by Hebe Uhart
Luisa insisted; she got the chocolate bars and sometimes even a notebook to draw in. Uncle Esteban knew the future of that notebook would be bleak. Luisa gave half of it to Aunt María, ripping the pages out. On her pages, Aunt María drew young ladies with curly locks, hats, long dresses, and handbags. As she drew, Aunt María said: “This is the young lady of sport and ruffles. How charming!” She drew another just like the first and said: “This is the young lady of sport and surf.” There was another she called the lady of bidet and toilet, but they all looked the same: little ringlets and faces like a dead fly.
Around that time a southern screamer showed up at María’s house. Nobody knew where it came from or why. The southern screamer is a bird with spikes on its wings that it only flaunts when nervous. The bird chose to maintain a safe distance from the house, but since no one ever visited Aunt María, the first time Luisa walked through the gate the southern screamer became startled. Luisa watched as it exposed the spikes, drawing closer; her heart raced.
She didn’t mention it to Aunt María, who wouldn’t have had the slightest clue how the southern screamer had shown up anyway. Luisa presented the face powder to her aunt, who said:
“It’s not Rachel.”
“I’m telling you it is. It’s Rachel,” Luisa said. “What does it say here? What’s that word?”
“Liars! Troublemakers! Tricksters!” María said.
That day she didn’t draw any young ladies of sport and ruffles. She didn’t make any fritters either. She maligned all the filthy people and troublemakers of the world.
Luisa ran to the playground. She told Uncle Esteban:
“I’m going to the playground.”
She played on the swing for a while, halfheartedly. More like she sat on the swing. She was bored.
She wanted to stop by María’s before going home to say goodbye, but the southern screamer was there; still, the idea of facing the bird gave her a sense of satisfaction. She couldn’t let it scare her. She’d approach the house casually, as if invisible. When she opened the gate, the southern screamer played the fool. Luisa said to her aunt:
“I’m leaving.”
María heard her but it just set her off again:
“They’re not honest, they’re not honest people. They’re a treacherous, bloodsucking race!”
Luisa conjured up a terrible race of bloodsuckers and treacherous individuals, but then she realized that some of the comments were directed at her, for example “troublemaker,” which made Luisa feel a little bit naughty.
This time, when she left, she had a pleasant surprise: it wasn’t Saturday and yet Lili was there. Lili vacationed in a nearby house and had a romantic past: her parents were poor and she’d been adopted by a well-to-do family, the ones who took their vacations there. Lili had met her poor parents and siblings, but it seems that she was something of a nuisance to both her poor family and her rich adoptive parents.
They wanted her to be a concert pianist and Lili practiced for four hours a day, but when she went to the playground, she made mischief. Luisa really liked Lili, but she also figured that a concert pianist—even if only eleven years old—should be more reasonable than someone like Lili, because when they were sitting on the swings Lili told her a flat-out lie. She told a story about an aviator’s plane that malfunctioned: the aviator ejected from the plane into the sky and fell, making a pit six feet deep in the ground. Then, alive and kicking, he stood up, brushed himself off, and walked home. Luisa knew it couldn’t be true and she said:
“No way.”
“I swear over my own dead body,” Lili said, crossing her fingers. Luisa figured it was worthless to keep arguing.
She pretended like she believed that the pilot had gotten out safe and sound, but afterwards she felt lonely and pensive. She decided it wasn’t worth it to lose Lili’s friendship over an argument about a hypothetical pilot. Besides, she found Lili to be both admirable and despicable: despicable because such a ludicrous fantasy was shameful coming from an aspiring concert pianist—or perhaps, thought Luisa, playing the piano was mechanical for Lili; she banged out the notes and got better and better without even realizing it, like a talent she possessed in spite of herself, as if she were an acrobat. And admirable because such an outlandish fantasy, together with the fact that she’d been adopted, made Luisa think Lili was some type of gypsy.
* * *
—
The house where María lived belonged to Uncle José.
It had a front porch with mosaic tiles decorated with fleurs-de-lis and the Page of Wands. The land around the house used to be a yard, complete with grass, but now tall weeds grew because Aunt María hated the lawn mower, and she especially hated the scythe. There were rosehip bushes, a jasmine plant, an apple tree, a persimmon tree, orange and lemon trees. You used to be able to see the train pass by from the kitchen, back when the hedge had been trimmed. The kitchen was huge and it was next to the damp room with the chicks.
Then there was a big dining room and three lovely bedrooms. Uncle José had wanted to contribute by letting Aunt María live in that house in Paso del Rey; but every time he came to visit from Buenos Aires he spluttered with rage. Since the hedge hadn’t been trimmed in a while, it had grown into a thicket of tall trees; you could no longer see the train through the hedge. María was on friendly terms with José because he was a “visiting brother” and not a “resident brother” like Esteban and Ernesto.
She let José enter the kitchen.
“Hello José dear,” she would say to him. “Where have you been?”
“I’m in from Buenos Aires.”
“What do you mean—all the way from Buenos Aires!” said María. “How silly!”
