A la víbora de la mar, por aquí pueden pasar, los
de adelante corren mucho, y los de atrás se
quedarán …
The following morning, Sunday, Raúl was still sleeping as Blanca Estela, Lilia and Mamá Anita quietly got dressed and left for church, leaving Blanca Estela with her curiosity about the ball still unsatisfied. Attendance at Mass that morning was, not surprisingly, less than usual as the revelers from the night before stayed home that morning to recuperate from their exertions. The communal fatigue even communicated itself to those who were in church, filling them with an air of lassitude, and even Father Mirabal was more subdued than usual in his sermon, uttering only a half-hearted condemnation of those who would celebrate on Saturday night and forget the Lord on Sunday.
Blanca Estela noticed that none of the golden-haired sisters, as she called Rosalía, Aurora and Perla, were in church, nor any members of their family or their guests. María Eva and Evita were sitting in one of the front pews, and Blanca Estela hoped to get some reports of the ball from them, but when Mass was over, Mamá Anita hurried them out, commenting to Lilia that they needed to get home so Raúl could have his dinner before leaving. Blanca Estela then looked for Leopoldo around the plaza, but there was no sign of him nor of the Jeep that took him to work. There was still more frustration when they passed Doctor Marín’s house, where the doctor’s old gray car and Enrique Alemán’s gleaming new automobile stood empty, one in front of the other. The doors to the house, too, remained stubbornly closed, although the faint sound of voices came floating out to the street through the open shutters.
When they arrived home, they found Raúl drinking coffee in the kitchen. He was already dressed, and his suitcase stood ready by the parlor door. Mamá Anita immediately busied herself warming a pot of soup on the little kerosene stove while Lilia set the table. Blanca Estela stood by quietly, waiting for her uncle to say something, but he seemed abstracted and paid no attention to her.
Finally her patience evaporated, and she spoke to him. “Uncle, aren’t you going to tell me about the ball?”
He paused in mid-sip, looking puzzled for a minute before responding. “The ball? Oh yes. Ah... it was very nice, very lively.”
“Did you dance? Who did you dance with?”
“Yes, I danced a little.”
“Did you dance with Perla? Did the man from Mexico City dance with her all night? Did he keep you from dancing with her?”
He laughed. “Yes, I danced with Perla once or twice.”
“Did she look beautiful?”
“Yes, she’s a very pretty girl.”
“What else did you do? And Leopoldo, did he dance with his sisters like he said he would?”
“I believe he did dance with his sisters. I don’t know if he danced with all three, but he did dance with Perla.”
“I wonder if he asked for her hand in marriage?”
“Who? Who asked for whose hand?”
“Enrique Alemán. Evita said that he had come to dance with Perla and to ask for her hand in marriage.”
Raúl shook his head, bewildered. “Blanca Estela, you know much more than I do.”
Lilia stopped going to and fro from the stove to the table and joined Blanca Estela in questioning Raúl. “Couldn’t you tell if Perla looked happy dancing with her suitor? Did they look as if they were engaged?”
Raúl threw up his hands. “I couldn’t tell anything like that. Leopoldo and I spent most of the time in the restaurant downstairs, talking and drinking a few beers.”
Lilia looked displeased and murmured under her breath, “I think it was more than a few beers.”
Raúl did not seem to have heard her, but Blanca Estela did, and she looked at her mother with surprise. Even as a murmur, the tone of Lilia’s words had been sharp, which was unusual for her.
Throughout dinner Raúl continued, distracted, saying hardly anything, and even Mamá Anita made only half-hearted conversation. As soon as they had finished eating, Lilia got up from the table and began washing the dishes, instead of lingering in after-dinner conversation, as was the custom. Raúl stood up, too, and announced that it was time for him to leave. Mamá Anita and Lilia followed him to the front door. Blanca Estela trailed behind them, feeling deflated, as if a party had ended too soon. She was disappointed that her uncle had not kept his promise to describe the ball in detail to her, and she was puzzled by the tension that she sensed in her mother. Before driving away, though, Raúl smiled his old smile and embraced his mother and his sister and then, spying Blanca Estela half-hidden behind the front doors, he retraced his steps until he stood before her. He surprised her by lifting her in his arms and giving her a quick kiss on the forehead. Then he was gone.
That evening at game time, Evita, Pedro, Mimi, Mario and Blanca Estela, pondered which game to play or which song to sing.
“We haven’t played La víbora de la mar in a long time,” Pedro said, his voice trailing off hesitantly, as it usually did on the rare occasions when he volunteered a statement.
“Yes, let’s play La víbora de la mar,” Evita supported him.
Blanca Estela turned to Mario with a question in her eyes, which he understood immediately.
“It’s simple,” he said. “Two people build a bridge with their arms, and the others line up, one behind the other, holding together with their hands to the waist or the shoulders of the one in front of them. Then the line passes under the bridge, except that the bridge falls down at the end of the verse and catches the last person.”
