The Butterfly Effect
My abuelo always said, “Whatever happens, happens for a reason.” He'd never told me what his reason for moving from Buenos Aires to Puerto Iguazu was, but I suspected it was partly to do with my mother.
We ran a little B&B there called Hosteria Mariposa. It was sweet that he'd named it after me, but no one really called me Mariposa. I was always Mari - quiet Mari, poor Mari, orphan Mari. Hardly a ‘butterfly’, the stench of bad luck followed me as if it were oozing out of my very pores. Still, Abu always insisted that I was fortunate and as beautiful as a mariposa. Of course he did! He was my grandfather, after all.
Our little hotel—and I called it a hotel, because I wanted it to be grander than it was, like the big American Hilton nearby—had only ten rooms. Each room, however, had its own distinct personality. This was more to do with the way that the property had been constructed rather than anything we'd done to it. Originally someone's home, rooms had been added over the years in an unusual and haphazard pattern, tacked on as an afterthought. Some rooms were long and rectangular, others were like little boxes, and one—the largest one—was like a pentagon. Guests were assigned rooms according to the rate they were willing to pay. And sometimes, Abu would give the pentagon room to a young, honeymooning couple who could barely afford it.
What I loved most about our hotel was its scent. The air was always heavy with the smell of dust and old wood. Rust and age filled the spaces, along with the aroma of something tangy and sweet. Then there was the sound of the Iguazu Falls crashing onto the rocks below. The rhythmic percussion of water echoed between the houses, bouncing from wall to wall; mingling with the creaking of the faucet and the squeaking of old doors. The wood on those doors and windows was rough and raw, filled with gnarly knots, and daylight streamed in through the cracks.
When Abu first bought the place, I was only five. But even then, he’d listened carefully to me as I ran through the rooms shouting, “Red!”, “Blue!”, “Pink!” The rooms were decorated accordingly and soon came to be known by their colours.
My favourite was the pentagon room, the “blue” of my childhood transformed into a turquoise wonder. The room was deep and oceanic; a king crab's shell, a palace of egg sacs and riches. The rug was locally sourced, a weave of sapphire, lime and maroon. An old and scarred oak table placed on one side of the room had been polished, and it reflected the light; a pale golden glow. A large bed covered in a mossy green coverlet took pride of place in the centre of the room, and an old dressing table with a mottled mirror reflected the azure richness of it all.
Every time I entered the room, I felt like I was plunging into the waters below the Devil's Throat, La Garganta del Diablo, and finding a place of sanctuary while the waterfalls cascaded, crashed and roared ferociously above me. In here, I was at peace.
It was also where Abu put me after the accident.
I was only six months shy of turning eighteen when it happened. It was a beautiful day, and I was meant to help Abu with the hotel, but Diego was coming by on his new motorbike and I wanted to go with him.
"Cariño, he has just learned to ride. Maybe, it is not good to go out with him yet." My abuelo's eyebrows knit together every time he worried, his craggy face creasing even more.
"Oh, Abu! Don't fret. I will be okay."
Young love and teenage impetuousness waved a red flag to fate that morning. When Diego's bike skidded at breakneck speed and landed heavily on its side, careening to a stop near a cliff edge, people said we were lucky. We could have gone over, we could have died. He suffered a concussion, but my left leg was crushed under the weight of the motorcycle, the bones splintering beyond repair. Yet, they said we were lucky.
The first thought I had in that moment was, can I survive this?
* * *
When I was four, my mother abandoned me. We were living in Buenos Aires at the time, in a small home in the San Telmo barrio. My abuela had died just a few months ago, and Abu was still recovering from losing his wife of over thirty years when Mama went out to a milonga and never returned. Abu says she later sent word that she had met a man who wanted to take her travelling around the world. She said she would be back in a few months. Abu waited over a year, and when she did not return, he moved to Puerto Iguazu, his childhood home, and told everyone he knew to give Mama the address. She never came looking for us.
Mama was a tango dancer, like my abuela had been before her. But where it had only been a hobby for my grandmother, it was a passion for my mother. Abu would tell me she would practice for hours in front of the mirror, each move supple yet precise, each limb moving in time to the sharp, staccato rhythm of the bandoneón.
There were framed pictures of her all over the house. Dark hair pulled back into a small knot at the nape, her eyes large and luminous, her features delicate like her mother's had been. In every picture she was dancing, her body poised as if incapable of standing still; as if she wanted to slip away to a milonga immediately, leaving behind everyone and everything she knew.
I hated her, and I hated dance.
Abu often tried telling me stories of when she was younger, that stranger in the pictures. Of how funny and sweet she had been, how full of mischief, how loving. To me, she was only a woman in a picture frame. A woman that I bore a passing resemblance to but had little in common with.
You see, where my Mama was funny, I was serious; where she was sweet, I was acerbic; where she was loving, I was wary of love. Only Abu held my heart. Everyone else - Diego, and the boys that came before him, meant nothing to me.
