The Queen of Water (13 page)

Then he is happy and everything is good … until next week.

The flowerpot incident doesn’t exactly solve the problem of Niño Carlitos, but it does make me feel stronger and smarter. I become an expert at finding ways to avoid being alone with him. In the afternoons, I watch for him through the window, and if I see him walking home alone from school, I dash out on an errand. If the Doctorita goes to bed early, leaving me by myself to wash the dishes, I just pile them in the sink for the next morning and go straight to my room and shut the door.

Still, it’s tiring to always be on guard, always peering out the window, looking over my shoulder. How much longer can I keep this up? It’s only a matter of time before he catches me alone, before he comes home late at night drunk again. But as any
MacGyver
episode will show you, when things look bleakest, that’s about the time you turn a corner.

chapter 20

O
NE AFTERNOON
, I’m pasturing the cow on the
colegio
grounds, walking along the concrete wall of the school. I turn the corner, and suddenly I’m face to face with a boy.

“Ay!” I jump back.

He has brown eyes, not as dark as mine. The color of coffee with a little cream swirled in. Or those delicious caramel milk candies. He looks surprised, in a happy way. He tucks a strand of wavy hair behind his ear, only to have it slip out again and hang over his cheek. I smile a little at that, and then he smiles a little, and then I keep walking, my heart pounding. I feel him watch me go.

After that, I notice him whenever I pasture the cow or cut grass for the guinea pigs near the
colegio
. He hangs out there, under the avocado trees, with a group of guys my age. Most of them are students who have chatted with the Doctorita and Niño Carlitos and me before. When I pass them, I blush, but I don’t change my route.

I notice that he’s usually talking with Leo, one of the Doctorita’s students, a lanky, friendly guy. But I don’t recognize this boy as a student at the
colegio.
As I pass, I watch him out of the corner of my eye. He’s always watching me, too.

I walk slowly, memorizing his slim waist, his muscled arms, the small, charming ponytail at the base of his neck. I like the way he moves, kind of swaying along like a branch in the breeze, at ease in the world. Sometimes he picks a piece of grass and sticks it in his mouth and chews on it thoughtfully as he looks at me. When I come close, he sits up straighter and tucks loose strands of hair behind his ears.

As I pass him, I grow very conscious of the frayed rope in my hand leading the cow, and the rhythm of my ponytail swinging back and forth behind me. I start sneaking a little gel into my hair before my walks, making it smooth and shiny, and secretly wearing the Doctorita’s lip gloss.

I hope we run into each other again, because next time, maybe I won’t pull back. Maybe I’ll let myself fall into him.

A few weeks after running into the boy, I’m on my way to the store to buy eggs, walking quickly, weaving around slower people crowding the sidewalk. As always, the Doctorita has given me the same warning. “Five minutes. Don’t talk with anyone. If you see someone you know,
buenos días,
and come right back.”

I’m zipping along when I spot him half a block in front of me, heading my way. I slow my pace and move my eyes straight ahead so he won’t think I’m staring.

“Hola, guapa,”
he says as he draws nearer.
Hello, beautiful.
No boy has ever called me beautiful before. His eyes dance and I can’t help smiling. Heat rises to my face, and suddenly I feel embarrassed. I force my feet to keep walking.

Again, I feel him watch me go. He whistles through his teeth, a low whispery whistle. Tickles spread over my skin, feathery light.

I buy the eggs, flustered, and on the way back I see him again, leaning against a wall, waiting for me.

He straightens up and asks, “May I walk with you, señorita?”

I laugh. Then, unsure what else to do, I run back to the house as fast as I can.

A few days later, at the
colegio,
some students are talking to the Doctorita after science class. I’m standing beside her, holding hands with Jaimito and Andrecito. The boy who called me beautiful walks over with Leo and some other friends. Immediately my heart starts hammering.

“Good afternoon, Doctorita,” he says.

“Good afternoon,” she replies.

He looks at me with singing eyes. “Good afternoon.”

“Good afternoon,” I say softly.

“I’m Antonio.” He extends his hand. “What’s your name?”

“Virginia.”

His hand feels rough and calloused, but his grip is gentle. Muscles and veins ripple his forearm, like the arm of someone who works in fields all day.

