by Laura Resau
As the morning wore on, the sun blazed and wind blew dirt into our eyes, our mouths, our noses. Soon I grew tired of walking and planting and started dumping beans by the handful, quickly covering them with dirt so Mamita couldn’t see. When I announced that my sack was empty, she frowned at me, suspicious, but didn’t say anything.
When the sun was directly overhead and everyone was ready to have lunch, Alfonso emerged from his big white hacienda with its red tile roof and sauntered by, checking on the progress. All the workers lowered their heads, mumbling, “Good afternoon, Amo Alfonso,” or “Good afternoon, patrón.”
Alfonso stopped near me, very close. I tilted my head back to look up at him. He was so tall my neck got a crick in it, and I had to squint into the sun behind him.
“You are a very pretty girl,” he said, “and very smart, and I like how you’re working.”
“Thank you, Taita Alfonso.” I jutted out my chin stubbornly, calling him Taita, the title I’d use for any indigenous man in our village.
He didn’t seem to care. “Now, how old are you, guagua? Five? Six?”
I shrugged. “Who knows.”
He grinned the way a man grins at a pig when he’s deciding whether to buy it—admiring it and imagining how good it will taste or how much money it will make him.
I smiled the most charming smile I could muster up, letting my eyes dance. “Taita Alfonso, if you like my work, we can make a deal.” I paused, searching for the right words in Spanish. “I can work more days for you. And you can pay me a lamb.”
He chuckled and pushed up the rim of his hat.
I stretched my smile even bigger, proud that he understood my rough Spanish. “You don’t need to pay me money. A lamb will do.”
“All right,” he said. “If you work hard and plant all the beans today, you’ll get a lamb.”
As he moved away to talk with other workers, I felt rich and important already, just like a business lady must feel after making an especially good deal.
But Alfonso broke his promise. He never paid me my lamb.
A month later, huge, chaotic clumps of plants sprouted from the holes where I’d thrown handfuls of beans. The vines crowded each other in a twirling mass, winding desperately around each other’s stems, suffocating the tender corn shoots. A furious, red-faced Alfonso asked his workers who was responsible, while at his side, Mariana pinched her lips together as if she’d just eaten a green berry.
I said nothing.
But Mamita knew. “You’re the one,” she said, frowning at me like I was soup with too much salt. Or corn with worms.
Once I was sure she wasn’t going to hit me with a eucalyptus stick as punishment, I smiled inside, because that rotten, lying thief Alfonso and his wife got what they deserved.
In the truck, on the road out of Kunu Yaku, the Doctorita opens a crinkly bag of fried plantain chips. “Have some, Virginia.”
“Thank you, Doctorita,” I say, pouring some chips into my palm. I’m watching the roads carefully, in case I ever do decide to make this journey alone, by foot or by bus. But I may not need to. What if I run back to my family today and refuse to leave? My insides leap wildly at the idea.
“Now, Virginia,” the Doctorita says sternly, as if she can hear my thoughts, “you know if you try to go home to your parents, they’re going to sell you to other people. To a family that won’t treat you as well as we do.”
I grit my teeth. She might be lying … but maybe she’s telling the truth. After all, Mamita had said, I’d be happy if one day you left and never came back. If only I could forget those words. Thinking about them makes me blink and blink to keep from crying.
I eat the chips slowly. The salt stings my tongue, makes me thirsty. I’m quiet during the ride, watching the fields and canyons out the window, memorizing landmarks and turnoffs. The two Virginias inside me argue—the brave one and the scared one, the one who wants to leave the Doctorita and the one who wants to stay.
The brave Virginia says, Stop thinking about Mamita’s bad words to you. She said some good words, too. Think of them.
So I think and think and when I spot a chilca tree out the window, I finally come up with something. A memory where Mamita is not frowning at me. A memory where she has something close to a smile on her face. My daughter, she can do it. Words that glisten with a kind of tender reverence.
Whenever a neighbor had mal viento—evil air—or espanto—fright—Mamita would walk me over to the sick person’s house, and announce, “My daughter, she can cure you. She can do it.”
