Free Vida by Patricia Engel Page B

extra good with Paloma. That is, until Paloma started barking at her, telling her she wasn’t cleaning well enough because the dust was causing her to cough uncontrollably. Luz almost quit a few times, told Mami she was not used to this kind of treatment, but Mami begged her to stay, finally admitting that the doctors had told her Paloma wouldn’t last much longer.
    Several times a week, Mami drove Paloma to the city to see her doctors. Every weekend that I came home, I found Paloma more dependent on the oxygen tank, with plastic tubes up her nose and eyes wide as if in the midst of a duel. We kept the house quiet. Paloma couldn’t take any kind of noise, which meant that Luz couldn’t play her salsa music while she worked in the kitchen, and Mami had to whisper when she spoke on the phone to her other sister in Colombia. Paloma wouldn’t even come to the table for dinner. She was losing her appetite. It took all her will to swallow a few crackers and some soup.
    All her life, Paloma loved to read the New York Post . Never the Times . When she was at the house, Papi went out every morning to get her a copy. One day, Paloma stopped reading. Each day thereafter the editions piled up on thecoffee table in the family room untouched. My father tried to entice her with the latest news about the mayor or whatever political scandal was in the headlines—all to inspire a little passion in Paloma, but she wasn’t interested anymore, and soon she lost track of the days.
    Gerald came to see her sometimes. My mother tried to be polite, even asked Luz to make him lunch, coffee, whatever the guy wanted as he sat in the armchair next to Paloma, who didn’t even change out of her nightgown anymore. She spent her afternoons on the sofa with her crossword puzzles, and when Gerald came to visit, they sat in silence across from each other in the family room. Sometimes Luz and I hung around the doorway trying to hear the way they spoke to each other but they didn’t give anything away. Luz said she could see in Gerald’s eyes that for him, Paloma wasn’t dying fast enough.
    When Paloma was hospitalized, my mother asked me to call her sister in Colombia to tell her to come because there wasn’t much time left. Carmen arrived the next day. Papi picked her up at the airport and brought her straight to the hospital. Carmen was two years younger than my mother and they could pass for twins, though Carmen had abandoned the Andean vanity that sustained my mother, in favor of a more European look, wore mostly black and only foundation,which Mami always told her was the wrong shade. Mami warned Carmen not to cry at the sight of Paloma but when she stood at the foot of the hospital bed, the room dimly lit because too much light bothered Paloma’s eyes, Carmen folded. Paloma peeled the oxygen mask from her face when she saw her little sister for the first time in over ten years.
    “I must really be dying if you’re here.”
    My mother and Carmen slept at the hospital with Paloma, who was increasingly anxious that she would suffocate, her lungs locked with disease. She sucked air from the plastic nasal tubes, ravenous, and called the nurses often, telling them the oxygen tank was broken, not enough air was coming out.
    After three weeks, the insurance wouldn’t pay for her hospital stay any longer and the doctor told my mother that bringing Paloma back home with her would be a mistake. Mami argued that she could take care of her, with Luz’s help, and she would hire a full-time nurse, but the doctor kept shaking his head, and finally took Mami’s wrist in his hand and said, “Trust me, you don’t want to do this.”
    I could see what he meant, so it was up to me to spell it out for my mother, tell her that Paloma would die on our sofa. She needed better medical care in case there was anemergency. Mami relented. A few hours later, an ambulance came to take Paloma to a hospice in the Bronx. Mami and I followed the ambulance in her car. I