Where Mangoes Fall by L K Dominguez

Author:L K Dominguez
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Reader's Select
Published: 2024-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

22.

Bate, bate, chocolate!

Con arroz y con tomate

(folklore)

“I hear you’ve been visiting North Americans?” Jarýi said, stirring a pot of rice pudding. She gave it a last whip with vanilla and turned her back to the fire, holding the pot ready for pouring. I looked forward to the drizzle of burned sugar over the top and remembered the bowl of pudding I had eaten in Myrna’s store.

“Jarýi, you bought Pablo shoes so he would tell you things I’m doing,” I said curtly.

“Pablo doesn’t tell me anything. Myrna said you asked about that foreign boy. The neighbors also tell me that you leave every afternoon during siesta, and Pablo isn’t always with you.”

“Myrna doesn’t pay him to follow me anymore. I don’t need a babysitter.”

“No, but...is it safe to go to a stranger’s house alone?

I had to think quickly. “I don’t think they’re bad,” I finally said.

“You just sit there pulling that quilt around you tighter when there isn’t a chill. Who are they?”

“His name is Adam, and he said I could visit. He’s just a little older, maybe seventeen. His sister is Annie, and she’s an adult.”

“Seventeen!” Her face was in knots. Pudding dripped over the side of the bowl and onto the dirt floor. “How did you get past the maid?”

I knew what she was getting at. Jarýi sold chipa and fruit to rich houses all day. She knew that maids never opened the doors unless their bosses wanted something. The crumbling walls that lined our poor neighborhoods were nothing compared to the thick brick walls and steel gates with speakers and little flip metal windows on the front gates.

“She let me in,” I lied.

“Humph, it would be best if you stuck around here instead of hanging out with a seventeen-year-old foreign boy. You can’t have their American life.”

“We eat pizza and play video games. We’re just friends, and his sister is there,” I lied again because Annie was usually gone. I scooped a bowl of pudding. Jarýi glared at me suspiciously, probably knowing she couldn’t do much about my daily wanderings after school. Her sales took her to the edges of town.

“I’m going out,” I said.

“Ama,” she sighed. “...he needed shoes.”

“I know,” I said. “Thank you.” I politely nodded at her and left the gate open behind me. I knew she’d shut it. And with the pudding, I knew she knew where I was going. I couldn’t wear my school shoes after school, so I went barefoot. I told myself I would watch the neighbors through the hole in my bedroom wall more closely that night when I went to bed. Their skills taught me to piece flip-flops together. Maybe I could learn how to make shoes with cardboard soles. My flip-flops had disintegrated just that day.

Señor Gonzalez wasn’t in his usual spot, but I found Rosa sitting in front of her electric heater. It was plugged into a frayed extension cord that found its electricity from a nearby neighbor, one who never realized that the whole courtyard shared his unknowing generosity.

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