The Queen of Water (4 page)

chapter 6

“VIRGINIA,”
the Doctorita says one evening after dinner, “you’re going to learn how to knit so you can make sweaters for Jaimito.” That very night, she forces me to start knitting a poncho, and every time the rows turn out uneven or I don’t do a knot right, she snatches the knitting away from me. “
Longa estúpida,
” she mutters. She shakes her head and sometimes adds a thunk on my head for good measure.

The Doctorita loves knitting. Her favorite things to knit are dresses for the Baby Jesus doll that lies in a cradle on top of the wardrobe. She says that every year she makes him a new outfit to bring her good luck.

Since she loves knitting, I decide I hate it. I make mistakes on purpose, taking her blows as I shout
No!
inside. Knitting is something she can’t force me to do.

And to my joy, I win. The Doctorita gives up on making me knit. But she hatches another plan to make me a more useful servant.

One day, as we’re watching TV in her bedroom—me on the floor on my sheepskin, and Niño Carlitos and Jaimito and the Doctorita on the bed—she announces, “I’ve decided you’ll go to elementary school to get the diploma you need for sewing school. Then you’ll learn to sew clothes for me and Jaimito and Carlitos!” She looks delighted with her plan.

Fuming, I stare at the TV, at a commercial with happy blond children drinking red juice. I think carefully before I give her an answer.

You see, I’ve been to school before. For six terrible weeks. I was about five years old, and, against my mother’s wishes, I went to school instead of pasturing the sheep. That first morning, with high hopes, I tromped down the dusty, pebbled dirt road toward the school, a low cement building. Inside the classroom, everything smelled of chalk dust and pencil shavings and disinfectant. I started out the morning with my most charming smile, hoping the teacher would notice how my eyes danced, how irresistibly
vivísima
I was.

I learned quickly that this
mestiza
teacher ruled her little kingdom with a cruel hand. Three times that first morning she pinched my ear with her sharp fingernails. Four times she called me a stupid
longa.
“How many fingers?” she demanded during math time, stabbing the air with her pointy nails.

I knew my numbers in Quichua from playing market so much; I could even add and subtract and make change. But in Spanish I was speechless.

“Stupid
longa,
” she said, hitting the side of my head.

Over the next six weeks, my ears had permanent red marks from the teacher’s nails, as did the other indigenous students’. Whenever I whispered to my classmates in Quichua to ask what letter comes after
c
or how to make a lowercase
f,
there came the nails again.

I blinked hard, over and over, and bit my tongue and thought of Cheetah, waiting for me outside the classroom. Cheetah, who believed I was the smartest girl in the world. For six weeks I suffered through this, and here is why.

Mamita gave me a few riales every day to buy a snack at school. But I decided to save my riales for my first pair of shoes, because my bare feet looked ugly next to all my classmates’ shoes and boots. At snack time, while the other children bought little plastic bags of popcorn, I cuddled with Cheetah. I hung on to my riales in my sweaty fist, my stomach growling as I pictured the little pile of riales growing in a cloth bag at the bottom of my cardboard clothes box.

Once I had enough money, my sister brought me to the market to spend it. And that afternoon, back at home, I stood tall in my brand-new black rubber boots and jutted out my chin and announced to Mamita, “I am never going back to school again.”

“Fine.” She shrugged. “Now you can make yourself useful and pasture the animals.”

This was one of the few things we agreed on. School was a waste of time.

“No,” I finally say to the Doctorita. “I’m not going to school.” My muscles tense instinctively, preparing for her fists.

At first her eyes flash with anger, as though she’d hit me if my bodyguard Niño Carlitos weren’t nearby. But a sour smile creeps over her face. “Fine. No school for you. You’ll stay an ignorant
longa
all your life. You’ll never know how to read or write.”

Something about her words stings more than a slap. I turn away from her smug face and look at the TV. The commercial has ended and the show is back on. There’s a beautiful lady in a glittering dress onstage, belting out a romantic song. Her sequins flash in the spotlight like thousands of little mirrors.

