about Veronica's Diary )

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