Her room was built two feet above street level and maybe this was why the breeze was lifting up her light shift, exposing her pretty calves. She was all curves, the way I am nowadays. Both of our bodies are devoid of sharp angles, without being chubby. Whoever designed us — a stumpy god, presumably, because he made us both short — had no knowledge of straight lines. Since I was perched on the rim of the fountain, we were both at the same level. People kept on passing by without stopping to look at her. She raised her shift with her left hand. The sky was now a fiery red, staining the dying day with colors of heat. Inflamed by the hues of the sky, I felt it in my own body when Mama’s right hand emptied the jug over the black triangle of her crotch. She let the vessel drop and wiped the water sliding down her thighs back up to her crotch. She did it again and again. The water seemed to run down in slow motion. Mama was bending forward and then tossing her head back with the grace of a dancer. She was clinging to the balcony rail, and it didn’t seem to bother her that people in the street could see her shameless performance.
My, but she was beautiful! Still, that was no excuse for her to be exposing her nakedness in this scandalous way. Occasional passersby glanced up at her from the corners of their eyes, but they went on their way without raising any hue and cry. I was the only one who was shocked.
I could see the hammock in Mama’s room, a little to one side. It started to sway back and forth. But Mama hadn’t changed her position. Then the door through which I could see her slammed shut in my face. An alarm went off deep in my brain: “There’s somebody with her!”
I ran to find Grandma, because I didn’t know what else to do, and I had to do something. The red of the sky had tinted everything. The whole world was on fire. The ants I had been watching seemed to scurry up the inside of my throat. It was the time of day for the mosquitoes, but I couldn’t hear a single insect sound because everything inside me was buzzing.
I found Grandma in her bedroom, shaking up the mattress, punching it with the energy of a girl. “Grandma, Mama isn’t alone,” I told her. “Hurry up. They’re going to do something horrible to her.”
She ran behind me, still without her shawl over her shoulders, despite the rapid approach of night. She then overtook me, sweeping into Mama’s room like a tornado. The window of the balcony that overlooked the street was still partway open and Mama was stretched in her hammock, her hair down, her shift pulled halfway up, and her legs shiny with water. Her eyelids were half closed. There was nobody with her. Grandma grabbed the pole which we used to gather fruit from the trees in the garden and which Mama kept in her room like some kind of treasure, and started to whack her with it, calling her a filthy bitch, while Mama kept saying, “What’s the matter, Mama? What’s up with you? You’re going to break the pole. It’s for the mangoes. Stop it!”
But Grandma didn’t stop until the pole broke and then she bellowed at her, “So you did have somebody in here!”
“What are you talking about? Who did I have in here? I’ve been alone all afternoon with the door shut.”
“Delmira says you had somebody here.”
My mother narrowed her eyes at me. “Did you see anybody? Why would you want to tell a lie like that?”
“I didn’t see anybody. But I did see the hammock swinging. And somebody slammed the door.”
My answer made her take her eyes off me and she glanced submissively at Grandma.
“It was the wind, Mama. I swear it. Who could I have had in here?”
Grandma now glared at me in fury. It was probably the first time in her life that she had really looked at me.
“You bitch!” she screamed with the full force of her lungs. “I should smash your head open! But I don’t have the energy to waste on you. Did you hear me? You little loser! You misbegotten good-for-nothing! You, you, you …!” This “you” she howled out, pointing at me, drawing out the vowel, as if she wanted to blow me away. But she didn’t finish the sentence. That “you” was enough to convict me of being the lowest of the low.
She leaned over Mama and covered her with kisses, begging her forgiveness. I stood there like a total fool, saying nothing, motionless, watching them hug, Mama crying, Grandma complaining, talking nonstop, enveloping her daughter in words. It had always been obvious that I stood outside the circle of their love, but it was the first time I saw with total clarity that they had something in common, that they shared a world from which I was completely excluded.
3 The Shawl Store
A few days later I went shopping with Dulce. She had three precise errands for my grandmother, who had already set out early to buy the weekly groceries. Dulce had to bring home some cinnamon, a bunch of scented cloves, and a skein of white wool for crocheting. There was no boy along with us to carry the goods. Thinking herself alone in the middle of the hubbub (apart from me, of course), she had let her mind wander. At first she was leading me by the hand, very attentively, but after a while she let go my hand and actually forgot she was in charge of me. She hardly seemed to remember what she was going for. For sure, she wouldn’t notice my absence, so I quit following her through the crowds and smartly slipped away.
It was Saturday, market day, and there was lots of bustle because it was also the occasion of some Indian festival. Booths extended alongside the church and its ample porch, crowded with vendors who had come down from every part of the region and were flooding the neighboring streets with their merchandise.
I was carrying on me all my savings, the money that Uncle Gustavo slipped to me behind Grandma’s back. He no longer lived with us, having moved to the city, but he came back for parties and birthdays. “In this house full of lovely ladies,” he liked to say, “you, Delmira, are my favorite.” I kept every coin and bill he gave me, never spending a thing, because they were my only treasure. But now I had them all with me, as I had decided to get Mama a splendid present so that we could be friends again. I was going to buy her another long pole for gathering fruit, one with a small woven basket at the top which could collect the fruit from the topmost branches without letting it fall to the ground. I was going to replace the one Grandma had broken across her shoulders, but I was going to take her something else as well, something very special, something that would never wear out, something that would be hers alone. It was a stroke of luck that Dulce had let her thoughts wander and had forgotten all about me, because it would have been far from easy to buy something really special with that tough character by my side. She modeled herself on my grandmother and would not have countenanced any extravagance.
I checked out the stalls selling various kinds of tackle and bought the longest pole I could find, much longer than the one that had gotten broken. I scanned the hats for sale with a careful eye, but I couldn’t find one that struck me as really special. Then I toured the haberdasheries inside the market, but I still couldn’t decide on anything. I came out through the rear entrance, where cookware was for sale, and live animals, and I nosed around there, more out of curiosity than anything else, since I’d never explored that section of the market. For a moment I thought I’d get Mama a duck or a turkey. Then I considered a small plate, hand-painted with flowers, where she could keep her hairpins and clips. I almost decided on a pair of extra-sharp, elegantly designed scissors, and I already had them in my hand when I spotted what I was looking for. Between a stall selling gigantic clay pots and dishes, so big they could have been used for elephant soups or cannibal stews, and another with copper spoons and ladles of all sizes, there on the ground, on a large white sheet, beside an unbroken line of long veils, white, gray, and black, which didn’t interest me in the slightest, was a display of rebozos, shawls, handkerchiefs, wraps, and head scarves in different shapes and sizes, and in an endless variety of colors. Immediately I darted to the stall. I planted myself in front of it with my pole set upright beside me. The scarf that first caught my attention was a red one, small in size but of fine texture.