5

Lucia

The cabin door opens and she’s enveloped by warm, tropical air. It’s dense. Moist. It slicks down her throat, shuttles through her lungs, her veins, to her heart. This is the oxygen, more potent, the well, more pure, this is the new breath, new earth, new air, new life—she is coated with newness inside and out!

It takes two bus rides to reach the city of Cuenca, a third, slow and bumpy, to reach a tiny town called Martez. Hardly a town, maybe a village, it’s a single road lined with low, boxlike buildings, where women in traditional shawls squat next to buckets, hawking their vegetables. Six eggplants here, six cabbages there, ten avocados, thirty potatoes, a handful of peppers, three watermelons cut from the vine that morning. Freshly harvested, to be eaten the same day, so she pays twenty cents for six guayabas and the abuela hacks one open with a small, rusty hatchet and she sucks sweet pulp to quench her thirst. “Essy, want to try?” Wide-eyed children swarm to greet them, waving plastic bags full of gummies, candy corns, lemon and lime sour balls. “Essy, try this! It’s better than candy.” Manny swats the niños away.

His Papi arrives in a pickup truck, a battered red Toyota with scratches and dents like it’s been mauled by some foamy-mouthed carnivore. Fredy’s in back, curls big and tangled from the dusty wind, grin so wide it splits his face. He’s got the characteristic look of a Down’s kid: up-slanted eyes, flattened profile, tongue hung like a weary dog. But the way he lights up, leaps out of that truck when he sees his brother, it’s enough. The joy, the love! They must’ve told him so many great things about Manny, the hermano who went to Nueva York like a legend.

Papi is a plow of a man, solid, tireless, rooted in the earth. Dressed in sleeveless white undershirt, cutoff denim shorts, he’s a darker, heftier, more leathery version of Manny—handsome, with the same boxy face, prominent brow ridges. They shake hands before embracing in that awkward man-to-man way, high up around the shoulders instead of chest to chest.

“Did you have a good trip?” he asks.

“A beautiful trip,” she says.

Fredy offers a green lollipop to Essy, helps unravel the wrapper. Essy can’t take her eyes off him. She points to his belly button, blooping out from under his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles T-shirt. “Gordito,” she says, and back home Lucia would’ve had to shush and whisk her daughter aside, glance around apologetically, hoping no one overheard. But here Papi and Manny just laugh. Fredy is flabby, porky, obese, for a boy of twelve. Gordito. It’s the truth.

Papi slings their red plaid suitcases onto the back of the truck, stacks them in a pyramid.

“You and niña sit in front,” he says, gesturing to the cab. “The boys in the back.”

She reaches for Essy’s hand.

“No, Mama! I want to sit in the back!” Her daughter tugs away, waves her lollipop in the air like it’s a magic wand, slows to aim it straight at Fredy. “With that one.”

Lucia frowns. Maybe she’s skeptical for a minute, but Manny and Papi don’t bat an eye. So Essy clambers aboard, plops herself in Manny’s lap, and Fredy reclines on the mountain of luggage like it’s a comfy beach chair, points to puffs of clouds in the sky. “Mama, look at me!” says Essy, waving, and Lucia, up front next to Papi, twists and cranes to watch them through the mud-caked window. When they peel out of town, Essy unleashes a scream of joy: “Eeeee-ha!” She screams all the way to Papi’s farm.

This is her just-turned three-year-old daughter: unbuckled, unharnessed, hurtling down a dirt road on the back of a pickup truck. Her long dark hair flies free in the wind, lashes at her beaming face. Oh, if the mamas from Group could see them now!