An idea forms inside me, an idea that gives me happy shivers. Maybe I can be a famous singer when I grow up. That way it won’t matter if I can’t read or write—except for my name, of course, to give autographs. I imagine myself onstage, my fans going wild. After my last song, they stand up and cheer and shower me with rose petals and flowers and everyone is begging for my autograph, even the Doctorita. Niño Carlitos gives me a giant bouquet, the biggest of all, so big I can barely carry it.
I am proud of you, my daughter,
he says, and kisses the top of my head.

Now, in the mornings, while the Doctorita and Niño Carlitos are gone, I practice being a famous singer. I turn up the stereo and let my hair loose and swing it around and clutch an invisible microphone and dance and sing in front of the mirror. Jaimito dances with me, bouncing up and down, wobbling his head and clapping and laughing. He sings too, opening his mouth wide, sticking out his tongue and shouting
Yayayayaya.

I love watching my reflection, how my face gets shiny and sweaty like I’m under hot spotlights. But there’s a nagging problem. It doesn’t look right to see a famous singer in
indígena
clothes. Indigenous women cook and clean and work in fields and take care of children; they don’t sing in the spotlight on TV to thousands of fans. I need a sequined dress, or at the very least, regular
mestiza
clothes.

It’s been almost a year since I left home, and the few clothes I brought with me have worn out and gotten too small. One afternoon, the Doctorita comes home with three blouses. They are ugly
indígena
blouses, used and grayish white, the color of dirty laundry water. I can tell just by looking that they’re way too big for me.

“Try one on,” the Doctorita says.

The neck is so large it slides off my shoulders. The stitches of the embroidered flowers are big and sloppy and all wrong. The thread’s cheap dye bleeds into the fabric. Without a word, I fold the blouses and stuff them in my cardboard box where I don’t have to see them.

A few days later, in the kitchen, the Doctorita demands, “Why aren’t you wearing those new blouses?”

I shrug.

“Tell me.”

I stare at the potato I’m peeling. “I don’t want to wear them.”

The Doctorita slaps my face. “Tomorrow you’ll start wearing them.”

“No,” I say, bracing myself for the next blow.

Another slap.
“Longa tonta,”
she spits. Fool
longa.

With trembling hands, I set down the knife. At my sides, my fists tighten. I look at her beady eyes lined with smudged mascara. “I want to wear clothes like other girls around here.”

“You’re a
longa,
and you have to dress like a
longa.
” And she turns and walks away.

The next day, once again, I refuse to wear the new blouses.

She hits me. “Ungrateful
longa.
”

But I hold my ground. I
will
become a star someday. And I will
not
wear indigenous clothes.

Once, when I was about four, I pretended to be a
mestiza.
I remember it clearly, like a vivid photo that stands out from all the other, blurred ones. I was in the giant cornfield, helping Mamita pull weeds from the still-short plants, scratching at the lice on my head, feeling my sun-warmed hair, tangled as a bird’s nest, and squinting into the dry wind to see if anything more interesting was happening outside the edge of the cornfield. Just other workers, mostly women with
fachalinas
folded on their heads to keep off the sun, some with babies strapped to their backs, all bent over, faces close to the earth. A few rows over, my cousins Zoyla and Gregoria were pulling weeds and wiping the sweat from their foreheads, crisscrossing their faces with streaks of dirt. Beyond them stretched more cornfields, a few whitewashed houses with red tile roofs, and, towering in the distance, mountains.

I picked at some flea-bite scabs on my calves, which were split and caked with dried mud and hardened blood. At the sound of voices speaking Spanish, I straightened up, alert.

Alfonso and his wife, Mariana, were walking by. Alfonso wore snakeskin cowboy boots with heels that made him look taller than he really was, and an expensive leather hat. His hand rested just above Mariana’s rump, which swished in a short skirt that revealed doughy legs teetering on spiky heels. The cloth of her shirt seemed stuck to her rolls of fat, and her hair was long and spiraled into a large ball pinned to her head.

