Beyond the Snows of the Andes

by Beatrice Brusic

  ~~~

  Two weeks go by very quickly and in our last Sunday at the bakery mother jokes that she would like to do voodoo witchcraft on Alicia to prevent her from coming back on Monday.

  “Forget it,” says Juán sharply. “Black magic won’t stop that bitch from coming back here but shooting her in the head might, I’ve guns in the back in case we get held up, I can always arrange a robbery and shoot her.”

  “Oh,” says mother. “You mustn’t even joke about a thing like that.”

  “I do have guns,” he says seriously. “I was held up at gun point years ago and the boss has allowed me to carry arms ever since, I can show them to you if you like.”

  “No thanks, ever since my brother got killed during the revolution, I hate the sight of guns.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

  Angel holds onto to his leg. “Do we have to go, ma? I want to stay here with Juán.”

  “We have to go darling,” says mother pulling him away. “Thanks for everything, Juán. You’ve been so kind.”

  He holds her hand and gives her a quick kiss on the cheek. “Can I visit you sometime? I’m going to miss the little devil tremendously.”

  “Any time,” says mother without hesitation. “You know where we live. You dropped us off once. Do you remember the address?”

  “I do, and I’ll be there.”

  We walk back home in silence, carrying the bread and cakes he has insisted we take with us. Mother and Oscar have tears in their eyes and I try to cheer them up.

  “Come on, ma, something else will turn up. Let’s be glad we had the job to begin with.”

  But despite my false cheer, I too feel depressed and apprehensive. The false security of the job has spoiled us, making the return to our regular existence all the more difficult. It has gone very fast because we have been happy, but now each day will drag on interminably and every evening will be filled with strife again. I will miss the bakery, the pastries, the customers but most of all I will miss the temporary feeling of ease and comfort so rare in our lives. Mother kept knitting to supplement our income, but at least she had the rent money secured every month. Now her face is tense again and I’m afraid she’s going to erupt when things start to go wrong.

  ~~~

  Two months pass and we get no visit from Juán.

  “I guess he didn’t want to waste his time,” says mother wistfully when we bring up the subject. “Men can’t enjoy a simple friendship with a woman, they always want more. I do miss him though, he made me feel important.”

  “You’re important to us, ma,” says Oscar. “Don’t you know that?”

  “Is that why you haven’t even remembered my birthday?”

  I cringe. It is the sixteenth of May and we have forgotten again. We have done it time and time again because every day is spent worrying, surviving crisis after crisis and catastrophe after catastrophe. We hug and kiss her but the damage is done. She looks distraught, bitter and stiff.

  “Dogs don’t have a birthday,” she says tersely, cutting her onions for the chicken soup she is making. “Dogs don’t need any celebration whatsoever.”

  “Unless they are Clementina’s dogs,” I say trying to lighten her mood. She looks at me blankly and doesn’t smile. I feel terribly guilty because every time it’s our birthday she has always made sure we did something special, had some kind of celebration. She would make us a different meal, borrow money to bake us a cake, anything that would let us know she considered the occasion special, worthy of care and attention.

  “It won’t happen again, ma,” I say, sheepishly.

  “Oh, it will,” she says peeling the potatoes with resignation. “But worse things have happened to me in life than you forgetting my birthday.”

  Oscar makes signs for me to meet him outside. “I’ve got an idea,” he whispers with a gleam in his eye. “Let’s go to the bakery and tell Juán, he’ll give us something for her, I’m sure.”

  “That might make her madder.”

  “I’m going,” he says with a resolute look. “You can stay if you want to.”

  “We’ll be right back, ma,” I yell, following him.

  “Don’t start picking up flowers full of flies, it’s too late for that,” yells mother. “The soup is almost ready.”

  We ignore her and head straight for the bakery. It has begun to drizzle and we feel cold. We left our sweaters at home and the dampness makes us shiver and shake, forcing us to run to the bakery, reaching it in record time.