•   •   •

Mami greets them at the farm. “Bienvenido a casa! Un abrazo, Lucy.” She’s short, wide-hipped, with a low center of gravity, formidable for her size (unmistakably, a bear). She draws Lucia into her bosom, a cocoon of warmth, a true womanly embrace. “And you, you must be Esperanza.” She drops to her knees. Essy burrows her face into her mother’s legs, until Mami coaxes her out with a piece of honey cake. Mami’s kitchen is spotless; colorful woven baskets hold everything from bread to knives to straws to eggs. On the wall hangs a silver plaque of Madonna and Child next to a Statue of Liberty calendar, days marked off with sturdy red X’s. “Where are Juan and Ricky?” asks Manny. “They’ll come home for lunch,” says Mami, and when they come, they come running, panting with excitement—dashing teens in school uniforms, starched white shirts and long brown trousers. “You’re an old man!” they yell, throwing punches at Manny, who punches them back, and it’s like he’s never been away.

They are shown to a small bedroom with bright orange walls. The bed, covered with a lacy bedspread, something handmade (knitted or crocheted, she can never tell the difference), the mattress soft but comfortable. She tells Manny she’ll rest her eyes for a minute. It ends up being all night.

She wakes to the smell of dew, calls of birds, high-pitched hums and chirps of busy insects. No cars, no buses, no screeching sirens, just the clacking throttle of a tractor at work in a distant neighbor’s field. Manny and Essy are both snoring, so she climbs out of bed, drapes Manny’s arm across Essy’s back in case she starts to roll. She slips into a sundress—no more bulky sweaters, no more heavy coats, no more boots! Everyone in the house is still asleep, so she heads outside for a walk. It’s a glorious new day. Everywhere she turns, only big uninterrupted sky, lush green terraces rolling up the hillsides, peaks gently bumping the horizon. She follows a trail through tall grass and is delivered out onto a pasture, freshly cleared, drenched with ripeness, cows and hay. Nature is perennially in bloom in Ecuador, and she feels at ease in its presence; even the traces of smoke and sawdust in the air feel familiar on her skin. In this part of the world, someone is inevitably burning or building something somewhere nearby. She stretches her arms, starts to spin like a child, faster and faster, until the world becomes a kaleidoscopic blur, until she gets so dizzy she must sit down. And then she lies on her back and watches the sky untwist, the clouds unwind, around and around and around.

Maybe she falls asleep for a minute. Next she’s rubbing her eyes like a fairy-tale princess, biting on her thumb to make sure this isn’t a dream. Trekking back to the house, she smells frying meat. Mami has cooked breakfast—chorizo, eggs and rice with cilantro, guanabana juice, all neatly arranged on the wooden picnic tables outside.

“You like?” asks Mami. Gestures from the food to the fields to the distant mountains and blue-gray sky.

“Yes,” she says. “Es muy bonita.”

“Paradiso.” Mami nods proudly.

Paradiso. She agrees.

Querencia.

•   •   •

That weekend, Manny’s parents host a welcome home party. With Mami’s six sisters and Papi’s three brothers and tíos and tías and cousins and a slew of neighbors, too, it feels like more people than she’s known her entire life! They roast a pig, four chickens, half a dozen guinea pigs (cuy, Ecuadorian specialty!), set out soups and tamales and empanadas and llapingachos, four pots of beans and rice. Mami has even baked a belated birthday cake for Essy, decorated with jelly beans and Jell-O and mini-marshmallows. And when they sing, feliz cumpleaños, it’s like a full-on chorus and Essy’s eyes grow round as marbles as she basks in the attention, puffs her cheeks, blows out three candles. Then she’s off with the pack, babies to teenagers, tearing through the house, into the fields, chasing animals, wielding sticks, playing ball games and hide-and-seek. No one worries about bedtime. The moon comes out. Lightning bugs flicker. As the night wears on, men slam shots of aguardiente. The older generation favors plaid button-down shirts, the younger sports neon tracksuits. Drunker and drunker, bolder and sloppier on the dance floor, and Manny mops his forehead as he loosens his hips, passes from tías to cousins to chicas with tight strappy tops and wedge heels and miniskirts. He is a smooth dancer, with an easy lead, hand in the small of the woman’s back. Lucia dances with the neighbor, Roberto, who sprays saliva into her ear as he sings, and then Tío Remy, who asks questions as he spins her around. Te gusta el campo? Te gusta nuestro país? Does she like Chinese food? When he lived in Quito he had a lady friend who was Chinese, an excellent cook who had very soft hands.

