Por Ahora, or simply translated, 'For Now'

Por Ahora, or simply translated: For Now

My current wife is a distant cousin of my first wife. Unlike my first wife, however, my current wife lacks remarkable beauty. Not that she’s dragon-ugly, or anything that extreme. It’s just that my current wife -- to be kind - is blessed with simplicity, homeliness, and perhaps a few extra pounds.

In itself, the chances of meeting a woman related to my first wife after she left me seemed quite remote. My first wife, see, assisted by a coyote, had six years before she left me six years ago been smuggled across the border from Mexico via the desert. My current wife, on the other hand, had six years ago stepped from the pages of a picture book that my first wife had written and illustrated six years after she’d come to America.

In the book that my first wife had titled ‘Por Ahora,’ which translates into ‘For Now,’ the not particularly beautiful young woman narrator who works in a tomato field shows up at a plastic surgeon’s office. The illustrations my first wife drew show clearly that my first wife’s woman narrator who worked in the tomato field did not have ample breasts. The surgeon, a man depicted wearing jeans under his white smock, directs my first wife’s homely woman narrator to sit at the edge of the examination table.

My first wife’s woman narrator, she asks the surgeon wearing jeans how much it will cost to have her breasts enhanced. The surgeon, pictured with one hand in his smock pocket and the other cupping his chin, tells the my first wife’s woman narrator the price of breast enhancement. My first wife’s woman narrator cannot yet afford the breast enhancement, so she instead makes an appointment to have her crooked nose straightened. “This will have to do,” my first wife’s woman narrator says while standing in front of a mirror on a page still near the front of my first wife’s picture book. “This will have to do . . . por ahora.”

After having the bump in her nose smoothed, my first wife’s woman narrator works very hard in the tomato fields and saves her money. In several months she has an implant inserted in her chin, and liposuction. She has liposuction, too. These events occur toward the middle part of my first wife’s picture book, and when the surgery is complete, my first wife’s newly made woman narrator says while looking at her thinner thighs and fuller chin and straighter nose, ‘This will have to do . . . por ahora.”

Working day after day in the tomato fields under the scorching sun, the woman narrator of my first wife’s picture book manages to save enough money to have her breasts enhanced. My first wife’s woman narrator is transformed right there on the page into a completely different woman, one who no longer needs to slave over plowrow after plowrow of tomato plants. On the third to the last page of my first wife’s picture book, her now transformed, no longer simple and homely woman narrator, with her newly straightened nose and newly structured chin and with her narrower thighs and larger breasts, stands at the edge of the tomato fields saying goodbye to a distant cousin. The cousins, one now beautiful, the other still homely, embrace one another under the bright yellow sun.

On the second to the last page of my first wife’s picture book, my first wife‘s transformed, remarkably beautiful confident narrator‘s distant simple, homely, heavy cousin stares straight into the face of my first wife’s woman narrator and says, .”I envy you, cousin. You came to America an ugly and simple and homely and fat person. Now look at you. Completely transformed. And look at me,” my first wife’s now beautiful narrator’s not so beautiful distant cousin goes on to add, “I am so ugly that nobody will ever love me.”

And on the final page of my first wife’s picture book, the now beautiful woman narrator puts a hand on her not so beautiful distant cousin’s cheek and says, “Yes, you may be disgustingly ugly, cousin. But only por ahora.”

My first wife wrote and illustrated that picture book by lamplight. Each night she’d bend over her desk, scratching out the dialogue, etching out the pictures. When she was finished, she sent it off to a New York publisher, who immediately snatched it up. As the royalties for this widely successful picture book -- Por Ahora -- rolled in, my first wife began to visit a plastic surgeon. She began to make herself into a different woman. Then one night she simply vanished, disappeared into the world a different person.

For a long time I was lonely. I used to take my copy of my first wife’s picture book and read it from front cover to back cover, over and over. I soon found myself falling in love with my first wife’s narrator’s distant cousin who’d been so skillfully illustrated on the last page of my first wife’s picture book. Then one night, as I lay in bed lamenting my first wife’s disappearance, her now beautiful narrator’s not so beautiful cousin appeared at the foot of my bed, still smelling of tomatoes. She seated herself at the dining table with a perplexed expression on her not so beautiful face.

This all happened over six years ago. The marriage to my current wife, who is my first wife‘s distant cousin, though not particularly gratifying, had moved along with little problems. But this morning, while my current wife stood naked staring at herself in the full-sized mirror in the bathroom, she remarked that she wished she could visit a plastic surgeon and have her breasts enhanced.

I shook my head and told my current wife that we didn’t have the money for a breast enhancement.

She glanced at me, smiled, and said, “Por ahora. Por ahora.”