The Scent of Buenos Aires by Hebe Uhart & Maureen Shaughnessy

Author:Hebe Uhart & Maureen Shaughnessy
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Published: 2019-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

Luisa’s Friend

AT Luisa’s house the chickens were kept in a dark corner and nobody looked at them. The only good thing about her house were the mandarin trees. Luisa ate mandarins when they were still green, sitting in the garden among the plants. There was a hose, too, but she wasn’t allowed to wash down the sidewalks, or to spray people like it was Carnival either.

But at her grandma’s house she could chase after the chickens. They had a big, beautiful henhouse. And there was a duck, too, with all her ducklings in a row. Luisa could toss mandarin peels in the henhouse and spy on the neighboring houses to see if there were any children.

And now the people who lived next door had gone away and there were new neighbors. Luisa watched them a long time to see who they were, but it was only a fat lady who scattered corn.

At her grandma’s house she could throw the ball on the roof, and it rolled right back down. Once, Luisa was playing with the ball and it went up on the roof, but this time it didn’t come back. The roof was low and Luisa heard a voice behind her:

“Maybe you could get it down with a long stick.”

And Luisa said, without turning around:

“I don’t have any long sticks and neither does my grandma.”

“Maybe I could lend you a broom.”

Then Luisa spun around and saw a young man who was lying down on something that looked like a gurney, but his head was propped up. It was as if he were lying down from his feet to his waist, and sitting from his waist to his head. He was much older, bigger than her cousin Ernesto, who was sixteen, and she was sure that nobody told him what to do. Luisa said to him:

“Then go get the broom.”

“I can’t because I’m lying down.”

“Bah, I can lie down, too, and then say, ‘I can’t because I’m lying down.’ ”

Luisa lay down on the ground but then got up quickly, and the young man looked at her sadly. When Luisa got up she realized he couldn’t go get the broom, and she went to ask her grandmother for one. Her grandma didn’t want to give her the broom because she was busy using it and then Luisa said to the young man:

“Well, I can’t play with the ball anymore so I’m going to talk to you.”

He was reading a yellowish book that had drawings of skulls and legs and things. Luisa didn’t really know how to read yet because she was only six, so she asked him:

“What are you learning?”

“Medicine.”

“Oh, I know! Like to cure diphtheria and things like that. I have an uncle who learned medicine and now he cures diphtheria. He studied for twenty years because he had to marry my aunt, and my aunt told him if he didn’t learn all those books she wouldn’t marry him, so he learned them.”

Then Luisa asked:

“What’s your name? How old are you?

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