"Tell me about my Papi, Abu..."
"What is there to tell, princesa? Your mama was always an impulsive one. She only told us when she was five months gone, and I doubt that even she knew..."
When I looked in the mirror, I saw my mother's eyes, but the rest of me was someone I would never get to know. From my long limbs, to the cleft in my chin, and the way I devoured books, to my ability to swim like a fish; these were all genetic blessings from an unknown father. Yet, I felt closer to him than I ever had to my mother.
It was not like there weren’t other maternal figures in my life. There was my teacher, Seño Camila, who instigated my love of reading; our housekeeper, Maria, who bustled around our home as if it were her own, and was the closest thing to a mother I’d ever known. Also, I had many girlfriends who often tried practicing their motherly skills on me, perhaps in preparation for their future lives and children. I took what I needed from them and ignored the rest.
That is not to say that I was selfish! I was, and still am, a giver. I gave of my time and my patience. I also gave gifts to the people I was fond of. Jars of homemade dulce de leche, secondhand books, hand painted watercolours of the falls, pressed flowers that I turned into cards. These were all evidence of my affection. But I withheld a part of myself from everyone, a part I kept secure from hurt and betrayal. A part that was at the very core of who I was.
Maria often tried to get me to learn to dance.
“It is in your blood, Mari. Your abuela was a fantastic dancer.”
Maria had known my grandparents when they were younger. They had all gone to school together and been friends for over fifty years. Now, Maria’s daughter, Sofia, ran a dance school, teaching young children the basic moves of the tango: the rebounds, the quick side-steps, the stops on the beat.
“My blood is tainted by dance, Maria.” I would answer flippantly, laughing as I gave my stock-standard response. “I would much rather read.”
“And what will you do after all this reading?”
“Escape from Argentina and never come back!” I’d stick my tongue out at her then, and skip away, chuckling at her oaths.
The truth of the matter was that I did intend to leave. Perhaps Abu understood it, or at the very least, he suspected it. He was proud of my academic achievements, and happy to let me procure as many books as I liked from the secondhand store. Someday, I’d be a writer, but before that I planned to teach. I had already started looking into teaching Spanish as a foreign language, examining which certifications were recognised internationally, and how many countries I could travel to in the course of my career.
There would be days when I would chew on my lip in frustration, stomping around the kitchen while the old computer died and came back to life for the tenth time that day. Then I’d catch Abu’s eye, as he watched me from his rocking chair, his bushy eyebrows forming a long horizontal band over his deep grey eyes. Then I would go and nuzzle into him, placing myself on his lap, breathing in his smoky cigar scent and allowing myself to be a five-year-old again.
On those days, he would pat my back and rock us both unevenly while whispering, “Don’t run away from me yet, cariño.” And we would both weep soft tears of grief and loss.
The long months of hospitalisation left me weak and my leg a useless, inky black log until finally it was amputated. The doctors in Puerto Iguazu said I could never use that leg again unless I was fitted with a prosthetic.
I remember little of that time, falling in and out of consciousness and pain. My dreams were dark and murky, hands reaching out from the mouth of La Garganta del Diablo and wrenching off my mermaid tail fin as I watched, helpless and incoherent in my anguish, knowing I would never swim again. The water from the falls crashed around me as I sank to the bottom, lifeless yet aware.
Mind flailing like jellyfish, lacking Lilliputian stability. The apparition of ghosts, the impairment of the future, a smell of death and decay mixed with the scent of moss and seaweed, a reeking marsh. And then, Abu leaning over me on my hospital bed, his face was so dear, his love like a salve to my soul, whispering, “Yesterday's pain is today's wisdom.”
Was it all a dream?
* * *
I woke up in my blue pentagon room, a phantom itch on my absent leg driving me crazy. Reaching down, my hand met the nothingness of the amputation, and I screamed and screamed.
Abu’s stocky figure rushed into the room, closely followed by Maria.
“Shhh, my princesa, my preciosa! It is okay, it is okay.”
He held me as I cried and beat his chest, and Maria uttered soothing words that did little to assuage the rage within me. Why hadn’t I died? How could I live like this - a cripple! Where was the good Lord’s justice?
I wish I could tell you that I healed quickly. Outwardly, I did, my young body recovering from the trauma of the accident and the amputation with remarkable resilience. But inside, I oscillated between rage and despair. And when I had no more tears and my throat was raw from screaming, I fell into a numb apathy. Refusing food, turning away from my books, ignoring the friends that came to visit. None of it mattered. My life was over.
Two months into my self-imposed exile, Abu came in and sat on the bed next to me.
“Mariposa, I want you to listen carefully to what I am going to say.”
I was burrowed under the covers and gave no indication that I had heard, but something about his tone penetrated the fog of my gloom. That, and the fact that he rarely called me by my given name.
