Knock, Knock. ¿Quién es? La Vieja Inés.
¿Qué quiere? Un color.
Sunlight poured into the kitchen through the bow window and the open door when Blanca Estela walked in the next morning to find Mamá Anita rolling out flour tortillas at the table while Lilia cooked them on a griddle on the stove. The tortillas would puff up, releasing their freshly baked aroma, and Lilia would press them down to make sure they cooked thoroughly. Then she would flip them over to cook on the other side.
“Good morning, my love,” said Lilia.
“Did you sleep well?” asked Mamá Anita. Blanca Estela nodded sleepily. She had, indeed, slept soundly, dreamlessly, so much so that after waking up it had taken her several minutes to recollect where she was.
“Shall I cook you an egg for breakfast?” Mamá Anita offered. “Scrambled with tomatoes and onions, or soft and runny? The eggs are very fresh, just gathered from the nest. Pedro, a little boy who lives just up the street, brought them early this morning. You will meet him later and perhaps become friends with him. Would you like to eat a banana first?”
Blanca Estela took a banana from a brightly painted bowl in the center of the table, peeled it, and ate it hungrily. A loud knocking at the front door startled her as she swallowed the last mouthful of fruit.
“Blanca Estela, go see who it is,” said Mamá Anita. “I removed the bar from the entry door when I let Pedro in this morning, but I shut the doors again.”
Blanca Estela looked down at herself and exclaimed, “But I’m still in my nightgown!”
Mamá Anita and Lilia both laughed. “It’s quite all right,” Mamá Anita assured her. “Your gown is quite modest. It can pass for a dress. Just go through the house; don’t cut across the patio, because you’re barefooted.”
She ran back through the bedrooms and made a right turn when she came to the parlor, where at one end, the two cots were still unfolded and unmade, side by side. She slowed down when she reached the entryway, stopping to inhale the fragrance of the jasmines in the flower pots before she pulled on one of the heavy front doors. A boy somewhat smaller than herself stood nonchalantly on the sidewalk, a metal bucket dangling from one hand. She thought that this must be Pedro come to deliver more eggs. She stood aside to let him pass, but he did not move. Instead, he knocked again on the door although it was now open. Then he said, “Knock, knock,” and waited. She made a gesture for him to pass. He shook his head and said, “You’re supposed to ask who it is. Say, ‘¿Quién es?”’
“¿Quién es?” she repeated, puzzled.
“La Vieja Inés,” he responded to her amazement. How could he say that he was an old woman named Inés’?
“Come on now,” he encouraged her. “Ask me what I want: ¿Qué quiere?”
“¿Qué quiere?” she repeated obediently, waiting to be enlightened.
“Un color.” She was completely at a loss now. How could anybody ask for a color? Something of a certain color, yes, but not a color by itself. “Name a color,” he added, with a trace of impatience.
She looked down at her gown for inspiration and tried to remember the Spanish word for blue. “Azul,” she finally said.
“Well, yes,” he responded, as if he were disappointed. “Of course I have blue,” and she noticed then that he wore faded blue shorts and a shirt with a sailor collar of more or less the same shade.
“Why did you answer ‘La Vieja Inés?’” she could not refrain from asking.
The boy shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. It rhymes with ‘¿quién es?”’ He then stepped over the threshold adding, “My mother says, could she please have some water?” He continued, “You must be Blanca Estela.”
She wished that he wouldn’t call her that. Her friends, June and Linda, and their mother always called her Stella, which she preferred, and her mother called her Estelita, but to her grandmother she was Blanca Estela. It seemed as if everybody in this place was going to call her the same thing. She did not like double names, not unless it was something cute, like Mary Ann.
“I am Mario,” the boy told her. “I live next door to you. Doña Anita told us you were coming.” He skipped down the steps from the entryway to the patio and went to the aljibe while she followed him uncertainly. He raised the wire mesh lid and dropped the bucket that was attached to a long coil of rope, which in turn, was tied to a metal ring on the outside wall of the aljibe. She heard the metal hit the side of the cistern several times and the splashing of water before he hauled up the bucket and emptied it into his own pail.
“Thank you for the water, Doña Anita,” he called through the bars of the kitchen window. “My mother sends her regards, and how are you this morning?”
“I am well, Mario,” Mamá Anita answered from inside. “Tell your mother that I am enjoying the company of my daughter and my granddaughter.”
Blanca Estela had forgotten that she was barefooted until she felt a feathery brush against her foot, and then she remembered the red ants. She ran back up the steps to the entryway and waited there for Mario. He followed her, walking carefully as the overflowing pail splashed water on his feet, which were also bare and quite dirty.
