Free Boundaries by Elizabeth Nunez Page A

around her large though shapely thighs. Anna wishes Paula would go on the diet that worked for her, but Paula dismisses the idea. She has one life to live, she says, and she won’t deny herself the pleasure of good food. She has been denied other pleasures. She means sex, she means a meaningful relationship with a man, but Anna thinks Paula has given up too soon. Thirty-nine is not old, she tells her. Thirty-nine is ancient in the dating game, Paula responds, and quotes a Harvard study. “A woman my age has less than a 3 percent chance of finding a husband,” she says.
    Anna does not give up. Paula is a curvy woman. There are men who like curvy women.
    “In Africa,” Paula says. They both burst out laughing.
    “Back home too,” Anna says.
    Home. They are no longer laughing.
    Now Paula surveys the living room. “Everything here is virtually sparkling. The parents?”
    “I’m getting ready,” Anna says.
    “Looks like your mother’s house.”
    “And ten times smaller.”
    “You have her taste. There’s nothing in here she won’t love.”
    It is true; her taste in decorating has not strayed far from her mother’s. Her style is conservative and muted, the colors in her living room a palate of earth tones: taupes, deep browns, beiges, off-whites. Even the prints on the wall are understated: watercolors by Jackie Hinkson, her favorite artist, of the sea and the mountains at dawn, fishermen pulling in seines on the beach at the end of the day. There is one exception. It is a painting of La Diablesse by Boscoe Holder, the colors intense, smoldering. But her mother would approve of this one too. She has the original in her living room.
    While Anna puts on the kettle for tea, fills a bowl with brown sugar and the creamer with evaporated milk, they talk about her plans to take her mother to the hospital. Paula recommends a car service that she swears by, but Anna says that won’t be necessary, since Paul has offered to arrange for a car to bring her mother to the hospital.
    “Paul?”
    “Dr. Bishop,” Anna says, and brings cups, saucers, and cutlery to the cocktail table.
    “So he’s Paul?”
    “The son of a family friend. My father worked closely with his father years ago.”
    “I like him already. Paul, the male counterpart to my name. You have chosen well, Anna.”
    “Don’t.” Anna wags her finger at her friend and returns to the kitchen.
    “So I take it this Paul is not simply the doctor who will do your mother’s surgery.”
    “I told you who he is,” Anna says. She drops two tea bags in a teapot and fills it with boiling water from the kettle.
    “But you didn’t tell me he’s Paul.”
    “Black cake.” Anna returns with a tray bearing the teapot, a cake, two plates, and two forks.
    “Black cake!” Paula is immediately distracted.
    “My mother’s helper made it. Here, try it.” Anna puts a forkful in Paula’s mouth.
    “My God, it’s practically dripping with alcohol.”
    Lydia, her mother’s helper, promised it would be. She had soaked the fruit in rum and cherry brandy for weeks before she folded it into the cake mixture.
    For the second time Paula says, “I miss the sun. I miss all this.” She takes the fork from Anna’s hand and pulls apart another piece of cake. The sounds that come out of her mouth when it reaches her taste buds are sounds of pure, unadulterated pleasure. She sighs. “Why are we here, Anna? Why?”
    “Because we are here,” Anna responds.
    Few immigrants will open the Pandora’s box of the whys—why they left behind familiar lands, familiar faces. They ride the waves of nostalgia, hoping they will not last. There is the road ahead; America promises rich rewards if they are patient, if they work hard. It’s futile, a waste of precious time, to look back.
    “Come, sit next to me,” Paula says, and she makes space for Anna on the couch. “Let’s hear what happened today at work. Tell me everything.”
    But Anna takes the armchair. She does not want to be