She nodded with comprehension. It was like “London Bridge Is Falling Down.” “But I don’t know the words in Spanish,” she felt obliged to warn him.
“Don’t worry. Just listen the first time. We’ll repeat the verses several times,” Mario assured her.
Mimi and Mario held up their arms and locked hands with each other. Evita then lined up first, then Pedro put his hands on her shoulders, and finally Blanca Estela lined up behind Pedro with her hands around his waist. The first four chanted the verses while Blanca Estela listened, and the line passed under the bridge. The height of the bridge formed by Mario and Mimi’s interlocked hands was sufficient for Evita, but Pedro and Blanca Estela, who were taller, had to duck to pass underneath it.
Blanca Estela listened to the words of the chant, wondering, first, why they invoked the snake of the sea. Why was the game called “The Snake of the Sea?” Perhaps because the line snaked around and under the bridge. The players also sang something about those who were ahead running very fast, and those in the back would be left behind. And just as they were singing “Los de adelante corren mucho y los de atrás se quedarán...” the bridge came down on the last word, just as Blanca Estela was passing underneath it. She was the one left behind, and she was out of the game.
She went to stand on the sidewalk and listened to the other verses that followed. There was something about a woman selling fruit: “Una Mexicana que frutas vendía, ciruela, chabacano, melón y sandía.” She knew the words for melon and watermelon—melón y sandía—but she would have to find out what ciruela and chabacano meant. Pedro was caught next, leaving Evita as the winner, and they were about to reshuffle the positions to begin again when Sandra arrived to join them.
“We’re playing La víbora de la mar,” Mario told her. “Do you want to be part of the snake, or do you want to be the bridge?”
She shook her head. “I can’t play. I have to go home right away. We’re packing our suitcases. I just came to... to say goodbye,” she added, shyly.
“Will you miss us? Will you remember us when you’re in Mexico City?” Mario asked her seriously.
“Yes,” she answered softly. “I think so.”
“We won’t forget you, and when you come back, you can play with us again,” he reassured her.
“Don’t forget to write to me,” Evita reminded her. “Tell me which movies you see and if you meet any movie stars.”
When Sandra had turned away to go home, all that remained with them of her was her white dress, reflecting the moonlight, growing fainter with every step she took away from them. Then Blanca Estela remembered that she had forgotten to ask Sandra to tell them about the ball.
The front door of Mimi and Mario’s house suddenly flew open, and a woman’s voice called out clearly, “Mimi, Mario, it’s time to come in.”
Mario let out a groan, “Oh, Nereida, it’s still very early.”
In the narrow opening of the door, Blanca Estela could see a room brightly illuminated by electric light and, silhouetted against the light, the figure of a tall, slender woman. She had on a dress of silvery material that clung to her waist and hips, and flared out around the knees. For a moment, Blanca Estela was reminded of the pictures of mermaids that appeared in her grandmother’s fairy-tale books, the creatures called sirenas. Who could this person be? It was not Mario’s mother, who was always referred to as Delia by Mamá Anita and who was a small, thin woman who seldom raised her voice above Mimi’s. She waited for Mario to say something by way of explanation, but he remained still, looking after Mimi as she slipped silently into the house.
“All right,” he said in a placating tone to the apparition in the doorway. “I will be there in just one minute.” He then turned to Blanca Estela, saying, “That’s my big sister, Nereida. She’s been away and just got back this morning while you were in church. She was visiting my aunt who lives in California. When she got there, Nereida decided that she wanted to be a beautician, and so she stayed six months to take some classes. She likes combing and cutting people’s hair. I had better go inside before she comes to get me. She pinches awfully hard. Good night.”
Pedro had already drifted up the street in the direction of his house, and Evita said she had better go to bed early since she had to go to school the next morning. Before she retired, though, she passed on additional information about Mario and Mimi’s family.
“Nereida wants to open a beauty parlor,” Evita said. “We don’t have one in Revilla. She brought back from across the river a whole bunch of lotions and curlers to give permanents.”
“How old is she?” Blanca Estela asked, impressed.
“I think she just turned seventeen. Yes, I think that’s right because Tino, the brother, is the oldest, and he’s twenty.”
“Is that why she came back, to start a beauty parlor?”
“Well, no, she mainly came back because their mother is not in good health. She gets very bad headaches—migraines, my mother says they’re called. Nereida is supposed to help their mother with the house, but she’s also going to use one room for her beauty parlor, where she will cut hair and give permanents. I’ll ask her to cut my hair soon, if my mother lets me. I had better go to bed now. You’re lucky that you don’t have to go to school.”
But Blanca Estela did not feel particularly lucky about this, although reason and logic told her that she should. She merely felt left out because they went off to school without her. The following afternoon, however, she appreciated the benefit of being home, instead of at school, because she got to join her mother and grandmother and María Eva when they sat down for an early merienda and conversation.
