Pillars of Gold and Silver by Beatriz de la Garza

Author:Beatriz de la Garza
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arte Público Press
Published: 1997-01-14T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter VI

Tengo una muñeca vestida de azul …

Monday morning she woke up with a sense of foreboding. It seemed to her that it was very dark, both in the room and outside. Perhaps it was still nighttime, but her mother’s cot was already empty, and the faint sound of voices reached her from the kitchen. The window shutters were partially open, and through the gap between them Blanca Estela caught a glimpse of gray, swollen clouds in the sky. It was the first time since her arrival in Revilla that the sun was not shining when she woke up. Perhaps this was the reason for this feeling of heaviness in her chest and the dull ache in her head. Except that this vague sense of desolation had been with her since Saturday afternoon.

The picnic on Saturday had been, according to everybody, successful. Delia and Lilia had both returned home with better color and spirits than before. The two women had clearly enjoyed conversing with each other. The meat cooked over coals had been delicious and enjoyed by all. The men had repaired the trouble with the turbine. And the three friends, under Nereida’s supervision, had played until they were tired. Blanca Estela knew all this and felt that it would be ungracious of her to spoil even the recollection of the outing by dwelling on her own anxieties. Therefore, she had resolved to put out of her mind the brief moment of terror when she had believed that she was drowning and did not mention the incident to her mother on that afternoon—or even later—and had played continuously with Mimi and Mario until it was time to go home.

After eating they had packed up the picnic dishes and put up the leftovers, folded the quilt and doused the campfire. Then they got back in the truck and returned home to spend the hottest part of the day indoors, where they could also take a brief nap. It was quite a brief one in the case of Blanca Estela, for by three o’clock Mamá Anita had already seen to it that she had changed into a dress and had dried and combed her hair in preparation for the regular Saturday Catechism class. Mario, too, showed the results of having changed into clean clothes and combed his hair as he waited for her at his front door. The two of them were rather subdued, though, as they made their way to church, running part of the distance but saying little.

Father Mirabal was already in the church when they arrived, as was the rest of the class: three boys and a girl. Blanca Estela had not paid much attention to them before, but today she observed them with a heightened attention that she could not explain. The boys came from families that she had heard described as not “belonging to the town.” What that meant was not clear to her, since the boys lived in town, but she sensed that it meant that they were not considered suitable to be her friends.

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