Love a Foot Above the Ground

by Anna Burke

  Paulo was bragging about the fact that he and Guillermo had ended up with much more fish than my father or Tomàs. My father and Tomàs each had helpers, too, but none like Guillermo, apparently.

  “You would not believe how much fish we had in my little panga, Mama,” he said his chest puffed out like one of the roosters in our coop. “That’s why Tomàs and Pop are outside cleaning the fish we brought home for us. We had a wager that whoever caught the most would not have to clean those fish. Thanks to Guillermo, I get to sit down and put my feet up while everyone else is working.” My mother stopped him in his tracks.

  “Not until you go out and wash the smell of fish from your hair and hands,” Mother said firmly. An indoor shower was not one of the amenities we had. So my brother did as he was told, and got up to drag himself out to the courtyard where he could pump water to scrub up for dinner. “While you’re out there, see what fish is cleaned already. Bring it in so I can go ahead and start it cooking.”

  “Okay, Mamacita, but it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to wash off the fishy smell then put it back on again bringing fish in here to you.”

  “Then be careful not to slop it on yourself, Paulo,” Mother chided him.

  I said nothing during this whole conversation, but I was nervous. That Guillermo had kept his word to impress my father by catching all that fish was clear to me. Had he also asked my father if he could walk with me to church in the morning?

  Who was he, anyway? Where was he staying while he worked in town, I wondered, but did not ask? Where was his family? What would they think about his taking a walk with a girl he had only just met? My head was a crazy mixed up jumble of questions. I couldn’t even sort out one from another, or figure out which one to ask first. So I was silent, much more silent than usual.

  “Okay, but why don’t I just build a fire and cook it outside, Mama? I think you and Bernadette need to talk. Bernadette has a boyfriend, Mama. His name is Guillermo and he’s a good fisherman. He’s coming to the house in the morning to go to church with us. Pop said he could.” Mother let out a little puff of air—almost a gasp, but closer to a sigh. Then she turned a knowing eye toward me. I felt the eyes of my sisters on me too. I’m sure I flushed from my head to my toes. I felt like I might faint.

  “So, that explains it. Your sister has not been right since she got home this morning. Yes, Paulo, please cook the fish outdoors. Thank you, son, and good for you for catching all that fish. I can imagine you had quite a bit of help from Guillermo, yes?”

  “Yes, Mama, he was an eager fisherman. I had to convince him to sit and eat his lunch or he would have kept working, putting lines out and setting out the net without stop. I told him he did not want offend you or Bernadette by not eating the meal my sister had brought to us. That did it,” he said, and Paolo smiled mischievously as he headed out the door.

  “Mama, I need to sit down,” I said, taking a seat around the family table. That large wooden table was more than a place to eat. We did everything around that table, homework, prayers, as well as planning and discussing family problems or big events. Heart to heart talks with Mama took place there, too. Sometimes after the men were fast asleep that’s where we would do girl talk. While my grandmother was still alive she would join us there too. I learned about our family traditions, and how to sew, to cook and bake, and about love, marriage and babies. It was quite natural that when I needed to sit down, before I fell down, I chose that spot.

  “Theresa, please, you take over and finish the tortillas for dinner,” Mother said to my older sister. Mama sat down across from me at the table with a huge bucket of string beans she had rinsed, and a pot in which to toss the picked beans. “Rosa, you check the pot and tell me when the water is boiling, while Bernadette and I pick the beans.” My sisters moved quickly, their actions acknowledging my mother’s requests without uttering a word. They were not going to speak and risk the chance they might miss something that passed between my mother and me.

  “I’ll help, too, Mama,” my sister, Maria, said taking a seat beside me. She was only nine, a tagalong to me much of the time. At that moment, it was a comfort to have her at my side. The two youngest children were in the room too, on the floor in a corner playing a game of jacks. Not sure what was going on, they were unusually quiet too.

  “Okay, Bernadette, tell me about your young man.” Seeing my reaction, her effort to ask that question with sternness, vanished. My sisters, standing at the stove must have heard me suck in air. They started to giggle. I began to choke and cough, before I could figure out what to say.

