Aunt Sonia is softer, delicate, with light blue eyes, an upturned nose and porcelain skin. She is also petite, large breasted and prettier than mother because she doesn’t have the same hard, worried expression. She is two years older than mom but looks a lot younger, and mom says that time stands still for Aunt Sonia because she has “La Gran Vida” [“A Great Life”] and never has to worry where the next cent is coming from.
Aunt Sonia rings her little bell twice for the maid to serve tea and coffee, but Josefa doesn’t appear.
“Go see if she died in the kitchen or something,” she tells me impatiently. “It’s so hard to find a maid that moves fast these days, most of them move at a snail’s pace, dragging one foot in front of the other.”
Josefa is sitting in a little stool with a plate on her lap, and she gets startled when I walk in. She is wearing a white apron on top of her “pollera” [“typical Aymaran skirt”], and she begs me not to tell my aunt I caught her eating because she’s not supposed to eat till everybody is finished but today she was hungry and couldn’t wait. I tell her not to worry and to bring in the tea and coffee at once, but she’s really agitated and I take pity on her reassuring her again that I won’t say anything. She hides her plate in the lower cabinet next to her and I tell her to say she was outside getting rid of the garbage.
She is a pretty, round faced, light skinned young woman with long braids and nervous movements who’s been with my aunt for a couple of years, but I understand why she is upset because she knows my aunt likes to wait till everyone has finished eating before giving her the leftovers.
“I can not tell a lie,” she tells me reddening and nervously twisting her left braid. “It’s a sin to tell a lie.”
“It will be a worse sin to get fired for being hungry.”
“She’ll never find out?”
“Of course not, I’m trying to help you here.”
She lowers her eyes and bites her lower lip. I leave the kitchen and Josefa serves the coffee and tea with shaking hands and looks at me nervously while I smile at her reassuringly. She tells my aunt the lie of the garbage, and my aunt smiles at her and tells her she’ll give her lunch in a few minutes. I know she likes Josefa because she is clean, her clothes are spotless and she wonders how she is able to achieve that feat living in El Alto, the poorest district of La Paz, in miserable, substandard conditions.
~~~
Carlos and I go to the movies and he wants to see a war movie while I want to drag him to the romantic comedies I adore. I bribe him with cokes and chocolates, and keep stuffing him every time he complains that this is no war movie and that I have duped him again, till he falls asleep from boredom and his overexposure to sugar, and I enter the land of enchantment by myself. I sit there in the darkness savoring the movie and wishing it never ended. The bright screen is illuminating the actors’s faces and I make a mental note of the coming attractions knowing that I will die if I don’t get to see the next picture.
Carlos wakes up when the picture ends and I tell him he missed the war scenes which were terrific, and he gets mad at me and asks why I didn’t wake him. Laughing inside I tell him he was enjoying such a wonderful snooze I didn’t dare to disturb him. He asks me to describe the scenes to him and I make up stories while we walk back home, and he looks at me with incredulous eyes and says that I’m lying because Doris Day was in the bathtub the last time he looked and how did that turned into war, and I tell him the Russians declared war as she was getting out of the tub, and he calls me a liar, liar, pants on fire, and gives me a swift kick on the knee but I don’t care, I’m full of Rock Hudson and Doris Day and nothing can bother me today.
I go home knowing that this movie will last me for weeks, I’ll be rehearsing all the parts, dreaming of being Doris Day and living in such a fantastic city. Her song “Que Sera Sera” [“Whatever will be will be”] is already a huge hit in Bolivia and mother sings it a lot. I tell her the story and she seems disappointed Doris didn’t sing in the movie saying that the woman sings like an angel and what’s the use wasting that voice in some silly comedy.
~~~
It’s March 23, the anniversary of Eduardo Abaroa, our greatest hero, who badly outnumbered by the Chileans, defended our soil till his last breath shouting the famous, “Me, Surrender? Let your grandmother surrender, you cowards.” It’s time to go on the yearly parade and mother gets up at the crack of dawn to make us a succulent breakfast of eggs, ham, potatoes, toast and hot chocolate so we’ll have the stamina to march all day without fainting, which according to her we would, without the necessary fuel for our bodies.
