by Laura Resau
I have plenty of time to think of everything that could go wrong with my plan. What if they figure out I’m lying? That I’ve done all this myself? Nervous sweat trickles down my sides. She’ll kill me, that’s what she’ll do. She’ll beat me to death. And my family will never find out, because according to Matilde’s note, they don’t even know if I exist anymore.
I can almost see myself looking down from heaven, watching the Doctorita bury my battered body in a cornfield in the dead of night. Later, when Marlenny and Marina and Doña Mercedes and Niño Carlitos and the boys ask, Where’s our beloved Virginia? she’ll only say, Oh, that longa must have run away. And everyone will cry and cry for me. Why didn’t she say goodbye to us? Oh, how we’ll miss her. Meanwhile, the Doctorita will grin her evil grin, knowing she got away with murder.
Now I really, really have to go to the bathroom. Finally, I untie myself, which takes a while, and dash to the bathroom and pee for a full minute. Ah, sweet relief.
And then, while I’m on the toilet, I hear the truck pull into the driveway. They’re home!
I run back to the bedroom and frantically wrap the rope around myself, wind it around and around, and tie it to the bedpost.
The door clanks open.
“Virginia?” the Doctorita’s shrill voice calls out. “I thought I told you to lock the door. Didn’t I—” And then a scream and a thump. She must have just seen the giant mess and dropped her bags in horror.
Niño Carlitos’s voice calls up: “Virginia! M’hija! Are you all right? Where are you?”
I muster up my most traumatized voice. “Help me! Up here! In your bedroom!”
They run up the stairs. The Doctorita’s face is white, the color drained away, her mouth open. She clutches the door frame, looking about ready to collapse. “Wh-wh-wh-wh-what happened?”
“Thieves!” I cry. And on command, the tears start gushing from my eyes. “Th-th-they came into the house! I-i-it was h-h-h-horrible, Doctorita.”
Her pudgy fingers tremble as she unties me. “Are you all right?”
I snivel and sniff and give a weak nod.
Niño Carlitos turns to the boys. “Go to your room and close the door and stay there.” He comes up to me, touches my cheek. “M’hija, did they hurt you?”
I shake my head. “They just—they just scared me really badly.”
“Because if they touched you, I’ll kill them.” A vein pops out on his forehead. “I mean it, I’ll kill them.”
I whimper some more as he strokes my hair.
“Virginia, what did they look like?”
“I-i-it was two thieves,” I say. “O-o-one was short and light-haired. A-a-and the other was tall and dark-haired. A-a-and they wore baseball caps.”
“I’m going to go look for them, Virginia,” he says, jogging out of the room. He turns back, his face pained. “Are you sure they didn’t touch you?”
I nod, miserably. “They just t-t-tied me up.”
The Doctorita finishes untying me, her hands still shaking, her chins trembling. “Virginia, go take a shower to calm down. I’ll fix you a cup of tea.” I leave her sitting with her hand over her heart as though it could jump right out of her body. After my shower I come back to her bed and lie there, watching TV like a princess. She brings me lemon balm tea to settle my nerves and starts cleaning up the mess, breathing hard with effort and fear, muttering about how she knew it, that thieves are lurking around every corner. How the world is a dangerous place, even in a little town like Kunu Yaku.
Suddenly, she pauses and looks up at me. “Why didn’t they steal anything?”
I shrug.
She tilts her head. “Are you sure thieves broke in?”
“Yes,” I say, indignant.
“Did you do all this?”
“How could you think that, Doctorita?” I say, letting tears leak from my eyes again. A whole lake of tears has been under the surface for years, waiting to come out. “How could I tie myself up? Why would I do that?”
“To scare me,” she says slowly. “You know my nerves are bad. You did this, didn’t you?”
“That’s not true.” I stare into her eyes, as though I believe it with every cell in my body. As though I’m a famous actress on a soap opera.
A cloud of doubt passes over her face. “It’s true,” she says weakly, then sinks down on her hands and knees to gather the spilled trinkets.
