Mexico City, 1910–1911
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The next thing I remember is being flung on the ground like a sack of dirty laundry.
“Get down,” said Tía Emi. “We’re here.”
“Where?”
I saw elegant carriages and electric motor cars, but also pack mules, horses and braying burros, carts, wheelbarrows, and cycles. Human piss and horse dung ran in the gutters, and flies swarmed franticly around the turds. Cigarette butts were scattered everywhere.
“Mexico City,” she said. “We’ve walked all the way from Durango.”
By “we,” she meant she and the other women. I didn’t know how I’d gotten there, but I knew I hadn’t walked much. What’s more, I didn’t know what Durango was. I’d never thought about the name of the place where we’d been living. After all, I was only about four. I say “about four” because I wasn’t actually sure when I was born.
Tía Emi and the other women found an alley where they could squat and pee, and then looked for a church portal to sleep in. Tía Emi pulled some crusts and fruit out of her sack for me, then lay down, tucking her rebozo under her head to protect it from the hard stone. In an instant she was snoring.
We spent a couple of days loitering near the cathedral and occasionally begging for work. It was just after Epiphany—what they call Three Kings Day, January 6—which means that people weren’t feeling as generous as before Christmas, when they still had religion in their hearts. We ate the fruit first because it would go bad. Then we ate the tortillas and cheese. The food wouldn’t last long, we knew, so Tía Emi began offering fabric remnants, ribbons, and scraps of lace to passersby. Finally, she sold the gloves. With the few centavos she earned she bought fresh tortillas. After a week or so, we began venturing into the fancier neighborhoods—Colonia Roma, Condesa. Tía Emi would knock at the servants’ door and try to look self-assured. “Any work?” she’d ask. “I’m an experienced seamstress.” It wasn’t easy. We had no references, and besides, servants usually found positions through the gossip chain. One lady would tell another, “My maid Luisa has a niece who just came in from Oaxaca.” Or else, “Ludovica Barrada’s maid is looking for work on the sly because Ludovica is as bad-tempered as a puma with a thorn in its paw.”
In most houses, no one even bothered to open the door. In a few, the ama de llaves—the head maid—would look at me and shake her head.
“A kid? No, we’re not taking anyone with a kid.”
When the money ran out, Tía Emi learned to steal from street vendors and beg on church steps. Sometimes she’d snitch a cigarette from an urchin selling chewing gum and butts on a corner. She taught me to steal and beg as well. “Wait until he’s haggling with a customer, then nab an avocado,” she said. We were desperate. “Puta madre, I have to find work,” she moaned, “and you, you’re a burden.”
Don Francisco’s mansion looked pretty much like the other grand houses in the neighborhood—two stories, wrought iron over the windows, a locked gate. Tía Emi had heard from a woman in the marketplace that Doña Sara, Don Francisco’s wife, needed a housemaid.
We knocked on the door, but the ama de llaves said they didn’t need a seamstress.
“I can do other things,” said Tía Emi. “I could work in the kitchen or clean the house.”
“What about the girl?”
“I’m taking care of her,” said Tía Emi. “But I’m not her mother. I can get rid of her.”
Get rid of her? What did she mean? Was she going to slit my throat?
“She’s fair-complected,” explained Tía Emi. “I could probably get a good price for her from some white couple that can’t have a child.”
The ama stared at me. “That’s true,” she said finally. “What is your name?” she asked Tía Emi.
“Emilia Rojas-Moreno. They call me Emi. The child’s name is María Amparo, but we call her Mara.”
The ama placed her hand gently on my head. I shuddered. “Pretty little thing,” she murmured. I held my breath, wondering if she planned to sell me.
Her eyes were kind, but I was afraid. I wasn’t used to displays of affection. Neither Tía Emi nor the other servants in Durango cooed over children. Children were just there, like furniture. You put them where you wanted them and then forgot about them.
“You can keep her,” said the ama. “We have other girls with children in this house. We could give you a try...in the kitchen.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Tía Emi, taking me by the hand.
“Another thing,” said the ama. “Don Francisco Madero believes that all children should learn to read and write.”
“What for?” asked Tía Emi.
“He believes it will make them responsible citizens. Mara will go to school in the morning with other servant girls.”
“Sounds like a waste of time,” said Tía Emi.
