American Chica_ Two Worlds, One Childhood - Marie Arana [63]
My mother didn’t seem to care. She hardly socialized anymore, hardly sought adult company, hardly played her violin. From the moment my father headed for the factory’s command post to the hour the cook bustled about preparing dinner, we were the center of her universe. If she was still playing the piano, it was because it allowed her to pull one of us down on the stool beside her to teach us a thing or two. Otherwise there were sums to be done, essays to compose. We wrote in our neatly lined notebooks stamped Calvert School, Baltimore, and imagined cool-eyed gringos in that distant port city parting the blue covers, contemplating our brilliance, pressing their heads in awe.
Come four o’clock, George and I were released for garden maneuvers with our ragtag neighborhood platoon. Five boys helped us build a tepee one day, although the concept was alien to everyone but George, who had actually seen one in Norteamerica. The rest of us played along, pretending we knew who the Indians were, but understanding that if they were fighting cowboys with blades clenched in their teeth, they were nothing like the mild-eyed Peruvian indígenas we knew. Nothing.
George stood on the sidelines shouting orders and waving his pistols as the rest of us wielded bamboo poles and sheets, tying the top off with chicken-coop wire. We worked feverishly, glancing down the boulevard from time to time, scaring ourselves with the possibility that the big loco boy might stagger our way any moment and strangle us with his beefy hands. Tommy never did make an appearance that day, except long after nightfall, when I looked out my window and caught a glimpse of his doughy face over a bib, and the girl patiently shoveling food into it.
One of our neighborhood friends, Carlos Ruiz, was rod-straight, doe-eyed, with a lick of brown hair shooting up from his crown. He was the son of one of the machine specialists and liked to talk about his father’s expertise. According to Carlos, all the factories, all the output of Paramonga, depended on his old man. He was a handsome boy, tidy and scrubbed, with lemon skin and a chiseled nose. “Listo,” he said as he stepped away from the tepee to survey our handiwork. Ready. He tucked his shirt into his shorts and grinned.
Carlos’s ama peeked through the gate, where she stood with the other muchachas, chewing stalks of warm sugarcane and talking of love. “Carlos,” she pleaded in a voice that issued, high and reedy, from her nose, “no te ensucies!” Don’t get dirty. “Your mother will yell!”
“Vamos,” said Carlos, ignoring her and nodding toward our lopsided tent. “Let’s go in.”
“No, no,” said George. “Not like that, tonto. You can’t just go in. This is a club and I’m the president. We have to have rules.” Then he turned on his feet slowly, thinking what those might be.
“I know,” he said finally. “Rule number one: You have to learn the handshake.” He made it up right there and then—grab the right with the right, slide up, clasp the elbow, swipe arm against arm, one side then the other, intertwine fingers, and shake. We all did it after that. Again and again, messing up hopelessly, laughing, then starting over, until it was neat and rote.
“Rule number two!” said George. “In order to be accepted into the club, everyone has to go into that tepee with my sister. One at a time. And once you’re inside, you have to kiss her.”
“Yechh,” said Carlos, his chest caving with the thought. “Will you go first?”
“Not me!” said George. “I told you, I’m president. I’m already in the club.”
“Okay. Me!” said Manuel, a buck-toothed boy with droopy eyes.
“George,” I protested. “I—”
“And, Marisi, if you don’t like him, you have the power to say no.”
My protestation hung in the air. The power to say no? To say who gets in? All of a sudden, the kisses seemed trivial, no more than sealing wax on a queen’s table.
I was so quick to trot along behind George, I never stopped to wonder at the fact that I was the only girl