American Chica_ Two Worlds, One Childhood - Marie Arana [116]
Ours was the only Hispanic family. There were few Jews. The relative sizes of the town’s churches told the story. Summit Presbyterian was the largest, most prestigious. That imposing stone structure sat squarely in the middle of town, and the rich could be seen strutting in and out of it in their finery. The Catholic Church of St. Theresa, with steps sweeping up to its portals as if they led to salvation itself, was situated several blocks away, next to its own school. The Episcopal, Methodist, and Baptist churches were scattered about town, signaling lesser lights.
By June we were in Troy Court, a cluster of brick apartment buildings on New England Avenue. It was a modest district, on the other side of town from the mansions, and it would have been clear to anyone but us children that it was home to people on the fringes of society. There were strings of apartments up and down the avenue, where transients came and went, and old ramshackle houses, where nurses and waitresses lived.
Mother had her eye on a house in the middle range of the Summit spectrum, but it would be months before the owners vacated it. She had decided we would be wise to wait. When we moved into the apartment, it was empty save for an upright piano, the one thing we had bought on Route 22. We took our meals on it, plinking while we chewed, sleeping on the floor, waiting for our crate to arrive.
Within a week, we had recreated Lima on New England Avenue—huacos on the shelves, llama skins draped through the rooms. The display looked odd, even to us. The Lima we had come from had been a jumble, a place where Spanish and indigenous objects mixed freely—where modern and ancient accompanied each other, where a rich man’s house might be flanked by a tenement—but here, in this quiet, suburban setting, our possessions looked out of place. When the truck finally pulled away, two neighbors came over to see.
They were ten and eight, as sunny and frisky as Dutch maids on a roadside billboard. “You new?” said the older one. “We’re new. We just moved in a few days ago.”
They were from Westfield, a few towns over. George and I told them we were from Peru, but they puckered their mouths, rolled their eyes, and allowed as how they didn’t know where that was.
“Your parents are Westfieldian people?” I asked, trying to make conversation, figuring Westfield to be a country, like Peru.
“Were,” the tall one said. “Our mother got married last week.”
I was taking that information in, but she sailed ahead breezily. “My name is Suzi Hess. This is my sister, Sara. My mother used to be called Hess, too. Like us. But she’s Mrs. Loeb now.”
There it was. The gringo roulette.
“Oh, I know all about that,” I said, flaunting my urbanity. “My mother has a different name, too.”
“Different from you?”
“No.” I rushed to explain. “But different from her parents.”
“Well, of course, silly. Every married woman has a different name from her parents.”
My head felt fat as a blowfish. I needed to say that in Peru women strung their married and maiden names together, and that when my mother did that, her maiden name had turned out to be married, too, but it was going to take so much explanation. It was more complicated than I was willing to say: I was ashamed of my mother; ashamed that she was ashamed. In Peru, divorce was unthinkable. These girls, on the other hand, spoke of it so freely. I wanted them to be my friends. I burbled, dithered, stared down my nose, pulled on my ear. It didn’t take long for Suzi to take pity. “Okay, let’s see now. Your mother is divorced like ours, right?” she said, trying to help me along.
“Unh, yeah,” I said, and my head filled with the miracle that we might have this great flaw in common.
“So she has children by another marriage?” she said.
“Unh, yeah. I dunno.”
“You don’t know? You don’t know whether or not you have sisters or brothers somewhere else?”
“I dunno,” I repeated.
“You mean they could be walking around and you wouldn’t have any idea they’re there?