  “Maria, get your sister a glass of water before she strangles, por favor?”

  “Sì, Mama,” Maria said as she popped up out of her seat, returning quickly with a glass of cool water, poured from a pitcher kept in the fridge.

  “He’s not my...uh,” I tried to speak, but my throat was so dry my voice cracked. He was my Guillermo. I knew that even as I reached for the words to deny it. I started to sputter and hack again. My sisters laughed louder and my mother joined them.

  “Take a sip, carefully, Bernadette.” I did as I was told. The water soothed my dry throat and calmed my beating heart. I realized that I really did not have much to tell them. I felt as though Guillermo was as close to me as my own skin, but what did I know about that? Skin was just this part of me that I took for granted. What could I tell anyone about it that would mean something to them?

  “Thank you, Maria.” Another sip of water and I was finally able to speak. “He is the finest boy I have ever met, Mama.” My sisters giggled.

  “Why do you say that, Bernadette?” Mother asked. I began to pick up beans and remove the ends, trying to find more words, as I tossed the beans into the cooking pot. My hands were not moving as swiftly as Mama’s or Maria’s, who were making quick work of the mountain of beans it took to feed a family of ten. The work helped anchor me so my mind did not float away as it wanted to do. My mind wanted to take me back, as it had done all day, to that discovery of Guillermo on the beach. I told them how I had walked to the beach that morning in the same way I always did. How I spotted them all sitting at the edge of the water, but heard him first, from a distance, before I saw him.

  “He has a voice like an angel, Mama. Paulo and Tomàs will tell you that. I heard them say what a fine singer he was before they realized I was standing there with the lunches you packed for them. He is well spoken, and polite too. More polite to me than I was to him, I’m afraid.”

  “Why is that, niña?” My mother asked, with a concerned look on her face.

  “I don’t know. He made me upset. I felt so strange when I heard his singing. It was even worse when he spoke to me...and looked at me. I thought that a boy like him might be too full of himself. Paolo and Tomàs were picking on me, so I stomped off.” A loud harrumph came from my sister, Theresa, as she set a plate of fresh made tortillas in the middle of the table. She was all too familiar with my temper and had chided me, even more often than my mother, about the way I stamped my feet when angry or upset.

  “So he has already caught sight of El Pinto?” Theresa asked as she went back to cook more tortillas. El Pinto is the name she had given me when I kicked at the ground like that. As she said that she mocked me, pawing the ground, and whinnying. Rosa got into the act, too, putting horns on her head pawing the ground like a bull, rather than a pony. She charged Theresa who spun away as they both laughed.

  At another time it might have made me furious, to be honest. But my mind was flooded with the sight and sound of Guillermo. The feel of the buttons and cloth of his shirt made my fingertips tingle. I decided not mention such a forward act on my part. At the time I had reached out, as a sister might, to help a messy brother. When he grasped my hands in his, it was clear to me that I did not feel about him as I did a brother. I finally responded to Theresa’s question.

  “Sì, Theresa, I am afraid he has seen El Pinto. I was wrong about him, though. He came after me. When he spoke he was so sincere, Mama. Rig
ht away he wanted to impress Papa with his fishing, and wanted to ask his permission to go to Mass with us tomorrow. Not at all like the boys from school who feel they no longer have to ask permission to talk to you or visit with you. Isn’t that true, Theresa?” It was my sister’s turn to blush, as all eyes turned toward her.

  “Sì, that is often true. They complain that because they see you every day at school, or used to be in school with you, there is no reason to be so formal just to meet up with you somewhere else. They see nothing wrong with approaching me directly. I tell them otherwise, of course, not that they like to hear it one bit. Perhaps Guillermo was willing to talk to Papa because he is a stranger, and doesn’t presume on familiarity.”

  “Very well-stated, Theresa,” my mother said, nodding her head as she understood precisely what Theresa and I were telling her about the local boys. Mother was about to speak again when little Maria turned to me and asked a question with the twinkle of stars in her eyes.