María Eva arrived at three, bringing some fruit empanadas that she had baked, and Mamá Anita immediately put a pot of coffee on the stove to serve with the apple turnovers. Finally Blanca Estela got to hear the missing details about the ball. As María Eva settled down at the kitchen table to enjoy her empanadas and coffee, she began the conversation by saying, “Well, I can get some rest at last. The rush work of the ball dresses is over. The only thing I will have for the next month or so are perhaps some First Communion dresses and some baptism robes. Not that I’m complaining about having too much work. It’s hard making a living as a widow...” She stopped suddenly and looked at Lilia in distress.
“I hear that your ball dresses were much admired,” Mamá Anita interposed.
“People are kind to say so. Of course, so much depends on who wears the dress. I had told you about the blue dress I made for Perla Escalante. Well, of course the girl looked beautiful in it. She’s young and has a good figure, and with her coloring, she was bound to do justice to the dress, which was made of very good fabric, by the way. And speaking of Perla...”
“Yes, do tell us about her and her suitor,” Lilia broke in, expectantly.
“Well, I stopped by the Doctor’s house yesterday after church, because I had to deliver some dresses that I was altering for Aurora. They needed letting out because she has put on some weight. Anyway, I took the clothes after Mass to Rosalía’s house, and they were all there, all except Perla that is, who was at her parents’ house looking after her father who had a flare up of his diabetes. Aurora was very upset because Perla had refused their guest’s declaration of love.”
“Aah!” Lilia and Mamá Anita exclaimed in unison.
“I thought she might,” Mamá Anita began, but María Eva swept aside the comment and continued with her tale.
“You know that Enrique Alemán is a business partner of Ramón, Aurora’s husband. They sell refrigerators and stoves and household appliances, things like that. He fell in love with Perla when Perla went to stay with Aurora more than a year ago, at the time that Aurora’s youngest child was born. As a matter of fact, Enrique and Perla were the godparents at the baptism of the baby. However, Enrique did not declare his love for the girl then. He thought that she would feel that he was pressuring her because they had not known each other very long. But he began corresponding with her when she came home. He wrote to her every week. Armando, the mailman, remembers delivering the letters that came very regularly.”
“And did the girl respond to his letters?” Mamá Anita asked.
“That I don’t know. Armando remembers seeing a few letters addressed to a man in Mexico City, but not on a regular basis. I think he wrote much more often to her than she did to him. Anyway, he drove Aurora and Ramón and the children down here because he came to ask Perla to become engaged to him. And at the ball, he did ask her.”
“How do people know that?” Lilia asked.
“Enrique danced with Perla almost all night long, except for one or two dances when she danced with her brother, Leopoldo, and, oh, one dance with your boy, Raúl, Doña Anita. A very handsome couple they made, I hear—Perla and Raúl. But towards the end of the ball, Enrique and Perla stepped outside on the balcony, and people could see that they were conversing seriously. Then Sunday morning it came out that Enrique had asked Perla, on the balcony, to become engaged to him. He told her that his intentions were to marry her, and that he would speak to her parents about it as soon as she gave him permission to do so. And she said ‘No!”’
“Why? Did she give a reason?” Lilia wanted to know.
“She wouldn’t give any explanation at first, especially not to Aurora, nor to their mother, who was very upset with her. But, finally, she told Rosalía that she wanted to go away to study to be a nurse. She said that while helping Doctor Marín, she had realized that she would have liked to have been a doctor, too, but since she had missed all the medical preparatory courses of study, it was too late for her to go to medical school, even if she had had the money to do so, which I don’t think her family has. Still, since she received so much satisfaction from helping others get well, she would study to be a nurse, she said. It is not too late for that.”
“And where is she going to study? We don’t have any nursing schools or hospitals here,” Mamá Anita commented, puzzled.
“She will go stay with her aunt in Monterrey and study there. Doctor Marín assured her that he would help her to enroll in the kind of studies that she will need to be a nurse. You can imagine the upheaval in that family! Doctor Marín and Rosalía say that they will support Perla in her desire to study, while Aurora, Ramón and Doña Luz, the girl’s mother, are angry that she is throwing away her best opportunity for a good marriage. They say that Enrique is a wealthy man, that he could offer Perla a very comfortable life, even luxury perhaps, the opportunity to live in a great city, to meet important people... and he’s good looking, too. Anyway, Aurora and her family and their guest all left this morning, most upset with the girl.”
“And what does Don Juan, Perla’s father, say about her refusal?” Mamá Anita asked.
“He says that it is up to Perla to decide her future, that if she does not love this man, he would never pressure her to marry him. He says that it does not matter to him how much money Enrique has, that his daughter is not for sale.”
“Hilitos de Oro,” Blanca Estela murmured under her breath, but nobody heard her.
