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“What’s that?” I said, thwacking the last word with a spoon.

“That,” said Eloísa, “is your mother’s maiden name. Campbell. The name of your grandfather in North America. Someday you will learn to write it—as all Spanish ladies do—after the name of your father.”

“Mmm,” I mumbled distractedly, and went off to practice saying Campbell out loud.

“Mother,” I whispered into the blue telephone that night so that no one in the house would hear, “are you listening? I learned how to say your name.”

One day, Tía Chaba was called on by an art student she had met through friends. The young man was shown into the drawing room and received by my beaming grandmother, as was the custom. Hearing his voice, I clambered down the narrow stairs to have a good look at his face. What I saw delighted me: a wide open forehead with eyes as clear as amber.

“Aha,” the guest said, and I pranced up to kiss him, as I had been taught to do. It was love at first sight, a tumbling, rushing love, warmed by the red in his hair and the lavender scent of his neck. I reached up and wormed my way into his lap.

Tía Chaba ceased to exist. I could hear her gab on, as if she were chewing the hem of a distant curtain. I was happy to sit in her suitor’s arms, still as a heap of stone.

“I’m not a Peruvian,” I said finally, in as large a voice as I could muster.

“What’s that?” he said, rewarding me with his face. My aunt’s chatter came to a sudden stop.

“I said: I am not a Peruvian.”

“Marisi,” my grandmother said sternly, “what nonsense is that? What have you been taught up there in Cartavio? Of course you are a Peruvian. You’re as Peruvian as can be. Haven’t I always said that of all my three grandchildren, you’re the one with the Cisneros face?”

“I’m not like them,” I whispered coyly, and shrugged toward my bewildered grandmother and aunt. “I’m not.” Then, with a twisted little smile I was sure would punt me leagues ahead of Tía Chaba in his heart, I added, “I’m an American. Un yanqui. My name is Campbell.”

“I see,” he said, and raised his eyebrows. “How very interesting.”

I took that cue to scramble out of his lap and snatch my blue machine from behind my aunt’s chair. “Here is my telephone to the United States. Watch.” I spoke into the mouthpiece, switching to English for grander effect. “Hello, Georgie? Hello, hello! How are you? Don’t forget to bring me some … cream cheese!” It was the nectar my mother thirsted for: the Philadelphia kind.

“Ah,” the painter said tenderly. “How cosmopolitan you are.”

“Marisi,” my tía said in a sprightly voice, her black eyes as tipped as a cat’s, “why don’t you tell Diego what American city you’re from, now that he knows you’re a yanqui?”

I opened my mouth and stalled, trying to spin cities out of my brain. I couldn’t think of one.

“Qué graciosa, la Marisi,” my grandmother sang out. How cute she is. It was the signal that my show had come to a crashing finish. I was about to be sent from the room. I lost all decorum and begged the man to take me home with him.

The women laughed in high little cachinnations, the kind with a razor’s edge.

“Well, why don’t you at the very least walk me to the gate?” the amber-eyed man said, concluding that his visit was over, too. We walked down the steps together. But there, the most remarkable thing happened. The gate swung open and Don Pepe’s gray Chevrolet shot past, whizzing down Calle San Martin so quickly that I barely caught a glimpse of my mother’s gold head as it sped out of view.

I made a dash for it. The painter lunged after me, and we both clattered down the street like city hounds after spoor. But he soon overtook me, lugged me back to the black iron gate, and handed me to my aunt. Perspiration was running down his face. “Here is Miss Campbell,” he said ceremoniously in English, wheezing and swabbing himself with a handkerchief rank with turpentine. “She thought she saw her mother.” Then, parenthetically, in Spanish, “As sad a gordita as I’ve ever known.”

That was