The Aguero Sisters Read Online Free Page B

there. She avoids most of the products she sells, devising instead her own youth-conserving therapies. She smooths warmed honey over her face and throat, letting it congeal for at least thirty minutes. Constancia read of its preservative powers in a book on ancient healings. Archaeologists discovered a jug of honey, still soft and sweet, in a prehistoric Turkish tomb. Primitive people also treated burns with honey to promote the growth of new skin.
    Constancia rinses her face with mineral water and fresh pomegranate juice. She coats her skin with paraffin distilled from century-old redwoods, then smears the mixture on the soles of her feet before slipping on flannel booties. She saves the hand lotion for last: a special blend of vegetable shortening with a hint of oleander, which erases all traces of age.
    The first time Constancia felt a rush of heat across her chest, she was trying on a black cashmere sweater in the dressing room at Saks. She thought she was having a heart attack, but then the heat swept up over her face and lingered there for several seconds. Her skin became damp and splotchy, rippled with chills. On an impulse, Constancia decided to steal the sweater.
    After this, her periods came less frequently, until her flow diminished to just a few threads of blood. Her breasts ached every month like when she was twelve. She found herself elated one moment, despairing the next. It occurred to her that her parents had died long before they were old. How, then, could she possibly know how to grow old herself?
    In Cuba, aging was not such a disgraceful affair. Most elderly women were venerated and sought after for counsel. They were surrounded by their families and often lived tosee their great-grandchildren grow up. The
abuelitas
were the eyes and ears of a clan, the peacemakers, the storytellers and historians. They held each young destiny in their hands. Although this was not true in her own family, where her mother and grandmothers died young, it didn’t prevent Constancia from desiring a rich old age.
    Constancia lowers her bedroom blinds. Northern winds rattle the windowpanes, stir the garbage in the streets. Green stars skim the sky, shedding their forgotten light. Constancia settles under her quilt with the cross-stitch design and assesses her progression toward death. Death troubles her deeply, but not nearly as much as the prospect of an untimely transition. If only she could choose the hour and manner of her passing, plan for it properly with the caterers, she could avoid any unseemly panic. She is the first to admit she has a low threshold for disorder.
    The smoke of Heberto’s cigar filters into the bedroom like the thinnest of voices. It is the last thing Constancia registers before falling asleep.

A SIGUAPA STYGIAN
    M
y name is Ignacio Agüero, and I was born in the late afternoon of October 4, 1904, the same day, my mother informed me later, that the first President of the Republic, Estrada Palma, arrived in Pinar del Río for a parade and a banquet and a long night of speeches at the governor’s mansion. Cuba had gained its independence two years before, and despite the Platt Amendment, which permitted the Americans to interfere in our country from the day it was born, the citizens of Pinar del Río poured into the streets to welcome the President
.
    A brass band played on a wooden platform decorated with ribbons and carnations, and children scampered about in their Sunday finery, clutching pinwheels and balloons. Angry cigar workers pressed through the crowd, shaking placards protesting the high foreign tariffs levied on tobacco. My father, Reinaldo Agüero, a
lector
who read to the cigar workers in their factory, marched among them
.
    Back at our whitewashed cement house, which was shaded by the crown of a graceful frangipani, my mother was readying herself for the festivities when she felt the first of my violent kicks deep inside her. She sat down at the edge of the bed and