“Years ago, when you were only a little girl, a man came to stay here. He was a very handsome, distinguished-looking man, someone I would have put down to be a professor or in academia.”
Reluctantly I turned towards him, shifting the coverlet off my face. Abu’s face was grave, a faraway look in his eyes.
“I found it odd that this man would come here on his own. He seemed the sort who would travel in the company of a beautiful woman, or in a group of sophisticates. Why he would check into a humble B&B when he had access to a large and renowned hotel nearby also perplexed me. He handed me a large sum of cash as an advance to cover the cost of his stay. Naturally, I gave him this room.”
I pushed myself up to recline against the headboard, interested now. Why hadn’t Abu ever related this story to me before?
“Then?” I croaked, my voice an alien, unused entity.
“Something about the entire set-up bothered me all day. That night, on an impulse, I knocked on his door to offer him a glass of Malbec as a welcome drink. I knocked and I knocked, but he did not answer.”
Abu sighed, resting his hands on his belly, remembering the events from that night long ago.
“I knew he hadn’t left the hotel because I would have seen him leave. So, I entered the room with my spare key.”
“What?” I gasped, knowing Abu never did that. He had drummed it into us as well. To never ever enter a room when a guest was in residence, and only to clean in their absence if they had instructed us to.
“Like I said, it was some sixth sense guiding me. I am glad I went in because I found him on the floor, a bottle of sleeping pills in his hand and a half empty bottle of whiskey on the table…”
I leaned forward, clutching at Abu’s arm.
“Here? He died here?”
“When did I say he died? I took him to the hospital, where they pumped his stomach and kept him until he was fully recovered.”
I fell back against my pillows in relief. Then I glared at Abu.
“Why did you tell me this story?”
“Because, cariño, he is coming here tomorrow, and he wants to meet you.”
“Why?” I turned truculent immediately, angered by this imposition. Then, almost as an afterthought, I asked, “But why was he trying to kill himself?”
“Ah, that is not my story to tell. Maybe you can ask him yourself.”
“I don’t want to meet anyone!” I turned my face away.
“Mari, you will want to meet him.” Abu put his hand under my chin, turning my face to him. “Remember when I said I’d thought he was a professor? I wasn’t completely wrong. He was a doctor. And now, he has agreed to fit you for a prosthetic leg.”
* * *
Rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat.
I woke up to a strange noise coming from the corner of the room. Ever since I’d returned from Buenos Aires, sleep had become a complicated affair. It was as if my body had taken it upon itself to decide that all those months of depressed sleeping were quite enough, and now, my mind was always hyper-active and those same limbs that had been filled with lassitude itched to get up and move.
I sat up in my bed, back in my old bedroom, as the pentagon room was once again occupied by honeymooners. Turning on the bedside lamp, I peered into the corner where the odd noise had been emanating from. There was nothing there. Nothing except my prosthetic leg.
Looking at the leg brought all the memories of the past year flooding back. Dr Diaz’s gentle hands, his encouragement, his understanding nature and, above all else, his generosity. Abu could never have afforded a state-of-the-art prosthetic limb on the Obras Sociales, but Dr Diaz had done it all for free through his foundation.
“Mari, your abuelo gave me back my life,” he said when I queried him. “I’ll never be able to repay that debt. This is only a tiny token of my gratitude.”
Three months into the fittings and the physiotherapy, the daily evaluations and the psychological counselling, I finally gathered up the courage to ask him the question that had bothered me since the day Abu had told me his story.
“Why did you do it?” I blurted out in the middle of his note-taking, even as the nurse gave me a quizzical look. He’d motioned to the nurse to leave, and then turned towards me, his face serene.
“Are you asking me why I tried killing myself?”
I nodded, gulping, hoping I hadn’t angered him.
He looked at his watch and then sat at the foot of my bed.
“Mari, you must know the feeling when you think that life isn’t worth living anymore. I’m sure you have felt the same since the accident.”
“Yes, yes, I did. But this,” I looked down at the stump of a knee where my left leg used to be, “I hadn’t expected to live like this.”
He smiled then and patted the stump.
“You will do everything you’ve dreamed of, Mariposa. You will travel and you will teach; you will swim and you will dance. Nothing in your future will be impacted anymore.”
“Not dance,” I said, fervour making my words sharp.
“Very well. No dance.” His eyes twinkled.
“But why did you feel that way? You look well. All your limbs are intact.”
“Ah, but you see, I wasn’t well. I was very, very broken on the inside.”
“I don’t understand?”
“Mari, do you know what HIV positive means?”
I nodded, my eyes widening.
“A friend, a dear friend, had just died from AIDS. And then I found out that I was HIV positive too.” He shook his head lightly. “I thought it was better to end it then.”
“But you are a doctor!”
“Yes, and clearly I was meant to live, and to keep practicing medicine. Thanks to your abuelo, I did. Then I realised how foolish I had been, and decided that the rest of my life would be spent helping people who had hit rock bottom - people like yourself.”