I glance at the Doctorita to see if she notices my flushed face. But now she’s talking to him and I barely hear what she’s saying because the rush of blood has filled my ears. It sounds like they’re having a normal conversation about the weather and the crops. Then Antonio starts talking to Jaimito and Andrecito; after a while, he says goodbye and looks at me for a long moment. “Nice to meet you, Virginia.”

“Nice to meet you, Antonio.”

On the way back from the
colegio,
the Doctorita says, “What a nice young man. Such good manners. And handsome, isn’t he?”

“Yes, I think so,” I say casually.

“He was a good student,” the Doctorita says. “He had to stop school at eighth grade to help his family work in the fields. What a shame.”

“Yes, what a shame,” I say, already feeling a bond with him. “A real shame.”

The boys are asleep and Niño Carlitos is out with his friends, and the Doctorita and I are watching the latest episode of
The Slave Isaura.
It’s the Doctorita’s and my favorite soap opera, about a beautiful slave from Brazil in the 1800s. Like me, Isaura is a servant. Like me, she sometimes buries her face in her arms and sobs over her cruel destiny. But also like me, she knows how to read and write and dreams of freedom.

And like me, she’s forbidden to have a boyfriend.

But Isaura escapes to be with her true love, and together, they start leading a normal life in a town where no one knows she was ever a slave.

This episode is an exciting one. Isaura’s evil master, Leoncio, has hunted her down and announced to her neighbors that she’s really his runaway slave. I keep wishing that MacGyver would make a guest appearance, but I figure he wouldn’t have been alive back then. He really would have come in handy, though. Isaura’s true love tries to defend her, but without knowledge of booby-trapping, he fails, and Leoncio drags her back to his mansion.

“You pig!” the Doctorita shouts at the TV. “Let the poor girl live in peace, Leoncio!”

Strange how the Doctorita always calls Isaura’s evil master a pig, yet she doesn’t think of herself as a pig. She claims it’s wrong he keeps poor Isaura as a slave, yet she doesn’t think it’s wrong she keeps me.

Am I a slave?
A place beneath my ribs hurts when I think about this. She doesn’t pay me. She acts as though she owns me. I’m unclear whether she bought me or stole me or whether my parents gave me away. She never shackles me with chains, but she beats me. And Niño Carlitos acts as though he has certain rights with me, the way the slave masters think they have rights with the girls on their plantation.

The masters on
The Slave Isaura
think it’s perfectly normal to own slaves. Maybe the Doctorita thinks it’s perfectly normal to keep an unpaid
longa
servant. Maybe she doesn’t see that really, it’s the same terrible thing—trying to own another person. And maybe, like those slave masters, Niño Carlitos thinks it’s natural for a boss to put his hands all over a
longa
servant.

The Doctorita sniffs and snorts, her eyes spilling over with tears for Isaura. “What a pig, that Leoncio. How could he do this to poor, sweet Isaura? We can only pray that one day she’ll be free.” And she blows her nose loudly in her cross-stitched handkerchief, freshly washed and ironed by me, the unpaid servant, sitting on the floor below her.

*  *  *

I’m leading the cow to the
colegio
grounds, my hair shining, my lips glossed, my flowered skirt swishing around my knees. And when I spot Antonio there, waiting for me, my heart melts.

“
Hola,
Virginia,” he says.

“
Hola,
Antonio.”

“So, how’ve you been?”

“Good.”

“What have you been up to?”

“Same as always,” I say. “Cleaning the house and taking care of the boys and pasturing the cow.”

“Oh.” He nods enthusiastically, as though I’ve said something fascinating. “Do you like pasturing the cow?”

“It’s all right.”

He takes a deep breath. “Virginia, would you—would you like to go out with me sometime? Maybe for a walk? There’s a pretty stream not far from here. Sometimes you can even see fish in it. And there are pebbles that look really pretty underwater. And once I saw a deer drinking there.”

As he’s talking, I’m realizing how impossible this is. I’m forbidden to go out with boys. If anyone saw us walking together, word would spread quickly. The Doctorita would kill me and Niño Carlitos would kill poor Antonio.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I can’t.” I feel my eyes glisten like Isaura’s. Her true love is an abolitionist who fights for the freedom of slaves. Their love is impossible too. Of course, the impossibility of love makes it all the more exciting.