The boys come in and cuddle with me, one on either side. Soon Niño Carlitos pokes his head in the room. “More tea, m’hija?”
“Yes please,” I say, sweetly. “Thank you.” And I let a few more tears fall for good measure.
He pats my shoulder. “It’s all right, m’hija. We’re here.”
The Doctorita continues cleaning on her hands and knees, eyeing me suspiciously. She watches me as though I am not a child servant, but a real, grown-up woman with thoughts and schemes of my own. She watches me almost cautiously, as though I am unpredictable and not to be trusted. She doesn’t say anything more about it, only watches me with different eyes.
Meanwhile, the boys and Niño Carlitos are fussing over me, gushing love and warmth and concern. I soak it up eagerly. Maybe I should consider a career in acting. What else can I do with the rest of these stored-up tears?
Niño Carlitos keeps patting my shoulder. “Don’t worry, m’hija. You’re safe now.”
chapter 16
I WOULD MAKE A GOOD SOAP-OPERA STAR, but I’m starting to suspect it’s an impossible dream. Nearly everyone on TV is either mestizo or American. Only once in a while, on the soap operas, is there an indígena, and she’s usually a fat, middle-aged maid who never speaks except for yes, señora. She does nothing but sweep, open doors, and serve food. I hate watching those fat indigenous maids. As much as I want to be an actress, I don’t want to play a fat servant.
One of my favorite programs features singers performing music. The women are always slender and smooth and beautiful, no bulges on their stomachs, no jiggly fat on their thighs. Only the curve of their firm breasts and hips and bottoms.
From what I remember, none of the women in my village looked like that—they waddled like round hens and thought they were pretty. If a girl was thin in Yana Urku, people said she looked as sickly and ugly as a dying tree. But now I see they were wrong. That’s just another thing that makes them ignorant indígenas. They don’t understand what it means to have a beautiful body.
Everyone knows that mestizo men like their women slim with fair skin. As I’ve witnessed when Niño Carlitos gets angry, he tells the Doctorita she’s ugly and fat, which makes her cry and knit Baby Jesus dresses for days on end. I smile on the inside because if I can’t get vengeance on her, at least she’s getting it from someone else. I feel a little sorry for her, but mostly it feels good to see her hurt the way I hurt when she calls me names.
And here’s another thing that makes me secretly happy. Niño Carlitos is always telling me, “Oh, m’hija, you look pretty today.” Or, “I like your hair that way, hija.” Or, “That skirt looks nice on you, hija.” So when he insults the Doctorita, I smile to myself, knowing that he thinks I’m pretty.
But most of the time, I don’t feel pretty.
Most of the time, I worry that any day now I could turn into a fat, ugly indígena.
The Doctorita has forgotten about the aerobics book that Niño Carlitos gave her, but I haven’t. Every day, I race through the cleaning, then look at the color pictures of beautiful mestiza women in skintight leotards with flat stomachs and narrow thighs. I imitate their exercises, jogging in place, moving my arms in tiny circles, lying on my back and moving my legs around like I’m riding an upside-down bicycle. My muscles ache and burn, but it feels good knowing my body is that much closer to looking like theirs.
Lately my breasts are swelling more, little by little, which is fine, but my belly and thighs and hips and bottom are also getting a padding of fat, which is not fine. If this keeps up, soon I’ll be waddling around like the indígena servants on TV
. What’s worse, little ugly hairs are sprouting up in hidden places—under my arms, between my legs. The women in the exercise book only have glossy, long hair pulled in high ponytails, no other, ugly hairs as far as I can tell. Every day, I wish harder and harder for a body like the exercise ladies’, like the singers’ on TV.
The harder I wish, the less I eat.
I feel proud when I get through a whole day with only a bite of beef and a few spoonfuls of rice and a glass of melon juice. My stomach rumbles all the time, but I embrace it as a sign I’m getting thinner.
No one notices but Niño Carlitos. He notices me much more than the Doctorita does. He notices how my breasts have been growing. Sometimes, when he thinks I’m not looking, he stares at them. After dinner one night, as I’m washing the dishes, he studies me with concern. “Are you all right, daughter? You seem so thin. And pale. Do you feel sick?”
