Tengo una muñeca vestida de azul …
Monday morning she woke up with a sense of foreboding. It seemed to her that it was very dark, both in the room and outside. Perhaps it was still nighttime, but her mother’s cot was already empty, and the faint sound of voices reached her from the kitchen. The window shutters were partially open, and through the gap between them Blanca Estela caught a glimpse of gray, swollen clouds in the sky. It was the first time since her arrival in Revilla that the sun was not shining when she woke up. Perhaps this was the reason for this feeling of heaviness in her chest and the dull ache in her head. Except that this vague sense of desolation had been with her since Saturday afternoon.
The picnic on Saturday had been, according to everybody, successful. Delia and Lilia had both returned home with better color and spirits than before. The two women had clearly enjoyed conversing with each other. The meat cooked over coals had been delicious and enjoyed by all. The men had repaired the trouble with the turbine. And the three friends, under Nereida’s supervision, had played until they were tired. Blanca Estela knew all this and felt that it would be ungracious of her to spoil even the recollection of the outing by dwelling on her own anxieties. Therefore, she had resolved to put out of her mind the brief moment of terror when she had believed that she was drowning and did not mention the incident to her mother on that afternoon—or even later—and had played continuously with Mimi and Mario until it was time to go home.
After eating they had packed up the picnic dishes and put up the leftovers, folded the quilt and doused the campfire. Then they got back in the truck and returned home to spend the hottest part of the day indoors, where they could also take a brief nap. It was quite a brief one in the case of Blanca Estela, for by three o’clock Mamá Anita had already seen to it that she had changed into a dress and had dried and combed her hair in preparation for the regular Saturday Catechism class. Mario, too, showed the results of having changed into clean clothes and combed his hair as he waited for her at his front door. The two of them were rather subdued, though, as they made their way to church, running part of the distance but saying little.
Father Mirabal was already in the church when they arrived, as was the rest of the class: three boys and a girl. Blanca Estela had not paid much attention to them before, but today she observed them with a heightened attention that she could not explain. The boys came from families that she had heard described as not “belonging to the town.” What that meant was not clear to her, since the boys lived in town, but she sensed that it meant that they were not considered suitable to be her friends. She attributed this to the fact that they were often not very clean and had rough manners.
The girl did belong, but in an undefined way. Her name was Aminta, and she lived with her grandparents in one of the smaller houses that started some two blocks past the doctor’s house. Blanca Estela had seen the girl in Mass before with her grandmother. Mamá Anita would say good morning to the grandmother and add a few words about the weather or inquire after somebody’s health, but not converse with her at length. Aminta was small and thin, with a rather sallow complexion and dark, lank hair that she pushed behind her ears. Blanca Estela had seldom heard Aminta say anything, even in class. In all, grandmother and child were politely treated, but not noticed very much by the people who usually gathered to chat after Mass in the church atrium.
Father Mirabal began the class with the basic question of “Who made you?” They all knew the answer, which was simple: “God.” The follow-up question was also a repeat from previous lessons: “Why did God make you?” This was slightly more difficult, but they still managed to come up with the correct reply: “God made me, so that I may love and serve Him.” Every time she gave this answer, Blanca Estela had a moment of rebellion. Was it quite fair of God to create people solely in order to be loved and served by them? Wasn’t it rather selfish of Him? But she had never dared to voice her reservations to Father Mirabal, and he went on, unaware of her doubts, to drill them on the Ten Commandments.
The three boys, whose names she still had not learned, fell by the wayside with the Ten Commandments, unable to recite more than half of them. Father Mirabal had rapped them all on the head with his knuckles and had sent them to a distant corner with a dog-eared copy of the Catechism book, which contained the Commandments. He ordered them to not return until they had memorized all ten of them. The lesson then continued with only Mario, Aminta and Blanca Estela.
Mario had tripped up on reciting the Commandments of the Church, which were in addition to the Ten Commandments of God, and only the two girls were left. They both recited correctly the Apostles’ Creed, but when it came to the Salve Regina, Aminta’s thin, reedy voice was the only one heard. Father Mirabal had praised the girl for being the only one who knew the entire lesson and dismissed them all with instructions to go home and study, so they would be ready to receive their First Communion the following month.
On the way home, Blanca Estela commented to Mario that she had been surprised that Aminta could recite all the prayers, adding, “She had never said very much before.”
Mario shrugged indifferently, and said, “Well, she ought to know the Catechism. She’s been through it before.”
“But why hasn’t she made her First Communion, then?”
“Her grandparents took her to the ranch or somewhere before she finished the class last year. She’s weird,” he added.
This comment, coming from Mario, surprised her. “How is she weird?”
“Oh, I don’t know... just odd.” Mario would not elaborate any further, and they parted at Mario’s doorstep.
When she had crossed the threshold, she was met by the unusual sound of raised voices. It was Lilia and Mamá Anita who were sitting at the kitchen table, finishing an early supper. When they heard her footsteps, their voices ceased suddenly, and Lilia rose to meet her, saying in a tremulous tone that betrayed the strain behind it, “Estelita, do you want some supper, my love? Shall I warm up some of that meat that we brought home from the picnic?”
She shuddered at the thought of a heavy meal and shook her head.
“No, of course not, Lilia,” said Mamá Anita, going to the stove. “The child will want something light. Here is some rice pudding that I made for you, Blanca Estela,” she added, placing a small bowl before her.
