Read The Sum of Our Days for Free Online

talking, until you left, indignant. It’s true. Celia tended to express herself in rather bold fashion, at least for California, but we have to remember that for several years she was involved with the Opus Dei, and that she came from Venezuela, where no one’s tongue is tied when it comes to saying anything they want. Celia is intelligent and contradictory; she has tremendous energy and an irreverent sense of humor that, translated into the limited English she had at that time, caused havoc. She worked as my assistant, and more than one journalist or unwarned visitor left my office put off by my daughter-in-law’s jokes. But I want to tell you something you may not know, Paula: she looked after you for months with the same tenderness she devoted to her children; she was with you in your last hours; she helped me prepare your body in the intimate rites of death; and she stayed beside you, waiting a day and a night, until Ernesto and the rest of the family that had traveled long distances arrived. We wanted you to receive them in your bed, in our house, for the final good-bye. But back to Sabrina. Nico and Celia joined us in the living room, and for once she had nothing to say; her eyes were glued on her wool socks and Franciscan monk’s sandals. It was Nico who did the talking. He began with my mother’s argument that Willie and I were not of an age to be taking on the care of a baby. When Sabrina was fifteen, I would be sixty-six and Willie seventy-one.
    â€œWillie is no genius when it comes to raising children, and you, Mamá, you’re trying to replace Paula with a sick little baby. Would you be strong enough to bear grief like that again if Sabrina doesn’t survive? I don’t think so. But we’re young, and we can do it. We’ve already talked it over and we’re prepared to adopt Sabrina,” my son concluded.
    For a long moment, Willie and I couldn’t speak.
    â€œBut very soon you’re going to have three children of your own,” I managed to say finally.
    â€œAnd what is one more stripe to the tiger?” Celia mumbled.
    â€œThank you, I really do thank you, but that would be madness. You have your own family and you need to get ahead in this country, which won’t be easy. You can’t be responsible for Sabrina, that’s up to us.”
    In the meantime, behind our backs the days were going by and the cumbersome machinery of the law was following its inexorable course. The social worker in charge of the case, Rebecca, looked very young, but she had had a lot of experience. Her job was not one to be envied; she had to work with children who had suffered abuse and neglect, children who were shuttled from one institution to the next, who were adopted and then returned, children terrorized and filled with rage, children who were delinquent, or so traumatized that they would never lead a more or less normal life. Rebecca fought the bureaucracy, the institutionalized negligence, the lack of resources, the irremediable wickedness of humankind, and, especially, she fought time. There weren’t enough hours to study cases, visit the children, rescue the ones in the most urgent danger, find them a temporary refuge, protect them, save them, follow their cases. The same children passed through her office again and again, their problems growing worse with the years. Nothing was resolved, only postponed. After reading the information she had before her, Rebecca decided that when Sabrina left the hospital she should be sent to a foster home that specialized in children with serious illnesses. She filled out the necessary documents, they leaped from desk to desk until they reached the proper judge, and he signed them. Sabrina’s fate was sealed. When I learned that, I flew to Willie’s office, pulled him from a meeting, and loosed a barrage in Spanish that nearly flattened him, demanding that he go to speak with the judge immediately, file suit if it