“I’m fine,” I say, pleased he can tell I’m thinner. And the pale skin is an added bonus. “Just fine.”
There was another time, years ago, back in Yana Urku, when I felt the thrill of turning white. It happened when I got my first pair of shoes, when I was about six. Matilde brought me to the market with the riales I’d saved from my snack money during those six torturous weeks in first grade. The vendor handed me the boots—black rubber with zigzag soles, just like Papito’s—and I was the happiest girl in the universe.
That afternoon, I wore my shoes to pasture the cow and sheep. With abandon, I ran and skipped and kicked big rocks and stomped through mud puddles. I showed off my boots to every child I passed. My feet sweated and slid around inside them; when I reached the pasture, I discovered that two blisters had formed on the thin skin over my anklebones. By the time I came home, the blisters had popped and their water mixed with the sweat in the boots; even this, somehow, seemed beautiful to me.
All week I wore the boots. Every evening I cleaned them, using a stick to remove any last trace of mud from the zigzag soles. After I took off my boots, my feet looked wrinkled and tender and white. That’s when I realized that these were magic shoes. Mixed with sweat, they had the power to turn me white!
The next morning I woke up early, excited. Inside the kitchen, I poured water from the pot into my boots, filling them up, then carefully wedged my feet back inside. Some of the water spilled over the sides, but the remaining water still reached the rims. Now my ankles and calves would turn white too. And then the whiteness would spread to the rest of me. This was my deepest, secret hope.
All day in the pastures, I sloshed around in my boots with my goat, Cheetah, and Josefa and the other cows and sheep. People I passed gave me strange looks. “What’s wrong with you, girl? Why are you walking like that?” I didn’t tell them my secret. They would see, tomorrow.
At home that evening, I took off my shoes outside and dumped out the water. I examined my feet. White! All the way past my ankles! White and very wrinkled.
I sipped my soup in bliss.
When I finished, I examined my feet again.
Brown and pink.
The same feet as always.
Tears welled up first and then rage, a deep sense of injustice. It stung like Mamita’s slap when she’d told me, “We will always be indígena. Nothing will change that.”
After a few months of eating nearly nothing, it takes every bit of strength I can muster to do the little arm circles. When I stand up after doing sit-ups, I feel dizzy and steady myself with the wall. As I sweep, the joints of my shoulders and elbows ache. Sometimes a sharp pain, like a needle, shoots up my arm while I scrub the bathroom. Climbing the stairs, my knees hurt, as though they’re tired of carrying me everywhere. I doze on the red velvet sofa whenever I get a chance, too exhausted to follow Jaimito and Andrecito around. It’s the price of beauty.
And then one day, I can’t hold the broom.
It falls from my hand and whacks the floor.
“What’s wrong with you?” the Doctorita demands.
“My arm hurts.”
“Why?”
I shrug. “It just does.”
“Pick up the broom.”
I bend down, and my body aches, but I muster up all my strength and manage to pick up the broom. I am like an old lady.
This scares me.
Still, I eat even less and exercise even more.
From time to time, the Doctorita piles us all in the truck for a trip to her relatives’ house in Santa Rosa, a couple of hours away. I love these trips. Unbelievably, her mother, Anita, and niece, Silvia, and nephew, José, are sweet and dote on me, giving me hand-me-down clothes and telling me how beautiful I am. They treat me like a niece, or a granddaughter. Whenever they’re around, the Doctorita hardly ever hits me or calls me longa. If she slips up and yells or orders me around, Anita scolds her. “Treat our Virginia with respect, hija. And be easy on her. She’s just a young girl.”
Silvia always looks at me deeply, with kind eyes that really see me, that really look, and when she asks, “How are you, Virginia?” I feel like she means it, like she truly wants to know.
A week after dropping the broom, I’m at Anita’s house, eating dinner with the whole extended family. They never ask me to serve them, and they let me eat off china plates and use good silverware with the rest of them. I’m casually rearranging the food on my pretty flowered plate, pushing the meat around, wondering if I can slip any into my pockets and throw it out later. Today I’m too tired to enjoy their conversation and kindness. I can only think about resisting food and sleep, which is hard with a permanently rumbling stomach and eyelids that hang heavy as stones.