“And your condition?”
“I have learned to live with it. As will you, no doubt.”
Rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat.
The noise had returned, and I could not understand where it was coming from. I grabbed the crutch that sat like a trusty old friend by my bedside, and hauled myself out of bed. Hobbling, I turned the main light on. Immediately my room was illuminated by the warm glow of the overhead bulbs. Unlike the pentagon room, my room was an amalgam of earthy browns, greens and rusts. An old, faded crocheted blanket, one that had belonged to my abuela, lay on my bed, and a framed print of two tango dancers sat just above my study desk. I would have gotten rid of it, except that all of abuela’s items were sacrosanct, and I didn’t dare.
I moved towards the corner, flicking a glance at the clock on the wall. 3 a.m. What on earth was that noise?
As I approached the leg, I thought I noticed movement. Was the prosthetic moving on its own? But that was impossible!
I shivered as I recalled the feeling of wearing it and walking unaided for the first time. After months of visualising what my new leg would look like, I had been astounded to discover how very lifelike it was. Then, when I had strapped it on and stood up, everyone in the room had applauded. Abu’s face, his dear face, had been wet with tears.
Maybe that’s why I hadn’t mentioned the bolt of electricity that had shot through me, zinging every fibre of my being. I had felt über alive, as if the life energy of a hundred beings had gathered force within me. Then, as my audience waited for me to walk, I’d dismissed the feeling as nerves and proceeded to show them how well I was doing.
But every time I strapped the leg on, the feeling returned. And now this.
I reached forward and touched the leg that seemed to shiver in anticipation. My stump throbbed in response. It was as if they were communicating with each other. My body and this piece of foam-covered, carbon fibre and titanium limb!
Quite without knowing how, I strapped on the leg, as if in a trance. And that’s when the trouble started.
The tango is, at its heart, a conversation. At first there is the cabaceo—an invitation from the man to the woman—a nod after some eye contact, which is accepted or declined as per the woman’s inclination. If accepted, the woman is led onto the floor and the discourse begins. The man leads, the woman follows, but not in the traditional way. She improvises, choosing how she wants to respond. Sensual and intimate, with a sense of longing permeating the movements and the music, there needs to be trust between the partners.
Closely attached at the chest or hip, they dance in unison to the rhythm, understanding instinctively where the other has come from and where they want to go. In the end, this cooperative process results in a highly improvisational dance, one that captivates the attention of both the dancers and the spectators.
I was not a dancer, never had been nor intended to ever be. But my prosthetic leg had other ideas.
That night as I strapped it on in a daze, it started to move of its own volition, taking me through a complex series of steps made all the more difficult by the fact that I had no partner. My right leg followed obediently, and then my body had no choice. I spun and I whirled, I moved backwards and forwards, throwing my arms up, embracing an absent partner; my head held in the proud stance of a woman courted and admired by all. When the imaginary bandoneón music in my head came to its imaginary stop, my body halted, trembling.
The girl reflected in my floor-length mirror was one I didn’t know. Wild-eyed, her hair in disarray and her pyjama top soaking with sweat, she looked alive. More alive than she had in months.
I collapsed onto my bed, stunned. What had just happened? Looking down at the prosthetic attached to my knee, I shuddered. Unsnapping it violently, I threw it across the room. Then I turned my back to it and sobbed into my pillow. Was I losing my mind now?
The next morning, I hobbled into the kitchen using my crutch. Abu looked up from doing his accounts and started.
“Cariño, are you in pain? Is the leg uncomfortable?”
“No, no. I… just wanted a break from it, that’s all.”
Maria handed me a café con leche and laid a plate of medialunas on the table, her eyebrow raised in disbelief.
Abu carried on. “You do not have to worry about wearing it out, Mari. Dr Diaz has promised that all future replacements will be taken care of by the foundation.”
I sipped at my coffee, not meeting their eyes. How could I explain that the leg scared me? How could I explain that I feared the person I became when I wore it? They would think me mad. I half-thought I was losing my mind.
“Eat! You are too thin, Mari,” Maria scolded me. “Diego wants to come by today. He asked me yesterday if it was alright. I said okay.”
“Why? If it wasn’t for that forro, Mari would be whole!” Abu roared.
But Maria stood her ground.
“Our Mariposa is whole - with or without her leg! Diego has been trying to come and apologise for the past year, and you have not allowed him to. I think it is time.”
I watched as they both stared at each other intensely before Abu lowered his gaze. Maria had won this round.
Upstairs I strapped on the leg, hoping it wouldn’t do anything foolish, but it was as docile as a lamb. I put on the emerald green dress that hugged me in all the right places, and pinched my cheeks to inject some colour in them.
Truth be told, I was nervous about seeing Diego after all this time. When I had flirted with him before, it had been with impunity, secure as I was in my skin; in my ability to detach myself whenever I chose. Now, I was a different person. Damaged, incomplete, incapable. How would he view me?