Once they moved on, I hitched my
anaco
up to my knees, tucking it into the
faja
at my waist. I smoothed my loose blouse close to my belly and tied it in back. Then I twirled my hair into a knot. Grinning, I put my hands on my hips and cut through the rows of corn to Zoyla and Gregoria. “Get to work, you
indias
,” I scolded them in a shrill voice, strutting around just like Mariana. My cousins shrieked with laughter.

At that moment, Mamita looked up. She dropped her machete and stormed over to me. She snatched the fabric of my
anaco
from the
faja
and tore my hair loose. Then she slapped me and said in a low, dangerous voice, “Virginia. Never do that again. Never. You hear? We are
indígena.
We will always be
indígena.
Nothing will change that.”

Well, Mamita was wrong.

A few weeks later the Doctorita comes back from her relatives’ house with a little pile of used clothes.
Mestizo
clothes.

She drops them on my sheepskin. “Are these good enough for you?”

I pick them up and grin. “Thank you, Doctorita.” I’ve won again, and she knows it.

Later, at night, waiting for sleep to come, Cheetah doesn’t have to lick any tears off my face because I’m so busy picturing how beautiful I’ll look in
mestizo
clothes.

The next morning, after the Doctorita and Niño Carlitos leave for school, and while Jaimito is still asleep, I tear off my
anaco
and blouse. Which to try on first? There’s a blue dress that looks a few sizes too big, a green shirt with short sleeves and a stain on the hem, a gray sweater with two buttons missing, a white dress with frayed lace, and a pink skirt with tiny flowers.

I put on the skirt and the green shirt. With the shirt tucked in, you can’t see the stain. In front of the mirror, I let my hair loose and stare at the strange girl facing me. I smile a tentative, excited smile. The mole at the corner of my mouth is no longer a mole; now it’s a beauty mark, just like a movie star’s. When I squint my eyes so that everything looks blurry, I can almost believe that the skirt is fancy leather and the shirt has sequins and my skin is fair.

I can almost believe that I am backstage, after a performance, eating mangoes and drinking Inca Kola. Then Mamita, who was in the audience, comes up to me and says,
Forgive me, daughter. Forgive me for telling you I’d be happy if you left forever. I have done nothing but cry since you’ve been gone.
I open my mouth to speak Quichua to her, but only Spanish comes out, and she stares at me, not understanding.

That’s the true part of my daydream. More and more lately, Quichua words have been burying themselves deeper and deeper in dark places in my memory. Sometimes I look at the carrots or tomatoes I’m cutting and try to remember the Quichua words. When I whisper them, they feel strange and clumsy in my mouth.

My body is starting to feel different too, like a soft white roll or mushy white rice, from all the
mestizo
food I eat. My skin has grown pale and smooth from staying inside most of the day. My body is no longer made of dirty potatoes just pulled out of the earth and wild, weedy herbs.

I ask the girl in the mirror:
How long until people forget you were ever a
longa
?

chapter 7

W
HENEVER NIÑO CARLITOS CALLS ME
my daughter
, a cozy warmth spreads through me. He is kind to me, kind to all children, one of the favorite teachers at the
colegio,
the junior high and high school. He teaches social studies, grades seven to twelve, and he never tires of talking about the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
“M’hija,”
he says, “let me tell you about the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.”

I pause in my sweeping and sit down beside him on the sofa, listening to his words slip out, soft and thoughtful, painting pictures of temples and pyramids.

Sometimes, when he’s nervous, his words get stuck in an endearing stutter. He blends into the background, the same way his features blend into each other—pale skin and hair and teeth and shirt—all yellowed shades of white. I like watching him sit on the sofa, staring into space, quiet and nearly invisible, while inside his mind ideas for fun projects whirl around like sparks and colors.

When the rainy season comes, Niño Carlitos spends weeks building a very tiny pyramid. The Doctorita frowns at the pyramid pieces stacked on the table. “I can’t believe you’re playing with toys while I run our household and feed our family.”

