My Nona Did What Anora Couldn't.

Anora had me reflecting on certain preconceptions about my family and questioning whether my grandmother had won in the end, unlike the protagonist of the movie, having a vindication for herself.

It was the 60’s. My Nona met my Nono while she was studying sculpture, in Chile, where she was from. She was born in Antofagasta. He had convinced her to go back with him to Colombia, where he was from, and get married. Later in the 70’s, they welcomed three girls into the world. At first I didn’t ask that many questions about who he was as a person. I could notice there was a general impending sadness and nostalgia because he was gone, so I always assumed he was both, a good father and husband, besides, my Nona would never speak ill of him while she was alive, and in fact, she would ask him constantly to take her away so they could be together. She was one of those tired old ladies who just wanted to die already.

It wasn’t until this year I had the urge to ask my mother what was it like while they were together. She dropped a subtle hint of everything being chaotic constantly, which prompted me to keep on asking more questions about my Nono’s personality and coexistence with my Nona. I hadn’t done this before, not because of fear of unleashing something, but simply because, while I had respect for him, I simply couldn’t care, as I didn’t know him and my relatives no longer cried while remembering him. A long time had passed.

The girls had reached the ages of 12, 13 and 14 when my Nono was getting ready to go to work. He went out the door and never came back. At the time, my Nona was in Chile visiting her siblings. It was a school morning and the girls were getting ready. As my mother looked through the window, she noticed a neighbor shouting, calling for them. It was then that she knew my Nono was shot in cold blood. He had died in a corner near the house. It was my mother who let the others know her dad was dead. It was she who had called my Nona to let her know she needed to come back to the country to bury him. He was a cop in the most politically tumultuous of times for the country, and he payed for it in the end.

At the time, my mother and her family lived in an apartment above a dingy restaurant. Its structure was made of glass. “You could see the rats running inside the windows. It was very dirty”, my mom recalled. When she said that, I could only think about the universe having a strange sense of humor, as the constant presence of the rats made me think of them being surrounded by decay, having it be a prophecy of what was to come.

Before that, my mom told me about the millions of times my grandfather was rude to my Nona; a behavior I was unaware of. He was emotionally manipulative and abusive, had a ton of lovers and once in a while he would beat her. Granted, some of those moments added to my Nona’s and the girls’ comedic character. One time, she saw my Nono with his lover in the car and in her full Anora shit, pulled that woman by the hair, displacing her from the car seat while my grandfather yelled at her to leave the other woman alone. Another time, in honor of April Fool’s Day, the oldest daughter decided to paint a mole above her lip, just like the one of my grandfather’s lover. They all sat down to have breakfast, she showed up and playfully asked my Nono, “who do I look like, dad?”. He just faked dementia at the time, but the joke was funny ‘cause it was true. He was confronted with the idea of, not only his wife, but also his daughters knowing about the affairs. They were between 7 and 10 when this happened.

Not everything was like that, though. My Nono would scare my Nona into not getting an education here in Colombia. He would diminish her wish of finishing school, so eventually she just gave up, having her be economically dependent on him, while telling her that if she ever left him, it would be without her daughters, so that’s how she was kept around.

I think I saw many parallels from my Nona’s life to the one of Anora’s presented in the movie. Even though she wasn’t in the sex working industry, both find themselves subjugated to the command of a man in the hopes of getting out of their own realities. One could argue my grandmother did do it for the sake of real love though, but that turns inconsequential, for the outcome was the same, having both the character and my Nona removed from their own agencies. Both go through cultural shocks that are unprecedented for them, since my nona saw herself inserted in a country unfamiliar to her. Things didn’t get any better once she was installed here. My mother’s grandmother would hide the food around the house while my Nona was pregnant so that she couldn’t feed herself. She didn’t want her, nor her children. She was very cruel to my grandma.

Between that and having to deal with the multiple affairs my Nono had, she brought herself to simply tolerate these things in the hopes of making a better life for herself. Sometimes I think she convinced herself that after all, this was the type of thing one had to endure while being married to someone if she wanted it to work. This was all transferred to my mother on her wedding day, as my grandma dropped some advice:“sometimes you just need to pretend like you didn’t see anything”. My mom was not thrilled with this and simply ignored her.

“Do you think having my grandfather die was a blessing in disguise?” I asked my mother. She thought about it for not too long and concluded that effectively, it was a blessing in many ways. I asked her what had happened after my Nono died. She said initially my grandmother was sad, but she also found herself going out more with her friends, planning trips, etc. “She flourished” my mom declared.

One thing I consider funny now, but certainly wasn’t funny then, was my mother asking with anxiety in her tone what were they going to do, how were they going to live?! Obviously i’m laughing because I know she comes from a very privileged position in an unusual household and she got lucky. Like I said, my Nona got her vindication in the end. Because of the time my grandfather had worked under the Police Force, he had earned the right to retire with a pension that was more than enough for my Nona and her three daughters to live off of. Instead, he chose to keep working until the day of his death, having his wife inherit the pension he was entitled to, (luckily no lovers imposed themselves in my Nona’s way while reclaiming what was rightfully hers). She wasn’t cheap but she knew how to save money, so the four of them could live properly. The neighborhood in which they lived for several years, wasn’t the most reputable, but as time passed, the girls grew, left the house and my grandmother ended up living on what would become one of the most prestigious neighborhoods in Bogotá almost by accident. Gentrification did its magic, I suppose.

My Nona never worked a day in her life, never finished her education and yet got to live what most people could only dream of. Unlike Anora, the emotionally taxing relationship with my Nono payed off, and her vindication came in the form of economical retribution and peace in her life. While I know this isn’t the reality for the sex worker in the movie, as well as other women in everyday life, the Anora I personally knew provided me a sense of relief and in many ways, justice for the Anoras of the world.

I no longer have respect for my Nono. They never saw rats hanging around again.