“My goodness, this is almost like a novel,” Mamá Anita remarked and then added briskly, “Well, I hope the girl doesn’t regret her decision later on. She may be giving up a life of security and comfort.”
“I am glad that Perla did what she did,” Lilia interjected with a touch of defiance. “After all, there is no guarantee that the man would always be rich, or even that he would be a good husband. He could be rich and still make her unhappy. It is far better for her to do what gives her satisfaction, and at the same time gives her the ability to earn a living, so she can support herself. After all, María Eva and I know what it’s like to be left alone to raise a family and without the preparation to do so.”
“Lilia, don’t forget the child is here,” Mamá Anita scolded her, indicating Blanca Estela with her eyes.
Blanca Estela had sat quietly, imbibing the fascinating revelations, hoping that neither her grandmother nor her mother would remember that she was present. Adults always wanted to exclude children from the most interesting conversations.
“Well, Doña Anita, Lilia, I think I had better be going. Evita will be home from school any minute now, and she’ll be wanting a merienda. That child looks like a little bird, but she eats constantly. By the way, did you know that Nereida, Néstor Balboa’s oldest girl, returned yesterday? She has been in California with an aunt, but her mother needs her at home to help her. Poor Delia, she’ll have a good spell, but then a migraine will knock her down for days.”
“Nereida is going to set up a beauty parlor in her house,” Blanca Estela could not resist showing off her knowledge.
María Eva laughed. “Evita must have been talking to you. Evita wants Nereida to have a beauty parlor, so she can have her hair cut and set. Still, the girl—Nereida—has always had a talent for that sort of thing. She knows how to cut hair quite well, if you need her Lilia. She’s a very pretty girl, too. Those Balboa kids all grew up like weeds, more or less, without much attention, but they have learned to take care of themselves and are all hard workers.”
“María Eva, if you see the girl—Nereida—would you tell her that I want her to cut my hair, whenever she has time,” Lilia said, touching her wavy black hair that almost reached her shoulders. She laughed, “My hair is getting so long and wild that I look like those hermits from the Bible.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll tell her, or I’ll send word to her with Evita. And now I really must go.”
“But your hair is so pretty. I like it long,” Blanca Estela lamented when María Eva had shut the door behind her.
“Thank you, darling, but I need to begin getting things in order.”
“What things?”
“Oh, like my clothes, my hair, so that I can...”
They were interrupted by a shrill whistle outside the door. Lilia and Blanca Estela were still standing in the entryway while Mamá Anita went to hang a wet dress on the clothes line at the back of the patio.
“That’s the mailman,” Lilia remarked, suddenly alert. “Let me see what he has.”
Blanca Estela was surprised, for on the infrequent occasions when the mailman brought them letters, it was she, Blanca Estela, who was usually sent to the door to receive them. Lilia opened the door, quickly took what appeared to Blanca Estela to be two envelopes and thanked the mailman. She said, “A letter from my brother, Raúl,” and disappeared into the dimness of the parlor, where the shutters had been closed to keep out the afternoon heat.
The following afternoon, just as the parlor clock was chiming four, there was a knock at the front door, and Blanca Estela went to answer it. A young woman stood on the sidewalk with a barber’s white cloth draped over her arm and a pair of scissors and a comb in her hand.
“I’ve come to cut your mother’s hair,” she said, stepping over the threshold with the same confident air as Mario.
“You must be Nereida,” Blanca Estela said, although in the harsh glare of the sun, the young woman did not look like the mermaid that she had resembled in the moonlight.
She was quite tall and slender but “well developed,” as Mamá Anita would say, referring to the bosom and hip area, all of which was emphasized by her dress, a faded cotton print which seemed too short and too tight for her. Blanca Estela gazed with interest at Nereida’s face, trying to sort out the family resemblances. In coloring she was more like Mimi. She had light brown hair, like Mimi, although Nereida’s curled in soft ringlets around her ears and down the nape of her neck. Her eyes were golden amber and tilted up at the corners, like a cat’s and not like Mimís’. When she smiled, showing her perfect teeth, she had the same joyful air as Mario.
Lilia came hurrying out of the parlor, her wet hair wrapped in a towel, turban-like. “Thank you for coming, Nereida. I just washed my hair, so I’m ready. What do you say if I bring out a chair here, to the entryway? We will have the best light, and it’s still hot enough that I won’t catch a chill with my hair wet. Blanca Estela, do you think that you can carry one of those chairs from the parlor and bring it over here?”
Blanca Estela nodded and returned shortly with one of the ladder-back chairs that had once belonged in a dining set but now lined the walls of the parlor. Lilia sat with her back to the patio, where the light came from, and Nereida draped the sheet around her shoulders, asking her how much she wanted cut. Lilia indicated with her three middle fingers the length that she wanted cut off, and Nereida began to snip at the two-inch lengths that protruded through the teeth of the comb.
