American Chica (14 page)

It was Antonio, as I say, who taught me most about the
leyendas.
But it hadn’t started out that way. I had been his teacher first.

Sometime in my fifth year, during an endless afternoon while Papi was at the factory and Mother helped George and Vicki scribble words into notebooks, I skirted the kitchen and wandered back toward the animal pens. Antonio was there, cleaning out cages and sweeping out dung.

“Can I watch you, Antonio,” I asked, “while you work?”

“Sí, sí,”
he said, wiping his brow with his sleeve and turning a crate over for me to sit on. “But you must pay the price of admission.” He put a finger to his chin. “Let’s see,” he said. He was sloe-eyed, tousle-haired, and the dirt on his face looked yellow. “I know what you can do, Marisi. Tell me a story.” I frowned, thinking he was making fun of me. But his open-hearted smile told me he was not.

I sat on the crate, contemplated my white shoes, and tugged my cotton dress over my knees. On that day, I began the ritual that taught me everything. As Antonio heaved cages, pulled weeds, chased a renegade chicken, or wielded a wire broom, I’d repeat Greek myths Mother had told us at bedtime. I began, appropriately enough, with one about gardens: How Hades had burst through the earth into Persephone’s garden, to drag the girl down into hell. I told him about Zeus’s infidelities: How he’d turned a beautiful lover into a cow to avoid his wife’s wrath.
Antonio chuckled at that, his white teeth glinting in the sun. “You have
chicas,
Antonio?” I asked him.

“Ay, sí,”
he said, and shrugged. “But no jealous wife.” He threw back his head and laughed.

Mother’s face appeared at some point in the course of that afternoon, and I could see by her expression that she liked what I was doing. “Teaching is the highest form of learning,” she told me later. And she told the other servants she approved.

“Where are you going, Marisi?” Claudia would ask shrilly from her perch in the kitchen as I trudged toward the servants’ quarters out back, a place she knew I was not supposed to go. She was peeling potatoes, and Flavio bustled in and out, carting the day’s dishes from the
aparador.
“To see Antonio,” I’d say, as if I were the queen and he were my exchequer. “I’m telling
historias.
It’s storytime.”

I pretended to be Aesop one day, as Antonio raked the beds that lined the garden walk. I told him the one about the bird with the cheese. Then about the lion, the teeth, and the maiden. Last, with all the flourish of a rum-drunk
soltero,
I spun him the one about the fox and the crane. When I got to the part about the thirsty fox peering down the neck of the crane’s pitcher, unable to reach the drink, Antonio looked up from his knees and shook a muddy finger at me.

“Oye, chica!
That would never happen in Peru,” he said. “A crane in Peru would know better than to do that to the fox. You know what happens to the thirsty, eh? You know about El Aya Uma?” A clod of dirt dropped from his hand.

I didn’t know many
leyendas
at that point, but I knew about El Aya Uma. From quick, whispered accounts by my
ama,
from Vicki’s long-winded disapprovals, from any number of frightened conversations with George. I knew all I needed to know.

Andean legend has it that if a man is allowed to go to sleep thirsty, come midnight his head will leap off his body and run out the door. Possessed by El Aya Uma, “The Thirsty One,” the head
will hop into the night
—tac pum, tac pum, tac pum
—out to the open road
—tac pum
—in search of anything to wet its throat. If the head encounters a traveler, it will chase him down, leap on his shoulders, tear off his head, and fix itself onto the bloody stump. Then it will ride to the river, take a long drink, and gallop home before dawn.

In the morning, the villagers will gather around to cluck at the carnage. There will be little left of the poor traveler who gets in the way of El Aya Uma: a rag of skin in the garden, a severed head on the road. Dregs of a demon thirst.

Antonio was right. A Peruvian crane would have poured the fox a drink.

I jumped off the crate and ran to where Antonio knelt in the dirt.

“Don’t talk about El Aya Uma to me, Antonio,” I said, putting my hands on his shoulders and making him look in my eyes. I loved this man. I couldn’t bear the thought of his being sent away by my mother, like the
bruja
with her fruit. “If my mother hears you tell stories like that, she’ll come out and tell you to go away. I’ll never see you again.”

