animals swung their nasal protuberances in the air. Vicki laughed.
Within a few days, Mother was on the telephone to Abuelita. Rosa, she said, come meet your grandson. My grandmother thanked her. She arrived with her daughters and sat in the sala awhile.
It was a checked conversation, in the clipped spirit of that uncertain time. Abuelita held George, cooed over him, but the occasion was only marginally festive. Mother served gringo-style hors d’oeuvres with melba toast, mint jelly, Philadelphia cream cheese. The family nibbled politely, remarked on the baby’s handsomeness, then excused itself to go.
It was an era of paradox, even if no one was saying so. There was a tiny man-baby in the cradle, but there were also two beasts on the roof. Armed soldiers were posted on street corners, but the country was on the verge of an economic boom. My parents’ marriage had nearly foundered, but it had also been blessed by a second child. Abuelita had paid Mother a visit, and stepped smartly out of her way. The bridge had tottered under the burdens, and settled itself with a sigh.
The monkey and the anteater moved on to join the peacocks in Chaclacayo. Tía Carmen’s house bustled with our little family again. George grew round, bien papeado. And the neighbors admitted it was good to have the gringa back in town.
When Mother became pregnant with me the following year, Papi announced the most surprising shift of all. Once I was born, we were to leave Lima. He’d been offered a big job in Cartavio, he told her. In a hacienda owned by the gringos, where she was bound to feel more at home.
In March of 1950, my family picked up and headed north to Cartavio. Awaiting us there was the childhood of my memory: the garden below my window, the smell of burnt sugar, the yellow of floripondio, the animals with eyes at half-mast, the stones, the bones, the dust. There, too, were the apus —gods watching us from the mountains—and three shamans who would plow grooves into my heart: El Gringo, a witch, and Antonio.
BY THE TIME I was four, I was well-versed in the legends of the pishtacos. Why would I doubt that ghosts existed, when there were so many about? Our amas had taught us about the spirits that circled above us, howling when winds were strong, screeching when seas got rough. So that when El Gringo came hobbling around the corner one day, I never doubted that he was un vivo muerto, one of the living dead, and that he had the power to curse us. So that when I saw the old woman, the bruja, for the first time, I knew that she had come to speak to me.
Her eyes told us she was a witch. They were milky with too much seeing, marbled by sun, clacking around in her head as she wound through the streets of the hacienda, hawking fruit. When the bruja saw our faces behind the fence, she would stop, squint like a lizard, and flick her tongue against two yellow protrusions—more tusks than teeth—that drifted in the rolling sea of her mouth. Ahí, she would grunt. There you are. Los duendes. The dwarves. And George and I would step out and look in her face.
This was Cartavio. An oasis of cement, iron, and sugar in the long, gray sandlot of Peruvian coast. For children of privilege no less than for children of the poor in backwater towns like Cartavio, life was a dusty affair—an endless shuffle through dirt, punctuated by rapture and calamity, and encounters such as this, with mango-toting witches in multicolored skirts.
We emerged from behind my father’s wall one day, my brother and I—now five and four—to find the neighborhood children trotting to her cart. There was Billy, the big Scots boy with the dazzling smile; Carlitos, the tiny, pinched son of the factory’s accountant; Margarita, the flat-faced daughter of the cook across the street. We hurried out, knowing that the rush to the bruja ’s cart could mean only one thing: The witch was reading futures today.
By the time we reached her, she was addressing Billy, who, at
Within a few days, Mother was on the telephone to Abuelita. Rosa, she said, come meet your grandson. My grandmother thanked her. She arrived with her daughters and sat in the sala awhile.
It was a checked conversation, in the clipped spirit of that uncertain time. Abuelita held George, cooed over him, but the occasion was only marginally festive. Mother served gringo-style hors d’oeuvres with melba toast, mint jelly, Philadelphia cream cheese. The family nibbled politely, remarked on the baby’s handsomeness, then excused itself to go.
It was an era of paradox, even if no one was saying so. There was a tiny man-baby in the cradle, but there were also two beasts on the roof. Armed soldiers were posted on street corners, but the country was on the verge of an economic boom. My parents’ marriage had nearly foundered, but it had also been blessed by a second child. Abuelita had paid Mother a visit, and stepped smartly out of her way. The bridge had tottered under the burdens, and settled itself with a sigh.
The monkey and the anteater moved on to join the peacocks in Chaclacayo. Tía Carmen’s house bustled with our little family again. George grew round, bien papeado. And the neighbors admitted it was good to have the gringa back in town.
When Mother became pregnant with me the following year, Papi announced the most surprising shift of all. Once I was born, we were to leave Lima. He’d been offered a big job in Cartavio, he told her. In a hacienda owned by the gringos, where she was bound to feel more at home.
In March of 1950, my family picked up and headed north to Cartavio. Awaiting us there was the childhood of my memory: the garden below my window, the smell of burnt sugar, the yellow of floripondio, the animals with eyes at half-mast, the stones, the bones, the dust. There, too, were the apus —gods watching us from the mountains—and three shamans who would plow grooves into my heart: El Gringo, a witch, and Antonio.
BY THE TIME I was four, I was well-versed in the legends of the pishtacos. Why would I doubt that ghosts existed, when there were so many about? Our amas had taught us about the spirits that circled above us, howling when winds were strong, screeching when seas got rough. So that when El Gringo came hobbling around the corner one day, I never doubted that he was un vivo muerto, one of the living dead, and that he had the power to curse us. So that when I saw the old woman, the bruja, for the first time, I knew that she had come to speak to me.
Her eyes told us she was a witch. They were milky with too much seeing, marbled by sun, clacking around in her head as she wound through the streets of the hacienda, hawking fruit. When the bruja saw our faces behind the fence, she would stop, squint like a lizard, and flick her tongue against two yellow protrusions—more tusks than teeth—that drifted in the rolling sea of her mouth. Ahí, she would grunt. There you are. Los duendes. The dwarves. And George and I would step out and look in her face.
This was Cartavio. An oasis of cement, iron, and sugar in the long, gray sandlot of Peruvian coast. For children of privilege no less than for children of the poor in backwater towns like Cartavio, life was a dusty affair—an endless shuffle through dirt, punctuated by rapture and calamity, and encounters such as this, with mango-toting witches in multicolored skirts.
We emerged from behind my father’s wall one day, my brother and I—now five and four—to find the neighborhood children trotting to her cart. There was Billy, the big Scots boy with the dazzling smile; Carlitos, the tiny, pinched son of the factory’s accountant; Margarita, the flat-faced daughter of the cook across the street. We hurried out, knowing that the rush to the bruja ’s cart could mean only one thing: The witch was reading futures today.
By the time we reached her, she was addressing Billy, who, at
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