American Chica_ Two Worlds, One Childhood - Marie Arana [107]
In Abuelita’s house, conversations turned more and more to the hacienda my grandfather had just inherited from Tía Carmen. Owned originally by my great-grandfather Pedro Pablo Arana, the Hacienda Nogales was tucked into a far valley in Huancavelica, where the Andes began their ascent to the skies. The hacienda entered the lives of the Lima Aranas almost as a revelation, so little did they know about the secretive Pedro Pablo or about the history of the hacienda that had now come into their possession. Although it was assumed that it once had been the property of Pedro Pablo’s wife, my reclusive and eccentric great-grandmother, Eloísa Sobrevilla Díaz de Arana, all that was really known was that it had been her refuge as Pedro Pablo traveled about the country, marshaling his political career, and that he had paid little attention to it during his lifetime. Nor had their children been much attached to it. Both my abuelito and Tía Carmen had been sent to school in Lima at very young ages and had returned to Nogales only at rare intervals. So when my great-grandmother died in 1912, the house with all its land and peones began an almost century-long decline. My great-grandfather, who preferred to live in the hustle and bustle of Lima, ignored it, and no one thought much about it until 1926, when Pedro Pablo died. Instead of bequeathing the hacienda to his son, however—to my abuelito, as was the custom—Pedro Pablo had willed it to his daughter, a spinster with no other prospect of an income. What he could not have foreseen is that Tía Carmen would marry a parasite who abused the peones, sold off whatever was valuable, and bled the hacienda dry. Now the question was, in the late ‘50s, could it be made into a productive enterprise again? Could it grow crops and boost the family coffers? It made for endless debate about what would be most profitable: Sugar? Asparagus? Cotton?
Try as they might, the brothers couldn’t engage their father’s attention on the question. He looked pleased momentarily when Tía Carmen’s lawyer called on him to say the land was legally his, but once the man was done, Abuelito simply thanked him, turned, and mounted the stairs to his room. It did not really interest him.
One Sunday, we all came to wish Abuelita a happy birthday—even Mother was there. She hadn’t called on the house in years, but we had been passing by and Papi had insisted she come in. In any case, the grown-ups were well into one of those conversations about the hacienda, when suddenly there was a slow thumping on the stairboards. They paused and turned around. To our shock, it was my grandfather coming down to join us. He descended cautiously, placing two feet on each step before he proceeded to the next. He gripped the banisters on either side, inching his mottled hands along, eyes fixed on his shoes. When he reached bottom, he headed for his wing-backed chair. He didn’t look up, didn’t say a word, but Tío Pedro jumped up to take an elbow and navigate him. He looked tired and small. Hair sprouted from around his ears.
He sat in his chair, put an elbow on each armrest, and carefully brought the fingertips of both hands together so that they met. He separated and touched them, opening and closing, as if he had something to say. But the dialogue continued its tinny course—claro que hay una ventaja con caña, pero es difícil que de en la sierra; pues tiene un gran mercado; el asparrago también seria bueno, no?—with my aunts and uncles working hard to make Abuelito’s advent seem ordinary. Finally, my grandfather’s hands stopped moving, and he looked over them into my mother’s face. The room fell silent.
“Why do you despise me?” he said in a high, squeaky English, with a voice I seldom heard. My abuelita shot a look around the room. She had no idea what he had just said. No one translated.
My mother’s eyes grew wide, and her face, which until that moment had been the