Blanca Estela looked at the mound of rice and milk, sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon flakes, grateful to her grandmother for disguising the taste of boiled milk in the pudding. She ate it in silence. After she finished eating, she felt sleepy, and her grandmother, as if reading her thoughts, soon made up the cot for her. As she felt sleep closing in over her, she had a moment of panic. Sleep felt so much like the green wave that had washed over her in the pool. She thought that she had cried out, but if she did, no one heard her. Her mother’s and her grandmother’s voices had resumed rising and falling, and reached her from the other end of the house, and then from far away and then not at all.
The next day, the three of them attended Sunday Mass, as Blanca Estela had already become accustomed to doing. It seemed such a natural part of her life now, to go to church on Sunday morning with her mother and her grandmother and, after Mass, to linger behind, listening as Lilia conversed with María Eva and Mamá Anita exchanged news with other gray-haired women like herself. Today, though, María Eva and Evita were absent, gone up to Laredo to visit the older married sister, the one who might have married Raúl, if he had asked her. It was, perhaps, their absence that broke the pattern, because this time Lilia and Mamá Anita did not stay to chat after Mass let out, nodding only on their way out to Rosalía and Doctor Marín and then hurrying home.
Almost immediately after dinner, Lilia set to ironing clothes that she had washed the day before, while Blanca Estela had been at Catechism. Mamá Anita, apparently infected by this fever of activity, began to air out and rearrange the contents of the two large wardrobes. Blanca Estela at first watched as her mother maneuvered, not the electric iron with which Blanca Estela was familiar, but a larger implement made of cast iron. This iron had a hinged lid that opened on top to receive within it, glowing chunks of coal from the fireplace (where the beans had cooked earlier). These coals heated the iron with which Lilia now pressed black gabardine skirts and starched cotton blouses.
Lilia ironed with such determination, her forehead furrowed as perspiration beaded on her face, that Blanca Estela felt strangely inadequate and superfluous to her mother’s labors. She wandered off to watch Mamá Anita, instead. The scent of camphor balls and lavender sachets greeted her when she found her grandmother. She was bending down behind a stack of bed linens and garments from long ago, handling them lovingly.
Suddenly Mamá Anita exclaimed in surprise, “Why, here she is!” She lifted out a doll from her swaddle of white tissue paper. It was an object of perfect beauty, as only a doll can be: golden hair, pink porcelain face, blue eyes, a delicate rosebud of a mouth, and it was dressed in an opulent frock of sapphire blue satin. Blanca Estela wondered briefly if Perla had copied her ballgown from this doll. On her feet, the doll wore dainty slippers of white kid-skin. Lilia, coming into the room at that moment with an armload of ironed clothes, paused to contemplate the vision of spun gold and satin in her mother’s arms. She, too, exclaimed, as if meeting an old friend who had been given up for lost.
“There she is... Amilamia... Amaranta... Amalia... no, no. Aminta. Her name was Aminta.”
Blanca Estela mouthed a silent “No” and unexpectedly asked her mother, “Are you sure that is her name?”
“Yes, I remember now, that was her name.”
Blanca Estela was certain that the blue doll had not been named after the awkward, sallow-faced girl from Catechism class, but she wanted to hear her mother’s reasons. “Why did you name her that?” she asked.
Lilia carefully laid down the ironed clothes on the bed and placed her index finger on her chin, frowning in an effort to remember. “Why did I? I was very young, about your age, so what could I have been thinking of?... I know, it was the little girl in the picture album. A very pretty little girl, sitting on a small sofa with her doll sitting next to her. The little girl’s name was Aminta. I named my doll after her.”
“Who was she?” Blanca Estela inquired, increasingly curious.
“The little girl? I don’t remember. It was in that old album of yours, Mamá. Do you remember the photograph, a little girl about two or three, with curly hair, sitting next to a golden-haired doll?”
Mamá Anita only shook her head.
“I remember now,” said Lilia. “She was your niece, Mamá, the little girl who died of scarlet fever.”
Mamá Anita said, “Oh yes, I had forgotten. My sister Rosa’s oldest child. She would have been some fifteen years older than you. My sister was almost ten years older than me.”
Blanca Estela did not want to hear about a little girl who had died long ago, so she was relieved when her mother went on to remember happier things.
Lilia asked Mamá Anita, “Remember how I learned the song about the doll dressed in blue?” She began to croon softly: “Tengo una muñeca vestida de azul, con zapatos blancos y su manto azul. My doll never had a blue mantle, but it does have white shoes and a blue dress. And that is how I first learned to add and multiply, by learning the second part of the song. How does it go? ‘2 y 2 son 4, 4 y 2 son 6, 6 y 2 son 8, y 8, 16.’ Estelita, you must learn this song, too. All the children in Mexico learn it, even before they go to school. Repeat after me...”
And Blanca Estela repeated the words and the tune after her mother until she memorized the song, including the arithmetic. She even learned the last two verses, which she did not like because they brought up again the disquieting subject of death. The complete song first described the doll dressed in blue and then went on to relate how the doll had gone for a promenade and caught a chill and died.
Tengo una muñeca vestida de azul,
con zapatos blancos y su manto azul.
La llevé a la plaza y se me resfrió,
La llevé a la casa y la niña murió.
She hurried over those two last verses and with relief reached the part with the addition. After she finished, she asked her mother timidly, “Can I play sometimes with your doll?”