Antonio looked startled.

“Promise you’ll never do it again,” I pleaded, “and I promise never to tell. Ever.”

“I promise,” he said. “I promise.”

But come the next afternoon, I was daring him to tell me more.

“Listen to this one, Antonio,” I began, dragging my crate close to the garden wall. He was scrubbing it with a long hemp brush.

“There was this woman, see? A queen. And when her husband went off to war and got killed, she was home with her three daughters. They were beautiful girls—
muy bonitas,
I’m telling you—big and pink with yellow hair and cheeks as full as papayas. All the men were crazy in love with these girls. And the queen loved them, too. Every night she would tuck them into
bed, pat their pretty faces, and tell them
historias,
just like I do for you, Antonio. Maybe better.”

“Impossible,” he said, his back still to me.

“But then one day, an army of men swept into the city—
whoosh!
And they rode on their horses—
cataplún, cataplún—
right into the house, right up to the beds of the girls, and pulled ‘em out.
Pah, pah, pah!
All three. Like that.

“The soldiers took the big pink girls out on horseback and galloped around until the girls couldn’t breathe anymore. Then they threw them down on the ground like rag dolls
—splaaaa
—and rode away.”

Antonio turned and looked at me as he dipped his brush slowly into a bucket of water.
“Ay,”
he said.

“Ay,
ay, ay!”
I barked back. “Because the queen got mad. She got so mad, she got out her chariot. You know what that is, Antonio? It’s a fancy
carretón
with horses.”

“Ya,
ya,”
he said. “Go on.”

“She put her three dead daughters in the front of her
carretón
and tied them in with ropes so they wouldn’t fall off. And then she rode out onto the battlefield, shouting.

“You know what she said? This is the best part. She said, ‘I am the daughter of mighty men!’” I pounded my chest for emphasis. “‘And these are children of a very brave race! We are women! We are warriors! Fierce! And we fight not for kingdoms, or gold, or land. We fight for freedom! You think you can take us from our beds, ride us around, and flop us on the ground,
splaaaa?
Think again!’” I was standing on my crate now, crowing over the wall.

Antonio was staring.

I sat back down.

“And so?” he said.

“And so she went home and they never bothered her again, and all the queen’s subjects stood outside the palace and sang ‘Beautiful Dreamer.’”

He scratched his head. “What home? Queen of what?”

“Queen of the gringas, Antonio. Her name was Boadicea.”

“And so she lived happily, et cetera, et cetera?” he said, waving the brush in circles.

“No, not really.” I screwed up my nose. I knew that if my mother sang “Beautiful Dreamer” at the end of a story it was probably because it ended badly. At least in this case, I had found out the ugly truth. “Not really. After a while, Boadicea lost the war and took some poison and died.”

Antonio burst into laughter, spraying the air before him. “Your mother told you that? And she doesn’t like you to hear about El Aya Uma?”

“Actually, she didn’t tell me that last part,” I confessed. “Vicki read it in a book. She told George and me how the
historia
really ended.”

“So the men win the war against the queen of the gringas, and the gringos keep the women in their place,” Antonio said.

“But their gringa mothers protect them,” I said, sticking a righteous finger into the air, feeling every inch a gringa myself.

“Well, mothers are always protecting their children, Marisita. That happens in Peru, too. Even
brujas
look out for their daughters.”

The
brujas.
The witches. Antonio was in dangerous territory now. I knew the
leyenda
he meant. It was the one about the hungry crone who sent her daughter out to scoop out a warm heart for lunch. The girl didn’t have to go far. She carved out the neighbor’s and brought it home to her mother, who devoured the beating thing in one swallow. When the priest came to demand why the girl was staggering around town, crazed, the witch only smiled, picked her teeth, and said she had no idea. The child had just been doing her chores. So it was that a
bruja
could defend a daughter.

Antonio hadn’t said a word about that
leyenda.
But he was
teaching me its applications. We were communicating in code now.

“Antonio?”

“Yaaaah?” He was concentrating on a patch of black mildew.