She is winded. The air is thin and her red blood cells haven’t adjusted to the new oxygen levels yet, so she breaks away to mingle with the older women, who shout to be heard above the deep thuds of reggaeton and tecnocumbia. “I am Sylvia’s cousin,” they all seem to say, and it’s as Manny once said: he has enough tíos and tías and cousins to populate an entire village. Is that Esperanza? Qué linda! Will you have more? You must have more. They pat their bellies. She knows they’re not referring to a second helping of flan.

Next morning, she and Essy are the first to wake. She is disoriented; the kitchen has been left in complete disarray. She washes dishes, pots, wipes down the table. Then she boils water in Mami’s stainless steel kettle, brews herself a cup of hot tea. Soon Mami appears in pink bathrobe and clear plastic slippers. “Buenos días,” she says, and Essy giggles, points to the rollers in Abuela’s hair. Mami shoos them out of the kitchen; party or no party, it’s time to prepare the next meal.

They eat breakfast outside. Scrambled eggs, fried potatoes, naran-jillas and plantains. When they’re finished, Papi stands at the head of the table, broad gummy smile stretching from ear to ear, parenthetical grooves carved into his face. She sees that smile in Manny and his three brothers, an unmistakable family inheritance. She sees it in Essy, too.

“We have something,” he announces. He nods to her. “For you.”

“Me?”

“For welcome,” he says.

Caught off guard, she glances at Manny, who’s looking away. Papi leads, they follow. Through the campo, past Mami’s vegetable garden, an old barn, a field of lazy goats, past a meadow, a trickling brook, down a steep hill of wildflowers, up a winding dirt path. They walk for ten minutes, maybe more, Essy perched atop Manny’s shoulders. At the end of the dirt path, a flat clearing, and behind it rises a lush, green mountain. They stop.

Mami’s crinkly eyes, smiling. Papi, all teeth, like the Cheshire cat.

“What is it?” she says.

•   •   •

It’s a small casita. A house shaped exactly the way a young child draws a house: a triangle on top of a rectangle, inside the rectangle, two squares. Built from chalky wood beams, tin sheets for a roof, packed dirt for floors. In the kitchen area, a sink, a double-burner stove, a metal table with three folding chairs. On the wall hangs a calendar supplied by a local gas company, next to a gold-framed picture of Jesus Christ. In the bedroom, a queen-size bed with another lacy bedspread, a wooden desk, wire shelves, a high-backed rocking chair. Mami has sewn curtains, flowery pink with three tiers of ruffles like a young girl’s dress, which artfully adorn the gaping window holes.

“It’s simple,” says Mami.

“There is no toilet yet,” Papi apologizes. He hasn’t had time to build an outhouse, but he will get to it soon.

“For now you can come to the house,” says Mami. “Or . . .” She gestures toward the trees.

“You like it?” says Papi.

All eyes on her. Her palms sweat. She doesn’t know what to say. It takes several moments before she fully comprehends that this house is for her, for them, for their little family. They are to live here, on this land, in this spot, at the foot of this mountain. For now. For how long. Forever? She swallows, unsure of what this means.

She has traveled in this country before, seen the shanties where families live in cardboard shacks and piss in buckets. With a parcel of arable land, a water source, Manny’s family is not poor like this, but she is certain they are far from rich.

She says, “This is so generous. Thank you.”

Mami beams.

They move into their new home later that day. She unpacks their red plaid suitcases.

“What do you think?” says Manny, in bed that night, their daughter asleep between them. And she surveys the lacy bedspread by their feet, the neat stacks of clothing she has organized onto their wire shelves (His. Hers. Essy’s), the pink ruffled curtains now drawn closed.

“It’s beautiful,” she says.

“Temporary,” he says. “I will build us a house, a good one. I promise.” He reaches over to caress her breasts.

