A Loved Heart and an Impassive Adventure
They were very hard years. The truth is that I never thought I would leave Chile, Chile was my world, everything I knew, my north, but I was in love and had three children, what could I do? Those were Clara's words after she had begun telling me about her married life.
Julio and Clara had met when she was fifteen years old. He saw her dancing in a kermes, a typical party where funds were collected to support the candidacy of girls competing in beauty contests in small towns of Chile. He took her hand and led her to the dancing floor where she was always the queen. She felt floating as she had become infected with the sweetness that this man of short stature and broad back transmitted to her. Their faces touched, he knew how to please a woman, he was generous of love, especially when the romance was just taking place. She felt hypnotized, sweating the smooth taste of a young love, a desperate love. Clara says it was fulminating, like those passions from poetries or movies. After that night they didn’t see each other for a long time, they didn’t hear from each other. However, some time later he started to follow her trail until he found her. Young love was forbidden and dangerous to the eyes of adults, especially for Clara's parents and decide forbade it. However, in an act of frank despair, Julio's mother went to the Mieres González’s house to assure them that her daughter would be in good hands, that they should let her stay at her home. She gave her word, she would ensure that there would be no "accidents." So her parents were convinced, Clara had the green light to spend nights in the arms of her lover. Obviously, accidents are inevitable and soon Clara had a round belly. Her mother, Ema realized that she was pregnant when one afternoon she helped her to fit a dress, to realize that the dress did not fit. Ema, mother of Clara, was anxious and departed to claim explanations from Julio’s mother. There were screams and a fight that would last years, but the daughter who was coming could not be stopped. In the wedding, at the civil registry ceremony, Francisco Mieres, Clara's father, asked Julio to open his hand. Julio, obedient, opened his right hand without protests. Francisco then reached into the pocket of his brown jacket and placed an object in the open hand of his son-in-law. When Julio opened his hand, he saw a steel nail. According to Clara, the nail represented her.
After the first daughter, two others arrived, a boy and a girl. Life just started for Clara, but she was already carrying three children on her back and a husband wanting to flee away.
Cobián was the surname of Julio's closest friend, the son of a Palestinian woman and a Spanish man. Cobián's mother had a clothing store near the Italia Square, in Valparaíso, as a good Arab, says Clara. Julio and Cobián decided to leave for the United States. They plotted it for a long time and finally one day, without telling anyone, they carried out their master plan. Clara was left alone with her children at her mother-in-law's house, where she was never at ease, where she had to put up with humiliation. However, she, as a resourcefulness woman, like all the women who are here to change the world, decided to follow the man who took away her sleep. She sold the fur coat that Julio had sent her from New York and with the funds she began to plot the act of faith that would change forever the future of her life and of the generations that were to come. Without saying anything to anyone but a friend, who helped her with the paperwork and the plane ticket, she left for New York.
I left my two older kids in Chile and brought the youngest, Veronica. Julio did not know about my departure until it was too late. When we arrived in New York and were finally able to talk to him on the phone, after many false attempts because I couldn’t understand how those devices worked, Julio could not believe that I was in New York. He told me afterwards that his impact was such that, he ripped his sweatshirt while trying to fit his head in one of the sleeves, he could not find the neck of the shirt.
After a while in New York, Clara and Julio decided to return to Chile. Julio worked as a waiter's assistant and Clara cooked and sold snacks and was also in charge of renting rooms in their apartment to tenants. With what, she paid for groceries. They managed to save money and after a few years, they started their return to Chile. There everything went south, Julio lost everything we had, and he went back to NY, says Clara. Julio returned to New York alone and Clara, still infected with the same spell that had enraptured her that afternoon at the kermes, suffered his departure. Sometime later a rumor began to roll over Clara's head. According to her, someone had told her that Julio was in New York with another woman. The truth is that I do not know if it was true or if they invented it but I despaired, says Clara. I was quite upset, and sometimes I do things that maybe I shouldn’t do, but I do them without thinking, she confesses. The fact is that for some reason that Clara does not remember, the US embassy denied her the visa to enter the United States again and could not buy tickets to New York. But she was already determined. She left, this time with Julie, the fourth daughter, the first born in New York, to Mexico City. From the Mexican capital, she contacted people who would help her cross the border and went to Tijuana. Everything happened to me on that trip, says Clara. I almost went crazy, I almost lost my daughter. They were the hardest times of my life. All because of him, out of spite, out of jealousy, and because of my stupid impulses.
Today, half of her family lives in New York. Each of these descendants, including who writes these words, owes their destinies to this woman who by the force of her pure heart set out on an uncertain path in search of what she decided prudent. Clara had no secondary education or a college degree, her tools were always very limited. Until today, more than fifty years later, she still does not master the language completely, but she managed to put a road in the life of her family. Her husband did not help her, but rather became a burden, economic and spiritual, with which she had to fight for the rest of her days.