“Sounds fine to me.”
“See you in a while.”
“Where are you?”
“In crummy old Villahermosa.”
“That’s quite a ways away.”
“Come on! You could have said that yesterday. We got here late last night from Mexico City after driving all day. Now we’re only six hours away. Ciao, bambina!”
He hung up. The household had already started up a whirl of activities in preparation for his visit. There would be no morning stroll for Dulce and me, even though it was Sunday. Grandma was sending her out to recruit more help.
“Bring back two of the cleanest girls you can find. Check out if Doña Luz’s niece, Chole, is still around. Tell her to come and help me. But fancy Gustavo deciding to come and visit on a Sunday! And without proper notice. Oh, the bread!” she shouted, and then added, “Oh my God, the bread! Hey, Delmira, run and order the bread. Make sure they listen to you. Order four big loaves. It doesn’t matter if it’s too much. Get going over there right now. And don’t come back without it. Go on, move it!”
The bells for seven o’clock Mass hadn’t started chiming yet. Mama was still fast asleep; it must have been around six-thirty. Grandma had already changed her slippers for some outdoor shoes and was carrying shopping bags in her hand.
“Get dressed and run over to the bakery, girl! If you have to pay extra for them, just pay it and don’t argue.”
She took off at speed, but I took my own time in going back to my bedroom. Without closing the door, I pulled my nightgown off over my head and then quickly wrapped my dress around me. Dulce had just finished fixing my hair, so I wouldn’t be going out disheveled. I washed my face and then heard Mama dragging her washbasin across the floor. I went to peep. Her door was shut, but in my imagination I saw her clearly just as if I were watching her — splashing water on her body in the way I’ve described to you and trying to catch it on her thighs and scoop it back up to retrace its path. I thought she would have the balcony door open and I was embarrassed to leave the house, but I recalled Grandma’s urgency and, indifferent to embarrassment, I stepped out into the street. The balcony door was shut. I breathed deeply. Firmly shut.
Without dawdling along the way, I soon got to the bakery. It still wasn’t open. I went around the side and knocked on the door there. Nobody answered. “Well,” I thought, “then I might as well go in.” I knocked on the door and I got the feeling that it wasn’t bolted, only shut to. It was a tiny door, sized for dwarves. So I went in, plunging into the semi-gloom. Luckily I halted, because one step ahead of me lay a sharp drop and a narrow stairway.
“You nearly had a nasty fall there,” I said aloud to myself. Then I added in a bold, singsong voice, “Hey-hey, halloooo! Anybody there?”
Nobody heard me. I listened to some noises coming up from below, something like a murmured conversation, but I couldn’t see anything beyond the first steps of the stairway. I went down, calling out to see if anybody would hear me before I got to the bottom. But still no answer. The basement was faintly lit by small, high windows, protected by bars, that gave onto the sidewalk. In front of the stairs was a sloping ramp that ended in another opening, considerably narrower than the tiny door upstairs. It led to a patio and a brick oven where the bread was baked. Through it poured a stream of heat and light. Off to the right everything was smothered in a cloud of dust.
Once again I called out. “My grandmother sent me to order four loaves of bread for today.”
“Who’s there?”
“Delmira. Delmira Ulloa.”
“How big do you want the loaves?”
I followed my ears toward the voice, since my eyes could not penetrate the cloud of flour, but once I’d entered the cloud things became apparent. The flour reflected the meager light of the basement like little mirrors, multiplying it. There, inside the cloud, everything was visible, although it seemed to be in slow motion and totally intangible.
I waved my hand in front of my face, but clearing some dust from my line of vision only returned me momentarily to the blinding darkness, until the cloud came back to my aid and suddenly I could see again. The fat man who’d asked me the questions was neither white nor Indian. His only ethnicity was flour. He was the first man of flour I’d ever seen. He was totally naked except for his white cotton underpants and an enormous handkerchief around his head, knotted behind, like the pirates illustrated in my books.
“Hey, you!” I said familiarly, because I wasn’t sure how to address him. “I don’t know how big the loaves should be. We pay two pesos a week for them.”
“I’m not talking about the price. I’m talking about the weight. What weight do you want?”
“About this size,” I replied, showing him with my hands the exact size I wanted.
“Tell me the weight and I’ll make them for you. Otherwise, forget it.”
Beside him, an equally fat man, reclining on the floor, was kneading with his feet an enormous ball of dough on a huge tray. It wobbled around, swaying backward and forward, like something alive.
A little beyond him a third man, skinny but dressed like the other two and of the same color, was shaping the dough into loaves on another huge tray. Everything there was white too. God knows how the bread got its fancy colors into it.
“But I don’t know how much they weigh.”
“You don’t know, you don’t get the loaves. As simple as that.”
Then I had an inspiration.
“You know the loaves for the nuns, the ones with the cross on top? Make me four of those.”
“With crosses as well?”
“No. Put a G for Gustavo on them.”
“What’s a G? I don’t know my alphabet.”
The floor was as pure white as driven snow. I crouched down and traced a capital G.
“Four loaves?” he asked.
“Right. Four.”
“Four loaves coming up, blondie, in time for lunch. I’ll get them ready right now and put that snake-thing on top, all curly. Or rearing, you said.”
“Psst, pssst! Got anything to lend me, dearie?” shouted another man who was kneading with virile energy a thick welter of dough that had a yellowish tinge to it. He was doing it with his arms, chest, and one thigh completely sunk in the dough. For some reason I was reminded of the curate jammed up against my mother’s buttocks. There was a striking similarity between the two things. I was so overcome with shame I hadn’t the presence of mind to answer the man or even ask what he wanted me to lend him. I said a timid thank-you to the other fellow and took off fast. I shot up the stairs as if the men were chasing me.
When I got out to the street, I realized how appalling the heat had been down in that basement. In comparison the air up above was cool. The light too was so radically different from that down below that it was hard to believe it belonged to the same world. I rubbed my eyes and took a deep breath before starting my walk home.
On my way through the market I bumped into Grandma. Behind her toddled two boys laden down with shopping bags filled to the brim. One of them also carried an outsized hen, dead and featherless. Normally we never bought them in that condition. Doña Luz used to kill and pluck them herself, but now there was no Doña Luz and today we were in a hurry. The boy had fastened it with string around his waist in order to leave his hands free. He wasn’t even as tall as I was. The hen’s head bumped against his shins with every step he took. He smiled at me without embarrassment. His teeth were completely brown, like half-chewed caramels. His feet were bare. The other boy was taller than us, had his hair clipped down to his scalp, and also had a burden secured around his waist, a bunch of beetroots.