•   •   •

Early the next morning, he goes with Papi to buy tools. They need to cut trees, clear brush behind the casita. She sets off with Essy to visit the main house again. The child runs ahead, her ability to find her way as instinctual as her easy, graceful gait. Gifts. Her daughter, with so many gifts! As they approach, she sees Mama and Tía Camila through the kitchen window. Camila is Mami’s oldest sister, the same stocky shape. Mami waves. Fredy is in the garden, feeding the chickens. Essy runs to join him.

She’s offered coffee, mango, a slice of honey cake. The women mix masa, shred cheese, pound plantains. They demonstrate how to wrap tamales, laying out the leaves, flattening them with a fist. Like this. No, like this! Not like that. Like that is too slow. They laugh. They gossip. She basks in their warmth. She remembers when she and Jie used to be like this. Close.

She sits on a low stool by the open door. Fredy is by the pigs, crawling on all fours. Essy vaults onto his back, wriggles up to his shoulders. He bucks like a mule, braying dramatically, tosses her into the dirt. Again! Again!

“Cuidado!” calls out Tía Camila.

“Fredy is such a sweet boy,” she says.

“All my sons.” Mami strikes her chest with her fist. “Big hearts. Good boys.”

“He’s strong,” she says.

Tía Camila shakes her head. “Not so strong, this one. Born this way. He needs to be careful.”

Mami sighs.

“Doctors say it won’t last, his heart,” says Tía Camila.

Lucia remembers the herbs, wrapped in the pretty red box, and the clay pot she picked out, mustard yellow with bamboo leaves painted on the side. She could ask, but Mami’s eyes have sprung tears. Quickly, they are wiped away, and Mami brushes herself off like she’s clearing crumbs off a table. “You see what it is like to be a mother,” she says. Lucia nods.

“When will you and Manny have another?” says Tía Camila. “One is so lonely. Surely Esperanza would like a baby brother or sister.”

“My granddaughter is a beautiful child,” says Mami. “It would be a shame not to have another.”

“A woman cannot waste too much time,” says Tía Camila. “Sylvia knows.”

“Oh, Camila,” says Mami.

This. Of course, this. Among women, always this.

Twelve more touches.

She manages a gracious smile. “What will you do after you prepare lunch, Mami?” she asks.

“I will prepare dinner,” says Mami, laughing. And she takes her time—soaks the beans, cleans dirt off the carrots plucked from the garden, peels the potatoes carefully with a paring knife. These are her days: cooking, cleaning, harvesting fruits and vegetables from the earth. She has nowhere else to be, nothing else to achieve, only chore after chore after chore.

This is how she falls into routine. It doesn’t take long to figure out how to parcel out twenty-four hours. Every morning there’s breakfast to prepare: tea, eggs, potatoes, rice. Manny heads off to cut terraces in the hillside, weed and water and repair the endless roster of items in disrepair: the truck, the tractor, the gate, the trough, the pipes, the roof, the fences around the property. And there is still the outhouse to build. Papi has helped set up an irrigation system for the land behind their casita, involving a complicated system of hoses and sprinklers that must be moved by hand every six hours. If it works, they’ll plant crops—cacao, papaya, passion fruit, plantains, a grazing area for animals.

After breakfast she washes dishes. Then she sprays water on the dirt floor, quickly sweeps crumbs with a broom onto a newspaper. Sometimes she and Essy visit the market in town to buy rice or vinegar or household detergents, the few items they don’t produce themselves. Sometimes she weeds, tends to the small garden where she’s planted cucumbers, radishes, peppers, herbs. Soon it’s time to prepare lunch. Manny returns. They eat together. These days, he’s always hungry.