The ama shrugged. “Don Francisco has ideas about education. He believes that if people are literate, they will be able to govern themselves responsibly.”
The ama’s name was Marcela. She gave Tía Emi a uniform—a loose gray dress with an apron—and showed us where we would stay. Instead of on a petate, we would sleep on a cot in a room we would share with another kitchen maid, Rosario, and her daughter, Anita.
“Maybe if Doña Sara could see how well I sew...” ventured Tía Emi.
Marcela turned to her, her eyes in their sockets like two stones in dry earth. “Doña Sara has no children,” she said, “and she dresses simply. She doesn’t need a seamstress. If you’re set on sewing, then you should have gone elsewhere and not wasted my time.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Tía Emi, trying to sound meek. “I’m very happy to peel potatoes.”
Anita and I attended class in an open room that looked like an abandoned workshop, but was freshly painted and had pictures of animals on the wall. The littlest girls sat in one section, the six-and seven-year-olds in another, the eight-and nine-year-olds in another. The boys were in a different room. We wore white blouses and blue skirts. Marcela gave Tía Emi some cloth, and she whipped up a uniform—the first new clothes I’d had in a long time. We carried little slates to write the letters of the alphabet on.
On the first day, we learned “a is for asno, b is for burro,” and the numbers from zero to ten. After two hours, the teacher said, “It’s time for recreo. Please form a straight line and follow me to the plaza at the end of the street, where you can play for fifteen minutes.”
I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do. I didn’t know what “play” meant. Anita seemed to understand, so I followed her.
In the plaza, the younger girls divided themselves into two groups, five on each side, and kicked a rag ball from one side to the other. The teacher gave the older girls a long rope, which two of them whirled around while a third jumped up and down over it, trying not to get her feet caught. I grimaced. Was this “playing”? It didn’t look like fun.
“Go ahead, María Amparo,” urged the teacher, a squat, dark woman who reminded me of a ripe eggplant. “Go stand next to Anita.”
I cringed. “I don’t want to,” I whimpered.
My own words astonished me. I was used to obeying commands, not giving opinions, but chasing after the cloth ball seemed terrifying.
“Don Francisco says exercise is healthy for children.”
I didn’t answer. I took the wide stance of a mule, head down, eyes half-closed. The other girls were running and kicking and shrieking with laughter.
“I... I...don’t know how...”
I felt a sharp pain on the side of my skull. Tía Emi had cuffed me on the ear before, but never so hard. “Children don’t make the rules,” snapped the teacher, grabbing me by the arm and shoving me into the group.
I stood next to Anita and prayed the ball wouldn’t come to me, but a moment later, it rolled in my direction. “Kick!” shouted Anita. “Kick!”
I lifted my foot, booted the ball with all my strength, and watched it roll toward the opposite side. No one jeered. The girls on the other team kicked it back, this time toward Anita, and we continued playing. I had done it right.
We’d been working at the Madero house for a couple of months. I was in the kitchen helping Tía Emi pluck stones out of lentils when I heard the crack of the heavy knocker against the brass plate of the front door. Blanca, the parlormaid, went to answer, and two people I’d never seen before stepped inside. Marcela recognized one of them: Doña Antonia López Negrete de Asúnsolo. She was a distant cousin of Don Francisco’s, and she had visited once or twice before, long ago.
“The little one must be her daughter, Dolores,” said Marcela.
They said she was six, but she was smaller than me. She wasn’t particularly pretty. She was white, that’s true, but olive-complected. (You have to understand that in Mexico, “white” was not just a skin color, but a whole way of being—a culture, a class, a bank account.) She wore a frilly organdy dress with bows and edgings, patent leather shoes, and white stockings. I was fascinated.
Blanca showed the visitors into the parlor. Doña Sara called for coffee and little cakes, which Blanca brought in on a tray. I went back into the kitchen to help Tía Emi prepare broccoli and asparagus for French-style soufflés. At Don Francisco’s house, I saw foods I’d never seen before and even tasted some of them. Don Francisco had lived abroad, and he liked dishes with French names and lots of butter. Even the servants ate well at Don Francisco’s. At Don Adalberto’s, it had been tortillas, rice, and beans for breakfast, comida, and supper.
