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35 & 46
They make a home in the Bronx. It’s hard. Daniela cries every night for weeks when they move into their new building, and Carla holds her, combing her fingers through Dani’s hair until she falls asleep.
Daniela never speaks of it when the sun comes up. Covers her dark circles and tired eyes meticulously every morning, spends an extra twenty minutes laying her concealer. Only Carla knows.
But they do make the Bronx home, eventually. The new salon is larger, with huge double doors at the storefront, sixteen rows of chairs instead of twelve. It’s a good place. It’s good to them. Usnavi and Sonny take the train ride up just to paste Daniela’s window stickers at the front.
They’d forgotten how great it feels to not claw their way out of the red every month, barely holding onto what’s theirs no matter how hard they work.
They’d forgotten that home is wherever they’re together.
Carla makes them coffee before Dani wakes up, every day, just like she used to. Buys them matching fancy thermoses, the kind with the extra layers to keep their drinks warm all day, and Daniela carries one with her everywhere.
36 & 47
It’s the quiet moments that save them: the afternoons wrapped up in each other, the record player in the living room that reminds them of home. Most nights it only murmurs about a version of for always, para siempre trailing behind them every step from Abuela’s kitchen to the Bronx.
Para siempre, para siempre, it promises them, whispers of the very continued forever they stand in, and on other nights, soft trumpet flows from the speaker as an old Miles Davis record crackles to life.
Barefoot on the carpet, Carla will take Daniela’s hands, spin her in the light of the refrigerator. They’ll twirl, and they’ll laugh, Carla’s arms snaking around Dani’s waist, her chin hooking over her shoulder.
The music swells. Carla hums. It’s literally impossible to think anything of their life aside from the fact that for this one moment, everything is absolutely perfect.
38 & 49
Daniela starts adopting the neighborhood kids again, giving odd jobs to the ones that look a little too hungry a little too much of the time. She takes care of them. Starts keeping a spare key under the welcome mat-- for emergencies, she tells Carla, in case they need us-- that everybody knows about and nobody ever abuses.
Mothers send their daughters to Daniela’s Salon after school on days when they can’t get home on time, knowing Dani will keep them safe.
40 & 51
Carla takes to her forties gracefully, allowing herself the crows feet and fine lines that come with a good life, a happy one. Daniela fights her fifties back with a surgeon’s knife, because she can, because she’s always been the slowest to change and she’s not about to start now.
“Mi amor,” Carla says, “You don’t need to. I’ll still love you if your forehead can move.” She teases, poking Daniela between her eyebrows.
“It’s not for you, querida. I don’t want to look in the mirror some day and not recognize the person staring back at me,” Daniela sighs, catching Carla’s hand and pressing a kiss to it.
“It will happen, someday,” Carla holds Dani’s face in her palm, gentle. The bearer of bad news.
48 & 59
They get married in Carla’s family church, a ridiculous affair that Carla insists has doves and rice and little tin cans tied to the bumper of her father’s old clunker, preserved in time by a good mechanic and a heavy blue tarp. Daniela indulges her. She has for the last thirteen years.
The children they have raised together— none of them their own, they never felt the need— line the pews in rows.
“Took you long enough,” Usnavi claps Daniela on the back good-naturedly, 37, a father, a man, now. She pulls back, fixing him with a look that reminds him that no matter how old he gets she outranks him.
He coughs, glancing around for his wife to save him but knowing she won’t. “I mean,” he says, “Congratulations, Daniela. You deserve it.”
60 & 71
Carla retires first, because they can afford it. Daniela doesn’t, because she couldn’t stomach it. Her mother never retired either.
Carla sits on their stoop, drinking from Daniela’s mug because Dani always steals hers, and hands out colorful pieces of chalk to passing children who smile at her like she’s given them something precious. Their sidewalk is always rainbow, and the colors run the whole block every time it rains.
She waits for Dani to come home, kisses her wife on the cheek and stands back while Daniela opens the door for them.
And as they age, their little corner of the Bronx gets two abuelas for the price of one.
64 & 75
“Mi vida, mi vida, mi vida,” Daniela chants, prayerlike, Carla kissing behind her ear. Carla sighs against her throat.
“I know,” she says. “I am.”
75 & 86
Carla goes first, and Daniela can’t find her anger. How could she? Four decades-- Carla gave her four decades-- how could Daniela ever be angry with her after that?
She doesn’t stand alone at the funeral, or the wake, or the long hours she spends talking to Carla’s gravestone in the weeks after; she doesn’t have to.
She doesn’t buy groceries; her grandchildren take turns bringing them to her door.
Daniela cries alone now.
“I took care of my community, no?” She asks Usnavi, sitting in her favorite blue chair that faces the window. Watching the movement on the streets. “Like Abuela.”
“Yeah, Dani. You both did,” Usnavi smiles, kneeling in front of Daniela. His knees ache all the time now.
She puts her hand over his. “Usnavi…” she laughs. “You got old.”
75 & 90
She still wears her wedding ring.
75 & 91
She goes to church on Sundays, not because she’s a believer, but because Carla was.
75 & 92
She talks to Carla all the time. Knows what Carla would think about every book, every movie, every futon commercial that comes on T.V. Carla is still with her, at the end of the line. Waiting.
Has spent her whole life learning Carla, and now has to spend the rest of it knowing her.
75 & 94
Daniela’s children come home from all across the country to say goodbye. She loves them; she is loved. She’s holding court today, for the last time. This bed is her kingdom, that door is the gate. Daniela holds their hands, wipes away the tears that fall, and doesn’t cry once.
A photo of Carla watches from the bedside table.
75 & 94
Daniela takes the long walk through the tunnel, picking up friends along the way, those she hasn't seen in years, the ones she left behind in Puerto Rico, the ones whose faces she barely recognizes now.
Abuela greets her at the end, watches the way her head swings in every direction, looking for someone specific. Paciencia y fe, she murmurs. Daniela turns, taking one last look at the art on the walls, tallies how many are Pete's, the ugly ones next to his that are obviously Sonny's. Abuela smiles.
A step at a time, she follows Abuela up the stairs, and her soul— the part of her that still remains after death— leaps, because there she is. Back-lit in bright white light. And God, it's been so long.
Carla, looking no older than thirty — Daniela looks down at herself; she can't be any age but the day they met— holds two styrofoam cups. Her hands are soft, and one reaches out, words written on the side: For Dani. Honey + no sugar, a splash of milk.
"Coffee?"