Conquistadora - Esmeralda Santiago [7]
HER FIRST LOVE
Ana and her schoolmate Elena Alegría Feliz had rooms next to each other in the Convento de las Buenas Madres. Elena’s face was a perfect, pale oval surrounded by thick, chestnut hair. Her blue eyes were large and innocent. Her lips were shaped like a V, so she always wore a beatific smile. In school the other girls nicknamed Elena La Madona, because she looked as beautiful and pure as the paintings of the Holy Mother. They called Ana Bastoncito, because she was so short that, next to Elena, Ana looked like her walking stick.
After candles off, and against rules, they curled on one or the other’s cot in their cell-like rooms, sharing the secrets and fantasies of schoolgirls with lively imaginations. One night, while Ana was telling her about don Hernán’s exploits, the ribbon that closed Elena’s nightgown loosened, revealing one perfectly formed breast. Elena stared at it as if she’d never seen it, then looked at Ana, who was just as mesmerized. Ana’s uncertain fingers reached to stroke Elena’s breast, and the nipple hardened. Elena gasped. Ana recoiled. Elena pressed Ana’s hand to her breast and unfastened the ribbons so that the gown dropped off her shoulders. Tentatively, Ana caressed, and as Elena responded, she kissed, then used her tongue. They explored each other with furtive, fluttery fingers, hot mouths on cool flesh, wet tongues in salty crevices. So much sensation left her weak. Embarrassed, she pressed her bony back against Elena’s belly. Elena slid her middle and ring fingers into Ana’s mouth to suck until they both fell asleep.
They confessed once a week to fusty, nearly deaf Padre Buenaventura, who was sometimes heard to snore from behind the screen of the confessional.
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.” In the list of schoolgirl transgressions (“I’m guilty of vanity, Padre. I looked in the mirror three times yesterday”), buried within the urges that beset adolescent girls (“I’m guilty of envy, Padre. I wished my hair were as long and shiny as María’s”), there was always mention of carnal thoughts, but never of carnal acts. In the stale, airless confessional, Ana and Elena risked the eternal fires of hell, crossed themselves, and sinned by omission, their fingers still stained with the other’s pudendum.
Elena was an hija de crianza, raised in the same household as twin boys. Orphaned at four years old, Elena was raised by don Eugenio Argoso Marín and his wife, doña Leonor Mendoza Sánchez, relations so distant that Elena was unsure whether they were related at all. In any case, she grew up as niece to don Eugenio and doña Leonor, and cousin to their sons, Ramón and Inocente.
Ramón, as the eldest by twelve minutes, was expected to marry an heiress to increase the family’s fortune and status. His younger brother, Inocente, would marry Elena, who was then penniless but was due an inheritance from doña Leonor’s parents on her eighteenth birthday. While the engagement was not formal, it was understood that Elena was meant for Inocente.
“But you should marry Ramón,” Elena suggested. “We’ll be sisters then, and we’ll always be together. Ramón and Inocente are rich and handsome,” she added, “and the Argosos are from a distinguished family. Their father is a colonel in the cavalry.…”
“Is Ramón a soldier?”
“He was, but now both brothers work in an office,” Elena explained. “They’re learning how to take over their uncle’s business.”
No caballero of Ana’s acquaintance, including her father and grandfathers, worked, or at least, not in the sense that they went to an office. “I don’t know.…”
“They’re not boring or dull,” Elena said. “They only go there in the mornings. I know you’ll like them. They’re charming and like to have fun.”
“How would I meet them?” Ana was still