After lunch she washes dishes. Then she washes clothes. At first she tries to do it outside in a plastic basin. Later she learns to head down to a wide section of the river where the local women gather with children in tow. The river bubbles, rich and earthy like chocolate, with a faintly metallic smell. In the beginning Essy shies away, clings to her legs, must be forcibly pried off and set down on the muddy bank. The women pretend not to notice. They scrub their clothes against a flat rock, rinse in the stream, lay the garments on the grass to dry. She has washed her clothes in kitchen sinks and bathtubs and large metal pots, in coin-operated machines in hot, musty basements where she’s had to pluck out lint and gum and strangers’ hair and stand by counting down minutes. Here, only the power of the river and sun. She stands knee-deep, scrubs a pair of blue jeans, imagines tiny specks of dirt released from the fabric’s pores, the river carrying away the filth. A bird flies overhead. Oh, how lucky to enjoy this lovely view!

Eventually Essy tires of her own tantrums. She joins the other children, splashing and digging, throwing sand, skipping rocks, chasing after tiny fish. An afternoon in the sun and the child is tired, whines and begs for a piggyback ride or simply falls asleep. Either way, she must be carried home. With Essy in tow, even the simplest chore can stretch into a daylong affair.

Evenings, she takes out her laptop computer, opens her files, but the glare of white light always feels too harsh, unharmonious with her surroundings, so she shuts it off, sits cross-legged in the high-backed wooden rocking chair, turns her attention to her notebook filled with outlines, lists, interview ideas. “What are you doing?” asks Manny. “Work,” she says. She jots a few notes until her chin starts to drop, then crawls into bed (Essy asleep, Manny awake), watches the small television sitting on top of the desk, though the reception is poor, with only two grainy channels, but they like to listen to the Colombian telenovelas. There is no local news.

At night she dreams of the river, all bubbles and suds. Her back is sore. Her skin is brown. Rough and cracked, her knuckles bleed, fingers turn chalky white. She can hear Ma’s voice, hoarse and appalled: My daughter, with the hands of a servant, aiya!

One night they’re watching television and the picture cuts out, all that’s left is static. They sit at the kitchen table, play cards, rummy or cuarenta or crazy eights.

“What do you think about moving into town?” she says.

“What?” says Manny.

“Town,” she says, setting down three queens.

“What town?”

“Martez.” Hardly a town, barely a village. Twenty minutes away via Papi’s truck.

“Why?”

“We could open some kind of business. You know, a store, or a restaurant, or an Internet café.”

“In Martez?” he says, laughing.

“Maybe a laundry business.”

He raises one eyebrow. “Why would we do that?”

“Well, it’d be a great business. Remember, didn’t we talk about starting some kind of business once we moved here? And do you have any idea how much time I spend washing clothes?”

He shakes his head, but not a simple “I don’t know,” more tinged with invisible eye-rolling, though his glance does not waver from his cards.

“Imagine how much time we’d save all the women around here if we provided a laundry service once a week—you could do pickup and delivery, I’d do wash, dry, and fold.”

“But then what would the women do?” he asks.

He is looking straight at her, but there’s no wink, no grin, no hint of humor on his face. She swerves her gaze to the floor.

Something in Manny has shifted, she can tell. He’s confident in a way she has never seen before—the way his shoulders sit back, how he walks with a slight swagger, and for a while, this renews her sexual appetite and they make love in places where Essy is not: on the kitchen table or in a chair or on the hammock outside the casita, mosquitoes sucking at her legs. He smokes with his cousins, plays futbol with his old schoolmates, and she can see the chicas appreciate his good looks. The campo suits him. Essy senses a change in him, too; whenever she hears the heavy plod of his boots, she runs to him like a puppy, paws and begs until he picks her up, swings her around (higher, Papi! higher!), sets her on his shoulders. They march into the house. He asks, “What’s for dinner?” And if he doesn’t like what she has prepared, the way it looks or smells, he marches across the fields to his Mami’s kitchen.

Now she wonders: Who is this man? It’s the first time she’s thought of him simply as a full-grown man, not a guy, a novio, one of the Vargas boys.

“What would the women do?” She repeats his words.

“Yeah. What would the women do, if you were doing their laundry?” He sets down three aces.

Her face feels hot. Her chest tight. Something squirms in her temples. She can find no words with which to retaliate.