“Do you want to come out and play with us tonight?” he asked her. “We played outside your window last night.”
“Yes, I know,” she answered. “I heard you.”
“Why didn’t you come out and join us, then? We would have let you play.”
“I was tired. I fell asleep very soon.” She was ashamed to remember that the night before, before going to sleep, she had cried very softly into her pillow. “I don’t know your games. We didn’t play them where... where I used to live.”
“Oh yes, you’re from the other side, aren’t you? Evita said you probably didn’t speak Spanish, that you probably spoke only English, or Pocho, you know, half and half, but you sound all right to me. Come out and play tonight. You can just watch at first if you like.”
He left, closing the door behind him, and she went back to the kitchen to join her mother and Mamá Anita for breakfast. She was ravenously hungry.
That evening, after supper and after the sun had gone down, the children came out to play again. Blanca Estela, standing between the shutters and the metal bars in the embrasure of the window, could see them standing about, arguing over which game to play. Their mothers brought out rocking chairs and set them on the sidewalk to converse with their neighbors. Mamá Anita tried to convince Lilia to sit at least in front of the open door, but she refused, sitting, instead, in the parlor, in front of the open window, but away from the lamplight so nobody could see her.
“Hija,” Mamá Anita said to her daughter, “you are carrying mourning too far. Those harsh customs of old that kept widows in hiding are past.”
“I just don’t feel like seeing anybody yet, Mamá. I don’t want to talk to people now. It will only make me sad when the neighbors start remembering Roberto and the way things used to be. In a few days, yes, but not now. Estelita, why don’t you go out, and you, too, Mamá, if you want to talk to your friends.”
“They were your friends, too, at one time.”
“That was before I went away. Things change so much.”
“Blanca Estela, you go out and play if you want to, child,” said Mamá Anita.
Blanca Estela did not want to go out, either. For her it was enough at this time to stand in the embrasure and listen to what the children were singing. They had formed a circle around a girl in a white dress while they sang something. At a certain point in the song, two of the bigger boys, who had not joined in the circle, attempted to break through the chain of interlocking hands as if they were trying to reach the girl in the middle. Twice they tried and twice they failed, and finally the two boys joined the circle too, and they all sang again.
This time she understood some of the words. It was something about “Doña Blanca” and about being surrounded by pillars of gold and silver. Blanca, like her own name. Were they making fun of her? Blanca meant white something also. Maybe it was the girl in white. The girl in white, although small, seemed to be important. Blanca Estela could not see any of the children’s faces anymore as the twilight lengthened into night, but the girl in white seemed to be telling the others, even the bigger children, what to do. She recognized Mario’s voice responding to her.
“No, Evita,” he was saying. “You already got to choose a game; now it’s somebody else’s turn.”
“La Vieja Inés, los colores,” another boy said.
“You can’t see colors in the dark,” Evita’s voice answered scornfully.
“Besides, we’re not prepared. We should all bring an item of the color chosen. That way there is no cheating.”
“Enough play for tonight,” a woman’s voice called out in the dark, and the children slowly marched away, still talking about what they would play the next night.
Blanca Estela rested her head against the cool iron bars of the window. In her mind new words buzzed around like frantic bees, which were not silenced until she fell asleep.
The following morning, after breakfast, Mamá Anita asked Blanca Estela to go to Chabela’s grocery store on the next corner to buy half a kilo of tomatoes, since she needed them for cooking dinner. Blanca Estela stood very still, petrified at the thought of having to go out by herself and talk to a stranger who might not understand her. But how to refuse Mamá Anita?
“I don’t have any money,” she finally said.
Mamá Anita laughed.
“Don’t worry, child. Just tell Chabela to charge it to me. She always does, and I pay her at the end of the month. Come, let’s step out on the sidewalk, and I’ll point to where you will go.”
Mamá Anita opened the front door and turned to face the left. “See that yellow house at the end of the block? That’s the store.” The yellow house did indeed stand out in bright contrast to the white stucco and the dun colored stone of the rest of the houses.
At that moment a two-wheeled cart with rubber tires pulled by a dappled gray horse, stopped in front of them. “Oh, here’s the meat,” Mamá Anita explained to Blanca Estela. “It’s so good of Pepe to bring it to me. He started delivering it last winter when my rheumatism got bad and I had trouble walking all the way to his shop. It was my knees, you know. Good morning, Pepe. What do you have that is especially good today?”