Antonio’s eyes grow wet with tears. He clears his throat. “You don’t like … streams?”

“I do, Antonio, but I’m not allowed to go out with a boy.”

He looks at me for a long time, until I say, “I should go,” and lead the cow away. As always, I feel him watch me leave. On
The Slave Isaura,
when Isaura and her true love cry together, it means they are bound to one another, no matter what happens.

The next evening, I’m upstairs making the bed, folding the sheet back one, two, three times, when I hear music blaring on the street. It’s one of my favorite romantic songs,
“Estrellita de la tarde”
—Little Evening Star. The singer has a passionate voice that reaches right inside your chest and clutches your heart. I smooth the sheet, then walk down the hallway to see where the music’s coming from. It’s too early for a school dance—the sun is barely setting over the mountains, its rays still long and angled through the windows.

I step onto the balcony, and there he is, Antonio, across the street from my house, with a boom box at his feet. A smile spreads across his face when he sees me. I smile back and let the music wrap around me.
You rise to the window and give light to my life.…

As the song ends, he points to me and mouths
you
and then points to his ear—
listen.
The next song is a string of all the golden words I’ve ever wished someone would tell me—
I love you, I want you, I need you.
Oooy! My heart is flipping and dancing around and I laugh from sheer joy. People are passing by on the street, and they glance at Antonio and his boom box, thinking he’s just some kid blasting music.

But for me the sky is parting and a piece of heaven is pouring through, all liquid gold and papaya pink, shining on Antonio and me, and my heart opens and our spirits rise up and swirl together and it is the most magical, miraculous thing that has ever happened in the history of the universe.

“You don’t have a boyfriend, do you, Virginia?” the Doctorita demands as I wash the dishes.

“Why do you think that?” I ask, rinsing the last plate.

“Because you’ve been smiling nonstop the past two days.”

“I’m just happy is all.” I arrange the plate in the rack.

“You’d better not be seeing anyone. If Carlos found out, that would be the end of you and the boy, you hear?”

I nod and dry my hands on the dish towel, but even the Doctorita’s threats can’t wipe the smile off my face.

chapter 21

W
HEN THE WEEKEND COMES
, the Doctorita and Niño Carlitos and the boys plan to go to Quito to stay with relatives, leaving me alone in the house. The Doctorita gives the usual warnings: “Don’t leave the house, Virginia. You know we have the whole neighborhood watching you. I don’t want to hear that you went out except to feed the guinea pigs and pasture the cow.”

Niño Carlitos looks at me for a moment. “Be good,
m’hija,
” is all he says. But the edge to his voice makes clear this is a warning. Be good
or else.

Later in the morning, there’s a knock on the door. It’s Leo.

“Hola,”
I say nervously, hoping no neighbors are looking.

“Hola.”
He looks as nervous as I am. “Antonio wants to talk to you.”

“About what?” I ask.

He shrugs. “When can he come?”

“This evening,” I say. “When it’s getting dark. That way no one will see him.”

I do my chores, dancing around with the stereo blasting romantic
cumbias.
I play
“Estrellita de la tarde”
—which I managed to record from the radio—over and over again all afternoon. The ball of excitement in my stomach won’t let me eat much lunch. I let my hair fall long and loose around my face, which I can never do when the Doctorita is around. I dab on her lip gloss and silver eye shadow and a touch of blush. And I sit by the door, too giddy to read, just waiting in the fading light. I keep the lamps off so that no one will see Antonio’s shadow through the curtains when he comes.

I imagine his visit, see him taking me in his strong arms and kissing me, a long, passionate kiss.
Virginia, my beautiful little evening star, you are the girl of my dreams. You give light to my life. I love you, I want you, I need you.

At dusk, a soft knock. I swing open the door, let Antonio in, and close the door quickly behind him, praying no one has seen. And here we stand, alone. A faint scent of cologne hovers around him, the kind they sell at the corner drugstore. His just-ironed shirt looks light blue, though it’s hard to tell in the dim light. His work boots smell of fresh polish.

I rub my lips together, feeling the gloss, smooth and sticky. “Hi, Antonio.” I search for simple small-talk words, but none come to mind, so I ask, “Um, what did you want to talk to me about?”

