American Chica_ Two Worlds, One Childhood - Marie Arana [112]
I went back to school after a week’s convalescence, attending Nutcracker rehearsals with black stitches sprouting from my pate. “Maybe you can do something other than dance,” said the English ballet mistress, eyeing my head with dismay. “Maybe you can play the piano?”
“I want to dance,” I said adamantly. “I want to be onstage. I want to wear my costume.”
“Then you shall,” she said, and patted me on the head. “Fine.”
“You can play the piano?” said a ball of a girl, her face filled with admiration. Tocas?
“Yes,” I said grandly. “Call me and I’ll play for you over the phone.”
When she called that night, I was ready. “Hola, Cristina. I’m walking over to the piano now. I’m sitting down on the bench. I’m adjusting the sheet music. Chopin. Valse, opus 64. I’m flexing my fingers. Ready?”
“Ready,” she squealed.
A record spun on our turntable. I lowered the arm. Arthur Rubenstein began to play.
“Hear me?” I said.
A brief silence in the receiver, and then her amazement gushed through the wire. “You can talk and play at the same time?”
“Sure. The teléfono is tucked in my shoulder. I do this all the time for my cousins in America.”
“Caramba, Marisi. I had no idea you were so good.”
I turned the dial up slightly, made the music più mosso. And then I lifted the arm off the album. “There, I can’t play for long,” I said. “My injuries, you know.”
Lies. I was so good at them. More to the point, I loved them so. Why not? If I could slip from English to Spanish, from boys to ballet, from pledging American allegiance to swearing on life I was a Peruvian, from church to church, from Campbell to Clapp—why not from role to role, truth to truth? Lies. Thank you, God. You gave me a skill.
“My mother is pregnant,” I told Señora Arellano’s class. Espera bebe. Margarita had just announced that her mother was expecting, and the teacher was making happy cooing noises in her direction.
“Really?” Señora Arellano’s sweet face turned to me and she leaned a large bosom into her desk. “Qué maravilla. We’re expecting not just one baby in this class. But two.”
The next Saturday morning, Margarita banged her skinny little fist against our door and my father answered.
“Buenos días, señor,” she said, her eyes big as Ping-Pong balls. “Is the señora having a baby?”
“Buenos días, Margarita. Who told you that?”
“Marisi. She told us in school the other day. She said so in class.”
“Well, then, Marisi did not tell you the truth.”
“She lied?”
“If that’s what she said, she lied.”
After a stern lecture, Papi took me outside, called our friends over, and denounced me right there in our lot. “Listen, all of you. Marisi’s mother is not having a baby, and I’ll thank you to say so in school. When Marisi tells you something in the future, I want you to be skeptical. Tell her she can’t be trusted. Tell her you’re aware of her reputation. She needs to learn that lying doesn’t pay.”
I became the leper of Avenida Angamos. At first I was furious with Papi, but with the passing of every day I cared less. “See my sister?” Vicki announced to her friends in the school playground. “She lies. Don’t you, Marisi? Isn’t it so?”
“Yip,” I said, and giggled inside, imagining I’d just told a lie. But no one else was laughing.
“That over there is not our only house,” I whispered to the ambassador’s son, standing under his fuchsia gateway and pointing down the street. “We have houses all over the world. One in Cartavio, one in the United States of America, one in a little village in Switzerland. With swans. We just don’t like to show off.”
“Liar!” he screamed, and slammed the door.
“Marisita,” my abuelita said, “what part are you dancing in The Nutcracker? I’m coming to see it, you know.”
“The star,” I said recklessly. “Clara.” She’d bustle into the Teatro Municipal with red roses and a fancy box of chocolates and learn the truth soon enough.
I didn’t see Abuelita as often as I wanted to. She and Mother were