Blanca Estela sat down on the top step from the entry to the patio and watched with dismay as her mother’s full mane of hair was reduced to only a fragment of its former glory.
“I will feel much cooler with shorter hair,” Lilia was saying, oblivious of her daughter’s disapproval.
“Short hair is more stylish, too. In California, where I was, they were wearing it short. I cut mine, too, when I was there,” Nereida agreed.
“Do you want to go back there?” Lilia asked her.
“As far as wanting, yes, but I don’t know if I will be able to, at least for now. My mother can’t cope by herself, as long as Mario and Mimi are still young and in school. So I’ll stay here for a while, but I will not be wasting time. I will arrange a room where ladies can come to get their hair cut or to have a permanent. I brought the latest products to give hair permanents without having to use those horrible electric curlers that burn your hair.”
“But if you could go back...?”
“Oh, I would go back. There is so much more of a future there. More work opportunities and education, too. Of course I would miss my family. People are more loving and closer to each other here, but still...”
“Yes,” Lilia said, almost under her breath, but Blanca Estela heard her, nonetheless. “There is the future to think about.”
There were no games after sunset the remainder of that week because all the children (with the exception of Blanca Estela, of course) were preparing their end-of-the-school-year assignments: writing compositions, coloring maps, and, in particular, finishing their projects for manual arts. For manual arts class, which was held on Friday afternoons, the boys usually did woodwork and the girls embroidery.
Pedro surprised Blanca Estela by showing her, with a great deal of stammerings and blushings, a handsomely carved and varnished picture frame, which was his class project. He later planned to give it to his mother, so she could put in it her wedding portrait, which had remained unframed for more than ten years. Mario had made something practical, a shoe-shine kit box, which he said he would later put to use when he started his shoe-shine business. Mimi had embroidered some daisies, rather haphazardly, on a dishtowel, but Evita had outdone herself with a set of napkins, which she had embroidered in a dainty cross-stitch. Blanca Estela was surprised at the abilities of her friends, as well as dismayed at her own dearth of talents. Evita, sensing her discouragement, offered to show her how to embroider after school let out. For the first time, Blanca Estela felt a surge of warmth for Evita and ceased to feel jealous of her.
Friday was to be the last day of school, and Blanca Estela awaited the day with almost as much impatience as her friends, but on Thursday she woke up to a sight that drove all other thoughts from her mind. Since early morning, while she was still half-asleep, she began to hear voices and shouts in the street, accompanied by rapid thumping sounds. Curious, she got up from her cot and opened the window shutters to peer outside.
The street, which at this time of day—or at any other time for that matter—usually saw only a few pedestrians, such as children going to and from school, and women visiting each other or doing their grocery shopping, now seemed to be full of horses. They were beautiful, powerful, quivering creatures with black or gold manes, which fluttered in the breeze when they tossed their heads. And on the horses there were riders wearing cowboy hats and bandanas around their necks, trotting or galloping the animals, sometimes stopping to show off their mounts as they pranced and pirouetted in front of a house.
Several times before, Blanca Estela had seen a few men dressed like these, wearing rancher hats and even leather leg coverings, which Mamá Anita had told her were called chaparreras. The men rode rhythmically on their mounts, the reins in their left hand, the right hand resting casually on their leg, as they went on their way to or from their ranches. Mamá Anita had explained that there were no roads to those ranches in the brush, only paths or senderos, and therefore, people had to travel on horseback. Or, if the sendero was wide enough, they could travel by wagons pulled by horses or mules. But today it seemed to Blanca Estela as if all the ranches must be empty because the horses and riders had all congregated in town.
She ran to the kitchen, where Mamá Anita was cooking flour tortillas, calling out to her, “Mamá Anita, come and look out the window. There are so many horses outside. You have never seen so many horses before, I’m sure.”
Mamá Anita burst out laughing delightedly and was still chuckling when Lilia came in from the patio and asked, “Why are you laughing, Mamá?”
“This child, she thinks I have never before seen as many horses as there are outside today. Bless you, child. In the old days there used to be many more. Not everybody has a horse nowadays.”
“But... why?” Blanca Estela asked, growing more confused by the minute.
“Today is June 24th. The feast day of Saint John the Baptist. It is a custom in Revilla to promenade on horseback on this day. It is also a custom to go bathing in the river early in the morning, but at my age I don’t do that any more. Not even the young ones do it very much anymore, although going to the river on the morning of St. John’s feast day, la mañana de San Juan, is a very old custom, coming probably from Spain. It’s a shame how things change.”
The galloping continued most of the morning until the riders went home to dinner. Blanca Estela watched them in fascination from the safety of the embrasure of the window. The horses looked so large and powerful that she was afraid to go out on the sidewalk for fear that one might charge into her. She was not completely confident that the riders could always control their mounts, especially the young boys. She noticed that the riders were mostly men or boys, except for the occasional instance where a horse carried two riders: a man in the saddle and a woman seated sideways behind him with her arms around his waist.
