Heart of Tango

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Book: Read Heart of Tango for Free Online
Authors: Elia Barceló
word. I walked out into the empty street, feeling a vague desire to stab someone.
    A fter a long night of tossing and sweating, I awoke to the thought:
Tomorrow I’m getting married
. Suddenly I felt like a half-dead insect caught in a swirling storm drain, just before the darkness closes in. I shut my eyes tight, said an Ave Maria as my mother had taught me to do when I needed to calm down, pulled the sheets around myself, and wished with all my might that I would keep sleeping for years and years so that tomorrow would never come, so that El Rojo would have time to find himself some other bride and have five children before I awoke.
    María Esther’s mother, Doña Melina, had come by the afternoon before to tell me that my friend wasn’t going to be able to come to my wedding. She was pregnant and suffering from occasional bleeding—normal in the first few months, but bad enough for such an uncomfortable journey to be inadvisable. I couldn’t keep my eyes from welling with tears at the thought. I wouldn’t even have the consolation of talking with her woman to woman, as I had so often before we were married; she would not be there to helpme into my dress, as I had helped her; I’d have to put up with the Italian girls, who had been hoping to take part in a real wedding while they still waited for weddings of their own.
    Doña Melina must have noticed what was going through my head, because she hugged me like a daughter and offered to be the one who helped me get ready for the church. But I told her it wasn’t necessary and that I was sure that Gina, Beatrice and Vanina would be delighted to lend me a hand.
    â€œIt’s normal for you to be restless,” she told me, right before she left. “This is a huge step, dear, but it’s one you have to take. Your fiancé is a good man who loves and respects you, and that’s the most important thing. If you didn’t have him, when your father passes you’ll be easy prey for any
compadrito
, like so many girls we both know. Or you’d turn into an old maid, from home to church and back, up all night surviving on whatever miserable piecework you could get, so they could pay you half of what a man makes for the same work. Maybe some day things will change, like they say in the Feminist Union, but for the time being a woman needs a husband, Natalia.”
    â€œAnd do you think,” I dared ask when we were nearly at the door, “that it’s true what they say, that love will come with time?”
    She smiled and seemed to stare off at something far away that I couldn’t see.
    â€œSometimes. When both sides put in their bit. If they don’t lose their respect for each other, if they work for a future that they bothwant to achieve. Look, dear,” she said, taking my arm and putting her mouth up to my ear, as if she feared someone might hear, though we were alone in the house, “I’m going to give you a piece of advice, because I know you don’t have anyone else who’ll tell you: let your husband know how things stand from the first day; tell him what you like and what you don’t like; don’t let him think he has a right to do anything just because he’s a man. Tell him softly, of course, sweetly, and never in front of others, because one thing a man can’t bear is to hear people start telling him that his wife wears the trousers in his house, but don’t let him step all over you.” She waved her hand to cut off what I wanted to say. “I’m sure this isn’t what you’ve been hearing up to now, but we aren’t living in our grandmothers’ times, and I want you to be happy, Natalia. When a woman isn’t happy, she turns bitter, and then she embitters everything she touches—her children, her husband, her neighborss. Get as much out of life as it has to give, however little that might be. And remember, you have things that other people

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