American Chica_ Two Worlds, One Childhood - Marie Arana [7]
I loved to watch her sleep, for there was a vulnerability in her face then that was not there when her eyes were fixed on me. Ordinarily, her stare was as hard as a statue’s, unreadable, until something brought her to the verge of anger, at which point her blue eyes would turn a harrowing shade of green. It was a color I did not like to see. But her most disturbing features, by far, were her violinist’s hands, which were large and square, with meaty, muscled fingers that seemed to belong to another body, not to the delicate queen who lay on the wide carved bed.
When I had had my fill of studying her, I’d slip carefully out of her arms. I’d tiptoe off to wake up George, and in no time we were out in the garden with pockets full of bread—free of parents, free of the snoring mayordomo and the amas. Alone. Ready for our daily ritual with El Gringo.
More vivid than any other sound in memory—the crow of the cock at dawn, the cooing of mourning doves—was the rhythm of his advance. A tap, thump, drag—ominous and regular—as he made his way down the street. We would stand under the lucuma tree and listen for his step, cock our ears toward it, feel the hairs rise against our collars as it approached.
El loco, we’d whisper—the madman—and watch the black grow large in each other’s eyes. By the time we’d made it under the verbena, he was rapping the white stucco with his knuckles, bone-hard and sharp as weapons. When he reached the gate, we’d see the whole man. Eyeless. Rags like leathery wings. A purple stump where a foot should have been. Dried sugarcane for a crutch. When he threw back his head and let the sun fill his eye sockets, a wail would rise from his chest like the keen of a wounded animal. And then a stream of words, sliding at us in a high whinny so that we’d have to strain to catch it. Out, you little bastards! And he’d wham the fence with his makeshift staff. Out! Or I’ll call on the pishtacos! They’ll pluck you from that bush and eat your pygmy hearts!
El Gringo, people called him. The American. Somehow, we believed he was one, although all evidence was to the contrary. He was small. Almost as small as we were. Dark. Like us.
Weren’t all Americans as big, blond, and clear-eyed as our mother? We had serious reservations about her—she was so otherworldly, so ill-at-ease, so unwilling to conform, so mad in her own way—but it was terrifying to think she’d end up crazed and blind, staggering through some remote Andean backwater looking for her luminous land. Holding our breath against his stench, we crept out with our bread, dropped the offerings one by one into El Gringo’s grimy sack—buying our mother’s future, keeping the pishtacos at bay. Then we raced away, gasping and squealing, to our crawl space under the house. From there we would watch as he hobbled off to the neighbors. And we would worry.
But there were afternoons when my mother would sing and I’d actually fall asleep. Then it would be her turn to slip away.
One day, I woke to see the double doors wide open and her sitting in the sala, cameolike, her profile outlined against the wood of her piano.
She was not alone.
She was poised on one side of the sofa—its back toward me—her arm stretched out along its spine. Across, in the other corner of the same sofa, was a man. I did not know his name. His arm, like hers, was stretched along the back, and it was long and ruddy, with a halo of down against the skin. Their fingers were close. But did not touch.
The casa de solteros, the bachelors’ quarters, was across from us. There, a rotating corps of young Americans and Northern Europeans came for Third World adventure and a shot at the boom. They were rough-hewn, long-legged. Almost as golden as my mother. More often than not they were war veterans—ex-army engineers—rail-hanging habitués of the bottle, with tales of hard-won