The third month starts, the penultimate. It’s the month when our parents will play their biggest roles; we’re anxious to make sure they keep their word so that everything comes out perfectly. They do, and they do it well, and we are grateful. Manuel’s mother comes over one afternoon and reclaims the colored sheets she’d brought for Teresita. Maybe because she had thought about this detail for a long time, she asks me for a bag to wrap the package in. “It’s just that that’s how I brought it over,” she says, “in a bag, so that’s how it should go,” and she winks at us. Then it’s my parents’ turn. They also come for their gifts, reclaim them one by one: first the hooded piqué towel, then the pure cotton socks, finally the washable diaper bag with the Velcro closure. I wrap them up. Mom asks if she can caress my belly one last time. I sit on the sofa and she sits next to me, talking in her soft and loving voice. She strokes my belly and says, “This is my Teresita, how I’m going to miss my Teresita.” I don’t say anything, but I know that if she could have, if she didn’t have to stick to her list, she would have cried.
The days of the last month pass quickly. Manuel can come closer now, and the truth is, his company does me good. We stand before the mirror and laugh. The feeling is the total opposite of what you feel when you’re leaving on a trip. It’s not the joy of leaving, but of staying. It’s adding another year to the best year of your life, and under the same conditions. It’s the chance to keep on, unchanged.
I’m much less swollen now. It’s a physical relief and it raises my spirits. I visit Weisman for the last time.
“We’re getting close,” he says, and he pushes the preservation jar across the desk, toward me.
It’s cold, and it needs to stay that way; that’s why I brought the thermal lunchbox, as Weisman recommended. I have to store it in the freezer as soon as I get home. I pick it up: the liquid is transparent but thick, like a jar of clear amber.
One morning, during a session of conscious breathing, I make it to the final level: I breathe slowly, my body feels the earth’s dampness and the energy that surrounds it. I breathe once, then again, and again, and then everything stops. The energy seems to materialize around me and I can specify the exact moment when, little by little, it starts to turn in the opposite direction. It’s a purifying feeling, rejuvenating, as if water or air were returning of their own accord to the place where they were once contained.
Then the day arrives. It’s marked on the refrigerator calendar; Manuel circled it in red when we came back from Weisman’s office the first time. I don’t know when it will happen, and I’m worried. Manuel is at home. I’m lying in bed. I hear him pacing, restless. I touch my belly. It’s a normal belly, like that of any other woman—it’s not a pregnant belly, I mean. Weisman says the treatment was very intense: I’m a little anemic, and much thinner than before the episode with Teresita started.
I wait all morning and all afternoon locked in the bedroom. I don’t want to eat, or come out, or talk. Manuel looks in every once in a while and asks how I’m doing. I imagine Mom must be climbing the walls, but they all know they can’t call or stop by to see me.
I’ve been feeling nauseated for a while now. My stomach burns and throbs more and more intensely, as if it were going to explode. I have to tell Manuel. I try to stand up but I can’t; I hadn’t realized how dizzy I am. I have to tell Manuel to call Weisman. For a moment I manage to get up. I pause and then fall to my knees. I think about conscious breathing, but my head has already moved on to something else. I’m afraid. I’m scared something will go wrong and we’ll hurt Teresita. Maybe she knows what’s happening; maybe this whole thing is all wrong. Manuel comes into the room and runs to me.
“I just want to leave it until later . . .” I tell him. “I don’t want . . .”
I want to tell him to leave me here on the floor, that it doesn’t matter, he should run and call Weisman, that everything has gone wrong. But I can’t talk. My body is shaking; I’ve lost control over it. Manuel kneels down next to me, takes my hands, talks to me. I can’t hear what he’s saying. I feel like I’m going to throw up. I cover my mouth. He reacts then, and he leaves me alone and runs to the kitchen. He’s gone only a few seconds; he comes back with the disinfected jar and the plastic case that says “Dr. Weisman.” He breaks the safety seal on the container, pours the clear liquid into the jar. I feel like throwing up again, but I can’t, I don’t want to: not yet. I heave, again and again. I gag more and more violently and it’s hard to breathe. For the first time I think of the possibility of death. I think about it for a second and then I can’t breathe at all. Manuel watches me, unsure what to do. The gagging stops and something catches in my throat. I close my mouth and grab Manuel by the wrist. Then I feel something small, the size of an almond. I hold it on my tongue; it’s fragile. I know what I have to do but I can’t do it. It’s an unmistakable sensation that will stay with me for years. I look at Manuel, and he seems to accept the time I need. She’ll wait for us, I think. She’ll be okay, until the time is right. Then he hands me the jar, and finally, gently, I spit her out.
BUTTERFLIES