We never understand how she manages to buy ham and eggs which are always so expensive for these special occasions, but presumably she borrows or begs for an advance on her knits if necessary, because she’s not going to send her children to march under the hot sun on an empty stomach, the way her mother did, resulting in fainting episodes when she was growing up in Oruro, the small, stifling miner’s town where she was born.
We know she overdoes it and sends us out there so stuffed we can hardly walk, but we love the attention and pampering she gives us. It is great watching her fuss over us, washing and ironing our uniforms the night before, filling our bottles with water and sugar, stressing we drink constantly as though we were going to the Sahara desert because on these occasions it’s all about us, and she is able to forget her personal problems.
We have to shout “Down with Chile, down with the pirates of the Pacific, long live our martyr Eduardo Abaroa” but we want to take a nap instead. I separate from my brother so he can go with his own school and notice he looks sluggish and dopey. I wink at him and he winks back smiling and rolling his eyes as if to say ma did it again. He has soulful brown eyes, black, curly hair, a small nose and a heart shaped face like mother.
My ears are full of the stories about the infamous Chileans mother shared with us the night before to refresh our memory, because it’s no use marching for miles and miles under the hot sun if you don’t know what you’re marching for. She tells us that not content to steal our ocean, making our nation hopelessly landlocked, the Chileans also stole our songs and culture. She hates them because their actions converted us into one of the poorest countries in South America, and says they are the pirates of the world who should be despised and scorned by us forever.
I struggle to get into the spirit of the parade and properly express my contempt but I can hardly keep my eyes open. I know it will take a few hours for all the food I swallowed to go down and by then the best parts of the parade will be over. Still, looking at all the flags, hearing the speeches and listening to the cymbals playing, I feel a certain pride swelling up in my chest and enjoy the attention of the crowds who have gathered to look at us admiringly. I can’t help but feel that Eduardo Abaroa set an example for us all by staring at death right in the eye that could never be matched. What did it take to be like that? Was he born that heroic? Mother says we’re all heroic in our own way to put up with this miserable life, but I think he was the greatest. I could never look at a gun without cringing and begging for my life. Thinking of his heroism my eyes mist and I feel a twinge in my heart.
~~~
It’s a beautiful sunny day in La Paz, precious because it’s warm, something we never take for granted with our capricious mountain weather, and we are going down Monje Campero Avenue, and I look at the two girls up front playing the cymbals with the cute, short white skirts and knee high boots, and regret the fact that I was so clumsy I got dropped for hitting the cymbals at the wrong time. Oscar says it was just as well because mother could have never afforded the expensive boots and skirts, and he has a point, but I still feel disappointed in myself. It is one thing to lose because you can’t afford the fancy attire and quite another to get kicked out after many rehearsals because you are so inept they can’t get you to strike a single note in cue.
The same thing happened when I got picked for the school play and couldn’t dance to the Blue Danube music if my li
fe depended on it. I had wanted to be in that play more than anything in the world, and I had blown it by being unable to follow directions. The music teacher had spent inordinate time with me patiently showing me the steps and how to move my arms gracefully like a swan but I was hopeless.
The reason for this is that I am shy and self conscious to a fault and totally undeserving of the attention I am always getting because people think I look good out there in the podium. They don’t know that I never feel good about myself, not in the real sense of the word, I always think I am too lanky, too uncoordinated, and in a country of full of short people, that’s a big thing. For one thing, everybody thinks I am older because of my height. The girls call me “giant” and I defend myself by calling them “midgets,” but their comments still rankle, forcing me to walk hunchback all the time in an effort to hide my height.