Late in the afternoon, after the heat of the day, the riders returned to promenade on their mounts on the street. Several impromptu horse races took place before Blanca Estela’s amazed eyes. Sometimes the races were evenly matched, but other times one horse would gain the lead immediately and leave the competitor far behind, hidden in a cloud of dust. By the time the sun went down, the riders finally began going home, but the dust that the horses’ hooves had raised remained in the air for several hours, spoiling the neighbors’ enjoyment of sitting before their open windows or on the sidewalk, and spoiling their children’s games too.
After dusk Mario came looking for Blanca Estela. He found her sitting in the entryway with her mother and grandmother, behind the closed front doors, sipping lemonade and fanning themselves with fans made of dried palm leaves. He said good evening very politely to all of them and then said that he had come to invite Blanca Estela to accompany him and his family to a picnic on the river on Saturday morning. He added that, because his father and his brother had to work on repairing the turbine at the electrical plant on the river, the entire family had decided to go along, especially since they had missed the early river bathe on the morning of St. John. They were taking meat to grill over coals and other food already cooked.
Blanca Estela looked inquiringly at her mother, but Lilia acted doubtful and did not respond at first. “I don’t know,” Lilia finally said, hesitantly. “Blanca Estela, you don’t know how to swim, and I don’t want to place the responsibility for looking after you on Delia. She has enough worries of her own. Your mother is going too, Mario?”
“Oh yes, and she would like it very much if you would join her, too,” Mario responded, gracefully including both Lilia and Mamá Anita.
“I can’t go,” Mamá Anita said quickly. “I have to visit a friend of mine who has been ill, but you, Lilia, should go. The fresh air will do you good, and I am sure that Delia will welcome your company.”
Lilia finally overcame her reluctance, and it was agreed that they would all ride in Néstor Balboa’s truck on Saturday morning, just after breakfast. Blanca Estela was too excited to wait till the following day to plan for the picnic and immediately went off to find the only playsuit that she had brought with her and which she had not had an opportunity to wear yet. The playsuit would have to do because she did not have a bathing suit, and she wanted to go in the water.
The evening before the picnic, though, a thought filled her with anxiety as she was going to bed. What her mother had said earlier was true: she did not know how to swim, although she had enjoyed playing in the shallow end of the swimming pool back home. Now, they were going to the river, that frightening, sullen river that slithered over rocks and churned in brown pools. It would suck her in and drown her, surely. She asked her mother timidly if they were going to have the picnic under the swinging bridge that they had crossed on the day of their arrival.
“Oh no, darling, we’re not going there at all. I forget that you still don’t know your way around here very well. The river we crossed when we arrived was the Río Grande. Tomorrow, we’re going to the Río Salado. It’s a much smaller river and closer to town. Revilla is really built on the Río Salado, not on the Río Grande. The water that people use here is from the Salado, and that’s where the electrical plant is. This is our own river, although after it passes Revilla it empties into the Río Grande. We share the Río Grande with the United States, so it is not all ours. It used to be all ours... when the land across the river also belonged to Mexico.”
Blanca Estela had not bargained for a lesson in history and geography when she had asked the question about where they were going to swim, but since it had turned out that way, she thought she might as well get something else clear. She asked her mother, “So that’s why people here, like Evita, say that somebody is from ‘across the river,’ or that something came ‘from the other side’ instead of saying ‘the United States?”’
“Yes, although I had not thought about it before. I suppose I say things like that, too, without realizing it.”
Saturday morning, right after breakfast, the truck belonging to Néstor Balboa, carrying him and his wife, Delia, Tino, Nereida, Mimi and Mario, stopped in front of the house to pick up Lilia and Blanca Estela. Néstor drove, and Delia and Lilia rode in the cab with him. Tino, Nereida, Mimi and Mario were standing in the back, holding on to the wood railings around the bed of the truck. They helped Blanca Estela to climb up to them. Mamá Anita stood in front of the house, calling out to Blanca Estela to remember to wear her straw hat and asking Lilia if she had remembered to take the parasol. They assured her that they had, and the truck drove off slowly, making a right turn at the corner of Mamá Anita’s house.
Blanca Estela had not yet explored the town in this direction, except as one of two routes to go buy fresh eggs from Pedro’s mother, and that was a trip of only two blocks. They traveled downhill along a very rocky, narrow street, and as they got closer to the river, the houses got smaller, although they were still made of stone. They finally came within sight of the river, which they could glimpse from the height of the truck bed, over the tops of the green rushes that lined the banks. The river was green, Blanca Estela noted with satisfaction, perhaps not Nile green, but at least green and not brown.