“Good morning, Doña Anita,” answered the man, jumping down from his perch on the cart. “Ribs are good today, lots of meat on them. I don’t know how much longer we’ll get good meat. We haven’t had any rain lately, so the pastures are dry and much of the cattle has been sold. We’ll be left with only goat’s meat if we don’t get any water soon. Maybe we’ll have rain before St. John’s feast day at the end of June.”
“We’ll pray to St. John for rain, Pepe, to make sure the river doesn’t dry up. Let me have the ribs. This is my granddaughter, Lilia and Roberto’s girl. Blanca Estela, you go on to the store. Half a kilo of tomatoes, remember. Oh, and you might look and see if you want some mangoes or bananas, but make sure they’re ripe.”
Mamá Anita gave her a light push on the back and sent her in the direction of the yellow house. She walked slowly, keeping her eyes on the sidewalk, which on this block was made of the same little cobblestones as the floors of the house. She was reluctant to look in the open doorways or windows for fear that someone might call out to her, saying something to which she would not be able to respond. When she came to the yellow house, she hesitated at the open door and then, taking a deep breath, stepped inside the shop.
It was only a small room with a short wooden counter, behind which a small, thin woman frowned and peered intently at a scale. She was pouring rice out of a metal scoop into a pan with rounded edges, which rested at one end of the scale while a bar with metal weights on it danced up and down at the other end. Chabela very delicately adjusted the grains of rice until the bar was balanced exactly in the middle, the metal weights in equilibrium with the mound of rice.
“Here you are,” she said to three children who stood on the outer side of the counter. “A quarter of a kilo of rice.”
“Thank you,” said the boy, “and half a kilo of beans, please.”
Blanca Estela recognized Mario from the back. She had noticed the cowlick on the back of his head yesterday. He was leaning against the counter on one arm, talking to a girl on his right. Blanca Estela could see the girl’s profile, and it reminded her of a porcelain doll’s face that she had once seen in a glass case when her mother had taken her to a big department store back home. The girl was not quite Mario’s height and built like a small bird, with dainty fragile limbs. She had dark, curly hair cut short and wore a pale green pinafore. Blanca Estela immediately longed to look like her.
Mario held some colored picture cards in his hand and was telling the girl, “I’ll trade you Hedy Lamarr for Linda Darnell.”
The girl shook her head and made her curls quiver like flowers in the wind. “I have my collection of movie star cards already complete.” When the girl spoke, Blanca Estela recognized her voice as belonging to the girl in white from the night before.
“What about Erroll Flynn, Evita? Are you sure that you have him?
“Quite sure.”
“One half kilo of beans and a quarter kilo of rice,” said Chabela, interrupting the conversation.
“Mimi, you’ve got the money,” Mario addressed the girl on his left without turning to look at her. The girl fished in the pocket of her dress and pulled out several bills, which she gave to Chabela. Chabela opened a drawer built into the counter and gave her some coins in change.
“What about you, Evita?” asked the storekeeper, talking to the girl in green, “What are you buying today?”
“My mother says please send her a kilo of avocados, half a kilo of tomatoes, and oh yes, some candy for me.”
“Hrrmph,” muttered Chabela, “we’ll see about the candy, but I do have some very good avocados.” She went to a wire basket where she had stacked a pyramid of shiny blue-black skinned avocados.
Mario turned to leave, followed by the girl who carried the small bundles of rice and beans. “Hello, Blanca Estela,” he said. “This is my sister, Mimi.”
Blanca Estela was surprised. They did not look like brother and sister. Mario was rosy cheeked, as if he had just scrubbed his face (although he did not look overly clean) and had bright dark eyes, while his sister seemed to have taken her color from the sandstones of the houses, or from the khaki of his shorts. Mimi had light brown eyes, tan skin and sandy-colored hair which was cut short, very straight, but it kept falling over her forehead. She was obviously the older of the two, although not much bigger than he and had a serious expression that seemed to say that she had worries of her own. However, it was clear that she followed her brother’s lead.
“Are you coming out to play with us tonight?” Mario asked Blanca Estela.
Evita, her arms laden with bags full of avocados and tomatoes, joined them before Blanca Estela could answer.
“Who is this?” she asked Mario.
“This is Blanca Estela. She’s visiting her grandmother, Doña Anita.”
“Oh yes, I remember now, the one from the other side. You come from across the river, don’t you? My mother says that she knows your mother. Can you speak Spanish?”
