With water dripping off me, I realized that they weren’t the only two hysterics around; others were watching my arrival with concern. I turned my face to the horizon. Over the whole sea was stretched a second watery mantle, an enormous sheet of a lighter color, that in front of my eyes proceeded to gobble up the beach I had just visited.
“Silly girl!” Grandma was telling me. “How reckless can you get! You could have drowned. I mean, who’d get the crazy idea to swim so far off? It simply defies belief.”
If you couldn’t go in it, what was the sea for? I detached myself from the two nagging shrews. I heard people saying that it often happened, that this illusory beach would disappear as fast as it appeared, that you couldn’t trust it, because the sea’s second mantle would cloak the surface and drown anybody caught on the sandbar. The water had swallowed so many already; there was no counting the victims. I told as many as were willing to listen that I’d seen that beach covered in beautiful colored shells, with starfish and sea urchins.
A dark-complexioned girl of my age laughed at my words. “What’s the big deal there, blondie?” she said. “What do you think is under the sea? Shells that aren’t worth anything. You gonna sit down and make necklaces out of them like the Indians and sell them to gringos to hang around their necks?”
We had lunch at a restaurant with white tablecloths a little farther along. One of Mama’s cousins was expecting us, an idiot who kept saying he wanted to marry her. Mama kept him as a kind of informal boyfriend, perhaps, I think now, to divert suspicion from her affair with the priest. But what was the cousin trying to hide? I never found out, yet there was something in his look that sent shivers up my spine. But I knew the history of his brother, as did the whole town. He was a pilot, he had a beautiful wife he beat up from time to time, he had six children by her, my cousins, blond Gypsies forever traveling from pillar to post, from their grandmother’s house to their father’s house, because intermittently there’d be a bust-up and the mother would leave her husband, but she always went back to him. He had her tied to him by the chilling magic of his family.
On our way home the priest’s car crushed under its tires the crabs that were scurrying across the highway.
“This is the time crabs get massacred, daughter, on their way back down to the sea.”
We kept on crushing them to bits with our car. On the beaches near Agustini everything was devoted to devouring and killing.
18 My Uncle and the Bakery
The town’s bakery produced loaves of bread decorated in showy colors, doughnuts in strident Mexican pink, pancakes in royal blue, biscuits in lemon yellow. They even adorned their salty buns with a silly curlicue of colored sugar. For that reason, said Grandma, we never bought their individual items. She had them make large loaves for her without either coloring or sweetening, in place of those “disgusting monstrosities of the Indians.” From Monday to Saturday our bread was ready just before lunch, so we always ate it freshly baked. On Sundays Grandma made toast from the week’s leftovers, and anything else that remained, supposing that something did remain, went into a bread pudding with raisins and a glass of rum, along with almonds and slices of other nuts. It was an exquisite dessert.
Our household, like all the households of the better class of people, ate only white bread, but there were minor differences. The bread in the Juarez home was a little more voluminous than ours, and being a large family, they ate not one loaf a day but two. The loaves of the nuns were the same size as ours but had a cross set in the crust, made out of the same dough as the bread, and it was delivered in half dozens every other day. The Ruizes didn’t like big loaves. For them the bakery made round loaves that they called “country bread.” According to my grandmother, it was obvious they were still uncooked in the center and she claimed that it was eating raw dough that had given their youngest child, Ivan, his convulsions. The doctor had demolished her theory on numerous occasions, but she persisted in her belief and continued to preach it. She wouldn’t quit till she had convinced the whole town, the Ruizes included, that the round loaves were dangerous.
The doctor’s family preferred little loaves, almost the size of the buns with the sugared curlicue. The Vertizes, like the Ruizes, didn’t like loaves at all. For them they baked bread in the same shape as the buns with curlicues of sugar, but with two sharp points and the same size as our loaves.
All these special orders were set out on trays at the bakery, but with their destination unspecified. There was never any mixup; nobody ever took somebody else’s bread. Each family came by every day for its own order, and if they needed more they put in a request the previous evening.
Early one Sunday morning the phone rang. It was my uncle Gustavo. He told my grandmother that he would be coming to lunch that day. Grandma repeated everything he said, so that Dulce and I could know what he was telling her. He was bringing along his fiancée and her brother-in-law, to introduce them to us. China Jack, whom we’d met the previous year, was also coming. My uncle then asked Grandma to put me on the line.
“Delmira, my favorite niece, how are you?”
“Stop clowning, Uncle Gustavo. I’m your only niece.”
“That’s why you’re my favorite, my favorite little chick. I’ve a present for you and I’m bringing it over today. I can’t wait to give it to you. Want to see it?”
“Yes!”
“There! What does it look like?”
“How do I know?”
“What do you think it is?”
“A Barbie!”
“I’m not going to tell you. It’s a surprise.”
“Tell me!”
“It’s a surprise.”
“Hey, Gus, what are you doing awake so early?”
There was a burst of laughter at the other end of the phone. I remembered clearly that when he lived with us, before I started school, he used to wake up later than I did.
“I got up early because I can’t wait to bring you your present. Make yourself look pretty. I’m going to introduce you to a girl who — well, you never know, I could end up marrying. What do you think of that?”
“I think it’s horrible. You promised me you wouldn’t get married till after I did.”
“And who’s to say you won’t get married first?”
“I say so!”
There was more laughter.
“I’ll tell you a secret, but don’t breathe a word of it to anybody, Delmira. Your uncle Gus is a confirmed bachelor, a hopeless case where marriage is concerned. This girl I’m bringing today has some crazy idea of trapping your handsome uncle into marriage, but she’s not going to pull it off. I don’t want to be the bad guy, so I’m bringing her over so she can enjoy your grandmother’s cooking. She’ll eat like a queen. When she realizes I was pulling her leg, that I went out with her just to have somebody pretty to dance with and show off on my arm, she won’t be able to hate me, because at the bottom of her heart she’ll be grateful unto death for your grandma’s banquet. What do you say to that?”