Lilia seemed to come back from far away before she answered her, “Yes, darling, but you must be very careful with her. She is made of porcelain, and she is very delicate. I never really played with her. Mamá would only let me touch her gently and perhaps display her in the parlor. For playing, I remember that I had a rag doll. I don’t know what happened to it, probably ended up in shreds. Let’s put her up now, wrapped again in tissue paper, and we’ll place her inside the wardrobe, on the top shelf. That’s where she was, isn’t that right, Mamá? When you want to take her out, you ask your grandmother, and she will let you play with her.”
Blanca Estela nodded seriously, conscious of the care and ceremony that had to be taken when handling such a beautiful thing. But as she was going to sleep that night, a thought surfaced briefly in her mind: Why did Lilia say that she must ask Mamá Anita for permission to take out the doll if the doll belonged to Lilia? Before she could think of an answer, she was asleep.
The next morning, Monday morning, she woke to a dull heaviness left behind by half-remembered dreams of a doll taken for a promenade in the plaza. The doll was left behind, abandoned on a bench in the rain. The rain swelled up the river, which then rose to cover up the plaza and carried away in its current a drowning doll. She swung her legs over the side of the cot and stood up uncertainly. The clock in the parlor chimed the half hour, and she peered at its face through still sleep-leaden eyes. It was already eight-thirty, later than she usually woke up.
She made her way to the kitchen, following the murmur of voices and clattering of dishes that originated there. Lilia was already at the table, finishing a plate of machacado con huevos and refried beans. Mamá Anita stood in front of the kerosene stove, turning a flour tortilla that puffed up on the hot griddle as she said, “You need a big breakfast because you don’t know at what time you will eat dinner.”
She stopped suddenly when she caught sight of Blanca Estela standing at the door. Lilia, too, looked up quickly and pushed back her chair to approach her. She put her arms around Blanca Estela and kissed her forehead as she held her tightly against her.
Blanca Estela was surprised at the intensity of the embrace and pushed her mother away, saying, “I’m hungry.”
Lilia released her and said, her voice a little tremulous, “Breakfast is ready, darling. Come and eat. Your grandmother just scrambled some eggs with some very good dried beef.”
Blanca Estela sat at the breakfast table silently while her mother placed the promised machacado—the dried beef with sautéed onions and tomatoes and scrambled with eggs—in front of her, along with a still steaming tortilla. After she did so, Lilia continued to stand before her, as if searching her face for some response, a comment about the food perhaps, but Blanca Estela ate in silence.
Lilia then began a nervous monologue. “Did the thunder wake you up? There was some thunder and lightning last night, but very little rain. You know, Mamá,” she added, turning to her mother, “it’s a good thing that you didn’t sleep outside, in the patio. You would have gotten wet. I don’t think it’s good for your rheumatism to sleep outside. Even in dry weather the dew gets all the bedclothes damp, and dampness aggravates the rheumatism.”
Mamá Anita, still standing by the stove, made no reply, but it seemed to Blanca Estela that she stared intently at Lilia, her lips tightly compressed, as if to hold back a remark. The silence lengthened, and finally, a sigh escaped from Mamá Anita who then said, “It’s fortunate that those children from next door left on yesterday’s bus. Today, if it rains hard, the road may be impassable.”
Blanca Estela recalled suddenly the reason for the dejection that she felt just under the surface: Mario and Mimi had been taken by Nereida to visit an aunt in Saltillo, up in the mountains past Monterrey. Mario had told her on Saturday, after Catechism, that they were going to Saltillo, where it was cool even in the middle of summer. Evita was gone, too. It seemed that everyone had taken flight as soon as school was over, and now she had no one to be her friend.
Something stirred in her memory, and she turned to look into the bedroom behind her. There, on the bed, was the large suitcase that she had only half-noticed in passing on her way to breakfast a short time ago. It must mean that they, she and her mother (or was Mamá Anita included too?), were going somewhere, perhaps to see her uncle, Raúl, who was supposed to be somewhere near Laredo.
She turned to her mother and asked, “Where are we going?”
Lilia pulled out a chair and, resting her arms on the table, leaned forward towards Blanca Estela. “Estelita,” she began and paused to clear her throat. Her voice did not seem to be fully under her control, for she had to make several attempts before she could speak again. “Estelita, I have to go away,” she said quickly. “Just for a little while. I have to go take care of some things across the river... look for a job to support us and other things. You will stay here with your grandmother for a short time, until I come back.”
Blanca Estela continued to chew on her food, which had developed the consistency of an expanding wad of paper that she found difficult to swallow. She concentrated on chewing, not seeing Lilia in front of her, but noticing Mamá Anita in the background, moving about like a gray shadow in the kitchen.
Outside there was an occasional roll of distant thunder. She finally swallowed the food and took a sip of pale coffee and milk. Then she repeated, in a conversational tone, the remark that she had just heard Mamá Anita express: “If it rains, the road may be impassable.”
A little choking laugh escaped from Lilia, “Oh, darling, you sound like your grandmother. I’m going in Manuel’s car, only across the bridge. The road on the other side is all paved. The bus will pick me up at the store. Do you remember Dolores, the big woman at the store, and Chucho, her son, who helped us with the luggage?”
“She doesn’t know where you’re going. Tell her where you will be,” Blanca Estela heard her grandmother’s voice float out of the shadows by the cold fireplace.
“I am only going to San Antonio, Estelita. That is not so far away. It is much closer, much closer than where we were before.”