“Virginia,” Silvia says, her forehead wrinkled in concern, “you don’t seem like yourself. Have you been sick?”
I shake my head, too exhausted to form words.
Anita turns to José. “Why don’t you take a look at la Virginia, dear.”
José is a doctor, young and handsome. He studies my face, and I feel self-conscious, wondering if they’ve noticed I’ve only had two bites of meat and a quarter of a potato, and worrying I’ll somehow get in trouble. “Virginia, are you sure you feel all right?”
Dully, I nod.
After lunch, José brings me to his office in the clinic and sits me on a little bed covered in a tight white sheet. The room smells like disinfectant and bleach and a hint of his cologne. Normally this would thrill me, to be alone with this handsome doctor paying attention to me, but all I want to do is lie down on the bed and slip into sleep. He listens to my heartbeat with a stethoscope. “Pretty fast.” He takes my blood pressure. “A little low.” He feels my face with the back of his hand. “Cold.” He studies my face.
“Do you always breathe so fast, Virginia?”
I shrug.
He rubs his hand over his eyes. “Has Romelia been feeding you well?”
I shrug again.
“You’re thin and pale,” he says.
Good. Thin and pale is exactly how I want to be.
“Too thin, Virginia. You’re malnourished and anemic.” He looks sad, or angry, or some other feeling he’s trying very hard to hold in. He takes a deep breath and presses his lips together, then says, “Let’s go.”
I set a slow pace back to the house. Walking makes me short of breath. A block seems like ten kilometers. “Will I get in trouble, José?”
“What?”
“With the Doctorita. She’ll get mad at me, I know it.”
His mouth tightens into a hard line. “I’ll talk to her. Don’t worry, Virginia.”
Inside, the Doctorita is watching TV and talking with her mother. José tells me to wait in the kitchen, but I peek out and listen. His face is red and he’s talking to the Doctorita in a low voice that makes me think of opening the lid of a pot just a little so steam can pour out, so it won’t explode. “This girl’s starving, Tía—how can you keep her malnourished like this? Don’t you feed her?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Virginia has anemia and vitamin deficiencies.”
Anita looks at the Doctorita in horror. “How could you do this to our Virginia?”
The Doctorita blinks. “I give her plenty of food.” She turns to Niño Carlitos. “Don’t I?”
He says nothing, just looks thoughtful.
Anita and José eye her suspiciously. “Admit it. You’ve never treated her well.”
“I give her lots of food!” the Doctorita shouts.
And then Silvia comes in and when she hears what’s happened, she’s yelling too, and then the Doctorita is crying. She snivels and sniffs and finally calls me out of the kitchen and glares at me. “Don’t I feed you?”
I nod.
“Then why is she malnourished?” José demands.
I have to tell the truth. “I wanted to be thin.”
The Doctorita has that look in her eyes like she wants to smack me, and she would if there weren’t people around.
José closes his eyes and shakes his head. “Look, Virginia, I’ll give you vitamins and shots to help you build back your strength. But you have to eat. Bruta, you have to eat if you want to grow. You’ll stay short forever if you don’t eat. Your bones are growing. You need to eat. How can you grow up if you don’t eat?”
These are the magic words. The one thing I want more than anything is to grow up so the Doctorita can’t hurt me, so I can leave and start my own life. I want this more than being thin.
For the rest of the afternoon, José and I sit in the kitchen. He explains how my body is growing and all the nutrients it needs. Vitamin A from carrots for my eyes. Calcium from cheese for my bones. Iron from meat for my blood.
“Virginia, promise me you’ll start eating again.”
“I will. I promise.” I pause. “José?” I don’t know what I want to ask exactly. “Do you think it’s my fault? Do you think I’m bad?”
“Oh, Virginia, of course not. Your life isn’t easy. We know this. Just remember, you’re beautiful how you are.”