Gaby

Write a brief biography of the young girl (Gaby) in The Official Story. She would now be in her mid to late twenties.

Gaby was raised by her mother, Alicia, and grew up in a loving family--her mother, her grandparents, her uncle, her cousins, and her Nana Sara. She remembers little of her father--just that she sang to him over the phone for a while after she no longer lived with him, and he would call her the love of his life. Afterward, when she would ask about him, her mother would tell her that her father would be with her if he could--that he could not help going away, and no, she could not lie about it, he would not be back. Later, when she was older, she learned he was involved in some questionable business dealings and disappeared. Her mother believed that the government had something to do with it, but she could not prove it. She would not discuss it beyond that because she had no proof of the truth of her belief.

Over the years, Gaby's grandparents have died, and her mother has been ill with lung cancer. Nana Sara takes care of her after her treatments, even though Nana has arthritis and can't move around very well. She is often in pain, but always has a smile for Gaby, whom she calls la luz de mi vida--the light of my life. When Gaby was 18, she learned that Nana Sara was her grandmother by blood; the story of her mother being someone other than the woman she always called Mama stunned her at first, but she later became intrigued by the four photographs Nana Sara showed her. Nana Sara explained everything gently, truthfully, and Gaby eventually accepted that there had been another woman who had loved her but could not keep her, and that she was blessed to have the love of so many people. She also learned of the "dirty war"--much of it from her mother's friend, Anna, who told her about it when she felt Gaby could deal with the truth.

The truth is what Gaby has been taught by her mother to always look for, but not the truth as others say it is; she knows she must think for herself and not close her mind to what is going on around her. Her mother has kept her from the church, telling her that the truth cannot be found there--that it must be found between her head and her heart, and that at times nothing is more painful than finding it.

Gaby is now a graduate student at a local university. After starting as a music major, she is concentrating on being a history teacher, like her mother. She is planning to get a doctorate and teach at the university level; she believes in open and free discourse, and wants to encourage this in young people. She has boyfriends, but no one serious; she admits being afraid to become too close to a man because she feels abandoned by her father, regardless that he could not help leaving her. She is as beautiful a young woman as she was a child; she has the same smile as the young woman in Nana Sara's picture.

In her room at the university, up on a shelf, she keeps a baby doll that her father gave her, and sometimes, when she has no studying to do, she will stare at it, and softly sing a song she used to sing to her parents: "In the land of I-Don't Remember / I take three steps and I am lost /One step this way / I wonder if I may / One step over there / Oh - what a big scare / because I no longer know where / my other foot will go." After that, she always calls her mother and her Nana Sara to ask how they are because she knows she will not have them too much longer. She is 29, and she tries always to face the truth.