But she did not want to hear where her mother was going, if she was going without her. She pushed her chair away from the table and got up, feeling her limbs strangely stiff as she went to find her clothes, so she could change out of her nightgown. She was already dressed by the time the car stopped outside the house, and Manuel knocked on the door.
Lilia checked to make sure the catch was securely fastened on the suitcase and then pulled at her stockings, snapping the garters that held them up. Mamá Anita led Manuel inside the house, so he could carry out the suitcase to the car. The big man came in with a smile on his brown face, wishing them good morning and saying cheerfully, “Well, it looks like St. John brought us rain, after all, not on his feast day exactly, but close enough. The ranchers will be happy, and the river will carry enough water for the turbine to make electricity. I bet Néstor is happy that he fixed the turbine before the river rose.”
Mamá Anita nodded absently and pointed to the case. With Manuel and Mamá Anita leading the way, Lilia stopped to look back at Blanca Estela who stood motionless in the parlor, holding on to the back of a chair.
“Estelita, aren’t you coming out to see me off?” She took her by the hand and led her outside. Out on the sidewalk, Lilia dropped down on one knee so she could look at Blanca Estela, face to face. Blanca Estela looked over her mother’s shoulder and past her to the closed doors and windows of María Eva’s empty house.
“Estelita, listen to me,” Lilia pleaded, her voice taking on a frantic edge. “I am coming back soon, and I am taking you back with me, so you can start school across the river in September. I don’t want you to lose the advantages that you can have over there, but I must find a job first. I will miss you very much, and I will write often. Please be good and mind your grandmother.”
Blanca Estela still said nothing, and Mamá Anita reached to touch Lilia’s shoulder, saying, “You must leave now hija. It is starting to rain again. Have a safe trip, and God bless you.”
Lilia put her arms around Blanca Estela and kissed her on the cheek. Then she quickly got to her feet and also embraced her mother and hurried inside the car. Heavy drops of rain began falling as the car pulled away. Lilia’s face was blurred behind the rain-splattered glass and the tears that suddenly clouded Blanca Estela’s eyes.
She made a desperate dash to follow the receding car, but Mamá Anita snatched at her dress and pulled her back, putting her arms around her. Blanca Estela remained like that, with her face buried against her grandmother’s apron, inhaling the smell of soap and sun-dried clothes that was a part of Mamá Anita, until she had her tears under control. Then she pushed away from her, saying gruffly, “I have to go to the bathroom,” and she ran in to hide in the stifling cubicle of the outhouse.
She heard the rain beat down on the tin roof of the privy and endured the nauseating vapors that rose and stagnated in the humid air trapped inside with her. She waited out the rain, and still she would not come out until she felt her conscience nudging her, telling her that Mamá Anita might worry that she had fallen in. But if she worried, why didn’t she come looking for her? She finally emerged, half-suffocated, walked gingerly across the muddy patio and entered the house through the kitchen.
There she found Mamá Anita seated before a small mound of pinto beans, which she was engaged in cleaning. Mamá Anita looked up and said matter of factly, “My eyes are not very good anymore, and it’s so dark outside, Blanca Estela. Come and help me sort through these beans. Pick out the pebbles and any little bits of twigs or dirt. I need to set the beans to cooking.”
Mamá Anita vacated the chair and indicated to Blanca Estela that she should take her place. She moved on to the fireplace where she began to arrange small, foot-lengths of firewood, which she set ablaze, and then began to do her daily chores while the wood burned itself down to coals. When Blanca Estela finished cleaning the beans, Mamá Anita washed them and then put them in a clay pot, which she filled with water and, after adding salt and spices, she set on a trivet over the coals.
The beans simmered over the coals, and Mamá Anita busied herself around the house dusting tables and sweeping floors, folding linens and plumping up pillows on the beds. Blanca Estela remained sitting at the table as if the mound of pinto beans were still before her. Silence hung over the house as heavily as the clouds outside. Finally Mamá Anita returned to the kitchen, carrying a tin box about a foot long by about three quarters as wide. She deposited it on the table before Blanca Estela. The box was cream-colored with a hinged lid on which was depicted a boating scene. The illustration showed a narrow waterway, crowded with boatmen standing at the oars while spectators looked on from a bridge, which spanned the canal, or leaned out of windows from the houses lining the shores.
Blanca Estela looked at the box and then at her grandmother with a question in her eyes, but she said nothing.
Mamá Anita said, “Open it.”
Inside, Blanca Estela found a profusion of buttons. For a minute, Blanca Estela was reminded of a scene in a movie she had seen where somebody—a pirate maybe, had opened a treasure chest and had been dazzled by the golden coins and the jewels inside it. The buttons glittered like so many gems and coins. There were glass buttons the color of emeralds and rubies, there were gold buttons like ancient coins, and there were even delicate, smooth pearls.
“I need twelve buttons,” Mamá Anita said, “twelve pearl buttons. There are many pearl buttons in there, but they are not all alike. The twelve must all be the same. Will you sort through the box and find me a dozen pearl buttons? “
Blanca Estela said nothing as she looked at the treasure trove before her, wondering if there were twelve identical buttons of any kind at all. Why didn’t her grandmother just buy a package of buttons?
Mamá Anita seemed to read her thoughts. “I don’t like to waste anything,” she said. “Throughout the years I have been saving buttons from dresses and shirts and leftover buttons from packages that I buy for a particular garment. These in the box are all fancy buttons. The plain white ones from shirts and the like, I keep in a jar. So now, when I need buttons for a dress, I seldom have to buy them. It will take you some time to sort through so many buttons, but don’t worry. Take as long as you need. We can eat on the other side of the table.”