Diego was a catch, all my girlfriends used to tell me. Tall, curly-haired, dimpled, clever and with a smile that could melt the hardest of hearts, he also had a bit of the daredevil in him. Maybe that was what attracted me to him. In the year gone by, when my entire world had tilted off its axis, Diego had fallen off it too.
Now, as I made my way downstairs, my heart hammered in my chest. What would he say? What would I say in return?
He stood by the stove, his entire posture one of abasement. It was no wonder as my abuelo was staring daggers at him. If not for Maria, who stood between them, arms crossed, there might have been a bloodbath in our kitchen.
As I stepped into the room, a sudden ray of light caught me mid-step, blinding me for just a moment. I heard a collective gasp and as I stepped out of it, I looked at Abu’s face, which had turned ashen.
“Abu, what is it? Are you okay?”
Before I could reach him, Diego caught him as his knees buckled.
“W… what happened?” I rushed over, my gait slightly awkward.
Maria laid a hand on my shoulder. “For a minute there, Mari, you looked exactly like your mother.”
“Oh.”
I looked from her face to Abu’s and noted the shock written on them.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered.
“Ah, don’t be silly, niña. It has nothing to do with you. Go out now. I will tend to your abuelo. Diego, you take her outside now, che!”
In the small garden outside our part of the B&B, we had wicker furniture with bright orange cushions, which were always piled up in a corner to protect them from the rain. Diego put them down on the chairs, and we both sat across from each other.
“Mari,” he started, his voice hoarse.
“Diego,” I jumped in, “please don’t. There’s no need. It was an accident and I am not angry with you. I don’t hold you responsible.”
He held my gaze for a moment before dropping his face into his hands. His shoulders shook as he cried quietly, the occasional sniff escaping him. Appalled, I moved my chair closer to him, reaching one hand out tentatively to pat his arm.
He held on to my hand, raising his tear-streaked face to stare at me.
“I haven’t slept well in over a year. Mari, I keep replaying that day in my mind. What if I had gone slower, what if I hadn’t skidded, what if it was I who had lost my leg?”
“So many what-ifs, Diego,” I sighed. “What difference does it make? What’s done is done.”
“But…”
“Shhh.” I placed my finger on his lips. “I cannot live with regret any longer, and I don’t want you to either.”
Clasping both my hands, he leaned forward and kissed me softly. He tasted of salt and coffee, and in spite of myself, I melted into him. The soft kisses turned more passionate as he wound his fingers through my hair, pulling me closer. I allowed myself to drown in his ardour for a few more minutes, before pushing him away and standing up.
“I don’t want your pity, Diego.”
“Pity? Is that what you think this is?”
He stood up behind me, put his hands on my shoulders, and turned me around to face him.
“Even you must know, Mari, that I have been in love with you since I was ten. When you finally agreed to go out with me, I was extático! Then I messed it all up.”
I stared at him.
“You don’t want me now, Diego. This is just guilt talking. I am not the same girl you took to the cine or to drink mate with friends. I have changed, and not just physically.”
“But my feelings for you have not changed! When your abuelo would not allow me to see you, and when you went to Buenos Aires for your operation, I went mad with worry! I hounded Maria night and day to intervene on my behalf. Mari, believe me when I say that I would marry you tomorrow, if I could!”
I looked at the handsome boy in front of me and wondered what to say. So much was unresolved within my own self that I could not take on the weight of someone else’s feelings, too.
“Diego, please don’t be offended, but I cannot do this right now.”
His face fell as he regarded me.
“You do not love me.”
I turned away from him.
“I don’t know what I feel anymore. Please, just give me time.”
He dropped a soft kiss on my head and left.
“Well?” Maria asked as soon as I went indoors.
“Nothing. He asked for forgiveness and I forgave him.”
Abu grunted from his rocking chair.
“As if that will bring your leg back.”
And just as soon as he’d said that, my left leg seemed to wake up. Diego, who I thought had left, returned with a book in his hand, a book I had lent him a long time ago.
“I forgot… I meant to give this back…”
But his words were lost in the flurry of what occurred then.
Tipping forward, I grabbed his body, and suddenly and sensuously, my hip attached itself to his. Diego, who had been dancing at milongas for as far back as he could remember, responded intuitively to my unspoken invitation.
We moved together in the 8-count basic. Diego settled on his right leg, placing me on my left. Then he stepped side left, and I, side right. He turned forward right in the outside right position, keeping his upper body turned towards me, while I paralleled him in contra-body. He stepped forward left, and I stretched back right, seeking his centre. He closed his right foot to his left and rotated his upper body to face forward, while I crossed my left foot in front of the right as I finished moving back in front of him. We went from the salida to the resolución within minutes. Then, just as abruptly as it had begun, it stopped.
