Por Paulita.

There is always a disaster, somewhere. Happy lives are cut in half by man or nature, and hard lives are made the harder by the aftermath of devastation—pieces left to be picked up in loneliness or in quiet, vacant-eyed communities left stunned by the surprise. And yet, almost as if divinely commanded, soon after there will be another disaster. What senseless human hope makes us think that this one disaster will be the last? Why are we so surprised when the next one comes? All life needs to go wrong is time. True, the same applies to the happy moments, but we are so good at remembering ones and forgetting the others.

Strictly speaking, I don’t remember, though the images are well implanted in my memory from so much repetition. God shivered the day before Christmas Eve: the earth wouldn’t stand still; doors opened and closed, banging and clanging in an odd, offbeat applause; dishes and toys flew through the air and fell together into a broken mass on the floor; the ground roared; wind blew where before it had been calm. People who make a living counting the dead later said there were 10,000; the ones who make their living measuring devastation said it reached 6.5 on the Richter scale. Before the week was out, they’d increased those numbers to 20,000 and 7.2. With every telling, the numbers were different, but death and destruction are hardly quantifiable past a point where the brain simply turns them to multitudes—beyond, lies madness.

I was in my crib, or whatever those things are called that hold kids too big for cribs but too little for beds. My brother was in his bed, in the same room, but at the opposite corner from me. We were both away from the window. When the shaking started, the window exploded into a million tiny pieces and fine dust, covering the floor, but not quite reaching either of us. The ceiling collapsed; my brother was buried almost completely under it—only his skinny, long, left leg stuck out from under the rubble. I was fine, if a bit shaken. My mother was asleep in her room, at the other end of the house. Between us, the kitchen had become an impenetrable barrier of broken glass, fallen furniture and buckling floorboards. Gas leaked loudly; water poured from broken pipes. Electricity was out, but for the occasional blue lightning of exploding transformers up and down the street. My father was away; he would not return until the morning.

The maid, bless her heart, a young kid somehow related to my dad (probably a bastard child from one of many indiscretions), saved us. She was a tall, strong, young woman who couldn’t be bothered with panic or surprise. She dug my brother out of the rubble, pulled me from my crib, and literally elbowed and shouldered her way past the toppled refrigerator and dining-room table to the front door, where my mother sat sobbing. My brother and I were in our pajamas; my mother was in night gown; the maid was fully dressed, her hair pulled into a tight and tidy pony tail, her long, flowery skirt snugly and prudishly tied around her ample waist with a rope. She was ready for battle and a little shaking wasn’t going to get her off balance.

The house, however, had fallen to one knee, leaning heavily on the building beside it—itself quite weak and loudly complaining at the extra weight.

As I recall, that was the end of the weak, wooden construction in the city. Houses were built out of concrete blocks from then on, with rebar reinforcement—solid, strong. The skeletons of old buildings were left in place, as morbid monuments to the hubris of a people building a city where five different faults intersected. They say the skeletons are still there, having survived their former occupants, that disaster, and the many that came thereafter. Death, it seems, endures.

We moved with my dad’s aunt, in another city, a humbler city full of simpler people and proud, stout little buildings put together when Spain was not the enemy but the motherland—colonial, they called it, as if one’s own slavery is anything to proclaim. We were there a couple of years, while the city (there is, after all, only one city when one is that little) was being rebuilt. In the meantime, we traveled a little; we studied a little and spent time with family. Those were restful times. Life took a little pause. The destruction, the death, all the evil, terrible things that happened were in the past and far away. Young minds do put such things aside so quickly!

Paulita, my dad’s aunt, was a single woman in her sixties, a retired teacher with impeccable manners and perfect handwriting. Used to quills and blotters, back when fine, linen paper was expected when mailing personal notes to one’s friends and relatives, she took life gently, slowly, carefully, deliberately—she did not rush it but rather lived it. I was her favorite. Dark and ugly like my dad—by far the darkest of the litter—she adopted me as her personal child, the one she never had. She cooked with me, for me; she baked the most delicious cookies; she took me on long walks along the lake and bought me candy. She taught me long words and long division. She taught me to slow down in a fight and to smile even when I am angry. We made whole armadas of paper boats of all sizes when it was raining, so we could release then into the flooded streets when the rain stopped. We finger painted. Despite having dedicated her entire life to the care of her older sister, left bed-ridden by a series of strokes in her early twenties, and despite having thus given up any hope of starting her own family, she was the happiest person I have ever met. She was completely at peace with the world and thanked God every day for each glorious sunrise. More than anyone I’ve ever known, I miss her.

The war came and the war went, leaving ten dead for every one that died during the earthquake. But we survived. My roses and my friends, we left. Home and country, we left. We traded all the dreams of life and future there for the uncertainty of this new land. It was the greatest gamble. My father bet his life that he could make it here, and he lost. My sister, sick and weak, and sweet and gentle, did not choose this harsh, unwelcoming world and she succeeded. This is the way of the world, that despite the greatest odds in favor, the strong will sometimes lose, and the weak will sometimes win. We want the weak to win, from time to time, for we see our weaknesses in them, and their strengths in us. Rivers flood, winds blow, rain falls, earth trembles, forests burn, and yet we build again; we try again; we do not shake our fists at God and curse Him, but rather pray for the wisdom to understand His way and endure yet one more trial—for trials are always coming.

Let them come, I say. I am made of stronger stuff than rain and fire. I will not simply live; I will not just survive; when the sun rises again on this wind-swept, desolate wilderness that seeks to engulf me, I will persevere!