Mamita would take a warm, fresh egg from beneath one of our hens, then break off a bunch of small branches from the chilca tree. I carried the heap of leaves, pressing them to my nose in anticipation, breathing in their strong scent, a scent that seemed sweet at one moment and pungent the next. At the house of the sick person, usually a cousin or aunt or uncle of ours, I put a holy look on my face. At those moments I forgot the itch of my flea bites and the sting of my cracked cheeks; I felt pure, like a scrubbed-clean angel dropped straight from heaven.
First, I knelt on the woven mat and prayed: “My God, give me the power to cure.” Then I rolled the whole, smooth egg over the patient’s arms and legs and neck and stomach and back and head, to soak up all the evil air. I patted the chilca leaves vigorously over the sick person’s body to clean his spirit. Within moments my breath quickened, and soon I was nearly gasping for air, my arms aching, heavy and weighted down. The more evil air a person had, the more my body turned into a limp rag afterward.
But it was worth it. The patients and their families paid me a few riales and thanked me with respect, as though I weren’t a little girl but a wise, grown-up healer. And best of all, Mamita nodded proudly, saying, “My daughter, she can do it.”
Finally, after six hours in the truck, when my legs are stiff and cramped, we turn onto the dusty, pebbled road to Alfonso’s house. In the distance, my parents’ shack perches on a small hill, looking a little lopsided. Gray smoke streams from the chimney. They must be home. Mamita must be cooking potato soup. My brother and sister are probably playing together. I close my eyes to keep the tears in.
Behind my eyelids, I imagine little Manuelito crawling under the bed and discovering my box of old clothes. What are these? he asks. Hermelinda shrugs. Mamita frowns. Once there was a girl named Virginia, she says. But she was bad and she hit her sister and stole food and always got into trouble. So we gave her away and we hope she never comes back. She is dead to us now. Manuelito grows bored playing with the clothes and starts banging on pots with Hermelinda and laughing. They forget all about the bad girl named Virginia.
My eyes open and I strain to catch a glimpse of someone in my family, but the yard remains deserted. I struggle to remember the good words—My daughter, she can do it—but they feel flimsy and light, as though they could blow away in a gust of wind. No, the other words, heavy as mountains, are the ones that stick. I’d be happy if one day you left and never came back.
The Doctorita follows my gaze. “There you have nothing. It’s filthy and there’s not enough food to eat. And it will always be that way. With us you have good food and shelter. With us you live like a civilized person.”
I try to ignore her, try to find some Quichua words to use as shields or weapons. How to say Hello! I’m home! How to secretly insult the Doctorita in Quichua—ugly mestiza, mean mestiza, mestiza whose chin jiggles! But the words stay hidden.
As we pull up the dirt driveway to Alfonso’s house, the Doctorita asks, “Virginia, do you want to leave us? We can take you back to your parents right now.”
“No,” I say softly.
The Doctorita pats my knee. “Good, Virginia.”
Niño Carlitos smiles his bland smile. “You’re making the right decision, m’hija.”
We climb out of the truck and unload the bags. I clutch Jaimito’s hand as we walk toward Alfonso’s house. I take one last look back at my old home, the flat tin roof flashing in the afternoon sunlight,
the column of smoke fading and drifting away.
The weekend passes quickly. Sunday afternoon, under clouds heavy with rain, we head back to Kunu Yaku. My parents’ house looks sad and abandoned and swallowed by the mist. As we pass it, I shiver and wrap my sweater tightly around me. I peer at the valleys and pastures and red tile roofs spread out below us, dissolving into fog, and then up at the Imbabura mountain disappearing into a stony white sky.
I tell myself that the next time I come here I will be a famous singer in a sequined dress, and these sights and sounds will mean nothing to me. I will breathe in the smells of wood smoke and cows and potato fields and there won’t be an ocean of tears in my throat and it won’t matter if my parents don’t want me, because I will be famous and loved by all and no one will ever know that I came from this place.