I stepped away from him, my face flooding with embarrassment. He goggled at me, as if I had grown two heads. Had I? Nothing was impossible now!
“But you said you hated the tango!” He blurted out, his eyes still bulging. I thought back to all the times I’d rejected his invitations to the milongas he frequented.
I shook my head reflexively, then looked at Abu who sat open-mouthed in his rocking chair, having forgotten to rock.
Then Maria stepped forward and handed me a glass of water.
“When did you learn, Mari?”
That was when my body decided that the best course of action would be to faint.
“You say it’s the leg?” Maria’s incredulity wasn’t entirely unwarranted.
After I had been revived, I found myself on the sofa sipping on a submarino. Maria’s version of it was especially delicious because she melted an entire bar of El Alguila chocolate into warm milk and then topped it with a sprinkling of cinnamon, adding her signature dash to it. The submarino was reserved for special occasions, and fainting spells now, I guessed.
Abu and Diego sat together, for once not in disagreement with each other. They were both looking at me with an expression of stunned wonderment.
“I can’t explain it,” I shrugged, “it decides when and where it wants to dance, and then the rest of my body just obeys.”
I looked at the offender which sat mute and innocent, still attached to my knee, but no longer trembling to dance.
“But how is that possible, cariño? Dr Diaz does not manufacture magical limbs.” Abu finally spoke, his voice shaking.
“And the way you moved… it was like a professional.” Diego’s voice was accusing.
“Like I said,” I shouted, “I don’t know how or why this is happening! I can’t explain it and it’s driving me loca!”
“Cálmate, Mari! We are all just shocked, that is all.” Maria sat down heavily in the armchair. “Do you think we should contact this Dr Diaz?”
“And say what? That the leg is defective because it makes me dance? He will laugh at us.”
“Juan Diaz is not the sort of man to laugh at anyone, but he has done us enough favours without us bothering him with something like this too.” Abu stroked his chin. “Anyway, Mari, what harm is there to it? You didn’t dance before, and now you do. Another talent to add to all the rest.”
“You must be joking, Abu! The one thing I hate is the very thing this leg is making me do. Besides, there is no controlling it. It starts up anywhere, anytime. Can you imagine how embarrassing that is for me?”
“You were embarrassed to dance with me?” Diego sounded hurt.
“Of course not! That is not what I am saying. But what if tomorrow it isn’t you? What if it is Pedro, the postman? Or, Mateo, the delivery boy?”
All of us sat in silence. Then Maria spoke up.
“Only one solution I can think of. You learn to control it, instead of it controlling you.”
“How?”
“Let me ask Sofia if she will give you private lessons. She is my daughter, she will listen to me.”
I groaned out loud.
“One more person who will think that I have gone mad!”
“No one thinks that, princesa!” Abu glared at Diego as he said this.
“I can take you!” Diego offered with an apologetic glance at Abu.
“On your motorcycle…?” Abu growled.
“No, no! I got rid of it. Now, I have a small Fiat Focus, and,” he raised his hands as if to ward off any objections, “I will drive slowly and carefully. Please let me do this for Mariposa.”
Once again, we sat in silence, not sure what the future held for us, but convinced that in my case, it would take far more than two to tango!
“Does it hurt when you tango?” Sofia asked, visibly perplexed.
“Not at all! It twinges occasionally when I walk or put extra pressure on it, but when I dance, it moves as freely as my right leg. Even more, actually.”
“Hmmm. Well, it seems to me that you know the basic steps. What you need to learn is control. So,” Sofia stood up and walked to the end of the studio and turned the music on. Strains of Anibal Troilo’s “Quejas De Bandoneón” flooded the room.
“Come, let us practise.”
Diego watched from one end of the studio as I held Sofia’s hand and stood up. My right foot tapped to the music, but the left refused to cooperate.
“It doesn’t want to,” I muttered dolefully.
“Make it.” Sofia countered.
“How?”
“Close your eyes. Listen to the music. Let it enter your mind and body, let it penetrate your soul.”
Grumpily, I obeyed.
Slowly, I got caught up in the sway and sweep of the rhythm - happy one minute, plaintive the next; joyous and romantic, recalling lush moments in the sun, moments of love, of kissing underwater, of swimming naked in the moonlight - and suddenly, my leg came alive. My eyes snapped open, and instead of Sofia, it was Diego standing in front of me.
He held out his hand, and I took it.
Once again I was transported, led into the intimacy of dance, unwittingly. But this time, halfway through, Sofia stopped us. Diego complied, holding me in a clasp that made movement impossible. My left foot still tapped impotently, but the rest of my body was static.
The music carried on. I closed my eyes and tried communicating with my prosthetic leg. “It’s okay”, I whispered under my breath, “the music will still be there. You and I can dance to it another time.” Immediately, my foot stopped tapping.
“Did you do that?” Sofia asked.
“Yes, but I’m not sure I can control it completely.”