“Of course she does.” Mario came to her rescue, noticing, no doubt, that Blanca Estela’s tongue seemed to be tied up in knots.
Evita shrugged her shoulders and immediately had to re-establish her grip on the avocados, which threatened to come cascading down from her arms.
Pouting a little, Evita said, “I have to go now; I must help my mother in the workshop. I am snipping off the loose threads from the bridesmaids’ dresses that she’s making. They’re beautiful, but nobody is supposed to see them until they’re ready.”
“What do you want, child?” Chabela asked Blanca Estela, and she felt herself blushing.
“You go home with the groceries, Mimi,” Mario told his sister, returning to his place at the counter. Blanca Estela suddenly realized that he meant to help her, if she needed it, and this knowledge gave her confidence.
“Half a kilo of tomatoes... please,” she said, speaking slowly.
“This is Blanca Estela. She’s visiting her grandmother, Doña Anita,” Mario introduced her to the storekeeper.
“Yes I know. And how is Lilia, your mother? I haven’t seen her in a long time. Give her my regards... my condolences too. Here’s the tomatoes. Tell your grandmother that I put them on her account.”
Blanca Estela walked out of the store, clutching the bag of tomatoes tightly to her chest. Mario followed her. He seemed to be thinking of something. Finally he asked, “Why did Chabela say to give your mother condolences?”
She stopped and looked at her feet, tracing the contours of the buckles on her sandals with her eyes, not knowing how to answer. She came to a decision. “It’s because my father is dead,” she said, and looked at him to see how he took her announcement.
He said nothing for a few moments and then, as they began to walk again, he asked her, “What was he like, your father?”
“He was a soldier,” she answered after some thought, and she noticed admiration in Mario’s eyes.
“My father is a mechanic,” he volunteered matter-of-factly. “He runs the generator to produce electricity. The turbine is in the river; the water turns it. We... my brothers and sisters and I—we help him. We get to go swimming in the river when we help him. My father also knows how to repair radios, and my big brother runs the movie projector—when we have movies. We don’t always have electricity, either.”
Blanca Estela was impressed by the multiple talents of Mario’s family.
“Why don’t you come out and play with us tonight?” he repeated the invitation of the day before.
“I don’t know your games,” she told him with less embarrassment than the first time.
“We’ll play Colors... you know, La Vieja Inés. I already showed you how to play that one. Anyway, when you come out to play, bring something—a button or a ribbon or something like that for a color. I’ll choose you for my team.”
“All right, I will. After supper?”
“Yes, after the sun goes down. Bye.”
She left him at the door of his house and went on to the next door to where Mamá Anita waited impatiently to make tomato sauce.
“What took you so long, child?”
“I was talking to Mario and Evita and Mimi,” she answered, as if these were the names of her lifelong friends. “And,” she added, “Chabela sends her regards to my mother.”
Blanca Estela left out the part about the condolences.
That afternoon, when she got up from the after-dinner nap that Mamá Anita insisted that she take, Blanca Estela asked her grandmother if she could look through her sewing basket for a scrap of cloth. She explained about playing Colors.
“Oh yes,” said Mamá Anita. “There are some ribbons in there, but don’t take the whole length. Just snip off a short piece.”
Spools of thread in a multitude of colors nestled against the red silk lining of the sewing basket, like precious jewels displayed in a jeweler’s case. She did not think that Mamá Anita would approve of her taking a whole spool of thread for a game. There was also a profusion of white satin ribbon, but this choice did not strike her as sufficiently imaginative. There might be scraps of cloth or buttons elsewhere; however, she did not feel yet confident enough to ask Mamá Anita for them. She finally settled on a short piece of pale blue ribbon, apparently a remnant of that which adorned the nightgown that her grandmother had made for her.
That evening, after supper, she ventured out to join the other children who were just then negotiating which game to play. Evita had several suggestions, none of which was Colors, but Mario reminded her that the night before she, herself, had insisted on their bringing samples of color for the game. “We brought the samples, didn’t we?” he asked the others. Several nodded, including Blanca Estela, who now clutched the piece of ribbon in her hand.
“All right,” Mario continued, pressing his advantage. “I’ll choose my team: Pedro, Blanca Estela, Mimi. Evita, you can be La Vieja Inés, if you like. “
Evita was somewhat mollified at getting the lead role in the game and picked for her team a boy and a girl who, until then, had kept themselves slightly apart from the group.
“They’re visitors,” Mario explained to her. “They come every year from the capital to visit with their uncle, the doctor, and his wife. They don’t always play with us.”