“Listen. This is really important. Do you think it would be a good idea to give El Gringo—you know, the blind
loco
who comes in the afternoons—a Coca-Cola instead of bread? George and I always give him bread, and I’m a little worried about that. I don’t want him to go to sleep thirsty.”

El Gringo, El Aya Uma, the
brujas.
I was thinking of little else anymore but forces of evil. Antonio spun around and looked at me with concern.

Not too long after that, he taught me the biggest lesson of all. Mother had taken over the kitchen one afternoon, tutoring Claudia how to make English marmalade. Flavio had gone marketing. The
amas
were doing the laundry. My father’s
pongo,
Juan Diaz, had come to take George to the factory to watch sugarcane push through the
trapiche.
Vicki was doing some artwork. I darted through the house and headed out back for Antonio.

I found him behind the animal pens, by the servants’ quarters, where the stairs led up to his room. There was something odd about the way he stood there, face to the wall, motionless, straight-backed, his hands out of view. He had on a dark blue cotton shirt with holes worn through to his skin.

I tiptoed closer, intrigued by the tableau of man and brick, not wanting to shatter its spell. As I circled around, I looked down at the object of his focus. He was holding himself, and from him, a long stream splattered the wall.

“You’re peeing,” I squeaked.

He turned suddenly and burst out laughing.
“Sí.”

I drew closer to get a good look.

“You’ve never seen one of these before?” he said, wagging the hose back and forth so that it spat at the air.

I shook my head no. But it wasn’t true. I had seen George’s once, very quickly, before his
ama
ran in and covered it up. Nothing stopped me from staring now.

“Can I touch it?” I said, and stepped forward with one hand out.

He hesitated, then smiled and shrugged.

I lay my hand on the soft head and rested it there a moment, before it leapt and I jumped back and giggled, my hands to my face.

“Bueno,”
he said, more soberly now, and tucked himself away.

“Now, look at me!” I sang, and with three brisk moves, pulled down my underpants, sat down, and yanked up my cotton dress.

He looked at the place between my legs, then at my face, and smiled.

“Ya, ya, gordita. Ya.”

“See it? See my thing?” I asked him, looking down at myself. “It’s a
hueco.”
A hole.

“And here is another one,” he said, pointing at my navel.

“Sí.
But it’s not the same. It doesn’t do anything,” I said authoritatively, my legs waving about.

“No,
mamita,
that’s not true,” he said. “Put the other one away and I’ll tell you about this one.” I scrambled to my feet and pulled up my drawers.

“That,” he said, pointing to my midriff, “is the center of your being. The middle of your universe.”

“Let me see yours,” I said, and he pulled up his shirt and obliged. It was pushed deep, and the folds were brownish black. I raised my hand slowly, putting two fingers to its lip. The skin flinched. Then, I slid my forefinger into the orifice. He yelped and caved in, laughing.

“What’s inside?” I asked.

“Mi
alma,”
he said. My soul.

He squatted down and looked at me, eye level. “This is your
qosqo,
Marisi.” His fingers tapped my belly lightly. “Your core. If you learn to see and feel with it, you will know the life force. This is where your power is, your energy. It is the greatest
leyenda
I can teach you. Learn to open your
qosqo
and feed on the world around you. Learn to eat the earthquakes. Learn to take in the chaos. Learn to pull it in to your
barrigita.
Then cast all the poisons out.”

“The poisons?”

“The black light. The power of destruction.”

“How do I cast them out?”

“First you bring them in. Open your
qosqo.
Let everything rush in, the bad with the good alike. If you walk through life afraid of the bad, you will walk hunched over, broken, defensive. Stand with your
qosqo
to the world. Straight. Proud. Open up. Open wide. Face the black light
de frente
and take it in. And then, when you are filled with the storm of life, let the poison pour away. Away. Away. Into the heart of a stone.”

“And my other
hueco?”
I asked him provocatively, knowing that like the witch and the
leyendas,
that nether region of my self was important and forbidden.

“There is nothing wrong with it. It is fine. It is good. The body works from there. And it plays. Someday a man will teach you to play that game. But learn this much from me: It is your
qosqo
from which your life will flow.”