He pushes a loose strand of hair behind his ear and it falls right out again, over his eyes. “From the first time I saw you, Virginia, I liked you a lot.” The words sound rehearsed, as though he was practicing the whole way over here. “I really like you and I’d really like it if you could be my girlfriend.” He looks at me hopefully.

I feel flooded with something—joy and fear all gushing together. I say nothing, thinking of the Doctorita’s threats, thinking of Niño Carlitos’s jealous gaze, of how dangerous it is for Antonio to be here.

He keeps talking, rambling, his words flowing more naturally now. “The first time I saw you, you looked like a princess leading around that cow. Like those stories where a princess has to live in disguise as a peasant. You know? I saw you and I wanted to touch your hair. It’s the longest hair I’ve ever seen, a princess’s hair. Have you ever cut it? And every day when I watched you, I said to myself,
This girl has a light inside her.
Do you know that? Everyone else has just a tiny candle flame, but you have a giant sun inside. From the first time I saw you, I knew this.”

My face is hot. I don’t know what to say. I fiddle with a plastic pearl button on my blouse.

He takes a step toward me. “We’re old enough, Virginia. How old are you?”

“I—I don’t know.”

He gives me a strange look. “Well, when were you born?”

“I don’t know. What about you?”

“I’m fifteen,” he says.

“Well, I think I’m about fourteen,” I say. “I don’t know my exact age. See, I was born … on a farm.”

“Me too! I was born on a farm. And now I work in the fields with my family.”

I keep talking. “My parents, well, I don’t even know if they have my birth certificate because they don’t really read—”

“Neither do my parents!”

“Then I came here to work for the Doctorita when I was a little girl.” I look at his face in the near-darkness, made of tiny points of blue and purple. It makes me feel safe, this time between day and night, as though we’re floating together in an in-between place where anything is possible. “Antonio, do you know the soap opera
The Slave Isaura
?”

“I’ve seen it at Leo’s. I like that guy who fights the slave owners, you know, Isaura’s boyfriend.”

“See, Antonio, that’s kind of like my life.” My story tumbles out, gaining momentum like a boulder rolling down a mountain. Well, most of my story falls out. Not the part about being born a
longa.
But that’s easy to hide, since I don’t dress in
indígena
blouses and
anacos
or speak Quichua anymore. And my dark complexion doesn’t necessarily mean anything; Antonio’s
mestizo
skin is even darker than mine from working in the fields all day. The only possible giveaway is my long, long hair, but in Antonio’s eyes, this just lends me a royal presence.

I don’t say anything about how my parents don’t want me either. Or about what’s going on with Niño Carlitos. But I tell him the rest—studying in secret and watching the students walk by in their uniforms and longing to go to school and dreaming of leaving the Doctorita one day.

“Virginia,” he says, “we’re perfect for each other! What do you say? About being my girlfriend? The Doctorita doesn’t have to find out. I’ll just come to see you in secret.”

Keeping a secret in this town isn’t easy. It would be just a matter of time before Niño Carlitos and the Doctorita killed us both. “No, Antonio. No, no, no, no, I can’t. It’s too risky. You should go.”

Sometimes dreams do come true, exactly how you want them to. In the blue twilight, he reaches out and touches my hair, then takes me in his arms and lightly presses his lips to mine. The kiss lasts only a second, a fleeting feeling of his lips soft yet a little chapped. My knees go rubbery and we look at each other like we share an incredible secret. Then I giggle. “You have to go,” I whisper, pushing him out the door.

“¡Gracias, mi amor!”
he says.

“Go, Antonio, go!”

He leaves and I lean against the door and feel every electron in my body vibrating, alive. I move my fingers to where he kissed my lips. In a happy daze I float upstairs and lie on the red sofa feeling soft as
gelatina,
playing the scene over and over and over again in the darkness.

Being a secret-agent student has been good training for having a secret boyfriend. It comes naturally to me. Leo knocks on our door almost daily, claiming he has a question for the Doctorita about schoolwork. “Excuse me, Doctorita. I didn’t understand this part of the lesson today. Could you go over it one more time?”

And as the Doctorita explains—with patience the first time, and exasperation by the fifth time—I hang around, sweeping or mopping nearby. When I walk nonchalantly behind Leo, he presses a note into my hand. The notes are always tiny and folded up, and I clutch each one so tightly it’s damp with sweat by the time I open it.