Marcela said the visitors would be staying awhile. For the moment, they had no place to go, but they were relatives, so Doña Sara took them in. In Mexico, you can’t depend on the weather or the government, but you can always depend on your relatives. People called Doña Antonia a cat, Marcela said, because she always landed on her feet. Even when fate knocked her from her comfortable perch on the windowsill into a cold, filthy alley, she licked her paws, stretched her legs, and sauntered off in a new direction. “How many times do cats crawl out of the rubble after an explosion or an earthquake, sometimes carrying a kitten by the scruff of the neck?” said Marcela. “Cats are clever.”
Later that evening, Doña Antonia and Doña Sara sat on the patio in the shade of a massive ahuehuete tree. Colorful pots with cacti, Mexican heather, and herbs bordered the flagstone. While Doña Antonia recounted to Doña Sara how she had escaped from Durango with Lola hidden in a laundry basket, I flitted around inconspicuously, watering the cilantro and basil and pretending not to listen. I wondered where the girl was. I wanted to get a better look at her.
In the slums near the train station, Doña Antonia encountered squalor like she’d never seen before, she told Doña Sara. Squat, defeated men whose eyes never left the ground. Tattered women, with babies on their backs and outstretched hands. Old women—actually, not much older than Doña Antonia herself, but prematurely gray, with bleary eyes and decaying gums. In her plain black skirt and shabby rebozo, Doña Antonia looked as poor as they did. She could have gotten away without opening her purse, but once, in a flash of compassion, she thrust her hand into the mass of rags where she’d stashed some money, pulled out a few coins, and gave them to an abscess-ridden hag.
“Toma, madre,” she murmured. “Take this.” Immediately scores of beggar children surrounded her, squawking like starving chickens before a mound of grain.
On the walls, the graffiti screamed ¡Viva Madero! ¡Viva la democracia!
“I can’t help but wonder,” Doña Antonia said as they sipped coffee from Limoges cups, “How much longer before these downtrodden creatures rise up and demand the morsel of tortilla they are now begging for?”
“Francisco wants it to happen now!” said Doña Sara. “He says that without a total transformation, this country will rot.”
I could see that Doña Antonia was listening closely. She must have realized that even though her circle argued that Porfirio Díaz had brought growth to Mexico, the masses were weary of begging and eating slop. Don Francisco Madero was from one of the richest families in Mexico, but he’d been attracting crowds with his democratic ideas, crowds so large that Díaz saw him as a threat and had him imprisoned. What Díaz hadn’t realized was how much clout Madero’s family had. Before the dictator knew what hit him, Madero was out on bond and had hightailed it across the border. In San Antonio, November 1910, he called for a revolution, declaring himself provisional president. Then he lay low and prepared for the attack against Díaz. After some delay, he finally crossed the border into the Mexican state of Chihuahua on February 14. In the meantime, Revolutionary forces were organizing against Díaz elsewhere under Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa. I didn’t grasp any of this back then, of course. I was just a child. All I knew was that after Tía Emi and I moved into the Madero house, Don Francisco came and went. Sometimes he lived at home, but sometimes we didn’t see him for weeks at a time.
As Marcela had said, Doña Antonia was a cat, and she possessed a cat’s fine timing. She knew how to make the necessary adjustments in the air to land with all four paws solidly on the ground. She arched her feline back, raised her feline nose, and sensed which way the wind was blowing. Then she made a decision. It was clear that it was only a matter of time before Madero took over, and when he did, the great landed families would lose everything. But Doña Antonia’s family would be alright, as long as they made a few alterations to their political affiliation. And it would be easy enough, because Antonia was Francisco I. Madero’s cousin.
“I’m sure Paco is right,” she said, using her cousin’s nickname.
The nice thing about being a servant’s child is that nobody notices you. You’re invisible. People say all sorts of things, and they don’t worry that you might hear them.
Marcela came out to the patio with Lola, who looked as though she were just waking up from her siesta. Lola crawled into her mother’s lap and snuggled against her like a baby. Doña Antonia ran her fingers over Lola’s hair and coaxed a strand off her damp cheek. I felt a surge of disgust. Tía Emi never fawned over me like that.
The ladies got up and Marcela followed them into the house, holding Lola by the hand. I went back into the kitchen, where Tía Emi was husking corn, pulling the leaves off the ears with one swift yank, as though she were ripping cloth.
“I’ve already cleaned off the silk. Now you put the husks on a plate for tamales,” she ordered me.
