American Chica_ Two Worlds, One Childhood - Marie Arana [35]
Her eyes told us she was a witch. They were milky with too much seeing, marbled by sun, clacking around in her head as she wound through the streets of the hacienda, hawking fruit. When the bruja saw our faces behind the fence, she would stop, squint like a lizard, and flick her tongue against two yellow protrusions—more tusks than teeth—that drifted in the rolling sea of her mouth. Ahí, she would grunt. There you are. Los duendes. The dwarves. And George and I would step out and look in her face.
This was Cartavio. An oasis of cement, iron, and sugar in the long, gray sandlot of Peruvian coast. For children of privilege no less than for children of the poor in backwater towns like Cartavio, life was a dusty affair—an endless shuffle through dirt, punctuated by rapture and calamity, and encounters such as this, with mango-toting witches in multicolored skirts.
We emerged from behind my father’s wall one day, my brother and I—now five and four—to find the neighborhood children trotting to her cart. There was Billy, the big Scots boy with the dazzling smile; Carlitos, the tiny, pinched son of the factory’s accountant; Margarita, the flat-faced daughter of the cook across the street. We hurried out, knowing that the rush to the bruja’s cart could mean only one thing: The witch was reading futures today.
By the time we reached her, she was addressing Billy, who, at eight, was almost as tall as she was. He was sober, grim-mouthed, standing there with his chin thrust out, a pointed promontory in a freckled field.
“Come, gringo,” she told him, “hold my braids while I see into tomorrow. One in your left hand, papito, one in your right. Good.”
For the next few moments, Billy looked himself, a simple boy in a noonday game. He took the braids and his face relaxed, so that for a fleeting second he looked like his sweet-eyed mum, the gentle Scots lady who lived next door. Then suddenly it was as if a charge was shooting through him. His back arched. The bruja’s braids undulated like snakes. Carlitos shimmied back into Margarita at the sight of them, but the girl pushed him away and stood erect, her eyes wide, mouth in a tight, thin line. Billy, too, seemed frozen from head to toe; only his arms moved tortuously, in waves that appeared to issue from the witch’s hair. George and I shifted from foot to foot, turning nervously and searching each other’s face to see who would cut and run. But we’d witnessed these things before, and though I could see George’s face furrowed with worry, I could also see determination in his stance. He stood his ground in line. Quickly, I squirmed in behind.
“Ya, ya,” the bruja said to Billy, her voice high and silky as a little girl’s. “You have the face of a leopard, papo. Eyes of a puma. Heart of a bird. The spotted face will never change. The other two you yourself must change. See like the bird, gringito. Make your heart beat like a puma’s. You must work at this. Work.”
Billy dropped the braids, let out a grunt, and stumbled back against George. I took the big boy’s wrist and pulled him behind me. He wafted back like a feather.
George stepped forward and grabbed the woman’s braids. Her eyes focused and then squeezed shut. Her chin was still as granite. George did not move.
After a while, her lips began to pulse as she sucked on her delicately moored teeth. She ceased to look like a witch, more like a rag doll, her braids jutting comically from behind.
“Come another day, boy,” she said at last, shaking her head. “I see night, I see stars, I see a path. But nothing more. The spirits in you are sleeping. We must not wake them now.”
I loved George with every bone in me. He had a noble brow, straight and clean, and hazel eyes that squinted up with