Blanca Estela contemplated how to best approach her task. A quick survey showed her that there were at least two or three styles of pearl buttons, and she must find twelve of the same size and shape. She began by picking out all the pearl buttons and setting them aside. Then she began to sort them by size and shape. As the minutes passed, she developed four or five piles of pearl buttons, adding to one or another every so often after inspecting each button closely to make sure that it was a perfect match to its companions. Gradually, she began sorting buttons of other types until she had several stacks of gold or silver metal buttons or of colored glass.
She was surprised when her grandmother interrupted to say that it was time to eat. More than three hours had passed while the beans simmered, her grandmother cooked and she sorted buttons. She noticed, also, on looking out, that the clouds were parting, and the sun had begun to show through the breaks every so often. It surprised her too, that she was hungry and that she could enjoy the food that Mamá Anita placed in front of her.
After she ate, she was sleepy again, but she felt that she must push on to finish her sorting task. Mamá Anita noticed her drooping eyelids and suggested that she should go lie down; the cot was still set up in front of the window. The buttons would wait—today or tomorrow, there was no hurry. And so, although it was still daylight, she took off her dress and took Domino, the toy cat, to bed with her. She slept till the following day, dreamlessly and deeply, as if she had been anesthetized.
The days passed with an aching monotony. The clouds left, and the sky was clear again. The sun beat down on them with greater ferocity, and a hot, dry wind picked up handfuls of dust and scattered them indoors through the open windows. The mournful cooing of the turtledoves and the whirring of the cicadas were the only sounds to be heard outside in the middle of the day.
Inside the house, it was silent too. Gone were the sweet ripples of the sound of Lilia’s voice and the little laugh that sometimes caught in her throat. Blanca Estela, herself, felt no desire to speak now in either her still awkward Spanish or the now receding English. Perhaps this was what Mamá Anita had predicted for girls like her who knew neither language well: they would end up mute.
Mamá Anita did not force her to speak, either. Whatever she said seldom required a spoken reply. Blanca Estela realized that Mamá Anita had lived alone for so many years that silence no longer disturbed her. But she was kind to Blanca Estela, remembering to disguise the taste of boiled milk with chocolate or cinnamon, washing and combing her hair in the long afternoons, braiding her pigtails with different colored ribbons and reading to her from the magical tales of the Arabian nights. All this was balm on the raw-skinned grief that she felt at being left behind, abandoned, as she saw it, by her mother. She wanted to be angry at Lilia, but all she could summon when she thought of her was a crying ache, a longing to see her flower face, to stroke the raven wings that rose from her temples, to hear the sound of her voice like running water and the reassuring rustle of her skirts when she approached.
And throughout those days, the button box remained on the table with its treasure spilling out of it while the small mounds of buttons grew slowly. She began to lose track of the days and had to consult the calendar on the kitchen wall, which she normally avoided because it had a colored picture of a boy and a girl crossing a rickety bridge over a raging torrent. The picture always caused her anxiety, and she was not reassured by the presence of a blue and mauve angel hovering over the children. This morning, the calendar told her it was Saturday, and this afternoon, therefore, Mamá Anita would expect her to go to Catechism class.
Blanca Estela averted her eyes from the angel and the children in the storm. Father Mirabal had been telling them about angels and archangels, and her grandmother had taught her a short prayer to her guardian angel. The calendar picture was called precisely that, “The Guardian Angel,” and the idea was that he was watching over the children as they encountered danger. The angel would make sure that no harm came to them. But Blanca Estela had also overheard one of Mamá Anita’s friends say that when children died, they became angels, so that the angel in the picture was a dead child. What was the point of having a guardian angel, then?
Perhaps the bridge in the picture was about to collapse, and the children would be swallowed up by the angry river, and later they would join the company of angels. Perhaps she ought to ask Father Mirabal if it was a good thing to have a guardian angel watching over you. But Father Mirabal would probably view her question as proof of a lack of faith and would prevent her from making her First Communion. She was in the throes of these doubts, still staring at the picture on the calendar, when her grandmother hurried into the kitchen, waving a paper in her hand and saying, excitedly, “Blanca Estela, look, a letter from your mother.”
A beating of wings stirred in her chest and became trapped in her throat as she turned away from the picture on the wall to face her grandmother. She could not speak, but her hands fluttered as she held them out towards the letter. Mamá Anita did not see her gesture because she was peering at the writing through her eyeglasses.
She intermingled reading and commentary: “It says here that she arrived safely that same day, in the evening. Blessed be God and the Virgin Mary for that—although she had already sent word by telephone, long-distance, to Dolores at the store across the river, and she relayed the message to Manuel, who gave it to me the following day.
“But here it says that it was already dark when she arrived. Fortunately her friend, a very nice woman whose husband is in the military, was there to meet her at the bus station and take her home. She also says that she talked on the telephone with my Comadre, Lupe’s sister, who lives there with her son and his family. Thank goodness for that. At least she’s in contact with somebody from Revilla. Her friend may be very nice, but it is not the same as someone from Revilla, from your home town, where you know who people are.