Néstor turned the truck to the right again, and drove a short distance to a spot where the rushes were cleared. A large willow tree grew at the water’s edge, close to a square concrete building. Néstor pulled the truck to the side of the squat concrete box and stopped. While Tino jumped off the back of the truck, Mario explained to Blanca Estela that the turbine was “in there,” pointing to the building. From where she stood Blanca Estela could also see, on the far side of the structure, a channel leading from the river to what looked like a swimming pool, which in turn, was linked to the turbine room by a concrete trough.
The two men, Néstor and Tino, disappeared into the building while Delia and Lilia got out of the cab holding on carefully to a couple of clay pots, one containing rice and the other beans, and to a basket with beef ribs, which they planned to grill over the coals. Mario then jumped off the truck and followed the men into the turbine room, leaving Nereida, Mimi and Blanca Estela to scamper off the truck last.
Blanca Estela noticed how carefree and pretty her mother looked that morning. She still wore black clothes, but it was a dress of thin material with short sleeves and cut low around the neck. On her feet she wore rope-soled canvas espadrilles, and her legs were bare and very white. Lilia had put on her sunglasses, but with her hands occupied with the pots, she had no use for the parasol and offered up her smiling face to the sun while the wind played with her recently shorn hair.
A short distance away, Nereida, in a white cotton dress with a short, full skirt that barely covered her knees, stood with her hands on her hips, calling out, “Mario, Mimi, you had better go gather firewood right now, so we can start the fire. It will take a long time to make coals.”
Mario came out of the turbine room, grumbling about bossy sisters and motioned to Mimi to follow him. Lilia turned to Blanca Estela, who stood by the truck, uncertain of what to do, and told her she could go gather firewood with the other two, but to be sure to wear her hat and wear her blouse over the playsuit.
The playsuit had been a point of contention with Mamá Anita. It was composed of two parts: short pants that stopped a couple of inches above the knees and a sleeveless, smocked top that left her midriff exposed. Mamá Anita had commented that she wasn’t sure if the garment was proper for a granddaughter of hers to exhibit herself in public. Lilia had responded that children in the United States wore clothes like that quite frequently with their parents’ approval. Mamá Anita had changed her tactics then and told Blanca Estela that she would suffer a severe sunburn on her exposed skin, and all three had finally agreed that Blanca Estela would wear a loose blouse over the top, which she would remove, of course, when she went in the water.
Under the supervision of Nereida, the three of them began to gather twigs and small branches that were lying on the ground. “Stay close to me,” Mario told Blanca Estela while with a hatchet he hacked off small limbs from a mesquite bush. “We have to be careful of snakes. Have you ever seen a snake?”
She shook her head.
“Well,” Mario continued, “if you hear a hissing or a rattling sound, look around you quickly. Actually, we hardly ever see any snakes around here, but you never know. Sometimes snakes come out of the river, but not usually around the turbine room.”
When each had gathered an armful of twigs and small branches, they returned to where their mothers waited for them under the willow tree. Mario and Nereida then busied themselves building a small fire inside a circle of stones. While the fire burned down to coals, Delia and Lilia spread out a quilt under the willow and composed themselves on it, enjoying the breeze in the shade and watching the campfire from there.
“Let’s go swimming right now,” Mario said, “because after we eat they won’t let us go in the water.”
The river was much friendlier than the Río Grande, being green and placid, but Blanca Estela still did not feel confident to go in it and said so, although she was ashamed to admit her fear. “Oh no, we don’t go in the river,” Mario reassured her. “We swim in the holding pool. The sluice gate to the turbine is shut now, so it’s like a swimming pool.”
Relief made her lighthearted again as she heard this.
“Nereida and Tino are very good swimmers, and they sometimes go in the river, but Mimi and I are not allowed to do so,” Mario continued. “Nereida,” he called out to his sister, “we’re going swimming in the pool.”
“Wait for me,” she answered. “I’m going in the water with you. Mother would worry if you go in alone. If the pool is full, the water comes up over your head, and you’re not as good swimmers as you think.”
Nereida told Delia and Lilia that the children were going in the pool and that she was going in with them. Lilia told Blanca Estela to stay close to the edge, and Nereida promised that she would stay with Blanca Estela. Blanca Estela took off her blouse and left it with her mother. Mario in turn, pulled off his T-shirt, keeping only his shorts, and Mimi removed her skirt, revealing underneath it a pair of cotton shorts like her brother’s, while above her waist she wore a T-shirt that also matched his.
Nereida, for her part, retired to the truck, and when she emerged she had changed out of her dress and into a swimsuit of dark green material that draped and gathered in folds from the right shoulder to the left hip. She ran lightly on her bare feet over the hot sand and pebbles until she reached the edge of the pool. There, she stood for a moment, poised as if about to dive in, and Mario called to her anxiously, “Don’t dive in; it’s too shallow.”