“I didn’t know La Vieja Inés had a team,” Blanca Estela commented, puzzled.
“She doesn’t, really,” Mario admitted. “They’re just like her advisors, to help her guess the colors.”
“What happens if they guess the right color?”
“In that case you go with them, to their side. The side that gets the most people wins.”
Evita had already approached them and was miming knocking at the door while she said, “Knock knock.” She and Mario then went through the opening routine, asking who it was and what she wanted, “Un color,” answered La Vieja Inés.
“Which color?” they all asked her.
“Morado,” Evita announced, after a dramatic pause.
“Purple?” Mario asked and looked around at his teammates, who shook their heads. “No tenemos. We don’t have purple,” Mario replied with satisfaction at turning her away.
La Vieja Inés went back to consult with her advisors and soon returned to repeat the performance. This time she asked for blue.
“Azul?” asked Mario and looked at his crew. Slowly, Blanca Estela opened her hand and revealed the pale blue ribbon in it.
Evita gave a little squeal, “She gave up, she gave up. She comes with me.”
Blanca Estela looked at Mario and saw disappointment in his face. Like a lawyer, determined to fight for his case even after his client has let him down, Mario turned to argue with Evita.
“You asked for azul. That’s not azul.”
“Well it is, sort of. Anyway, she gave up when she showed it to us,” gloated Evita.
Blanca Estela felt confused and humiliated. Surely the ribbon in her hand was blue. She remembered asking Mario for azul yesterday after she had looked at the blue ribbon on her gown, and he had admitted that he had blue.
Crestfallen, she stepped away from them all and went to stand by herself on the sidewalk, gradually edging her way back to the open door of her grandmother’s house.
Lilia and Mamá Anita were still in the kitchen, drying and putting away the supper dishes. They asked her if she had played outside with the other children. “Yes,” she said, “but I am tired now and want to go to sleep.”
“We’ll set up the cots in just a little while,” said Mamá Anita. “would you like to sleep outdoors tonight... in the patio? It’s getting so hot now that we’re not getting a breeze in the house all night long. It’s perfectly safe to sleep in the courtyard. Nobody has ever climbed over the walls. Some people line the top of the walls with broken glass, but I never felt the need to do so. Most people are honest in this town.”
As they were getting ready for bed, Blanca Estela felt that she had to find out what her mistake had been while playing Colors. She showed the ribbon to her mother and asked her, “What color is this?”
Lilia looked at it closely by the lamplight and said, “It’s so pale that I can hardly tell. Oh, of course, it’s celeste.”
“I thought it was azul,” cried Blanca Estela with frustration.
“Well, of course, it’s azul celeste. That’s the shade of blue, like the sky, el cielo.”
“Which is azul, then?” she insisted.
“Well, it’s darker,” Lilia answered her.
Like Mario’s shirt and shorts, Blanca Estela realized. She reflected that the game—and the language—had many more subtle meanings than she had guessed. Shades of meaning, just like shades of color.
The following afternoon they had a visitor. It was at the right time for short visits, after the siesta but before supper. Long visits were made in the evening, after supper. The visitor was a tall woman with a longish face who embraced Lilia and gave Blanca Estela a quick hug. Mamá Anita called her María Eva. The woman carried something bulky wrapped in a sheet. As she sat down in one of the cane rocking chairs, she unwrapped the bundle and revealed a long dress of pale green silk.
“Look at this,” she said, in a confidential tone. “Six bridesmaids’ dresses just like this one, and each is embroidered with crystal beads on the bodice. I’m doing all the embroidery myself. That’s why I brought it with me, so I can work while we talk.”
“Who’s getting married?” Lilia asked, bending closer to see the beadwork.
“Artemisa González. You probably don’t know her. She’s only seventeen. She’s José González’s daughter, an only child. Her parents used to stay most of the time at the ranch, but now they live in town. He’s doing very well; he planted cotton recently, rather than raising cattle, and made money. They say the bride’s dress is quite a creation. She’s having it made in Laredo. I’m only doing the bridesmaids’ dresses.”
“That’s an unusual color for bridesmaids’ dresses. In the past bridesmaids usually wore pink, and there wasn’t such an army of them, either,” Mamá Anita said, putting on her eyeglasses and starting to darn a pillowcase.
“Nile Green, it’s called. It’s very much in style.” It’s supposed to be the color of the waters from the River Nile,” María Eva explained.
Blanca Estela looked at it closely. The cloth did have a watery-green look to it, but it was not like the water of the Río Grande. That had been brown. Somewhere else rivers must be green.