  “You and your ideas,” I reproach Oscar. “We’ll catch pneumonia and then she’ll really let us have it.”

  “Is Juán Gomez around?” asks Oscar breathlessly to the short, dark-skinned woman whose job we had all coveted so dearly. “Yes, but…”

  But before she could say more we are at his side in the back of the bakery. He is hard at work as usual, rolling his dough, his enormous hands full of flour, his radio turned full blast to the national music he enjoys so much. He welcomes us with a grin, joyous to see us. Oscar blurts out the story of us forgetting mom’s birthday, and without a word he rises from his seat and brings an enormous cake, which he proceeds to decorate with the words, “Happy Birthday, María.” He puts it in a box and walks outside with us.

  “Give her my best. Tell her those months you were here were some of the happiest of my life.”

  “We feel the same way, but why haven’t you come to see us?” I reproach him. “We waited for you.”

  He lowers his face. “She knows why.”

  I don’t think she does but I say nothing. Seeing that the rain isn’t going to let up, he puts us in a cab and gives us money to pay for it. We ride home delighted with ourselves. Despite his clownish appearance he is a nice man, and we feel sorry mom doesn’t reciprocate his feelings. We surprise her with the cake and she is stunned.

  “Goes to show you don’t need education, money or lineage to be noble and decent in this world. He’s a good man, with a big heart.”

  “Blow out your candles and make a big wish,” urges Oscar after we eat our soup, anxious to sink his teeth into the cake.

  She closes her eyes and blows them out.

  “What did you wish for, ma?”

  “I wished for my death, Vicky, that’s what I wished for.”

  Stung by her answer I retreat into an angry silence. I’m sorry I asked and look at her with annoyance. Oscar’s eyes fill with tears and he looks at her with pity while I’m frozen in my seat. Why do I feel so angry with her all the time? When did I develop this armor so that scenes like this don’t affect me the same way anymore? She calls me “heart of stone” and I’m beginning to believe it. There is a struggle going on inside of me all the time, a part of me loves her and another hates her. The same thing happens to me with my aunt. I love her strength, her defiance of life and all its blows, but I hate her shallowness, her pettiness. Would I ever be able to reconcile these conflicting feelings within me? It doesn’t seem possible, and I’m forced to go from household to household repressing my feelings, playing out a part, becoming what they want me to become for the moment. I seem to have offended my aunt, however, and she is no longer sending me messages with Carlos to come to the house. Week after week I wait for the usual Sunday invitation to lunch but it never comes, and mother feels upset for me.

  “Go on your own,” she urges. “Don’t wait for her to send word. Tell her you were worried about her and decided to find out for yourself if anything is wrong, that’s all, don’t make it a big issue.”

  “It is a big issue, ma. I can’t just show up there without an invitation.”

  “You are family - her favorite niece - her split image, you don’t need an invitation.”

  “She’ll have a fit, you know how she is.”

  “You can say you were worried about her health, she won’t be able to ignore that, not when she feels the world revolves around her.”

  But I can’t go, instead I try to focus on what may have upset her, but no matter how I
wrack my brains I can’t think of a thing I could have done, and then it comes to me. I’m getting very tall now and I towered over her a few weeks ago, and made an impulsive, gratuitous comment about what a short person she was, and she called me an insolent fool who obviously didn’t know that great things come in small packages.

  I apologized profusely saying that I said it out of affection, which I did, and she seemed to accept it, but she got even by not inviting me again. The remark just slipped out, I didn’t do it deliberately but she took offense and decided to teach me a lesson. I hate my big mouth, it always gets me in trouble; mother understands that flaw in me, and tells me to count to ten next time before offering a comment or making a point, especially when it comes to my aunt.

  Mother notices my misery and asks me to be patient. “When she feels you’ve suffered enough over the felony you’ve committed, she will call you to her side again. In the meantime try to stay calm and don’t dwell on it.

  “My sister has a mean streak in her, and she obviously didn’t appreciate being called “short,” especially because it’s true, so it might take her a little time to get over it. Be careful - don’t make any remarks; be very circumspect around her.”