The first one reads:

    Dear Virginia,

        I ♥ you!

                    Love, Antonio

The next:

    Dear Virginia,

        When can I see you?

                            Love,
                            Antonio

And the one after that:

    Dear Virginia,

        You’re the girl of my dreams!

                            Love,
                            Antonio

Soon everyday life becomes more thrilling than an episode of
The Slave Isaura.
When I run errands, Antonio always seems to be nearby, waiting for me, smiling at me. I smile back, our secret smile, and keep walking along, feeling like an undercover princess with my shiny long ponytail swinging behind me.

One perfect Sunday afternoon—not too hot, not too cold, just blue-skied and brilliant—the Doctorita and Jaimito and Andrecito and I are walking back from feeding the guinea pigs, passing a soccer game on the field. I strain my eyes to see if Antonio is playing, and yes, there he is, the goalie, looking handsome in his bright white jersey. He’s pacing back and forth in the goal, ready to throw his body in front of the ball. His legs are even more muscular than his arms. Pieces of hair fall loose from his ponytail and he brushes them behind his ear in that little movement that makes me feel all liquidy.

And then, unbelievably, the Doctorita says, “Why don’t we stay and watch the game a while? Some of my students are playing. There’s that pesky string bean Leo who always bothers me about his homework. See?”

We settle down in the grass on the sidelines, near midfield. By this time Antonio has spotted me and keeps glancing over. I smile and raise my hand just a little, so the Doctorita won’t notice.

I whisper to Jaimito, “Run over there.” He’s used to being an accomplice in my plans, so he doesn’t question me, just starts running along the sidelines toward the goal.

“I’ll keep an eye on him,” I tell the Doctorita. So I chase after him, and when I get close, I whisper, “Keep running Jaimito, all the way to the goal.”

I run after him. Luckily the ball is on the other side of the field, so no one’s looking in our direction.

“Mi amor,”
Antonio says. “You’ve come to see me!”

“Yes, Antonio, but pretend you’re not talking to me. Just look straight ahead.” Meanwhile, I pretend to play with Jaimito.

“All right, but I want to look at you so badly. I want to hold you,
mi amor.
When can we be together?”

“We can’t. The Doctorita would kill me.” I sneak a look at him. “But I want to tell you how much I love your notes. And I want to tell you …” I hesitate. I want to tell him a million things. Finally I settle on, “Good luck in your game.”

“I’m dedicating this game to you,
mi amor.
I’m going to win.” Then he looks at me.

“Don’t look!” I laugh.

“Please,
mi amor,
escape from the house some night and I’ll come to meet you.”

“I can’t. The Doctorita locks the door every night.” I glance over at her. She’s looking the other way, busy talking to a student’s mother.

“Please,” Antonio begs. “Somehow, find a way to escape!”

“Antonio, she’s like a wild dog when she’s mad. And I don’t even want to think what Niño Carlitos would do to you.”

He looks at me again. “Remember that I love you, wherever you are, even if we can’t be together.”

“I love you too, Antonio.” Then, shyly, I add, “Something inside me feels so happy when I see you. Even when I just think about seeing you.”

“That kiss I gave you,” he says. “It was my first kiss.”

“It was my first kiss, too!”

And then the ball flies down to our end of the field and he blows me my second kiss.

The next day, when I come back from pasturing the cow, the Doctorita is in an unusually good mood, listening to music, waltzing around the house, her cheeks rosy. She almost looks pretty, the way she does in her wedding photos.

“Listen, Virginia!” she says. “Those fools finally gave us the jobs! We’re going to live in Ibarra!”

I blink.

“One more week! Soon we’ll be living in civilization! Can you believe it?”

I feel numb.

“Well?” she says. “Aren’t you happy?”

“That’s great,” I say, and barely make it to my room before the tears come. I muffle my sobs in my damp pillow. The slave Isaura often cries over being apart from her freedom-fighter boyfriend, only she wears an enormous hoopskirt, so when she sinks to the floor in anguish she looks graceful in her pool of satin and lace, overflowing with angst and beauty. I am not as graceful. My face grows sticky from mucus and tears, and I punch my pillow, hard, over and over again, until finally I throw it against the wall.