“She says that she has started looking for a job, but it is difficult for a woman like her, with no education in English, to find decent work. Still, she is not discouraged, and look, Blanca Estela, she says that she loves you very much and hopes to see you soon. She says: ‘Estelita, you must remember that I love you with all my heart, and I keep you in my memory and my prayers. Be good with your grandmother; don’t give her any cause for worry. I hope to see you soon. Study hard in your Catechism class, so that you will be able to make your First Communion. I would give anything to be able to see you receive Communion, but I must stay here until I find a job. When I do, I will go back for you. Have you thought whom you would like to have as your godmother for your First Communion?’”
Mamá Anita folded and put away the letter in its envelope and asked her, “Well, have you thought of whom we should ask to be your godmother?”
Blanca Estela frowned, puzzled, and shook her head. She had no idea that one needed a godmother for a First Communion. “Well, you don’t have to decide this moment,” said Mamá Anita. “We can talk about it later. Right now, what we should do is eat dinner; then this afternoon, you must go to Catechism. You’ll have to walk to church by yourself because Mario and his sisters are not back yet. I am sure that you miss them and Evita. I know that I miss María Eva. She is such a good neighbor, but I think she’ll be back next week. Now, help me set the table.”
Shortly before three o’clock, Blanca Estela set off for church, wearing sandals and carrying a small, pink parasol that Mamá Anita had disinterred from the bottom of a trunk. That afternoon, she entered the church atrium at a sedate pace, twirling the open parasol, the shaft resting against her shoulder. She had not met anyone on the street at that unfriendly hour, when the sun heated the sidewalks like griddles for tortillas, and the stones of the houses turned the interiors into ovens.
Only Rosalía, the doctor’s wife, had looked out of one of her windows as Blanca Estela passed and waved at her with a gentle smile. Blanca Estela had wanted to call out to Rosalía, knowing that Rosalía would understand and share in her joy, “My mother has written a letter to me, and she says that she loves me and misses me, just like I miss her.” But she had said nothing, merely waving back, and had continued on her way to Catechism.
However, Blanca Estela carried with her to church a little worm of regret that bored into her happiness. She should have stopped to talk to Rosalía. Rosalía was so kind and pretty, but there was always something sad about her. Probably she missed Sandra and Jaime, now that they were gone and that she was left alone. Mamá Anita had remarked once that Rosalía spent a lot of time by herself because Doctor Marín was out visiting sick people a great deal of the time. The next time that she walked by the Doctor’s house, she would stop to talk to Rosalía, Blanca Estela resolved. She liked Rosalía very much.
Now, as she entered the cool dimness of the church, she paused to let her eyes adjust after the glare of the sun outside. The only light inside came from the clerestory windows above, close to the ceiling, and from the red votive candle that burned on the altar in the distance. She could barely make out the shapes of the three rowdy boys and the girl, Aminta, as they sat in the front pew, the boys at one end, laughing under their breath and shoving against each other, while the girl seemed to cringe against the bench at the other end. Father Mirabal came down the steps to the altar, spying Blanca Estela as she approached hesitantly, clutching her closed parasol.
“Come on, child, come here to the front,” the priest called to her, to her great embarrassment. She was forced to go to the front pew where Aminta reluctantly moved a mere fraction to make a space for her, leaving her wedged between the end of the pew and her unsympathetic neighbor.
Father Mirabal began the class as he usually did, with a review of subjects from previous lessons, in this instance with the Ten Commandments. He reminded them that the first group of Commandments was couched in the affirmative, as in “Do this, do that: love God, love your neighbor, observe the Day of the Lord, honor your parents.” As children, the Fourth Commandment, was one of the most important to them. It meant that you, as a child, should love your parents, and you demonstrated your love by obeying them and being respectful of them, as well as being affectionate to them. This commandment extended to the duty owed by children to grandparents and other elders who looked after them. You must love your parents, Father Mirabal, continued, even if they scold you or punish you for misbehavior.
Blanca Estela kept her eyes fixed on her hands, which gripped the handle of the parasol. She had the sudden conviction that Father Mirabal was speaking directly to her, remonstrating with her, because he knew that, deep inside her, she was not only sad because her mother was gone. She was also very angry with Lilia, and the anger sometimes also spilled over to her feelings for her grandmother who was, after all, not to blame for Lilia’s departure or for her decision to leave Blanca Estela behind.
In truth, she felt much gratitude and tenderness for Mamá Anita when she saw her grandmother seek out the treats to present before her: the honeycomb still dripping with honey that the milkman had brought in the morning, the ice cream from across the river that, overcoming her scruples, she had asked Leopoldo to buy for her. She thought of her grandmother also reading stories to her at night by the flickering light of the lamp, peering through her eyeglasses at the yellowish page of the book—all to help her go to sleep. And yet, all those times Blanca Estela thought that it should have been her mother who ought to have been with her, but her mother had gone away in the black car. Now, all she could remember was Lilia’s face bending forward, like a beautiful blossom on a slender stalk, from behind the car window that was quickly clouded over by the raindrops. She had tried to run after the car that took her mother away, but Mamá Anita had held her back. Mamá Anita was her jailer, and she was angry with her, too.
All this Father Mirabal must know, and that was why he was saying those things about the duty to love your parents and your grandparents. Blanca Estela made herself listen to him again and was surprised to hear that Father Mirabal was now talking about the Commandments that said “Thou shalt not.” He was saying that they all dealt with clearly forbidden acts, terrible acts, such as “Thou shalt not kill.” Was there anything about those Commandments, he asked, that they did not understand? Blanca Estela felt a stirring among the three boys at the other extreme of the pew and heard Father Mirabal ask one of them, “Yes, Eusebio, did you have a question about the Commandments?”