José started to stutter and he showed her his train ticket.
“I’m—I’m telling you that I came from Buenos Aires.”
José was active, he had a long list of home improvements to make. He didn’t stay talking to María for more than two minutes. Just looking at the hedge made him flush. He kept getting redder and redder and he couldn’t stop walking in circles. There were red ants; the big rose bush was cankerous; the southern screamer strutted around smugly like an absurd little monster. The small room with the chicks was dank and musty; they were pecking at the lime on the wall for food. María was always forgetting to feed them, especially when she was filled with prophetic inspiration. The bidet was black and there was no heater in Esteban and Grandmother’s place. Uncle Esteban suffered from chilblains and they weren’t the normal kind. His hands were entirely deformed and he couldn’t get rid of them. Meanwhile, Uncle José put out ant poison, muttering about neglect, backwardness, and moral misery. He unclogged pipes that had gotten backed up, and found the ant nests right away. When José arrived, pesticides and ant poison materialized miraculously. He went after the poultry mites and if the weasel was in range, he killed it. José agonized over that house, but more than anything else he wondered what he would say to his wife; she was so neat and careful. She knew how to wrap up packages just like they did at the shops, she painted folding screens, and she used to play the piano. Then she stopped because she thought she’d forgotten how. She feared she would make a mistake—and no matter what, she never made a mistake.
* * *
—
The Saturday-afternoon crowd created so much work, there were always so many baby bottles to be chilled and kettles of water to heat up. More and more of them kept coming; they came in droves, in truckloads, they were like nomads who moved into the park. Now they asked to use the telephone too, and they wanted to go to the river. The river was three blocks away and Luisa was never allowed to go swimming there. It was a dirty and dangerous river. Only once in a while, with Lili and a grown-up, could she walk along the bank. The vacationers went to swim in the river; they came back overjoyed, asking for more beer. Uncle Esteban scoffed at them, treating them as if they were an inferi
or caste deserving of that river. Plus, they invaded the area used by the regulars. One day, after his second glass of wine, Don Servini (for whom the bar was his home away from home) didn’t bring up Rosalinda the dam or whether King Umberto I had been a good ruler. He got up from his little aluminum chair, walked up behind Ernesto, and said:
“Just look at this place, Ernesto. It’s a regular dance hall. A regular dance hall.”
Ernesto, who was just in the midst of watering down Don Servini’s wine, said:
“I’ll be right there, I’ll be right with you.”
Don Servini walked up and took a look around. There was a gazebo and a perfectly level dance floor, painted pink.
“Ernesto, the gazebo is for the orchestra. That’s it! That’s it! Let’s see, but it’s broken here. Tomorrow I’ll send a man over to fix that gazebo.”
“Alright, Don Servini.”
Uncle Ernesto was capable of filtering the water and wine—or transferring certain drinks into different bottles—right in front of the regulars. The regulars already knew about it, which led to all manner of jokes and teasing.
To a certain extent, Don Servini had the power of decision; he came every day and didn’t care for the Saturday vacationers. A dance is much easier to control, like Don Servini said. You can charge for tickets at the door and hang a sign that says: “This establishment reserves the right to deny admission.”
Uncle Esteban began sweeping furiously. If he was put off by the Saturday vacationers, the regulars, and the river, he loathed the idea of putting on a dance.
“A dance hall,” he said sarcastically. “A fucking dance hall.”
Don Servini knew that he couldn’t discuss the matter with Esteban, so he followed Ernesto around as he performed his distillery duties, Don Servini even trailed him to the telephone, where he would call his family in Buenos Aires. Ernesto listened to the scheme without much interest. In fact, he was just pretending to listen because Ernesto was always caught up in his private affairs, but he never said no.
Records they already had; they’d been dumped into a corner a few years back. Luisa had listened to them when she was around six years old. There was one that went:
Los gitanitos tenemos todos
El alma alegre y el cuerpo loco
All us little gypsies have
A happy soul and a crazy body
When Luisa heard it for the first time, she went nuts. That record made her want to dance immediately. Then there was another one, with strange lyrics:
Ven a ver la ola marina,
Ven a ver la vuelta que da,
Tiene un motor que camina p’alante,
Tiene un motor que camina p’atrás
Come and watch the ocean tide,
Come see how she spins about,
She’s got an engine to move her forward,
And an engine to move her back
Luisa felt like that song embodied the spirit of investigation.