“It will take time. Keep coming to the lessons. Maybe you can even go to a few milongas with Diego.”
I shuddered at the thought, but almost straight away, my left foot responded by tapping in rhythm to the bandoneón strains.
“Okay, okay, I’ll go.” I glared at the leg and then at Sofia and Diego in turn.
“Sometimes Mariposa, we just have to go with the flow.” Sofia nodded sagely.
* * *
In the months that followed, if I wasn’t reading, I was dancing. People commented on how light on my feet and lithe I was. For those who didn’t know or didn’t look too closely, it seemed as if I was complete, with all my limbs intact. My dancing had also progressed from the tango basico to the more advanced volcadas, calesitas, planeos and barridas.
“She is Elena’s granddaughter…”
“Ah, but she is Lucia’s daughter…”
Everywhere I turned I heard my abuela’s name, which made me happy, or my mother’s, which angered me.
“There is no escaping your bloodline, cariño.” Abu, calm and fatalistic, who had accepted every peak and trough of his life, exhorted me to accept this twist of fate in mine.
When I hadn’t been to see Seño Camila in three months, she came to see me.
Slim and bespectacled, she had been the benefactor of many books and was concerned that I hadn’t been to return the last loan.
“I still have them Seño, I just haven’t finished them yet.”
“That is unusual for you, Mari. Normally, you read them thrice in half the time. Is it true what I hear about you?”
She studied me from behind the glasses as my head dipped in confusion.
“Are you dancing at milongas now? Some say that you plan to compete professionally? Have you decided against teaching then?”
“I… I don’t know…” I stammered in confusion. And honestly, I didn’t.
But her words reminded me of my first love, and once again, I returned to the world of words and stories, forsaking the tango as long as my now semi-controlled prosthetic leg allowed me to.
Diego had become as attached to me as the prosthetic. He had won over my abuelo with his dedication, and Maria, always trembling at romantic telenovelas, was encouraging him openly. It was I who was resistant.
“Mari, why won’t you believe me when I say I love you?”
“Because, Diego, love means nothing. For now, you claim to love me. Tomorrow, a more beautiful girl crosses your path, and you may fall in love with her. What happens then?”
“Why are you so cynical?”
“I am pragmatic and so should you be. All this dancing around me has to stop. What of your Dentistry?”
Diego had been accepted into the University of Salvador, but had delayed his start by a year. He wouldn’t say why, but I suspected it was because he wanted to move there the following year when I went to study at Universidad de Buenos Aires.
“There are things I need to settle before I go.” He looked away as he said this, which only reinforced my belief. “Anyway, will you come to the milonga this Saturday?”
Lately I’d been skipping them, able to control the prosthetic better, promising it another evening, another time.
“I have to study for my exams, Diego. You know that.”
“It is the last one I will ask you to, then you can knuckle down to your studies.”
The foot had started its tap-tapping once again.
“There she goes, little Maricita!” Diego remarked fondly. He had developed an affection for my prosthetic leg, and exasperated as I was by his attachment to me, I couldn’t help smiling in return.
“Oh, very well! Pick me up at 11 then.”
My last milonga was once again in a disused warehouse that was often utilised as a place for these tango dance-events. Once nearly demolished, it was rescued by an anonymous patron and given over to the organisers of milongas.
Inside, the lights were dim, and the milongueras were gathered, awaiting their turn on the floor. With the first cabaceo, a couple moved to the centre of the floor. The woman was dressed in a shocking pink dress with a fringed hem. Her dark hair was pulled back into a low chignon and she wore a beautiful bronze hair clip on the right side of her head. The man was older, grey-haired, with a long moustache and a low, thin ponytail. Dressed in a white silk shirt and dark trousers, he moved with the effortless grace of a panther.
“Who are those two?” I whispered to Diego.
He shrugged, his eyes not moving from them. He was not alone. All eyes were on the couple that danced with a rich, sensual ease. Their comfort with each other was apparent to all, but their dance was almost shockingly erotic. A languid slink that morphed into a rapid swirl, it stirred up forbidden desires in all the onlookers. With every backward kick, every sudden dip, they held the audience in their thrall. Their dance was like a complete love affair—erotic and charged—with not one word exchanged.
No one else dared to step onto the floor whilst the two danced with such grandeur and sensuality that everything else paled in comparison.
When they finally finished and took their bows, the room exploded in applause. For the first time, I felt moved to tears. This was true tango - in all its beauty, melancholy and nostalgia. This was worth living or dying for.
Slowly the dance floor filled up again, and Diego led me with a quick, “Come”.
I felt inadequate, stumbling over my feet, feeling the weight of my prosthesis.
“What is it, Mari?”
“I can’t dance.”
“But of course you can.”
“No, I think it’s gone, Diego. I’m not feeling it anymore.”
He led me off the floor to a quiet corner.
“Are you okay?”