There was some more shuffling among the trio and an audible gasp before the one addressed finally responded. “I don’t understand, Father,” he said, “that one about fornicating.”
Blanca Estela glanced at the speaker, looking past Aminta’s slightly open mouth, and noticed that the boy, who seemed to be the oldest of the three, was trying, not very successfully, to hide a smirk.
“The Sixth Commandment forbids fornication,” Father Mirabal retorted sharply and then paused, as if considering further replies. “I think, Eusebio,” he continued, “that I should speak to you after class. You will stay behind this afternoon after the others leave. Now, I must remind you all, dear children, that you will make your first confession before you receive Communion. When you confess you will admit to the priest, and through the priest to God, that you are sinners, and you will ask for God’s forgiveness. And how have you sinned? By disobeying God’s Commandments, the ones that you have been studying. Have you been disrespectful to your elders? Have you disobeyed your father or your mother? And what about the sins that nobody sees: your thoughts? Have they been thoughts of anger?”
Father Mirabal continued, but Blanca Estela no longer listened. Yes, she had been angry—at Nereida for nearly drowning her, at her mother for leaving her, at her grandmother for holding her back, but she could not make herself feel sorry about feeling that way. She was a sinner without repentance. She became uncomfortably aware of Aminta close to her. Why wouldn’t the girl move away? She looked down and saw a bead of perspiration running down Aminta’s leg and also noticed the white, salty trace, like a snail’s trail, that the already dried sweat had left from the girl’s knee down to her ankle. Blanca Estela felt a shudder of revulsion pass through her. As she tried to pull away from her neighbor, Blanca Estela realized with something akin to panic that the back of her knees was stuck with dampness from her own perspiration, or perhaps from Aminta’s who had sat in that space before her, to the varnished surface of the pew.
It was fortunate that Father Mirabal chose that moment to dismiss them, forgetting, however, to hand out to them the hard candy with which he usually rewarded their attendance at class. Perhaps he was still upset with Eusebio. Blanca Estela jumped to her feet, dropping the parasol, and had to suffer Aminta picking it up and holding it out to her with an expectant smile. She took it promptly, barely remembering to say “thank you,” and tried to escape, but the girl would not let her go so easily. She followed her to the exit, where they both made a quick bob of a genuflection, emerging together into the blinding sun. Blanca Estela opened the parasol and found that Aminta moved close to her to share in the shade. It was impossible to push her away, though she would have liked to do so.
The girl was chattering without pause in her thin, sing-songy voice. “I hope that Father Mirabal punishes Eusebio. He’s such a nasty boy. He always tries to look at the girls’ underpants when the wind blows up their skirts.”
Aminta continued telling stories about Eusebio and his friends, but Blanca Estela barely heard her. She was trying to guess when the girl would finally remove herself from under the parasol and go on her way home. Perhaps when they turned the corner past the plaza, but no, Aminta continued, attached to her. She was supposed to live some two blocks up the sidestreet that bordered the doctor’s house. She would certainly turn off there, but they passed the doctor’s house, shuttered and silent in the late afternoon, and Blanca Estela still could not shake loose of her companion. She realized that Aminta was asking her a question.
“You live with your grandmother, don’t you?”
“No,” Blanca Estela retorted angrily and then felt ashamed that she was, in some way, denying her grandmother. “I am staying with my grandmother,” she tried to clarify, “while my mother is away.”
“I live with my grandparents,” Aminta volunteered. “My grandmother and I come and stay in town while my grandfather is at the ranch. Sometimes we all stay at the ranch. My mother is dead,” she added, matter of factly, “and my father is away... but we don’t know where. Do you know where your mother is?”
“Of course,” Blanca Estela responded, marveling that this girl could say so many things that made her angry. “I just had a letter from her today,” she added, triumphantly.
“Your father is dead, isn’t he?” Aminta continued, relentlessly. “That makes you an orphan,” she concluded. “I am an orphan, too, since my mother died. I wonder what’s worse, for your father or for your mother to die?”
Blanca Estela was horrified at this ghoulish speculation. She was sad when she thought of her father dying, but his was a very dim memory, a less than shadowy presence. Whereas, if she thought that her mother might die, that she might not return, a sense of horror and anguish enveloped her. She wanted to strike out at the awful girl who had voiced the possibility. She realized that they had reached Mamá Anita’s house—her own house now—and Aminta showed no signs of departing. She pushed open the door and walked in, pointedly not inviting her to enter, but the girl followed her in, anyway.
She found Mamá Anita in the bedroom, mending some pillowcases. She looked at Blanca Estela and her companion with a question in her eyes, but said nothing and waited for Blanca Estela to speak. Blanca Estela cast about her mind in vain for some way to convey to Mamá Anita that she had not invited the unwelcome guest and finally said feebly, “We just got out of Catechism class. I guess I... I guess we... are going to play for a while.”
Mamá Anita did not respond immediately. She finished snapping off a short length of thread with her teeth and then said slowly, “Yes, why don’t you return to the patio and play with your jacks? I think you left them there.”