“It’s not a toy,” he says, looking hurt. “It’s a perfectly proportioned replica of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. The only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still in existence.”

But the Doctorita’s words must shame him because he decides to use his spare time making extra cash. One day he comes up with the idea of creating wooden puzzles to sell at school. So the whole family starts spending afternoons in Niño Carlitos’s workshop. Jaimito sits on the ground playing with piles of sawdust while we work. My job is to sand the puzzle pieces with scratchy paper.

“Good work,
m’hija,
” Niño Carlitos says. “Very smooth edges.”

Meanwhile, the Doctorita glues pictures of Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse onto the wood. Every once in a while, she rolls her eyes and mutters, “Here I am, a trained dentist and a teacher, gluing puzzles.”

“But you’re so good at it, Negra,” Niño Carlitos says as he dumps a new batch of puzzle pieces on the table. “So precise.”

After three or four months, Niño Carlitos grows bored with making puzzles and starts building a wooden airplane that will be big enough for Jaimito to ride around in. I perch beside Niño Carlitos on a bench, watching him work, bouncing with anticipation. A new toy for Jaimito means a new toy for me. Once it’s finished and painted red and white, I ride around in it too.

“You’re too big for that,” the Doctorita snaps. “It’s for toddlers, not eight-year-old girls. I forbid you to ride in it.” But it’s the most popular toy in the neighborhood, and when she isn’t nearby, I roll around in it proudly as the other children watch in awe.

At the top of the dirt hill, I tell Jaimito that I am a pilot flying us far from here, to Yana Urku to pick up Cheetah and Hermelinda and Manuelito, and then we’ll all soar down to the beach and play all day. Jaimito squeals and giggles at my plan, clapping his pudgy little hands together. I kiss his pink cheek, despite its coating of smeared snot. Together, we whoosh down the hill.

The Doctorita is always complaining about how little money they have, ranting about their debts and bad investments, moaning about their pitiful teacher salaries, nagging Niño Carlitos to find other ways to make money for the family.

Since people will pay a lot of money to eat roasted guinea pigs during celebrations, Niño Carlitos decides to raise them. He says once they’re plump and grown, he’ll sell them to restaurants. I help him by gathering alfalfa from the field behind our apartment and feeding the quickly growing pile of guinea pigs. Listening to them squeak reminds me of my life at home, of lying on my scratchy woven mat at night and listening to our guinea pigs rustle in the corner.

In Yana Urku, Mamita used to cure sick people with our guinea pigs. When a relative was feeling bad, Mamita would grab one of the little creatures and stuff it in a sack. I trailed along behind her as she barreled straight to the patient’s house, on a mission. Inside the house, she prayed to the gods of the mountains and the God in heaven, all the while rubbing the live guinea pig over the sick person’s skin. The guinea pig soaked up the person’s evil air like a sponge, until its squeaking grew weak and its fat little body was limp as wilted lettuce from all the sickness inside it. Then Mamita drew her knife.

I put my hands over my face, but left a space between my fingers to peek through. Mamita sliced the guinea pig’s belly from its neck down to its rear legs, then spread apart the furry, bloody flesh. She examined the guts closely, as though she were reading a book, and diagnosed the person’s sickness. She told whether they had gotten a fright from a snake or whether a witch had put a curse on them or whatever. Then she told them what they had to do to be completely cured.

What would the Doctorita and Niño Carlitos say if they knew that even after a year of living with them, I still have these memories inside me? These images of fresh guinea-pig blood and heathen Indian things? These dirty, devil things that would give the sweet Baby Jesus doll nightmares in his cradle? I keep these memories to myself, tucked away in a dark, secret place in my mind.

Soon after the guinea pigs comes the cow, white with black spots. Every afternoon, I take the two-minute walk down the dusty dirt side street to our cow pen. I let the cow out and lead her by a frayed rope down another dusty road to the
colegio
grounds, where she grazes on the grass near the avocado trees. This way the grass stays short and the cow gets fed and it works out for everyone.

