The Ladies of Managua Read Online Free Page A

of one of them, Luis Alfonso Velasquez, that my involvement with the Frente intensified. Manuel and I wanted to make the country safer for our future children. We had toppled Somoza, and Manuel had died in the process, but war still raged in Nicaragua. Everyone I had left who loved me was insisting the best way to keep my daughter safe was to send her away.
    The war had to end at some point, I reasoned. When it did, we would be together again. But even though I walked back into my parents’ home calmly, righted the one shepherdess that had slipped, and agreed to their plan with my mind and my voice, in my stomach, deep in my body, I couldn’t believe that this was actually going to happen, that my daughter would be separated from me. Logically, I knew it was the best thing for Mariana. But emotionally, I felt it was an impossibility. I thought someone would have to intervene. I don’t know who that would have been—Papa? God? The ghost of Sandino? But I was sure some higher power would stop this impossibility from taking place. And yet, it did take place. A second time, an unimaginable thing happened as I stood and watched in disbelief. And even though Papa assured me that this was the only way to protect the person I loved most in the world, and I still believe he was right, that knowledge didn’t make things any easier when I lost her.
    All along, Mama swore it was the best thing for Mariana. And I tell myself that she’s right, it was. She was so young, at that age where a butterfly or a vial of bubble stuff makes you happy to the core. I hardly saw Mariana as it was, even when we were all in Managua, my mother argued, among all my meetings, my consciousness-raising efforts for the Luisa Amanda Espinosa Nicaraguan Women’s Association, and my work setting up the new government, the councils that would turn into the foreign ministry, where I’ve worked ever since, going from office worker to minister.
    Even before we ousted Somoza, I spent half my time in hiding, working from outside the country, recruiting supporters to the cause: Honduras, Mexico, Cuba. Some of the postings were long enough that I was able to take Mariana and a nanny with me, which was great cover as I posed as a graduate student at the local universities, getting to know my fellow students’ political leanings and abilities. That was fine when Mariana was little, Mama said, but she was about to start first grade and needed consistency. Celia enrolled Rigobertito in the public high school on Key Biscayne, and Mariana could go to the grade school, Papa said. Most of the kids there spoke Spanish, and she was smart; I knew she’d learn English so fast. Mariana loved her grandparents, her cousin. If they were leaving the country, she’d have no one but a nanny and me. And I’d be busy, distracted. Maybe, if my history with Manuel proved anything, destructive. So I let Mariana go, telling her that she was going on a great adventure with her abuelo and her Bela and that I’d visit very soon. I swore to myself it was just until her summer vacation, when we would all meet in Mexico, where I’d be seeking support for the new government. Even though I knew I’d most likely have to come back to Nicaragua alone after that, I told myself I would bring Mariana home as soon as the war ended and the situation stabilized.
    I didn’t think the war would take so long. Or that by the time it ended and things stabilized in the year or two that followed, Mariana would be thirteen, old enough and opinionated enough to say that she wanted to stay at her school, with her friends, in the country she had come to know best. Even then I had hope. Papa and Mama returned to Nicaragua after Mariana graduated high school, as the country rebuilt. And young people here live at home until they’re married. Mariana could have moved into my flat near the office after high school, or stayed with my parents, even, in the house