Marcela came in, shoulders back, chin thrust out. She obviously had an important message to convey.
“Emi,” she said. “Doña Sara would like you to attend to Señorita Dolores. Get her dressed in the morning, bring her meals, stay with her while she eats... She’s too little to sit at the table with the adults. You’ll start tomorrow. They’ll only be here a few weeks, so it’s not a permanent arrangement.”
Tía Emi nodded. “Puta madre!” she said, when Marcela was out of earshot. “This could be a lucky break!”
“Why can’t she dress herself?” I retorted. “And why does someone need to stay with her when she eats? No one sits with me when I eat.”
Tía Emi looked as me as though I were a bug. “She’s not the same breed as us,” she said.
In the morning, while I was getting ready for school, I asked Tía Emi, “Did you take her breakfast?”
“She isn’t up yet.”
“Doesn’t she have to go to school?”
“I suppose she will eventually, some special school for rich people.”
I burst into tears. “This isn’t fair!”
“Listen, Mara, if Doña Antonia likes me, maybe she’ll hire me as a niñera...or a seamstress. I don’t want to spend my life pounding corn into cornmeal. A seamstress earns more than a kitchen maid.”
She was just using the girl to get a better-paying job. I calmed down.
For a while, I forgot about the girl. In the mornings I went to school with Anita. I was already starting to read and could do sums up to ten. Every day we also learned a few words in English—dog, cat, How are you? During the recreo I played ball or tag with the other girls. After the midday meal, I helped the maids clean up in the kitchen. They sang “Adelita” and the “Corrido de Pancho Villa” while they worked—they didn’t even have to hide their singing from the patrones—but never “The Ballad of Miguela Ruiz.”
One day, when I came home, I found Tía Emi in the kitchen with her needles and thread on her lap. The girl had snagged the hem of her frock, and Tía Emi was going to mend it.
“Take off your dress,” she ordered.
The girl caught my eye and raised her eyebrows. I shrugged. She shrugged, too, and threw the dress over her head. She stood there a moment in her camisole and petticoat. Then she smiled.
“Hola,” she said. “I’m Lola.” She held out her hand.
I didn’t respond. A white girl had never greeted me like that before. I was confused.
“My real name is Dolores,” she went on, “but they call me Lola. What’s your name?”
I blinked and looked down at my sandals, so shabby alongside her smart white boots.
“Tell her,” snapped Tía Emi.
“My name is María Amparo,” I said, “but they call me Mara.”
She was still in her underclothes, hand outstretched.
“Shake her hand,” directed Tía Emi, looking irritated.
How was I supposed to know? I thought. What do I know about hand shaking? I reached out and took her hand.
“Let’s be friends, Mara!” said Lola. Her smile was warm and engaging. I thought it might be a trick. I stared at her blankly. Was she really asking me to be her friend?
“Come with your aunt when she brings me my supper!” she said. “That way, we can play awhile.”
“Play?” Were we going to kick a ball across her room?
“Are you sure your mother won’t mind?” said Tía Emi.
“Oh no. Mami doesn’t like me to be alone all the time.” She paused and bit her lip. “I don’t have any brothers or sisters, you see. Mami can’t...”
“I’ll bring your tray up later,” interrupted Tía Emi.
When we entered the room with her supper, Lola was sitting on the bed in a frilly white nightgown, holding a rag doll. Doña Antonia had draped Lola’s dress over a chair.
“Look,” Lola said, handing me the doll. “Her name is Beti. She’s my favorite. I have others, though. Our trunks haven’t arrived yet.”
“Are you going to a party?”
Lola burst out laughing. “No, silly. I’m going to have supper and then we can play a little. Then I’ll go to bed.”
“Dressed like that?” I’d never seen such a fancy dress for sleeping. I slept in my underpants like the other servant girls, and Tía Emi slept in her drawers and a slip.
Lola sat down at a small table. “Here,” she said, “share my supper.”
Tía Emi had prepared a light evening meal of sopa de fideos—noodle soup—and rolls. Lola gave me a roll, crisp and fragrant, and I gnawed on the crust. Afterward, we ate mangos and dragon fruit cut like flowers, almost too beautiful to bite into.
I kept waiting to see if Lola would bring out a ball or a jump rope, but instead, we pretended to feed the doll and looked at one of her picture books. When Marcela came in and turned on the Victrola for her, she started to dance around the room.
