Minerva just held my hands like she used to when I was a little girl and was having an asthma attack. She said that the pain would go away once I found the man of my dreams. It wouldn’t be long. She could feel it in her bones.
But I’m sure what she’s feeling is her own happiness with Manolo.
1955
Sunday afternoon, November 20 Ojo de Agua
Diary, don’t even ask where I’ve been for a year! And I wouldn’t have found you either, believe me. The hiding place at Doña Chelito’s was too good. Only when we went to pack up Minerva’s things for her move, did I remember you stashed under the closet floorboards.
Today is the big day. It’s been raining since dawn, and so Minerva’s plan of walking to the church on foot like Patria did and seeing all the campesinos she’s known since she was a little girl is out. But you know Minerva. She thinks we should just use umbrellas!
Mamá says Minerva should be glad, since a rainy wedding is suppose to bring good luck. “Blessings on the marriage bed,” she smiles, and rolls her eyes.
She is so happy. Minerva is so happy. Rain or no rain, this is a happy day
Then why am I so sad? Things are going to be different, I just know it, even though Minerva says they won’t. Already, she’s moved in with Manolo at Dona Isabel‘s, and I am left alone at Dona Chelito’s with new boarders I hardly know.
“I never thought I’d see this day,” Patria says from the rocking chair where she’s sewing a few more satin rosebuds on the crown of the veil.
Minerva at twenty-nine was considered beyond all hope of marriage by old- fashioned people like my sister Patria. That one married at sixteen, remember. “Gracias, Virgencita,” she says, looking up at the ceiling.