PART 2
chapter 10
THREE YEARS HAVE PASSED, and I’m settled into the rhythm of life in Kunu Yaku. I’ve learned how to do all my chores perfectly. I no longer burn the rice or add too much salt or forget to sweep under the sofa. Only once in a while, when I slip up, or when the Doctorita is in a bad mood, does she beat me. And this happens only when my bodyguard, Niño Carlitos, isn’t around. Afterward, when he notices my face bruised and swollen, he whispers something sternly to the Doctorita, who hollers, “Well, why is this longa my burden?”
I understand the Doctorita better now. Even though she often treats me cruelly, I see that she is not all evil. Her students seem to like her, even joke around with her, although only to a point. She’s known for her temper and impatience and strictness, which make her students cautiously friendly with her. She works hard, waking up early to finish planning lessons and grading papers, going to bed late after squeezing in some dental exams in the evening. There’s even a playful side to her when she’s in a good mood, the side that laughs at Jaimito’s and my antics and cracks jokes with Niño Carlitos.
I understand her marriage better now, maybe from all the soap operas I’ve watched with her while lying on the floor beside her bed. Not to mention all the talk shows I’ve watched in secret, while she and Niño Carlitos are at work and Jaimito is at preschool. I often watch television while doing my chores, making sure to turn off the set fifteen minutes before they come home, so it has time to cool off. And all day long, I think.
I think about this family I’m stuck with, about my place with them, about their places with each other, their places in our town. I see that part of Niño Carlitos is proud of how smart and accomplished his wife is, yet part wishes she would be a simple mother and housewife. Part of him feels bad that she makes more money than he does. Part wishes that she would worry about staying slim and pretty and pleasing him, rather than lying like a bulging sack of potatoes on the sofa, exhausted from her two jobs, bossing me and him around.
I see from their wedding photo that the Doctorita and Niño Carlitos were once in love, and that back then, he didn’t care that his mother didn’t like her. Back then, the Doctorita’s education probably impressed him more than threatened him. Back then, he probably liked the way her fat bottom pressed at the seams of her skirt. Over the past three years, there have been times when they fought so much, I was sure they were on the verge of divorce.
Lately, though, life has flowed smoothly. Niño Carlitos seems to have a new appreciation for his wife, as though he’s remembering how he used to feel. They’ve paid their debts and made better investments and saved enough money to rent a new apartment down the street, bigger than the last, with two floors, separate bedrooms, and space for a dentist’s office downstairs. I sleep on a narrow bed in the room where they keep the ironing board and sewing machine and mops and brooms and buckets. Nothing purple or frilly, but my own bed in my own room.
Jaimito is five years old now and has a two-year-old brother. While the Doctorita was pregnant, she glowed, all pink and round and happy because she had an excuse to eat a lot. As her belly popped out, I grew more and more furious that I’d have to wash heaps of diapers again, just when Jaimito had gotten potty trained. But it turned out Andrecito was such a sweet cherub of a baby that his diapers didn’t bother me. He’s always called me Mamá, since he spent most of his first year strapped to my back with a shawl as I washed dishes and made meals and cleaned the apartment. Now that he can walk, we dance together to cumbia tunes on the stereo—which, like the television, I’m not supposed to touch, but could operate blindfolded.
I’ve made friends, students my own age from the colegio, and when I walk down the street, they talk to me as if I’m a normal kid, not a servant, not a former indigenous girl. I understand my place better, in this family, in this town, in this country. I am the only indígena maid in town. Some other people have maids, but they are poor mestiza girls from tiny farm communities. In bigger cities, like Otavalo and Quito, there must be lots of indigenous maids. I remember Matilde saying that she would see other maids like her at the markets in Quito or on the street running errands.
Here, there is no one like me. Sometimes I wonder what it would feel like to have a girl like myself to talk to, a girl who used to be indigenous, a girl who doesn’t know what she is now. I would ask her if she, too, feels an empty space inside her.
It’s a space I’m always trying to fill. It’s like the open beak of a baby bird squawking to its mother, Feed me, feed me, love me, love me. A gaping, hungry, dark space. The smiles from my friends and Jaimito and Andrecito and Niño Carlitos fill part of it, and my fantasies fill another part, but sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night afraid that the emptiness has swallowed everything.
