The Distant Marvels by Chantel Acevedo

Author:Chantel Acevedo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Europa
Published: 2015-02-16T05:00:00+00:00

9.

Gestures of Inheritance

My mother’s recovery from the fever went quickly, and the months since Agustín left us at the tallér came tumbling by like river water. Not all of those days were unhappy. Every woman and child there had a role to play. Lulu took charge of the children’s schooling, and she taught the little ones to read and write and to manipulate numbers, the older ones to recite poetry and compose clear letters. We also learned how to polish and sharpen machetes, and how to clean rifles and pistols. We kept a small garden and raised chickens and goats. In the shadows of that rich valley, the tallér was a secret place, the kind of green and lush corner of the world one read about in books, where duendes and adas flitted inside flower blossoms, granting wishes.

As for Mario, his fingers were meant for weapons. Dulled machetes became deadly again in his hands. His father, Captain Ricardo Betancourt, helped Mario set up a smithy during one of his return trips and taught the boy simple blacksmithing. The tools the captain brought with him all bore Spanish insignias, and he’d laughed, saying that at least one Spanish cavalry unit would have to go without equipment.

As Mario worked in that furnace of a place, Marcela and Graciela, the twins, would loiter to watch, sweat collecting on their upper lips and under their arms. It was worth it, they’d said to me, to watch the boy work, shirtless, whistling as he labored.

“What are you talking about?” I’d asked them.

“Don’t be stupid,” Graciela said. She was the rough-tongued one, often in trouble for cursing. “He’s a beautiful specimen.”

“There’s no one else worth looking at,” Marcela added. They were sixteen that summer, and had outgrown their girl-sized dresses. Graciela had become, overnight, all hips. And Marcela, who was her fraternal twin, was all chest. I’d overheard one of the boys say that each was half a woman. I’d blushed and run away from the conversation, understanding what the boy meant. I didn’t need to learn about sex from the older children, or at least not the mechanics of it. My mother had shared her bed with Julio Reyes for years while I had tried very hard to sleep. And yet, discussions about boys among the girls in the tallér suddenly gathered a different meaning. Bodies became something I noticed—who was hairy, who was fit or fat, whose hand I wanted to hold.

To hear the twins talk about Mario in this way, to know that they dreamed of doing things with him in the dark, caused a curious feeling in me. I was unsettled around the girls. Once, I pulled a chair out from under Graciela just as she was about to sit down. She rose and slapped me hard for the prank. When her mother asked me why I did it, I could only shrug. I had no idea myself. I would try to make it up to the twins by picking flowers for

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