yet, but I will. I promise.”
Luis and two others laid out their cards with drawn faces. Papi reached up, tugged the end of my ponytail, and wished me a good-night. As I turned to leave, he swept the pile of money toward him.
Scalp tingling, I slid the glass door shut on their noise. I wished Inez a happy Easter and asked if she’d seen her family. She stood on a stepstool to scrub at the sink; by age twelve, I’d surpassed her by a few inches, her short height not unusual for those descended from indigenous blood. Papi had hired her before my mother’s arrival. When I was younger and she got angry with me for letting the dogs run in just after she had polished the floors, she used to remind me that I would not have survived without her. I never heard Papi say a sharp word to Inez as he sometimes did to the maids when they didn’t do something right; he had raised me to mind her as much as him.
I sat at the counter facing her and said, “So, I think I’m going to have a friend over for dinner soon, and I want you to make something really good. Maybe get some fresh fish from the market? Or maybe a pasta dish, something Italian?”
Her mouth curled up as she whisked a towel over a platter. “Something special? Who’s the boy?”
“I didn’t say it was a boy! Look, I haven’t told Papi, just said it was a friend. Which is true. So please don’t say anything.” I grabbed the tail end of the towel.
“Okay, no problem. But do you really want to start a romance when you’re going to be leaving?” She eyed me, resuming her place on the stepstool, blew a strand of hair off her lips. “I’d be happy to stick to parties with my friends if I were you. How was Easter dinner at Ana’s? Did they serve lamb or the roast pork?”
“Pork.” I swiveled idly on my stool. Luis stood giving out another round of beers, but Papi waved him off. My father’s expression had dimmed somewhat. Bottles clinked, followed by muffled laughter. I said, “I wish we had a big family to celebrate holidays with, sometimes. Do you remember holidays when Papi’s parents and brothers were still alive?”
Inez shook her head. “That was before my time,” she said, staring down at her dishes.
“They farmed coffee, didn’t they? Before the market collapsed?”
“Coffee, yes. They were good Catholics, his parents. Hardworking, honest. Everyone said so. How they each must have suffered in the end—it wasn’t right. Only God knows.”
“You mean they had cancer or something? Was he not there with them, when they died?”
“Cancer, no—they were both strong as mules, your grandparents. They could have lived to be a hundred.” Steam billowed from the sprayer; her face a grave mask, flushed pink along her high cheekbones. She set down the sprayer and squared her stance toward me. “You know, your father and aunt have kept this from you long enough. I’ll tell you, but you mustn’t let them know how you found out, okay?” I clutched the countertop and nodded, waiting for her to begin.
“Your grandparents,” she said, chin lifted, “they were gunned down by guerillas.”
A web of cracks split across the mosaic tiles that she rested the platter against, and the counter chilled my arms. “Why didn’t Papi ever tell me?” I asked.
“Too painful, perhaps. And you knowing may lead to other questions.”
“About my mother?”
She squeezed her sponge, hesitated before she spoke. “Your mother, yes. This farm did not have all the comforts it has now. When she arrived, you know—the house was just a few bare rooms. I didn’t think she would stay, even with my help.”
“Because she was rich? From Miami?”
Loose hairs clung to her damp cheeks as Inez shook her head. She raised her suds-covered hands. “You think your mother could kill a chicken?” she asked, and mimed snapping one’s neck in the air. “No, not if her life depended on it, and all we had running around here was chickens and goats. So she left. Your Papi let her go. He had to. She had a nervous breakdown.”
I ran a towel over a pot. A breakdown, how did that happen? How did you kill a chicken? I was half-American; did this mean I wasn’t worthy of Colombia, wasn’t tough enough? That I might, too, end up broken one day? “But if he loved her,” I said, “why why couldn’t he have lived with her in America? Don’t they have ranches there?”
Her face remained as smooth as a plate; she peeked over my shoulder at the men. “If I know one thing in my life, it’s that your father is a good man. But I also know a few other things.” She dragged another pot into the sink, dipped her sponge in soap and scrubbed. After a few moments, she paused and brushed a moist rope of hair behind her ear. “Your father cannot go to the United States,” she said calmly. Then blasted scalding water over the pot.
CHAPTER TWO
Several days later, Manuel met me on the side street by my school. I had asked Fidel to pick me up two hours past the usual time. Thus began our ritual. Manuel and I would roam the historic district, buying a flavored ice or another street snack to eat on the steps of the Museo de Arte Colonial. When Manuel’s shirts were always dusty with sawdust and wood-shavings, and he smelled like freshly cut lumber and the faint grease of tools. I wore my horrendous school uniform with the baggy vest and the skirt that hung to the knees.
On the main street we passed a tall building, a Taca Airlines office inside the lower mall. The metal detectors beeped incessantly; a businessman sprang open his briefcase before a guard and lost his grip. Papers flew, and both men fumbled to retrieve them. A Taca ticket agent rummaged over her purse, swiftly adjusted her navy skirt and white blouse, and changed from street flats into heels. I hung back, peering through the glass at the posters of the Panama Canal and Machu Picchu. When Manuel joked about me booking a trip, I told him about my dream of becoming a flight attendant, asked if he thought that was silly.
“You’d look cute in the uniform,” he said.
We were holding hands and he drew me gently away from the glass and kissed me. Lady shoppers and businessmen in suits streamed by. My body flushed; where could we go? Since the party I had been picturing us together, out with our friends at street festivals and nightclubs, but also alone. I wanted more than just kisses and sweet touches; I wanted to be naked with him, to sit on the edge of a bed somewhere and pull him toward me in the dark.
His hand grazed my side. He hooked a finger in the waistband of my skirt. We continued walking. I bought an arepa in front of the museum, and we sat down on the steps. Below, a man dressed in a scruffy poncho and cowboy hat called after the passersby. He toted a plaster donkey that he placed on the sidewalk, gesturing for people to sit on its back and get their picture taken. But the business professionals, vagrants, and pedestrians breezed past with barely a glance. By the time the vendor handed Manuel his corncake, the Juan Valdez imitator was sitting on the poor plaster donkey like a Colombian Jesus with no place to go. Finally, a gringo couple shoved a few American dollars in the man’s palm, and the woman struck a pose with the prop.
Did I appear American to other Colombians? To Manuel? Or would he be shocked if I told him about my mother—not only that she was American, but Jewish? What difference did it make? Yet I felt sure that it would. I blew on my arepa before taking a bite of its sweetness.
The streets teemed with vagrants, dozens of young men Manuel’s age with a hunger in their eyes and a shiftless manner. Families, too, perched on corners with signs that
