If you ask me, my brothers have it easy. Men in general have it easy: they spend pretty much their whole lives gawking at girls’ chests without even having to wait for their own chests to grow something worth gawking at, or for their hair to grow only to then spend their lives shaving it off. Pina pulled me up on this last point, though.
‘And what about facial hair, then?’
She might have a point. As soon as she forgives me for what happened the other day I’ll tell her as much. This happens sometimes with us: we stop talking for an afternoon, or even a couple of days. One time we didn’t talk for almost an hour in the same room because she made fun of me for using the word ‘bygone’. She doesn’t get it. ‘Bygone’ is an awesome bygone word.
The letter doesn’t say anything they haven’t already told us by email, but it makes me happy anyway; happy not to be there with them. And because in it they repeat the one really important thing: that they got my seeds. I’ve done my research, you see. It seems knobby tomatoes don’t just grow from a single plant that you can plant. So now I’ve got myself an ‘heirloom tomato-seed kit’ which I bought online. I paid with Mom’s credit card and my brothers are going to smuggle it back in their suitcase. I have no idea how to say ‘heirloom tomato’ in Spanish. To me it sounds like a shady character: the Heir of the Looming Tomatoes. Or like some kind of macho saying: ‘You must stay home and weave, chosen heir of the loom.’ But when I told Pina this she just said, ‘Get over yourself, Elizabeth.’
Every three months, since I was about eight, Emma sends me a box of books. She buys them by the kilo whenever someone in her county dies, and then sends them on to me. For two whole years I got nothing but Agatha Christie novels. Whoever Emma’s neighbor was (RIP) he was a major fan. During those two years everything around me was a clue, and Pina would respond to anything I said with a ‘Cool it, Christie.’ Alf never stopped calling me that, but he also never tells me to calm down or get over myself.
I thought that Emma wouldn’t send me any books this year seeing as I boycotted camp, but a couple of weeks ago a box arrived full of Elizabethan classics written in an elegant and long-winded English. That’s where Pina got Elizabeth from. What’s in a name? My nicknames are determined by the reading preferences of dead folk from Michigan. Maybe now — because of all the Elizabethan and because I skipped the US trip this summer — my spoken English will disappear altogether. If they ask me my name, I’ll answer, ‘Taa tin tete tu,’ and I’ll have to communicate with Emma solely in writing. I only ever practiced speaking English at summer camp. Emma would say to me, ‘You’re so pretty, kiddo.’ And I’d answer in my best Miss Marple accent, ‘Why, thank you, my dear!’ Which doesn’t mean I believed her.
‘You’re so pretty,’ I say to my yard.
*
I take Pina a few cherry tomatoes from my plant and she forgives me for calling her stupid for no reason the other day. She comes over with her new hula-hoop and is gobsmacked by how it all looks now it’s planted. Mom made lemonade and I take sips from my glass while Pina tries to make the hoop hula around her waist.
‘I think Daniel has a lover,’ I tell her out of nowhere.
‘The neighbor?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘No way!’
‘Yes way.’
‘How do you know?’
‘The other day I went and knocked and he was there but he didn’t open the door.’
‘And?’
‘And I peeked a look under the door and saw some shoes.’
‘So what?’
‘There was a pair with high heels too, just sort of lying there. And Daniela doesn’t wear heels.’
‘Men are scum.’
‘Where did that come from?’
‘It’s what Chela says.’
‘Shall I tell you something else? When Emma went to the University of Michigan in the seventies, the women weren’t allowed to go in through the main door.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Uh-huh. There was a little door to the side with “Ladies’ Entrance” written on it.’
‘That’s awful! And it wasn’t even that long ago. But, shall I tell you something? If Theo isn’t careful, he’s gonna turn into a macho.’
‘Theo? But he plays the piano!’
‘Uh-huh, but he never takes that T-shirt off. The one with the naked girl on it.’
‘She’s a pin-up girl.’
‘It’s deprading.’
‘Degrading?’
‘Whatever! It’s wrong.’
Pi lets the hoop fall to the ground and she sits down at the table. I pour her some lemonade. I feel strong and tan. I pass her the glass and illuminate her, Marina-style, ‘It isn’t wrong, darling: it’s vintage.’
‘What really is wrong is Chela giving me a hula-hoop.’
‘Wrong how?’
‘Like she thinks I’m still nine.’
Mom opens the sliding door and says, ‘Look who came over!’
Marina emerges from the kitchen, as if summoned by my impression of her. The second she sees Pina, though, her eyes drop to the floor. Marina always avoids Pi. It’s one of those things that goes on in the mews and which we all know about but nobody understands. The same with Alf, who every evening takes The Girls around the block in their stroller. Pina doesn’t care. I think she might even like it: it amuses her. She says hey to Marina and offers her a go on her hula-hoop. Marina tries it while I tell them all about the Iroquois, a tribe of American Indians who had their own constitution and shared out all the powers equally: only the women could be chiefs of the clan, and only the men could be chiefs of the military, but the chief of the clan was the one who chose the chief of the military.
‘And were there less wars?’ Marina asks.
‘No idea. What I do know is that they planted a kind of milpa. I’m using their technique actually, it’s called the Three Sisters. The three sisters are corn, bean, and squash.’
Marina and Pina look over at the plants in the planters.
‘No,’ I tell them, and point to the part where it looks like there’s nothing but soil.
They nod, unconvinced.
‘It’ll take a few months to get going,’ I say.
The window opens and Mom whistles for me to go over. I’m convinced she’s going to tell me to get rid of Marina, and that by some secret Protestant mafia law she’s not welcome in this house. But instead she passes me a clean glass. It has movie characters on it and a straw built into the side. Theo got it in a fast-food promotion. Mom says, ‘It’s the only plastic one we have.’
Marina blows her a kiss, but Mom doesn’t react: she’s staring at something else. I think she’s about to notice that I planted the corn. She might be able to tell from the notches I made in the planters where I’m going to tie thread to mark out the plot (I don’t want anyone stepping on my three sisters thinking there’s only soil there). But her eyes are on something else.
‘Pina, where did you get that?’ she barks, all weird and aggressive. My mom never calls her Pina.
I look at my friend. She’s holding the cuddly dog I found the other day. Marina looks at it too and shouts, ‘Patricio!’
‘Did your mom have it?’ my mom asks.
‘What?’ Pina asks.
‘That was Luz’s dog!’ she says.
‘It was mine!’ I tell her.
‘I remember that, Ana. When I first met you, you wouldn’t let it out of your sight,’ Marina adds.