Often in the afternoons, while I pasture the cow or gather alfalfa for the guinea pigs, I run into Doña Mercedes’s daughters, Marina and Marlenny. They have crushes on a sexy singer named Chayanne and always carry little folded-up magazine pictures of him in their pockets. “Ohhh! Isn’t Chayanne gorgeous?” they moan. “Look at those muscles. Look at that chest.”
I nod. “He’s good-looking. But he’s not as smart as MacGyver.”
My heart belongs to MacGyver, the star of my favorite television show. He’s a handsome special agent, always solving mysteries and saving people and getting trapped in deadly situations and figuring a way out at the last second. He’s a genius. Even if he has only a match and a can of Coca-Cola and a stick of mint gum, he can use them to booby-trap the bad guys and escape. All the women on the show fall in love with him. When he kisses them, I pretend it’s me he’s kissing. Oh, Virginia, mi amor, he whispers, caressing my face. You’re so beautiful, so smart, such a fast runner. Will you be my secret-agent partner? For as long as we both shall live?
“One day I’ll marry Chayanne,” Marina sighs.
“One day I’ll marry MacGyver,” I sigh.
Marina is twelve years old, and she figures that in six years she can find Chayanne and make him fall in love with her. And she just might: she has shiny, wavy hair that she wears back in glittery barrettes, and thick, naturally curly eyelashes, and full, pouty lips. “Don’t worry, Virginia,” she assures me. “You’ll have no problem making MacGyver fall in love with you. You have bright eyes and a quick mind. That’s how he likes his women.”
I agree. I’d be the ideal girl for him if I were a few years older. I still don’t know exactly how old I am, but I figure I must be around Marina’s age.
Sometimes Doña Mercedes and the Doctorita speculate on my age. “Well,” Doña Mercedes says, eyeing her daughter and me, “my daughter is taller than Virginia, but look into their eyes. Marina has the eyes of a child, but Virginia has the eyes of someone much older.”
The Doctorita shakes her head. “Oh, no, my Virginia is younger.”
I flinch whenever she says my Virginia, as though I’m her pet.
She laughs. “Look, my Virginia barely has breasts.”
I blush and fold my arms over my chest.
“I still say Virginia’s older,” Doña Mercedes says, unconvinced.
“Well”—the Doctorita shrugs—“eith
er way, she’s definitely becoming a teenager, the way she primps in front of a mirror for an hour before she goes out. Even to buy a bag of eggs!”
My face flushes hotter still. It’s true. Before I go on errands, I brush and smooth my hair into a perfect waist-long ponytail and try on three outfits before I find the right one. Once I tried to leave my hair loose, like some of the ninth-grade girls I’d seen at the colegio, but on my way out the door, the Doctorita snapped, “What do you think you’re doing?” and made me pull my hair back.
Sunday mornings are best, because the Doctorita and Niño Carlitos sleep late and Jaimito watches cartoons with Andrecito. I can leave to buy the milk and bread without them knowing what time I’ve left. I get up early and put on my favorite pea green jacket. My other clothes are all a little too big or too small, but this jacket fits me as though I went to the store and bought it just for myself. I slip out of the house around eight o’clock and head toward the town square.
Life feels as quivery-new as the morning air. I walk around the sparkling fountain slowly, taking my time, wandering through the crowds, past the people lined up to buy warm popcorn and steaming potato tortillas. Cumbia music floats out of the shops and fills me up, makes me feel part of the thrilling buzz of families and couples who’ve come from the villages to spend the day shopping and talking and strolling.
I imagine MacGyver walking next to me, his arm around me, his hand resting comfortably on my hip. He brushes a strand of hair from my face and whispers words of love in my ear. We sit on a bench and munch popcorn while I tell him my secrets: how my family is fading from my memory, except for the words Mamita told me, that she would be happy if I left. Those words will never fade. MacGyver’s jaw clenches. Mi amor, if you want, I’ll booby-trap her house to get revenge. Just say the word.