  “It just slipped out, can’t she understand that?”

  “No, you need to be punished and punished good. My sister was always like that. A very good friend of hers in Oruro once said that she was beautiful but she had big hips, and it got to her ears and she never spoke to her again, even when the poor woman tried to apologize to her in the street. She had no compunctions about throwing away a friendship of years over one lousy remark. But with you it’s different, you are family and I think she loves you as much as she’s capable of loving anyone. Just sit tight, she’ll get over it.”

  But I couldn’t relax and the story she related unsettled me even more. What if she wrote me off like she wrote off her friend? I won’t be able to stand it. I’ll have to go to my uncle’s office and beg him to interfere on my behalf.

  ~~~

  Days later we ran into her at the market quite by chance, and mother seizes the opportunity.

  “Vicky misses you,” she tells her gently, as though I wasn’t even there. “She feels very bad you’re mad at her and she doesn’t know what she did to upset you.”

  “Does she now?” answers my aunt with a haughty air while her maid stands silently by her side holding a big bag full of groceries. She is wearing a beautiful red coat with a shawl and a nice pair of ruby earrings that look brand new.

  I redden and look down, mortified by her coldness.

  “Whatever she did, forgive her Sonia,” pleads mother. “She’s still only a child and she looks forward to those visits to your house so much. Why, if you only saw her standing by the window each Sunday waiting for Carlos to come over…”

  “Have her come over this Sunday,” says my aunt without looking at me. “My husband and son will be glad to see her.”

  We watch her walk away in a cloud of expensive perfume, shoulders back, posture straight, high heels hitting the pavement assertively, and we walk back home quietly carrying the few things we have been able to purchase for lunch. Despite the way the invitation has come about I’m happy and grateful to mother, but she looks sad and dejected. Reading her emotions, I press her arm and tell her that some day things will change for us too, that it won’t always be like this but she shakes her head stifling a sob.

  “She looked like a queen and me her servant, and that’s never going to change for me in this life.”

  The contrast between her life and her sister’s has hit her hard, and she broods. I pray that the incident doesn’t sour her whole day, but it does, and at home she gives full vent to her feelings, comparing her faded, ratty coat and worn out shoes with hers. But it isn’t the coat or earrings she aches for, it’s her husband and the comfort and security he has brought to her life. She had told us so many times that she would have been happy with a lot less, but she can’t reconcile herself to the fact that emotional stability has never been in the cards for her, not even as an infant; that is the torment of her life, that painful realization and her inability to make peace with it.

  She seeks that security like a drowning person seeks air, and with each failure she sinks deeper and deeper into despair. I worry about her constantly, wondering how she keeps her sanity amid all that pain, fearful that one day the pressure might prove to be too much for her, and she’ll retreat into madness, leaving us alone forever. But every day she gets up, puts one foot in front of the other and faces her desperate life.

  ~~~

  I’m dealt a terrible blow two months later. Bello gets sick all of a sudden and none of us can understand why. He has been crying shrilly for a few days and I scold him thinking he was just being a pest, when one morning I wake up to find him walking all stiff and rigid as though he had suffered a stroke. Taking him to the vet was out of the question, so mother tried to help him by applying hot compresses to the right side of his body which was giving him the most difficulty, to no avail. He stops eating and drinking and crouches under my bed in a pitiful, aching ball of fur. Helplessly I watch him suffer and knowing he’s crazy about meat, I spoon feed him some juice from my steak and he manages to lick it, filling me with hope.

  “You’re going to be fine, old boy” I tell him crouching down next to him before I go to bed, but that night I dream he was dead and wake up frightened. I rush to his side in the morning only to find him lying still under the bed, his thin face showing the agonies he endured during the night. I cry for days, unable to reconcile myself to the final loss. He has been so strong, so invincible that I naturally assumed he would last forever. I find myself reliving his precious life from the moment I first discovered him that cold morning in June, to his sad ending. We bury him in the backyard and mother is kind and sensitive but I hold a grudge, secretly blaming her for his demise. Who knew what he endured during the time he was abandoned? What terrors came his way? His life was cut short by that crazy action and I can’t get over the feeling of wrongness, of injustice that assails me.