The woman turned to Blanca Estela and said, “Evita tells me that you were out playing with them last night. I am so glad that you’re making friends already.”
Blanca Estela was taken aback by two thoughts. This woman was Evita’s mother, was her first thought. This tall woman with the broad shoulders, the harsh cheekbones and square jaw was the mother of the dainty Evita, with the perfect oval face of a porcelain doll. The second thought filled her with anguish. Evita had told her mother what a stupid girl she was: the girl from the other side who didn’t even know the names of the colors.
She was so mortified that from then on she paid no attention to the conversation and only came out of her thoughts when María Eva re-wrapped the dress and got up to leave, saying, “Goodbye, Doña Anita, I have to go get supper. Lilia, whenever you feel like it, come and see me. I’ve got two girls helping me sew who come in the mornings, but in the afternoon I’m all by myself. Come and see me. You’ve got to start going out; otherwise, you will become a recluse.”
“She will visit you,” answered Mamá Anita. “I will make sure that she starts going out. She’s going to go to Mass with me on Sunday. Now that Father Mirabal is back, we will have Mass again.”
For two days and evenings Blanca Estela joined her mother in being a recluse, refusing to go out to play and finding excuses to avoid being sent out shopping. She had heard the children playing outside her window, but she did not recognize the games. Finally, on the third evening, she heard Mario again organize a game of Colors. Boldly, she marched out the door and went to join him.
“Will you let me play?” she asked him.
He looked at her with some surprise. “Sure,” he said. “This time I’ll be La Vieja Inés, and you can be my advisor.”
She was relieved, for she had just realized that she had not brought a color sample.
They began to play. Mario asked for colors, without much help from Blanca Estela or from Mimi, the other advisor, and without much luck, either. Mimi spoke even less than Blanca Estela. During the day, Blanca Estela would spy Mimi scurrying about silently, as intent on her business as a little ant, and in the evening she limited her play to carrying out the role that others, usually her brother, allotted to her. Mario, in frustration, now turned to her and asked, “Mimi, can’t you help me? Think of a color that the others are likely to have.”
Mimi thought for a minute. “Verde,” she finally said. “Ask for green.”
Mario went through the routine again, knocking on the air, announcing who he was, and asking for the color green. The other team paused for a moment and looked at each other.
“What shade of green?” Evita’s voice piped up, high and clear, with an undertone of satisfaction.
Mario retired to confer with Mimi, but she had no further suggestions to make. Next, he looked at Blanca Estela, without much hope. “What shade of green?” he repeated. “Dark? Light? Is that what she means?”
Blanca Estela remembered the pale green silk dress with the crystal beads, the dresses that Evita had claimed to be helping her mother to sew and which nobody was supposed to have seen. “Verde Nilo,” she whispered in his ear.
“What? I have never heard of that!” he exclaimed, surprised.
“Just say that: Nile Green,” she insisted vehemently.
He shrugged his shoulders, saying, “All right, I’ll try that.... Verde Nilo,” he announced loudly, as he approached Evita’s group. For a moment nobody responded, and Mario was emboldened to demand, “Let me see. Open your hand, Evita.”
“How did you guess?” Evita wanted to know, but he only shook his head and walked back to show his advisors the scrap of pale green silk that Evita had relinquished.
Blanca Estela did not press her luck with other games that evening. She stood in the sidelines and watched them play the games, trying to understand the words, not always being successful. But, no matter, she had won a victory that night, even if the others did not know about it. Still, she knew that she could not rest on her laurels. There would be other games and other words to learn if she wanted to avoid Evita’s scorn or Mario’s disappointment.
Later that night, as she was going to bed, Blanca Estela asked her mother, “Where is the River Nile?”
Mamá Anita heard her question and answered before Lilia had a chance to say anything. “In Egypt, of course. Don’t they teach you geography nowadays?”
It was a sign of how things were changing that she was not abashed by her grandmother’s scolding. But Lilia came to her defense. “She hasn’t studied world geography yet, Mamá. She’s still very young.”
“Well, when I was a child we learned all that right away, in the first grade... at least I think we did. We studied the rivers of Mexico, and then the rivers of the world... sometime when we were in school anyway. I’ll tell you what, Blanca Estela, tomorrow I will show you a book with pictures of far away places, a travel book. It used to belong to your grandfather. I’m sure that we’ll find descriptions of Egypt and pictures of the River Nile.”
“Why do you want to know?” Lilia asked her.
“Oh, I just wanted to see if it was really green.”