She flashed him a smile, saying, “I know. I was just pretending,” and she jumped in, feet first, and ducked completely under water. She surfaced a few seconds later and pulled herself out of the pool, shaking the water out of her hair, like a dog will do when it is wet. “Come and get in the water, you chickens,” Nereida called, walking towards the three who still stood under the willow tree, as if mesmerized by her vision.
Blanca Estela marveled at the beauty of Nereida’s long, slender legs and at the golden sheen of her skin, now dappled with brilliant drops of water. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, she remembered something that she had meant to ask her mother. Turning to Lilia, she asked, “Mamá, what does chabacano mean—in English?”
“What a strange question,” Lilia said, a little annoyed. “Let’s see, it’s a fruit, like a peach, but I don’t know how to say it in English.”
“Apricot,” Nereida said, pronouncing the ‘a’ like a Spanish sound. “I learned some English when I was away up north,” she explained, looking shyly at Lilia.
Of course. Blanca Estela had seen apricots in the stores when they had lived across the river. A honey-colored apricot, that’s what Nereida reminded her of with her golden legs and arms and the green bathing suit.
“Come on, time to get in the water,” Nereida repeated, taking Mimi by the hand.
Mario followed, and Blanca Estela came last. At the edge of the pool Mario and Mimi jumped in the water and began thrashing their arms and kicking out with their legs like a pair of tadpoles. Blanca Estela, seated at the edge of the pool with her feet in the water, still hesitated until Nereida, standing in chest-deep water, took her by the waist and pulled her in.
Blanca Estela had a moment of panic when it seemed that the water would come over her head, but it actually reached only her chin. She tried to stand on tiptoe, but the water, pressing and swirling around her legs, robbed her of control over them. Nereida told her to face the edge of the pool and hold on to it with her hands. Then she told her to let her legs float behind her.
Blanca Estela raised one leg first, skeptical that it would float. When she felt it drifting upwards, she was so delighted that she willed herself to let the other one go too, and it rose like a balloon set free. Soon she began to kick her legs behind her, splashing water on the others.
Nereida placed her hands under Blanca Estela’s stomach and told her to let go of the edge of the pool. Blanca Estela hesitated again, wondering if she dared to abandon herself to the promise which the girl held out. She finally released her grasp, one hand at a time, and soon found herself borne towards the center of the pool, still kicking her feet and flaying with her arms, telling herself that she was swimming. Nereida then led her back to the edge and told her that she was going to let her go. Blanca Estela grasped the edge of the pool again, but this time with only one hand. Nereida then told her to put her arms around her neck and that she would carry her piggyback across the pool. A little shyly, Blanca Estela locked her arms around Nereida. They crossed the pool in this manner, with Blanca Estela holding on to Nereida’s neck, kicking her legs and splashing the other two, still pretending that she was swimming.
Suddenly Mario and Mimi ceased their wild somersaults in the water and simultaneously extended their arms towards each other, locking their hands together and forming a bridge while they chanted, “A la víbora de la mar, por aquí pueden pasar.” Without warning, Nereida threw back her head and took a deep breath before arching her back and plunging underwater, like a dolphin, to pass under the bridge. Blanca Estela convulsively tightened her grip around Nereida’s neck as a green wave rushed over her head and enveloped her, shutting out daylight and air in one terrifying moment. It seemed to her that she was underwater for an age, wrapped in a roaring darkness, while she wondered why no one realized that she was drowning.
A lucid part of her mind, however, noted that almost immediately after their dive, Nereida had kicked out strongly and flayed her arms, gathering impetus for surfacing again. When they broke the surface, Nereida paused to take a deep, shuddering breath while Blanca Estela, clinging frantically to her, coughed up water. Nereida quickly led her to the edge of the pool and disengaged herself from the arms that still clutched her around the neck.
Blanca Estela hung onto the edge of the pool while her arms and legs trembled. She looked in the direction of her mother. Lilia was deep in conversation with Delia under the shade of the willow and never once looked in her direction. Glancing quickly over her shoulder she saw that Mimi and Mario were now playing water tag. Nereida lay floating on her back in the middle of the pool, a splash of dark green and gold on the opaque surface of the water, completely withdrawn from them all, but especially from Blanca Estela.
She had not cried out in fear. For that much she was grateful. She had not shamed herself before the others, but the shame was there, nevertheless, because she had sensed the disappointment in Nereida. What a stupid, cowardly girl she was; that had been Nereida’s unspoken message when she left her at the edge of the pool. And her mother had been oblivious to her anguish and her silent cry for help, wrapped up in her own grown-up concerns. She told herself to be sensible, that surely she had not been in any danger of drowning with so many people, especially grown-ups, around her. But it was still frightening to realize that, even surrounded by people, no one had sensed the sheer terror that had suddenly seized her, no one, not even her mother, had noticed it, except for the siren who had led her into and out of fear.
Gripping the edge of the pool, she threw one leg over it and pulled herself out of the water, shivering as the wind blew over her wet body. She felt very chilled and alone.