  Mom offers to get me another pet to help me forget but I won’t do it, at least not while I depend on her, I won’t bring another animal home to suffer, besides the fact that everyone assumes you can just replace one pet with another, irks me. Bello was irreplaceable and he will live in my heart forever, he taught me the beauty, the nobility that exists in animals and for that he’ll always be unforgettable to me.

  ~~~

  The landlady raises the rent unexpectedly and mother has a huge fight with her telling her she should be lowering our rent not raising it, since she obviously gave us a room full of mice with a filthy cloth for a ceiling, under false pretenses. She tells the landlady that had she known the roof provided a breeding ground for rodents, she would have never rented it. The Indian woman scowls and tells us to get out, there are many people begging for the room, and gives us time to find another room.

  She wears the typical Indian attire and she smells badly. Her teeth are bad and her manners atrocious. Mother wonders what she does with her money because she as sure as hell doesn’t use it to buy herself a shower. She tells me she has two houses already with lots of tenants under her watch, but she is so greedy she probably wants to own the whole block before she finally dies from avarice.

  She takes the news with aplomb saying that she was sick and tired of the room anyway, and this might be the best thing for all concerned. But we are sorry to go, the room was near our school, near my aunt’s house, and I had gotten used to the neighborhood, to the river I made believe was the Madras in India.

  Accompanying her in her daily haunts for a new place, I feel nervous and apprehensive because she looks in the worst neighborhoods again before finally finding something reasonable a few blocks away from the Black Market. We get two rooms for the same price, and they are located on the second floor of an old house with big windows facing to the front of the street. The rooms are bigger and a lot nicer, provid
ing us with a marvelous view of the steep mountains surrounding the area.

  We have always lived in such dark dungeons that these sunny rooms are a big improvement and a most welcome change, but getting to our rooms is treacherous for there are no stairs, and we are forced to climb over a wobbly bridge the landlord has improvised with left over wood, which threatens to come apart under our weight every time we use it. The Indian landlord has promised to put cement steps there for us, but experience has taught mother he will never get around to it.

  “Upon renting you the room, they promise you the moon,” she says looking at the flimsy bridge with trepidation. Still, she is pleased with the rooms, but keeps warning us to be careful with the bridge.

  “No place is perfect,” she says opening the windows wide and filling her lungs with the dry mountain air. “Every place has its problems but this is the nicest we ever got for the money, must be the bridge nobody wants to tackle. Thank God we snatched it before another poor family did. It is also very clean; there is no roof cloth here and no rodents that I can see.”

  Mom decides to hire a part-time assistant because the vendors in the Black Market have agreed to take her merchandise on a trial basis only, and she feels confident her knits will sell better in this congested area with the exposure to tourists and all kinds of people all day long. The small Indian girl she hires proves to be very adept and hard working and mother is happy with her decision. Manuela Quispe is a puny Aymaran girl who has been working since she was six years old. Humble and obedient, she answers in monosyllables without looking at our faces. She is missing two front teeth and covers her mouth with her hand when she eats, because realizing that she often goes hungry and keeps chewing coca leaves to give herself energy, mom begins feeding her as well, unable to withstand her thinness and fragility.

  “Did you see the bones on her neck?” she tells me when I complain. “This is probably the only decent meal she has all day. She doesn’t talk much, but I can imagine the kind of life she leads at home. I found her at the Black Market begging for work, a little sparrow of a girl like that, she can’t be more than fifteen years old, and God only knows what can happen to a young girl like that in those streets full of drunken jerks who could take advantage of her situation. At least she has a job now, I wish I could give her more hours, but that’s impossible for us at the moment. I wouldn’t be surprised if she wasn’t feeding her entire family in El Alto with her miserable salary.”