“I love to dance!” she squealed. “What about you?”
“Me, too,” I said, although I had no idea how to dance.
“Can you come again tomorrow?” said Lola, once it was time to leave. “I know we’re going to be good friends.”
“Yes!” I said excitedly. “We’ll be good friends.”
I was thrilled. “Tomorrow I’m going to go play with my new friend Lola,” I told Anita before bed.
“She’s not your friend,” Anita murmured.
“Yes, she is,” I insisted. “She said—”
“Listen, Lola,” interrupted Tía Emi. “You can’t be her friend.” Her tone was matter-of-fact. She wasn’t trying to be unkind. “You can play with her, but you can’t be her friend.”
“Why not?” My chest was throbbing.
“Because,” she said. “That’s just the way things are.”
Within a couple of weeks, Doña Antonia had found an elegant two-floor apartment at 8 Calle de Berlín, in Colonia Juárez, one of the toniest neighborhoods in the city, right down the street from her cousin Francisco.
“She’s going to need a staff,” said Tía Emi. “She didn’t bring any servants from Durango. She’s going to want curtains and linens for the new house. She’s an elegant lady who wears tasteful, high-quality clothes, not like these city women who go around with no corsets and their bloomers showing. They look like putas en vacaciones. Besides, she has a child, and with a child there’s always mending. She’ll need someone who can sew, and she saw how nicely I repaired the señorita’s dress when she tore it.”
Putas en vacaciones? What did a puta on vacation wear? I had an idea what a puta was—I’d seen whores in the alleys by the cathedral—but what was a vacation?
Doña Antonia didn’t offer Tía Emi a job, but she did ask Doña Sara for permission to borrow her for a few days so she could make window hangings for Lola’s bedroom. We’d go over there after school, and I’d play with Lola while Tía Lola measured and sewed.
Before long, I realized that Lola was as fascinated with me as I was with her. At first, I assumed it was because I was light-skinned and didn’t look like the other servants’ children. But then I understood it was because she thought I was smart. I could already read as many words as she could, and do other things as well, like sew. I made a pinafore with tiny embroidered pink flowers around the hem for her doll Beti. A pinafore is easier to make than a dress because it has no sleeves or armholes.
“It’s beautiful,” she gasped. “Could you make one for my other doll, too? For Lisi.”
I wanted to please. “Of course,” I said.
“Just like the rich,” muttered Tía Emi, when I asked her for another scrap of cloth. “You give them your hand and they take your whole arm.”
About a month after they’d moved into the new apartment, Lola’s father arrived back from El Paso. Jesús Leonardo Asúnsolo was a distinguished-looking man who always wore a stiff white collar, a tie, a dark, double-breasted Edwardian vest, and a tight-fitting jacket. He had a rectangular face made severe by slicked-down hair parted perfectly in the middle—you would have thought he measured his forehead with a tape every morning—and a meticulously trimmed moustache that extended just to the corners of his lips. Thanks to his banking connections and Doña Antonia’s powerful friends and family, the Asúnsolo-López Negretes were once again living in style. Don Jesús Leonardo had deposited his fortune in a US bank and made investments. He had rescued not only their money, but also—and much more important—their social position. After all, eventually Lola would need a husband, Doña Antonia reminded him frequently, and given that she was a little on the dark side, they were going to need plenty of cash and social pull to make up for it.
Don Jesús Leonardo didn’t like me. That is, he didn’t like that Lola was hanging around with a servant girl. It was time for her to start mingling with her own set, so he and Doña Antonia began looking for the right school in earnest.
They decided on the Colegio Francés, a French convent school run by the Sisters of Saint Joseph, on the Rivera de San Cosme. At the Colegio Francés, Lola would receive a solid education in French language and culture, and she would mix with the right people. Besides, all those sweet little disciples of the Sisters of Saint Joseph had brothers.
Lola was a quick study. She learned to say, Oui, ma soeur and Non, ma soeur with bowed head and lowered eyes. She read the Bible and learned on which side of the plate to place the dessertspoon. She learned when to wear black leather Mary Janes and when to wear button-down boots. And she learned that she must not give up her virginity until she was married. “A woman’s body is sacred,” said the nuns. “You must never defile your body by allowing a man who isn’t your husband to touch you.”
