“What’s that, Grandma?”
“Sugar beets.”
“But you never buy them.”
“Well, I did today. Get a move on. Don’t block my way.”
“I put in the order for the bread, Grandma. I asked them to put a G where they put a cross for the nuns.”
“Can’t you do anything right? Even when you get explicit instructions?”
I didn’t bother to explain why I’d been driven to make the order this way. If she didn’t like it, she could lump it. I was sure that Uncle Gustavo would love the G’s, and that was what counted. She could get as nasty with me as she liked. Instead of answering her, I started to joke around with the boys.
“You’ve got teeth made of gold, right?” I said to the kid with rotten teeth.
The two boys laughed. Then I tried again. “Is that hen tickling your belly with its claws?” But Grandma grabbed me by the ear and said into it, “You don’t talk to Indians. Have you got that? Okay?” And she gave me a sharp pinch.
We walked on to the house without a further word. Then she, Mama, and I went to hear Mass. But Grandma didn’t join us for breakfast with the priest. She had to busy herself with the preparations for lunch. She invited the priest to drop in and eat with us, and he accepted gladly.
We walked over to the doctor’s house and invited him as well. The rest of his family had gone off to Mexico City because somebody was marrying somebody there, and he too accepted gladly.
From there we hurried off to buy flowers, purplish gladioli with long stems, and back in the house we arranged them very prettily.
Mama slipped some worn table mats under the flower vases. The vases seemed to float, as usual, about a finger’s breadth above the furniture, but they didn’t chime in the wind the way Grandma’s collection of bells did, responding to its gusts and even to the footsteps of anybody going by. If the living room was open because it was Saturday, the day for general cleaning, I used to jump up and down in front of the bells till their clappers tinkled. But on the rare occasions that we were entertaining people from out of town, the flower vases, the bells, and the porcelain Lladro figurines were placed on top of the furniture. Even the Virgin from the altar at the doorway came in and set her sacred feet in the wall niche.
In some other houses in town the sculpted figures insisted on lying flat, snuggling down, as if tired out by the endless heat. At the priest’s place, the piggy bank on the windowsill above the kitchen sink was always tilted, with its front feet down the sloping ledge and its back feet raised. Our church gave us the feeling of a solar plexus in the process of breathing. All the images and the candlesticks rocked back and forth.
If invading forces had wanted to capture us by surprise, they never would have succeeded. Inside our houses we would have felt them the moment they set their first treacherous foot on our soil; the force of their arrival would have been transmitted to our ornaments and religious statues.
Once we’d organized the flower vases, we laid the table, putting on it a crocheted tablecloth made by Grandma, her wedding crockery, the silver cutlery, and the cut-glass wineglasses. We’d barely got the napkins in place when we heard Uncle Gus’s car arriving. Now he was driving a fabulous, flaming-red Mustang, a model never before seen in Agustini, but God knows how it had survived all the potholes on the highway. He also had a camera with him and had us all come out for a photo.
“This is before I introduce anybody to anybody,” he said, arranging where we should stand. “A photo of total strangers.”
Just as he was about to take it, he asked, “Where’s Doña Luz? I can’t take a photo without her. Get her out here.”
“Well, that’s just not going to be possible,” said Grandma. “Go ahead. Take the photo.”
He didn’t ask us to say “cheese,” to get us all smiling, but just snapped us. I’ve still got that photo, I brought it to Germany with me. Behind us you can see kids milling around, their bellies on display, and youngsters from the town intrigued by the car and indifferent to us.
“What about Doña Luz, Mama?” asked Gus.
“She left us, son. Two weeks ago, she passed on to a better life.”
“How come you never told me? I’d have come to the funeral.”
“There wasn’t a funeral,” I interrupted.
His sad features registered astonishment.
“What did you say? No funeral?” he asked in slow, deliberate tones. “Why was there no funeral?” he added even slower. “She was one of the family, Mama. If it was a matter of money, you’d only to ask.”
“What are you talking about?” said Grandma. “That wasn’t the reason. In this town not even the most miserable wretch goes to a better life without flowers, a coffin, and tamales.”
“She turned completely into pee,” I interrupted again.
Gus looked at me with a smile all over his face.
Grandma glowered furiously. “That kid! I can’t put up with any more from her!”
“Let’s change the subject, shall we?” said Gus. “First things first, and then you can explain the whole thing to me.”
With great formality he made all the introductions.
“This is Helen of Troy,” he said, indicating the girl. She was wearing a navy blue sleeveless dress with white dots, made of a delicate fabric, with a dropped waistline, pleated behind. Falling below the knee, it was an elegant chemise, expensive, fine, and quite the latest thing in fashion. Her high-heeled shoes were white like her purse, which dangled from a long gilded chain. Her long nails were painted a bright, shiny pink. Her hair had been styled in a beauty salon with curlers, teasing, and spray.
“This is her brother, the famous Beelzebub Rincon Gallardo, alias Robert the Devil.” A young man with unruly, tufty hair that no amount of pomade could control offered his hand to my grandmother. He was wearing an iridescent red-and-black bow tie. His short-sleeved shirt was white, his trousers checkered. One look at him told me what Grandma must be thinking: “This poor fellow has never made the acquaintance of a comb, and nobody’s introduced him to the favorite aunt of every decent family, Madame Savoir Faire.”
These two siblings with the ponderous surname looked like rich orphans left to fend for themselves. They had invested a small fortune in their clothing but still had the air of a couple of homeless dogs, of two flayed foxes from the middle of nowhere. He with his silly, skewed bow tie, and she with her starveling look and her need to impress the whole world, but with her dress half off one shoulder and her bra strap showing.
“Jack needs no introduction. He’s already part of the family.”
Uncle Gus then gave me my present, a beautiful Barbie with a stunning dress and a huge male doll, almost as big as me, dressed like a bridegroom.
“I brought my fiancée, and to make things even I brought you a fiancé so that you can’t say I left you before you left me. What do you think of that?”
I thought the Barbie was wonderful, but I hated the male doll. And I hated Gus’s sweetheart even more, though I said nothing. I stood there like a grinning idiot, while he took the girl’s hand and held on to it, with her fingers encircling his. Now she looked less like a creature abandoned than an abandoned creature, the slut who had stolen my darling uncle.
A few minutes later I had accepted the idea that my doll boyfriend was quite charming, though he didn’t hold a candle to Barbie. But Uncle Gus’s girlfriend only got worse in my eyes, a tart to the core. I ran off to put my presents in my room, and immediately after they announced they were serving the appetizers.