Blanca Estela turned around and motioned for Aminta to follow her. They walked into the parlor and crossed the long room towards the patio. On the walls flanking the door between the parlor and the entryway were hanging the heavy, ornately carved wood frames that contained the portraits of the ancestors, as Blanca Estela thought of them collectively. One was the man with the fierce mustache, Mamá Anita’s beloved departed husband, Blanca Estela’s own grandfather. The other was an elderly couple with a rather severe expression who were Mamá Anita’s dead parents and her own great-grandparents. The third and smaller portrait was of a wistful-looking young woman in a white dress who was Mamá Anita’s oldest sister, who had died very young,
As they passed the portraits, Aminta paused before them and contemplated the faces, curiously intent. Suddenly she turned to Blanca Estela and asked, almost eagerly, “Is this house haunted?”
Blanca Estela felt a chill go through her, followed by a sense of outrage. “Of course not,” she protested. But the strange thing was that when she walked under those portraits, especially at this time of day, when the shadows in the room played on the faces that looked out from the frames, she always hurried and averted her eyes because she could not be sure, in the gloom, that they were not looking at her. She was also secretly relieved that a tall, hinged screen hid her cot from the entrance to the parlor, so that she need not fear that the ancestors were keeping a watch over her while she slept.
“Do you ever hear something like... like the sound of somebody chopping wood, especially in the middle of the night? Or like somebody is dragging chains, or strange sounds between the walls?” Aminta continued, very seriously.
Blanca Estela was shaking her head, vigorously, while inside her a voice was saying, “Well, of course you’ve heard the sound of chopping wood... when somebody was chopping wood, but in the middle of the night? No. But how did she know that it wasn’t so? She was asleep then.
“When you hear those sounds, it means that the house is haunted, usually by someone looking for buried treasure.” Aminta pursued her topic relentlessly. “There was once a man who was killed by robbers in his house. The robbers wanted the gold coins that he kept under his bed. Years later another man owned that same house, and he fell asleep with his arm hanging down from the bed, and at midnight the dead man came out from under the bed and pulled the sleeping man down. And in the morning they found the owner of the house, dead, on the floor by the bed, and a gold coin was lying on the floor by him.”
Blanca Estela cast about in a panic for something that would stem the tide of horrific tales from Aminta and found herself saying what she had never intended to say: “I have a doll, a beautiful doll, dressed in blue satin. Would you like to see her?”
Aminta stopped her recital in midstream and responded eagerly, “Let me see her. Where is she?”
“In the wardrobe. I... I have to ask my grandmother to take her out.”
She ran back to the bedroom and said, breathlessly, “Mamá Anita, please may I have the blue doll, so I can show it to... to her?” She finished nervously, pointing back to the parlor.
Mamá Anita finished folding a pillowcase and walked slowly to the wardrobe, as if giving her time to change her mind. She opened the wardrobe and deliberately unwrapped the tissue that surrounded the doll. She looked intently at Blanca Estela, and Blanca Estela realized that she was asking her silently if she was sure that she wanted to entrust the doll to the other girl. It was impossible for Blanca Estela to explain to her grandmother the desperation that had led her to take this step. She took the doll from her grandmother’s hands and carried her gently to where Aminta waited.
The girl’s eyes lighted up greedily. “Oh, what a beautiful doll” she exclaimed, reaching out to take it. But Blanca Estela continued to hold on to the doll. “What is her name?”
Blanca Estela rebelled at the thought of giving the girl the satisfaction of knowing that she shared the same name as the beautiful object. Better to violate the Ten Commandments and lie. “She... doesn’t have a name... yet.”
“Let me baptize her and give her a name,” Aminta pleaded, still holding out her hands. “Let me be her godmother.”
“No... my mother is going to give her a name, when she comes back,” she continued to lie.
“Please, let me hold her for a minute,” Aminta wheedled and, in a surprise move, grabbed the doll from Blanca Estela’s arms.
A red wave of anger washed over Blanca Estela, and she shouted, trembling with fury, “Give me back my doll,” and snatched her from Aminta’s hands. She heard a sickening ripping sound and realized in horror that the lovely blue satin dress now gaped open with a tear in the back.
“Go away,” Blanca Estela shouted, clutching the doll to her chest. “Go away, you horrible, ugly girl. Go home and leave me alone. I hate you. I hope you... I hope you die.”
The moment she had finished uttering these dreadful words, she was horrified at what she had said, but before she could retract her curse, Mamá Anita had hurried into the room. Her glance took in quickly the tears streaming down Blanca Estela’s face and from there passed on to Aminta, shrinking back from the fury that she had provoked.
Mamá Anita addressed herself briskly to Aminta, saying, “I think it is time that you went home. Your grandmother must be expecting you for supper.”
The girl seemed relieved to be dismissed and melted out and away through the open door. Mamá Anita then turned to Blanca Estela and gently pried the doll from her hands. “Let me see,” she said, examining the doll. “It’s only the dress that got torn. We can repair this. I will mend it with very fine stitching. You will hardly notice the mend.”
“But my mother... my mother,” Blanca Estela sobbed loudly now. “What will I tell my mother? It was her doll, her beautiful doll.”
Mamá Anita put her arms around Blanca Estela and crooned softly, “Hush, hush child. Your mother will understand. Besides, she is your doll now. Your mother gave her to you, don’t you remember? You will help me mend the dress, and we will take very good care of her in the future. What is her name? I have forgotten.”
Mamá Anita paused, as if trying to remember, but Blanca Estela would not bring herself to say the name which had such unpleasant associations.
Mamá Anita continued after the pause. “I think that we—that you—should give her a name. She is your doll now. But there is no hurry. You will name her when you are ready.”