~~~
Mother has made cabbage soup again for lunch and I already know we’re going to have a big problem with my brother. He hates cabbage soup, he says the smell of it makes him sick but mom doesn’t give a damn, she says cabbage soup is full of nutrition and he will eat it if he wants to see the dawn of another day. He looks at me with pleading eyes and I nod so he can sneak some of his cabbage onto my plate. I swallow it real quick when mom isn’t looking, partly to help him out but also because I have a voracious appetite and nobody has to tell me to eat twice. He’s so bony we can count all the ribs on his chest one by one, and his lack of appetite drives mother insane. He takes forever to swallow food and she has to end up shoving food down his throat and hitting him. We call this the “food wars” because they usually end up the same way, with him crying hysterically over his cold food and mom yelling and screaming that if he doesn’t want to die right then and there, he just better finish his food.
She blames this on the fact that he only weighed five pounds three ounces when he was born, because she had tried to abort him by taking lots of enemas and laxatives. “Life begins at conception,” she says to me tearfully, when he is sleeping. “I don’t care what your aunt says; I’ll go to my grave believing that. I’ve seen miniature fetuses in a jar at the museum and they had perfectly formed arms and legs. But his father gave me no choice at that awful time in my life so I tried to get rid of this beautiful child, and I might have damaged his digestive system in the process. I guess that’s the price I have to pay for going against my nature. You have to admit that his lack of appetite is not normal, there’s something wrong with him.”
I look at him sleeping soundly at my feet and feel tenderness in my heart for him now, but it wasn’t always that way. At the beginning I hated sharing my bed with him and would often kick him at night making him cry. His birth had been a life changing experience for me too because I had stopped being the only child and he had forced me to share. The minute he stopped crawling, while mom did her work, I taught him to walk and talk. I remember rushing him because Uncle Jorge had gotten me a beautiful doll with blue hair from Venezuela, and I wanted to play by myself, but he would take his time learning, and I would have to spend hours walking him endlessly around the small courtyard in the lower level of Aunt Sonia’s house where we had our room, with mother yelling after me to keep him walking till he got it right.
“No te des de alta, soldado Morales,” [“don’t discharge yourself yet from duty, private Morales”] your work isn’t done yet,” she would mock me, clapping her hands for emphasis and marching one two three, one two three in a cadence like a soldier.
Grudgingly, I would comply while she cooked her customary soups in the kerosene stove, her hair up in a kerchief – the pungent smell of garlic and onions penetrating her nostrils and making her face flushed and red. I would make him repeat words over and over while he watched me with a silly grin on his face, preferring to play with my hair rather than doing the work. He was a happy baby, content to sit on the floor, propped up by pillows for long periods of time regardless of whether he was hungry, cold or wet. His good nature pleased mother enormously too because she said I was always a difficult, cranky baby.
~~~
It’s finally Wednesday, glorious Wednesday and it is time to go to my aunt’s house for lunch. Mom has washed and dried my hair in the sun so my aunt will have nothing bad to say, and she is combing my bangs with the thick, hard comb she uses for everything which scratches my forehead. She always cuts my hair in the same Prince Valiant style that I hate, because it is easy to manage. She tells me that when I’m a mature woman, I can let my hair grow to my ankles the way the Indians do, but while I’m still a child and living under her roof, I will obey her rules and look neat and presentable. I have lots of thin, silky hair that flies all over the place, and she takes some Vaseline and applies it to the ends of my hair and to the bangs which stick over my forehead like glue.
Satisfied that I look good she gives me a quick peck on the cheek and lets me go repeating that I don’t make her look bad by eating like a field hand. I promise and as I close the door I notice that my brother looks sad and pensive because he wasn’t invited. I try to tell him many times that I’m not the favorite, that I only get invited more often because I’m older, but he doesn’t buy it. He thinks my uncle and aunt prefer me and only throw him a bone once in a while. I know he is right and I feel bad for him but I can’t stop going to their house no matter what they do because I would lose the only outlet I have.