Stricken, I shook my head. How quickly I had become accustomed to how the tango made me feel. How good it was for my body; how much I used it, like meditation or therapy. And now that it had forsaken me, I was devastated.
“I think I’d like to go home.”
He drove me home wordlessly, planting a quick kiss on my hand before I exited the car.
“I’ll call tomorrow.”
I nodded, tears slipping down my face noiselessly.
In my room, I took off the prosthetic leg and placed it to a side.
“Where did you go, my little djinn of dance?”
The leg remained motionless, a mute piece of foam-covered carbon fibre and titanium limb.
After a sleepless few hours, I finally fell into a deep, dreamless slumber just as the first rays of sunshine poked their way in through the cracks in my shutters. I slept soundly until noon and woke up with my heart hammering against my ribcage. Why had no one woken me? Where was Maria, who normally bustled in at 8 a.m. regardless of how late a night I might have had?
I grabbed my crutch, ignoring the prosthetic, and hobbled my way into the kitchen.
There was a strange charge in there, as if all the electrons had rearranged themselves and created a different energy. Maria was busy at the stove and as I walked in, she looked up at me, her expression unreadable. Her eyes were red, as if she had been crying.
“Abu?” The question came out as a plea, my heart constricting at the thought.
“No,” she mouthed quietly, tilting her head towards the living room. I stumbled my way towards the living area, wondering what awaited me.
Inside, there were the signs of a most civilised lunch. Empanadas and fainâs, chimichurri and provoleta jostled for space with alfajores on our narrow coffee table. Most of it remained uneaten. Two visitors sat across from my abuelo, talking in low tones. They stopped as soon as I walked in.
Startled to recognise them as the couple from last night, I came to a halt as well.
That’s when the woman, dressed elegantly in a cream shirt and slacks, came towards me, a timid smile on her face.
“Mariposa, it is I, your mama.”
I took a step back, stumbling at first, then regaining my balance. Then I turned my back on her and limped my way back to my room, closing the door with a loud thud and locking it behind me.
For the next few hours I did not respond to Abu’s entreaties or Maria’s appeals. Not until I was sure that the visitors had left did I emerge from my room.
Diego was sitting with Abu, looking worried, as Abu spoke softly to him. Maria was nowhere to be seen.
“Why,” I asked, ferocious in my anger, “why did you let her in?”
Abu held out his arms, and instinctively I hobbled over and buried myself in his chest, sobs racking my body.
“She is your mama, Mari.”
“She is nothing to me. You are my mama and my papi.”
“But Mariposa, don’t you want to know what happened to her?”
“No!” Stubborn, I held on to my only anchor, rigid in my hatred for the woman who had birthed me.
If life was like a book, then there would be answers to all the questions. But life is always stranger than anything fiction could conjure up. When Lucia had left home on a whim, tempted by a handsome man’s offer, she had not expected to be sold into slavery. Taken to Saudi Arabia, held against her will and living a life of domestic servitude, it was only years of patience, and one tiny window of chance that had led to her escape.
She sat in front of me, this beautiful stranger that I had hated for nearly all my life, and wept openly. Tears of remorse, tears of guilt, and tears of redemption.
“My darling girl, my darling Mariposa! The only thing that kept me going was the thought of you. The thought that someday I would get to see you, to hold you.”
Lucia reached forward, but I shrank from her touch still. I was ready to listen, but I wasn’t yet ready to forgive.
“I was impetuous and foolish,” she acknowledged, “but I more than paid for my sins. If only you knew of the life I led…” Her last words caught on a sob.
“But you are still dancing. I saw you at the milonga that night.”
“Yes,” she nodded, brightening slightly, “It was dance that took me away from you, and it is dance that has brought me back.”
She looked at the man sitting next to her, her love for him apparent in the gaze she threw him.
“If it weren’t for Carlos, I may not have survived. When I ran away from my employers while they holidayed in London, I was penniless; without a passport or any kind of identification, and unable to speak a word of English. Carlos found me on the streets, wandering like a street urchin, begging for food.”
“How fortunate that he also happened to dance the tango!” Disbelief dripped from my words.
Lucia folded her delicate hands on her lap and looked at me.
“I believe you also dance the tango, and with no formal training either?”
All my words choked up as I realised that I alone did not reserve the right to remarkable events or coincidences.
I nodded, my eyes meeting hers in a sudden recognition of life’s randomness and chaos, of its incredible vagaries and miracles.
“Show me,” she implored.
“I… I don’t know if I can…”
“Try,” she whispered.
I stood up, just as she did. Her eyes locked with mine, followed by a tilt of her head, and I acknowledged her cabaceo. With a swift move, she suddenly held me in her arms. The melody of a thousand bandoneóns erupted somewhere, and my left foot started its familiar tap-tapping.
As we bent and swirled, moved forwards and backwards—my mama and I, in a dance as old as Argentina itself—I felt all the missing parts of me fall into place.
And I was complete once more.
