American Chica_ Two Worlds, One Childhood - Marie Arana [74]
Pueblo chico, infierno grande, the old adage has it. Small town, big hell. When Ralph Cunningham announced the happy day, the Club de Bowling women stared at the walls. The solteros got out the good gin and begged him to reconsider. When he asked Papi to be his best man, Papi gave a long lecture on como se hace, the things you can and cannot do in Peru. When vows were exchanged in church, a crowd of revelers was there only because the good Scottish widow had insisted on it. And when the new Mrs. Cunningham arrived at the club in her citrus-green sundress, ready for chicha and gossip, she found herself at an empty table, watching the smokestack pump black into the sky.
The como se hace of the Cunningham situation was the theme on which my parents’ bedroom conversations focused. You can’t turn your back on a lifetime, they agreed—and much to our surprise, since even at our tender ages we knew it was exactly what they’d done. You won’t fool anyone; blood will tell. Did those two lovebirds really know what they were getting into? Why didn’t Ralph save himself a lot of heartache, my father lamented, and find himself a nice Englishwoman? And so my mother was made to understand what was in his own heart. Why didn’t Carmen get out of this hellhole, my mother countered, and head for a city where people were more enlightened? And so my father was made to understand how she yearned to be free of small-minded Peru.
The upshot was that my mother quickly befriended Carmen Cunningham. At company parties, at the Bowling, I would stand at my window and watch her make a beeline for the hacienda’s pariah. The two would sit and talk for hours—blond hair grazing black—finding comforts in their otherness. At a distance, the club’s señoras could be seen shaking their heads in bafflement. This one was too extranjera, that one too indígena. What could the two possibly have to say to each other?
The following month, Papi got word he would be transferred to Lima. I took down my relics—my prayer card, my teeth, and my stone—packed them in a box, and, before I knew it, all our possessions were boxed, wrapped, and carried out onto a truck. Lima’s splendors beckoned: our tíos and tías, the urban bustle, the grandness of it all. After many years of home learning with Mother, we were to attend one of Lima’s best private schools.
On the evening before our departure, we were dressed up and taken to a despedida for my father at El Bowling. We were scrubbed and cinched and slicked and told to mind what we said. Vicki pulled her hair into a curly cataract and tucked a book under her arm, just in case. Papi wore a white guayabera, his cheeks flushed with accomplishment. Mother wore a dress of bronze satin, swept up in bright folds at her waist. They moved through the party, cutting their own paths.
A live band was playing música criolla out on the club lawn: “José Antonio” and “La Flor de la Canela.” George and I shot down the walk, between the pool and the tennis courts, and headed for our favorite waiter at the bar. Three knocks on the window and he looked up and gave us the nod. A moment later we were strolling the grounds like grandees, with cold bottles of orange Crush in our fists. We looked for our boys and fed on skewered beef heart: succulent anticuchos on bamboo spears, arrayed on terra-cotta slabs.
“Come on,” said George, finding Carlos Ruiz’s face in the distance. By the pool I caught a glimpse of Mother in animated palaver with Mrs. Cunningham.
We did our boys’ club handshake with Carlos: grab the right with the right, slide up to clasp the elbow, swipe arm against arm, one side then the other, and intertwine fingers and shake. Carlos snuffled loudly and drew a dead lizard from his pocket. It was squashed flat, translucent at the throat, gray with dirt. “I think I have business for Señor Birdseye,”