  “Is he very handsome, Bernadette?” The room was completely silent. Even the little ones paused. My sister Antonia held the ball and jacks she had just picked up in one hand suspended in midair. I felt the flush rising in my cheeks again, and the dizziness took hold. I put the beans down and picked up that glass of water, gulping the last of its contents.

  “Oh yes, Maria, so handsome. He has a smile that rivals the sun.” A round of sighs escaped my sisters’ lips, bouncing around me from wherever they were in the room. My mother stifled a smile as she threw the last of the beans into the pot.

  “Rosa, is that water boiling?”

  “Sì, Mama.” Without being asked, Rosa took the pot of beans off the table and dumped the contents into the boiling water on the stove, adding a small handful of salt.

  “So where has this handsome, polite, well-spoken boy come from, Bernadette? Why is he here in San Felipe?” Mother asked.

  My father stepped into the room just then. His black hair was slicked back, wet from having washed the smell of the day’s catch from it. His sleeves were rolled up and glistened from where he had scrubbed his arms too. Behind him, Paolo and Tomàs followed. Paolo held a platter of grilled fish, still steaming as the aroma of mesquite filled the room. Tomàs carried cleaned fish in a shallow square pan, covered in a layer of ice, the pink flesh and silvery skin, were visible, here and there.

  “Pop had the fire already going, Mama. He and Tomàs had our fish for dinner, already cleaned and ready, too. All I had to do was place it on the grill and watch as my stomach grumbled, and they finished cleaning the fish for tomorrow.”

  I knew it wasn’t quite that simple, and smiled to myself, grateful for the distraction. My stomach rumbled, too. I had been too nervous about that encounter with Guillermo to eat much at lunchtime. Relieved that my secret was out, and that Guillermo had spoken to father, I relished dinner.

  As my father moved to the head of the table and sat down, Paolo followed with the freshly cooked fish. He placed it on the table next to the tortillas. There were roasted white peppers on that platter too. Tomàs took his pan of cleaned fish to the refrigerator. It only barely fit, almost as wide as the fridge itself. Tomorrow’s meal was ready to be cooked.

  Theresa brought more fresh tortillas and a pot of frijoles from the stove as she sat down. Tomàs took a pitcher of drinking water from the refrigerator to the table, as Rosa set out plates, glasses and silverware. We sat for a couple more minutes while the ejotes boiled in the pot. My father spoke.

  “Guillermo has left his family and gone, not to a city in Chihuahua where they live, but to Mexicali. In June he finished high school and is planning to go to college next year, if he is accepted.” That set off another round of gasps. I felt torn up inside by so many mixed emotions. Pride, because Guillermo was truly an exceptional boy. Fear, though, too. Mexicali was a million miles away. Or it might as well have been. My father, and later my older brothers, drove the one hundred twenty miles to that town, on occasion, to deal with something about fishing. But only once a year did the whole family go on that long drive to Mexicali. One year, when my grandmother was sick and needed to see a doctor, we made a second trip. She and my father and mother rode in the cab of the pickup truck while the rest of us piled into the back of the truck as we usually did.

  “What is such an educated man doing here in San Felipe?” My mother asked, as she began to make the rounds, filling glasses on the table with water. The pitcher was soon empty. Rosa was at her side in an instant with another full one, taking the empty one from her.

  “His parents hope that if he spends part of the year out on the open sea, while he waits to hear from the college, he might satisfy his wandering soul. They think the work at sea will give him a greater appreciation for the life they live on land. So they sent him here to stay with Carlos and Juanita who are cousins to his mother. He has signed on to help Carlos on his trawler. After watching Guillermo yesterday I wish he was going to be working with us this season.” He smiled at me as I continued to try to make sense out of what he was saying.

  “He has more than wandering on his mind now, I think.” I could barely hear him. My heart was pounding so loudly in my ears. My mind was wandering, too, frantically, from one question to another that filled it to overflowing. A ripple of laughter reached me, as my family waited for my reaction.