The cow reminds me of Josefa, my family’s cow in Yana Urku, and like Josefa, she quickly becomes my friend, flicking her tail happily when I rub the space between her enormous eyes.

Niño Carlitos also starts buying crates of eggs from people in the countryside and then selling them in town. “Listen, Negra. Listen,
m’hija,
” he says. “These eggs are for selling, not eating.”

We store the eggs in a musty, falling-down wooden shed next to the cow pen. Some of the eggs are huge and extra delicious, with two yolks. The Doctorita likes those eggs too. “Virginia,” she says in a conspiratorial voice, “go to the storehouse and tell Carlitos to give you some eggs. He can never say no to you.”

So I run to the shed. “Niño Carlitos,” I say, flashing a smile and letting my eyes dance, “please be nice and let me pick out some eggs.”

He hesitates for a moment, runs his hand over his face, then says, “Of course,
m’hija.
” Grinning, I pick out the biggest eggs, satisfied that being
vivísima
has its rewards.

We’re taking one of our evening walks around town—the Doctorita and Niño Carlitos and Jaimito in his stroller and me. The sun is gentle and golden at this time of day, melting like butter behind the mountains. Our shadows stretch long in front of us and crisscross with the shadows of other people strolling along. On the outskirts of town, when we pass an orchard, I scamper up a tree to pick guavas, eating the sweetest, prettiest ones myself and tossing down the worm-eaten, half-rotted ones to the Doctorita. From the treetop, I hear her grumble to Niño Carlitos, “I know she’s up there eating the best.”

He just laughs. “Oh, this Virginia! We’re lucky to have her.”

I grin, smug in another tiny victory against the Doctorita.

I like these walks. They’re a chance for me to figure out what other people think of the Doctorita. The more I know, the more power I have. So I’m always listening, watching, thinking in secret.

Passersby say hello to the Doctorita, often with exaggerated respect. I’m beginning to realize that their respect isn’t as simple as it seems. They
have
to be nice to her. She teaches their children science at the
colegio.
She’s known for her temper, and no one wants her to unleash it on their children. Most of all, people know they might need the Doctorita to fill a painful cavity or pull a tooth someday. If she likes them, she’ll help them, and even if they can’t pay her money, she’ll accept a bag of fruit or a box of eggs instead. They, too, see the value in staying on her good side. Or at least appearing to.

Every now and then, I overhear women talking about her in hushed tones.
It’s too bad she’s put on so much weight, but of course, she works so much she can’t exercise,
pobrecita.
She wears the pants in the family, you know, but her poor son, he has to survive without a mother all day,
pobrecito.
She makes more than her husband, you know, so we’ll see how well the marriage fares—what a shame. She’s so much darker than her husband, but lucky for her he doesn’t seem to mind—of course who knows how long that will last.

There is a certain wistful, almost jealous, look in the ladies’ eyes as they gossip. It occurs to me that maybe the Doctorita makes them feel bad about their lives as homemakers, mournful they don’t have their own careers.

As much as I hate the Doctorita, I wonder if one day I could be like her, only not as fat and mean. Maybe I could graduate from college and get a professional job. Maybe I could make more money than my husband so he couldn’t boss me around. Maybe everyone would have to treat me with respect.

Many people on the street recognize me by now and know that I’m the Doctorita’s servant. Sometimes they say, “What a pretty little girl,” or “Such a fast little girl,” or “This little girl is
vivísima,
” and my heart swells and I wonder: if a new person came to town, would she see me strolling and think I was part of the family, like a daughter?

Hello, Doctorita, hello, Carlos,
this newcomer would say.
Oh, your daughter is getting prettier by the day. Why, I saw her on TV last night singing in a gorgeous sparkly dress. You’re so lucky to have such a talented daughter. All my daughter does is go to school and play.

Oh, yes,
Niño Carlitos would say.
Virginia is our treasure.