My aunt has invited Aunt Emilia whom we call Aunt Eli, and she’s smoking and drinking in the terrace. She’s crossing her legs and forming little circles in the air with the smoke nonchalantly. She’s a tall, good looking woman with long, wavy red hair she often combs to the side like Rita Hayworth whom she believes she resembles. She has a big flat face, small, vivacious eyes and large, thick lips she accentuates with a liner. Her figure is hefty and she’s always trying to lose weight. Mom hates her because she is my aunt’s best friend and favorite cousin, and says they were inseparable since they were children to the exclusion of everyone else in the family, especially her.
Mom calls her “la carantona” [“the big face”] and says she has usurped her place and is always imitating my aunt in everything she does. My aunt had two boys, so Aunt Eli managed to have two boys; my aunt named her sons Ramiro and Carlos, so she named her sons Ramiro and Carlos, saying that she had always loved those names and wasn’t that a big coincidence? Mom tells me that my aunt loves to play bridge so Aunt Eli entered her select group of friends becoming an avid player herself, and that the only thing she couldn’t imitate was her choice of a husband because my aunt married a man fifteen years older than her who was also her boss, while Aunt Eli married her childhood sweetheart.
Mon says they are both well off and have “La Gran Vida” with nothing to worry about but how good they look and how to prevent themselves from aging too fast. It is a well known fact that Aunt Eli’s husband cheats on her all the time but she looks the other way, because she’s not going to risk her comfortable lifestyle just because her husband keeps a mistress on the side. Mother doesn’t know how she can stand it when everyone knows about it, she says she would rather be alone and reminds me that she got rid of Oscar’s father for the same reason.
I don’t remember Oscar’s father ever living with us, but for some reason his moaning outside our door after Oscar was born, “let me see my child, María, I have a right to see my child” has stayed on my mind. She would scream at him to go away and leave us alone, and he would try to force open the door which had a big lock from the inside. I remember being afraid he would break down the door, and hearing mother sobbing after he left. She had eventually allowed him to recognize Oscar and give him his last name, which was Ardani because he was of Italian descent; but too jaded over the court battles with my own father, she never took him to court and he never gave her a cent for his upbringing.
She would say it was better that way because nobody else would ever be able to lay a claim to my brother. We ran into Oscar’s father years later by chance at the post office, and
when he approached her, mother rebuffed him with an icy glare saying that he must be mistaken because she had never seen him in her life. He was a short, thin man with shaky hands and nervous mannerisms who smoked incessantly and had a pale, unhealthy complexion, but nobody could deny he was Oscar’s father because he looked like Oscar down to his curly hair and freckled face.
Mother recognized the uncanny resemblance but hoped that he would never have his father’s astute nature or his addictions to women, tobacco and alcohol. She had been introduced to him by Uncle Jorge, who was a very good friend of his, and said that Alberto Ardani was once a very good looking man with a bright future but you could never tell that by the wreckage he had made out of his life.
“I guess his wife found out that she couldn’t compete with the bottle because he’s permanently enamored of the cantinas,” would say mother bitterly, whenever she thought of him. She hated him because while still living with us after my brother was born, he’d had the audacity to make her iron his white shirt the morning of his wedding to another woman, lying that he was going to a meeting at the ministry of labor where he worked. He had looked handsome as a groom and she had told him so, never imagining that she had indeed guessed the sordid truth. Uncle Jorge told her that Ardani had married out of greed and that he really loved mother, but nothing assuaged her humiliation, not even the fact that the rich woman threw him out without a cent a few years later.
~~~
We sit down for lunch and the maid has made lentil soup, avocado salad and Fricasė which is my uncle’s favorite dish. Fricasė is a spicy stew made out of pork meat, which is served with small white potatoes and white corn. It is so spicy I feel my face burning and drink lots of soda to wash it down. The grownups have red wine with their meal, and they are toasting my uncle whose birthday happens to be today. Ramiro gets up with his glass of wine and offers a toast to his father, saying he has a special gift for him. He begins reciting a poem that he composed himself about an old man who has come a long way in life, admiring the fact that he started out from nothing. He recognizes that he can be a difficult son at times but says this old man will always have a special place in his heart.
Beyond the Snows of the Andes Page 2