It wasn’t so easy to decide how to deal with admission to the dance: Was it going to be exclusive? Could Antonio come? He brought around the vegetables every day wearing tennis shoes and the regulars constantly teased him about his family, and especially about his brother. Antonio had a brother who took care of the cows; he didn’t know how to speak. Luisa and Lili saw him walk by sometimes, behind a couple of cows. He was half man and half monkey. His entire body was covered in thick hair. He had a fleshy, toothless mouth and he only knew how to cry out to get the cows moving along. Lili said that he must have turned out that way because his mother had gone to bed with a monkey, but Luisa didn’t believe it. No, he wouldn’t even find out about the dance. But Antonio did come, wearing a suit and a tie—he was barely recognizable—and with him, a petite brunette. The regulars kept their mouths shut, expectantly. It wasn’t the time or the place to mention his younger brother. Antonio and the brunette lined up outside the market. On the patio, the regulars started playing cards; they had more important things to do than watch what Antonio was up to. But Luisa followed him in. She adored Antonio, who always smiled at her and treated her nicely. To Luisa’s surprise, the brunette eagerly approached the candy jar. Uncle Esteban would never let Luisa eat those candies because he said they were old. At this point Luisa wouldn’t have eaten those candies even if she could have (because she bought bigger, better candies in Moreno), but they’d caught the eye of the brunette, who was around eighteen years old.
Antonio smiled, realizing he could indulge her, and he urged her to ask for more. She did and gave some to Luisa, who accepted. It dawned on her that Antonio and the brunette were treating her as if she were grown-up, or at least as someone deserving respect. Then Luisa asked her:
“What’s your name?”
“Aurora.”
“Aurora what?”
“Aurora Lipzchi.”
“Write your name here.”
Aurora smiled but she didn’t say anything. Antonio took her by the arm and said:
“She doesn’t know how to write. She’s illiterate.”
He smiled and gazed into Aurora’s eyes. She said pleasantly:
“My mamita couldn’t send me to school.”
And he led her, sucking on candies, to the dance floor.
It didn’t make any sense to Luisa. How could such a big girl, eighteen years old, be so enchanted by a jar of candies?
She told her mother, who was reading the newspaper, about the incident. She said:
“They’re girls from the countryside. They don’t know anything.”
Luisa couldn’t imagine what it would be like not to know anything. And just how was it that adults knew so much without even getting up from their chair or looking up from their paper? She decided that even though the brunette was much older than her, it felt like she was younger.
* * *
—
They decorated the dance hall with colorful garlands and even hung some out on the patio too, where the regulars sat. They had a great view of the dance. Luisa didn’t know where to stand, she didn’t know how to dance but she didn’t want to stay too close to the adults either. When she heard that song she loved:
Los gitanitos tenemos todos
El alma alegre y el cuerpo loco
She was struck by a feeling of sadness and a fear of the unknown, at the same time. So she went out into the darkness, under the fig tree, and watched the dance from there. She would have liked to watch it all from up close, but only if she had been invisible. If Lili had been there, they would have watched from afar together, but she wasn’t.
Luisa felt ashamed of herself for wanting to dance and not knowing how. No, she couldn’t dance in front of everyone now like she had at age seven when she danced to “Los Gitanitos.”
Then she forgot all about her problems because something unusual happened: Aunt María had gone over to Grandmother’s house and there, with the dining room door wide open—which was visible from the regulars’ patio, the dance floor, and even all the way from Mars—her aunt was dancing alone. She held her hands on her head and took small steps, dragging her feet, a little bit forward and a little bit back, like the ocean tide.
Uncle Esteban was beside himself. He called out:
“Alright! Enough!”
But it was obvious that she couldn’t stop dancing, she was possessed by her role as a dancer. There she was, a stout woman over the age of fifty, holding on to her skirt. Strictly speaking, there’s nothing wrong with a stout woman over the age of fifty holding on to her skirt, but you should have seen Aunt María. She kept placing her hands on her head, lurching forward with such determination and disregard for others—as if she might even shimmy all the way over to the dance floor. But then they realized she didn’t have plans to go anywhere; there she stayed, as if inside a magic bubble.
At first, Luisa laughed at her a
unt’s dance; she felt irritated, embarrassed, and ashamed by her aunt’s persistence. María had violated an unspoken agreement until then respected by all the other dancers on that calm and enchanted dance floor. They could all see her and yet she couldn’t care less; she didn’t manifest any hopes or desires of dancing with anyone else.
Luisa went back out into the darkness, by the fig tree, to watch the dance floor from afar. She knew her aunt was there too, dancing with her hands on her head, and Luisa couldn’t push that image from her mind.
She was momentarily repulsed by her aunt’s dancing, but then she felt bad about her disgust. Aunt María would just have to learn to dance the right way—a more normal dance, like everyone else. She looked like she was under some sort of spell; perhaps one day in the future Luisa’s aunt would become more discreet and prudent. She couldn’t possibly dance like that forever.
So Luisa accepted it, temporarily. She thought to herself: In the end, the only ones here who truly love dancing are Aunt María and me.
* * *
—
One day Luisa was standing outside the front door with her Aunt María when a man walked down the sidewalk. María yelled:
“Cross to the other side of the street, you thief! This sidewalk is mine! This is my street—all of this belongs to us!”
The man left quickly, sheepishly.
Luisa was embarrassed. How can anyone rightly say they own the sidewalk?
“Why did you say the sidewalk is yours?” she asked.
More furious than ever, María replied:
“It’s mine! They’re all thieves, murderers, fucking gold diggers!”
Where María had come up with those insults, no one knows. After yelling she muttered to herself, as if repeating a mantra: “I’m right. I’m right.”