  “May I ask you a question, Papa?” I said, with all the eyes on me, making me feel so nervous my voice sounded squeaky.

  “Of course, little mouse,” my father teased. “What is it?”

  “Does Guillermo say that it is his wandering soul that makes him want to go away to college?”

  “You should probably ask him yourself when he walks you to Mass in the morning.” He smiled broadly and paused for a moment as he picked up the platter of fish, placed a piece on his own plate and passed it to Paulo sitting on his right.

  “What he has told his parents, so he says, is that he wants to learn modern methods to better manage his family ranch. As the oldest son, he will be responsible for that one day. His father believes he already has enough education from books and needs, now, to settle down. Take on more responsibility for the running of the ranch. You know, Bernadette, find a wife and start a family of his own, like any grown man.”

  “But Papa, he’s no more a grown man than Paolo, is he?” That caused Paolo to nearly spit the water he was sipping. A little water dribbled down his chin, causing my brothers and sisters to giggle. “See, he drinks water like a baby,” I said as Paulo wiped his chin with a cloth my mother handed him.

  “But he wipes his own chin,” Tomàs said, “so he is not such a baby.” Paulo threw the cloth across the table at Tomàs. My father snatched it from the air before it could reach Tomàs, or land in the food.

  “Throwing things at the dinner table does not make you appear more like a grown up, Paolo.”

  “Sorry, Pop, but at least I am grown up enough to begin to take my responsibilities as a man seriously. I am at my father’s side, learning all the things that books can’t teach, and I’m only a few months older than he is. Guillermo turned eighteen in May, Bernadette.”

  “Only barely a man then, Paolo, so I believe he should have time to figure out what he wants his life to be before he’s asked to live it,” I said, in Guillermo’s defense. Paolo shrugged, but said nothing more. “I will ask him myself, Papa, to hear what he has to say about it.”

  “Do as you please, Bernadette. I doubt you will hear much with your eyes so full of that boy who’s only barely a man. Perhaps he’s also too young to know, yet, what sort of woman he wants for a wife. Especially when it comes to girls that are such babies they haven’t even celebrated their quinceañeras,” Papa teased.

  The snickering around me was set off again. I must have looked horrified as he spoke those words. That thought, several like it anyway, had already occurred to me. Perhaps, that’s why I wanted Guillermo to have more time to grow up—so I could catch up. How could that ever happen? I wanted to run, and might have bolted,
except that Mama spoke.

  “Stop teasing your daughter, Enrique. She’s already doing what a good wife does. Taking Guillermo’s side, and supporting his dreams, is what she will have to do if this one meeting on the beach turns out to be more.”

  “Knowing our daughter, she will have her own opinions about what he should do and will make sure he hears them. She did that once today already.” Rosa set the bowl of steaming green beans on the table in front of me. Before she sat down, she pawed the floor and stamped her feet. Theresa, sitting next to Mama, responded with a whinny.

  “Sì, Papa, El Pinto is no mouse!” The table erupted in such laughter that I was swept up in it, too. Of course they were right. I would talk with Guillermo and support his dream if he could make me see how it made sense. It was only a couple more months until my quinceañera. I would catch up, as women so often do. Could I keep up? That was another of the concerns I had about the handsome Guillermo who had surprised me in so many ways in only one day.

  4 Everyday miracles

  I hardly slept that night. The next morning, when Guillermo came to walk with me, my father introduced him to everyone. He was as polite as I had said, and as well-spoken. He paid my mother, and my sisters, a compliment, as he handed each a small stem of bright red allamanda flowers.

  “Please accept these with greetings from Tia Juanita. They come from her garden,” Guillermo said, still holding one last stem of the lovely red blossoms.

  “Please tell her thank you, Guillermo. I will do it myself, of course, if we meet up with your aunt at Mass,” my mother said. She smiled sweetly at him, as did my sisters. Even the six-year-old Antonia, who spent most of her time peeking at him from behind my mother’s skirt, smiled. She had stepped out from behind Mama just long enough to take the flowers from Guillermo.