Pero la vida es como asi

The train clacked in a hypnotic resonance like the tick of a clock, away, away from him, away from Cadiz, away from my beloved Spain. His handprint dissipated on the nicotine-stained glass; he was a ghost of a human, evaporating into vaporous air. One last goodbye, and he drew me into his mind on the train platform, tracing the outline of my body with his hands, down the small of my back, over the curve of my ass, his finger tips deft brushes, painted his desire on my belly one last time. My thighs trembled while he traced me into the depths of his memory, only to pull me out again when he wanted me close by. I kissed him quickly goodbye and rested my head under his chin, like a puzzle piece that fits neatly in the groove of the next. Now his handprint was fading away, and I was trying to grasp reality from the stagnant air, thick with the smell of steel and grease.

I could hardly turn around in the two-foot hallway leading to the couchette door. My heavy bag at my side, I reluctantly opened the door to the cabin, a room hardly bigger than a walk-in closet. Each side lined with a bench like bed that bridged together on my far side by a sink. I looked at my bulky suitcase; a collection of the past year's memories bunched together in one heap and began pulling it awkwardly through the door behind me.

My traveling companion for this night sat at the end of her narrow bed with four suitcases piled like a towering high-rise by her feet. "Aqui, there is space." she croaked moving her hands nervously fussing about the cabin, while I tried to jam the huge case under the tiny bed, "No alli, there." She pointed to the space at the end of my bed. I pushed and pulled my heavy bag, and finally resigned to putting where she had suggested.

"Esta bien. No te preocupes." She consoled me as I fell back against the hard plastic bench of a bed. It squeaked like clean rubber as I stretched my weary body long-ways, propping my long legs on the edge of my monster suitcase.

"Donde Vas?"

"Home, to Atlanta, Georgia, in the US." I gulped.

"I am going to live with my daughter in Barcelona." she said as she unpinned her hair. Carefully, she unthreaded the gray ends that had been coiled and twisted atop her head and brushed the fragile hair strand by strand. "My son from Cadiz has grown tired of me." She placed the brush on the plastic bench beside her and began to unbutton her dress following the trail of buttons down her body; sun-spotted fingers paused briefly over each button to push it slowly through the hole. "Porque vas a tu hogar?"

"I have to go home because my father is sick, and I need to be with him. Plus, I have been offered a job in Atlanta working for the Center for Disease Control. They need me there, but he needs me here..." I paused.

She stood up and let her dress fall to the ground, unbothered by my presence, as if years of handling had sanded down her modesty. Her skin hung like curtain folds down her stout frame. Her breasts, heavy sandbags, arched her shoulders towards the floor. A sour smell of urine mixed with sweat filled the room. I noticed her adjusting the catheter bag that hung like a parasite at her side. I cast down my eyes, ashamed for her, ashamed for myself.

She lurched towards me and caught my chin in her hand lifting my head to stare in to her dark brown eyes. "Chica no me preocupes! My health is bad, but I'm still breathing. Now, tell me about your novio."

months

Tears clouded my eyes. " His name is Sergio. He is a bartender in Cadiz. We met six ago while I was doing my internship at the hospital. He'd been rushed there after a bar brawl. I helped stitch up his forehead and later he helped me brush up my Spanish. He says Spain is the best country in the world, the only place for him. He wants me to move back to Cadiz, but he won't come with me to America. God, I love him so much."

For a brief moment a gush of memories filled my head: endless nights dancing in the discotecas, moonlit dips in the ocean, drinking cafe con leche after a slow siesta afternoon.

"Hay tiempo," she slipped her polyester nightgown over her head. "You're young yet, there are many more loves to come."

She was right. There was time, but time for what. Time enough for him to fall in love with someone else, time for him to forget me, time for me to give up on him. Time, a slow, intangible ghost was haunting me. All I wanted were plans and promises, and all he gave me were somedays and maybes.

"I know what it is like to lose half your heart," she whispered, "to say goodbye, sometimes forever. Pero la vida es como asi, and you can't stop living. You have to keep on breathing, and get up the next day and that is all you can do."

She opened the smallest box on her tower of suitcases and removed an oakenframed picture. She sat on the end of her bed, hard-eyed and pursed-lipped as she stared at the picture. She gripped the frame so hard her fingertips turned white. In the photo a middle-aged man sat in a wicker chair, a cigar in one hand, a hat in the other, his dark eyes smiling. "No rezas mas!" she choked. I nodded not quite knowing what to say. "At least I don't pray to the Virgin Rocio anymore. She took him away from me, forty years ago. He had throat cancer, and we went to the festival at Rocio the spring after he was diagnosed. We waited up all night in front of the Cathe- dral. Finally, at five a.m., her porcelain frame came through the doorway of the church on a float of flowers. Somehow we pushed up in the crowd, and he touched her gold-laced robe praying for her to heal him. She is the saint for the ill and was my husband's only hope. But she didn't listen to my husband's prayer, and he died three months later, leaving my two kids and me. I was only thirty, too young to be a widow." She shook her head. "No, I don't pray anymore. The Virgin Rocio forsake me."

"Lo ciento," I murmured.

She sat rocking her head back and forth hypnotically, finally resting the picture under her pillow. She turned off the overhead light and lay down.

I lay in the bed across from her exhausted and numb, physically tired from toting my heavy suitcase and emotionally exhausted from all my goodbyes. My puffy eyes sore and red blinked repeatedly, questioning the darkness. What if I never saw him again? How quickly would his heart forget me? I was one girl, one girl divided, her heart living two separate lives, one in Spain and the other oceans away in America. My thoughts faded into the night as the train lulled me to sleep, its rhythmic cadence clacking like horse hooves down the tracks.

I awoke in the middle of the night to hear her hacking, coughing up a green mucous that clogged her chest. She moved hurriedly like a worker ant rustling her bags and jiggling pill bottles. She was nearly hysterical, as she bickered in an indecipherable voice, possibly talking with him. After taking a handful of pills she calmed down, and reached under her pillow to grab the frame. Fat tears rolled down her cheeks making a wet pool on her on her pillow. She knew what real loss was, a loss you cannot control, a loss that punches the air from your lungs and catches your heart in its teeth. She had lived forty years after her husband's death, continually rising for another day.

Foggy with sleep, I wearily opened my eyes. She was sitting across from me dressed, hands gripping her purse tightly. The rising sun seeping through the curtain cast a golden glow on her left cheek. She looked radiant and strong in the morning light. She sat ready, waiting, and I lay back down, reluctant, and closed my eyes.