“Who’s going to want to touch me?” she giggled. “With you, it will be different. You’re very pretty.”
I began to fidget. People had called me pretty before because I had light skin and wavy hair, and it made me uneasy.
On Sunday afternoons, the Asúnsolos would come for the comida, the midday meal, and I’d get to see Lola. We’d hide behind the ahuehuete tree, where we’d play with dolls and share secrets. Lola liked to imitate the nuns, with their pinched noses and French accents. Sometimes I’d brush her hair and tie bits of brightly colored ribbon or yarn into fanciful braids or twists.
“You see,” I hissed at Tía Emi one Sunday after Lola had left, “we are friends.”
Tía Emi grimaced and gathered up potato peels to throw to the chickens Doña Sara kept in the backyard. “Child,” she finally said, “you have a wild imagination.”
Even though I was living in his house, I didn’t know that Francisco I. Madero was the most important man in Mexico. Lola called him Tío Paco (even though he was actually her cousin), as though he were like any other grown-up. However, in November 1911, Don Francisco became president of Mexico. Then, everyone treated him with great respect and called him Señor Presidente.
Now, on Sundays, the dining room filled with important men who smoked and decided the future of the nation. Tío Gustavo, who was Don Francisco’s brother and adviser, would become agitated and use words like “national reconciliation,” “freedom of the press,” “bipartisan cabinet.” He would jump up and thrust his fist into the air demanding justice for the peasants. Of the two brothers, I liked Tío Gustavo more. He had a soft look about him, as though he’d like to forget about all this political nonsense and take a long nap. His face was fleshy and round, like a peach with bifocals, and he wore his hair combed back in a spectacular pompadour. His moustache formed an inverted V above his upper lip, giving him a perpetually surprised look. Even though he was very rich, his clothes never quite fit. His jacket was too tight and stretched unbecomingly over his chest, and his tie was always askew.
One evening, the men were in the smoking room arguing, puffing on cigars, and drinking liqueurs from decanters on the serving cart by the door. A new cousin was visiting that day, Mariano Samaniego. I’d never seen him before, but I knew from the way he dressed and spoke that he was part of the crema y nata of Mexican society. Lola told me that he had studied in the States, but then moved to Durango, where his family owned a large estate. He and his wife had twelve children, and he wasn’t willing to risk a hair on the head of a single one of them, and so, when the violence started a year before, like Lola’s father, he left Durango and set up house in Mexico City. But Lola wasn’t interested in all that. What interested Lola was Ramón, Don Mariano’s handsome and lively twelve-year-old son.
I expected that Sunday to be like any other. I expected Lola to meet me behind the ahuehuete tree, where we would play with dolls and giggle about the French nuns. But instead, she disappeared with her cousin, and I didn’t see her all day. Tía Emi was right, I thought. We’re not really friends. She only wants to be with me when there’s no one else to play with.
I was in the kitchen drying dishes when I heard a commotion in the smoking room. I ran to the door. Lola and Ramón had burst in while the men were arguing about politics, Lola wearing a wide, garish pink and purple skirt, her eyes lined with kohl and her lips painted red, and Ramón dressed all in black, holding a guitar.
Ramón pushed away the rug in the center of the room, took his position, and bowed.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began.
Lola giggled. “There are no ladies!”
“Call the ladies!” commanded Ramón.
“Ramón!” bellowed Don Mariano. “What is the meaning of this? Leave this room immediately and go play outside!”
“Please call the ladies,” insisted Ramón. “We have prepared a marvelous spectacle for you. I will play the guitar while Lola dances a famous dance from Andalusia.”
“Ramón!” exploded Don Mariano. “We are talking about important things here. This is no place for children!”
“Oh,” murmured Don Francisco tiredly, “let them do their show. We could use a break.” He rang for a servant and instructed him to fetch the ladies, who were smoking cigarettes from long gilt holders in one of the parlors.
Doña Antonia entered the room and caught her breath. Lola stood by the decanters, one leg raised in an arabesque, one arm extended toward the audience. In her hands, she held castanets. Doña Antonia looked as though she didn’t know whether to haul her out and spank her or burst out laughing. Lola shifted her weight and brought down her leg, then raised her arms above her head and looked over her shoulder with Andalusian arrogance. She clicked her castanets.
“A copla from Sevilla,” announced Ramón.
“From Sevilla!” Tío Gustavo jumped up and growled with mock indignation. “We are Mexicans here. We don’t need Spanish music. Play a corrido or a ranchera!”
“Today’s program features music from Andalusia,” Ramón continued calmly. “Please be seated and enjoy our performance.”
With a flourish and a sweep of his fingers, he made the guitar sing. Lola moved to the center of the room and clacked her heels, as she had once seen Spanish dancers do in a show.
“Ole!” cried Tío Gustavo.
“Brava! Brava!” shouted Don Francisco.
“She’s usually such a quiet little thing,” said Lola’s father with a sigh. “It’s only when she dances that she lights up like an electric bulb.”
Tío Gustavo started to clap in time to the music and soon everyone joined in. Doña Antonia, caught between mirth and mortification, pursed her lips. Lola clicked and clacked, moving her hips like a pro, turning this way and that, twirling and twirling.
“Watch out!” shouted one of the men.
Lola was spinning like a top. I could see she was going to lose her balance.
Ramón played faster and faster, his fingers flying over the strings. Suddenly, the tail of Lola’s skirt caught on something. She whipped around and extended her hand to yank it free from the cart with the liqueurs. The crystal decanters wobbled, teetered, and crashed to the floor with an earsplitting clatter. Splinters of expensive lead crystal cascaded over the floor, the ladies’ gowns, and the carpet Ramón had pushed to the side. Port, sherry, and French liqueurs flowed in abandon over the wood, joining together in crevices and cracks, then finding their way into the fibers of the carpet. Antonia hid her face in her hands.
The guests sat stunned, immobile, silent. Meanwhile, the liqueurs continued to ooze through the floorboards.
Doña Antonia seemed to be searching for something to say. But she was speechless with embarrassment.
Without warning, Lola moved toward the center of the room and stood before her uncles. With consummate poise, she took a wide step, bent her front knee, brought her opposite foot behind her, and curtseyed.
Francisco I. Madero, the president of the Republic, bit his lip and bowed his head. Don Gustavo stared into space, his eyes bulging. His moustache twitched. His fleshy face convulsed into a snarl. He opened his mouth to say something. Then, he burst out laughing.
“I’m so... I’m so sorry,” stammered Doña Antonia.
“Of course, we’ll take care of...” spluttered Don Jesús Leonardo.
Don Gustavo wasn’t listening. He was quaking with laughter. “Brava, Lola!” he shouted. “Brava, hijita! You are a real performer!” He shook his head. “Hard to believe she’s only seven.”
Don Francisco started to chuckle, and then, one by one, the guests began to roar with laughter. Lola took one bow after the other.
“I bet she’ll be a movie star!” thundered Tío Gustavo.
“Over my dead body,” mumbled Doña Antonia.
After the Samaniegos had left, I found Lola in the garden. She was singing to herself, clicking her heels to the rhythm of a flamenco number.
“Oh, we had so much fun tonight,” she cooed. “My cousin Ramón brought costumes and his guitar from home, and we put on a show.” She giggled. “Only the most awful thing happened...”
I cut her off. She’d ignored me all day, and I was furious. “Yes,” I snapped. “You made a big mess in the smoking room. I was watching from the doorway. You can go ahead and laugh about it, but somebody had to clean up after you, you know. Tía Emi and I have been picking the glass splinters out of our knees for hours.” I raised my skirt and showed her my bloody kneecaps. Snot was dripping from my nose, and tears were rolling down my cheeks.
Lola looked mortified. “I’m... I’m sorry... I didn’t think...”
“No, you don’t think. You just have fun and forget that the maids have to scrub the floors afterward. And by the way, that skirt you were dancing around in was horrible. You looked like a puta en vacaciones!”
She stood there staring at me. Ha! I thought. For once she had nothing to say.
I wasn’t resentful because I had to clean the floor. I was jealous. I’d thought that Lola was my friend. Yet she’d spent the whole day with Ramón without thinking of me even once, I was sure. And there was something else, too. Him. Ramón. He was handsome and spirited, and he had the most beautiful smile. Why couldn’t I be his friend, too? Why couldn’t I be his cousin, instead of her? I knew these were silly thoughts. Tía Emi had said that these people were not “the same breed” as us. Even so, I could feel the green-eyed snake gnawing at my heart.