Upper Bohemia

by Hayden Herrera

  Pepita appeared at the kitchen door. “Buenos días!” she called. “Buenos días!” we replied. I was beginning to think I knew a lot of Spanish. Pepita signaled for us to come up the kitchen steps, and she showed us a storeroom where she kept a pail of dried corn nuggets for the chickens. She gave us each a little bowl to fill with corn to scatter on the ground. The corn kernels felt silky as they slipped through my fingers. Soon I was surrounded by chickens pecking near my feet. I wished I could pat them the way I had patted my mother’s New York cats, but the chickens moved away if I touched them.

  We spent the next days in Pepita’s dark, mostly unused rooms. There was a formal dining room, with a cupboard with glass doors behind which was crystal and porcelain—things that had not been touched in years. We only went into Pepita’s bedroom once. Her walls were hung with religious images. On her bureau were old framed photographs—some of Edmundo as a boy and several of a dark-skinned man who must have been Pepita’s husband. There was a wedding photograph. Pepita, now so shriveled, had once been beautiful. How unfair to be young and then to be old. I felt the same way about Gaga’s wrinkly arms and her age-spotted hands with their raised blue veins. It seemed odd to me that old people could be so cheerful when every part of their bodies was shriveling. I wondered if, when I got old, would I mind the way the flesh on my arms sagged and jiggled.

  Pepita’s house had bookshelves filled with dusty leather-bound volumes, the kind in which the paper is so dry it cracks as you turn the pages. Luckily, our mother had made sure we had books. She had bought us each a pile of books for our journey south, and since I was such a slow reader, there were two I still had not read. Every day we fed the chickens. There was a wall at the bottom of the garden, which I knew I could climb over, but I always stopped partway up. On the other side of the wall was more brown earth covered with dusty, dried-up leaves and a few banana trees on a long downward slope, the bottom of which I could not see. Maybe there was a stream down there. Looking over the wall was seeing another world, a piece of land that could join me to the whole world if I dared to step into it. I imagined going there and walking and walking in strange empty places, walking and walking until I was not myself anymore.

  Pepita spoke to us in Spanish, which we did not understand. She was kind and did not expect us to answer her. She cooked our meals and washed our dishes. We ate a lot of eggs, rice, and beans. She made a custard called flan for dessert. I thought she must be lonely living alone in that many-roomed house. Maybe she liked having two American girls come to stay.

  When our mother came to see us a few days later, there was a new gold bracelet on her wrist, and she was wearing a blue dress I’d never seen before. We walked a few blocks to Coyoacán’s Plaza Centenario, on the far side of which was a shop sign that said Panadería. In the store’s window were heaps of pastries. “Take a tray,” our mother said, “and take tongs to pick them up with. You can have what you like, just make sure to add four bolillos—see those little bread rolls to the left of the cash register? I will take four of them home for Edmundo’s and my supper.” Blair and I each picked up a round metal tray from a stack near the shop’s entrance and we went around the store choosing pan dulces. The saleswoman added up the bill. Most pastries cost a peso. Some of the fancier ones with custard inside cost more, but our mother warned us to avoid anything with custard. It might have bacteria. The saleswoman made two packages out of square white papers whose corners she folded toward the middle and then twisted and tied with a thin red string. The butter from the pastries turned parts of the paper translucent.

  Blair and I carried our packages across the street, and our mother carried a bag of bolillos. We sat on a bench in the plaza and sampled our purchases. There were three kinds of pastry that would remain my favorites for many years. The best were orejas, meaning ears. They were shaped like hearts or butterflies. Our mother said that in France they were called palmiers, because they resembled palm leaves. The next best was a sugar-sprinkled churro. These were about as long as a banana and ridged like a fluted column. The third type that I liked a lot was a thick sugar cookie. They were heavy. You couldn’t eat more than one. Some pan dulces were more like buns with a coating of beige-colored sugar on the top. They were boring. My mother assured me that they would be good for breakfast with butter and honey.

  From the plaza we walked to an adjacent park to rent bicycles. I had learned to ride a bicycle in Cornwall, but I was not sure that I remembered how. Blair sped off on her bike while our mother held on to the back of my bicycle seat until I got my balance. She was being so nice. This was not the kind of thing she liked to do. I was happy. After that I rode around and around on the paved paths that circumvented flowerbeds, feeling like a champion. I hoped my mother was watching. I wanted her to be proud of me. When the hour’s rental was up, we returned the bicycles and, on the way out of the park we stopped at an ice cream cart. The owner opened the top and we surveyed the vats of pink, orange, and yellow sherbet. The cart also sold paletas, popsicles, and our mother bought those for us because she said they were probably made with purified water, whereas the sherbet might not be. Sucking on popsicles, we returned to Pepita’s house. When we reached the green gate, our mother opened the tailgate of the Coche de Mama and took out four books that she had borrowed from the Benjamin Franklin Library, which had English-language books. Two were for me and two for Blair. For me she had a Nancy Drew mystery and The Secret Garden, which became my favorite novel. For Blair she had The Call of the Wild and some other book.

  Late one afternoon our mother turned up and drove us to the middle of Mexico City. We followed wide avenues, one called Insurgentes and another called Paseo de la Reforma. The Reforma was magnificent, much grander than New York’s Park Avenue. Every few blocks there was a roundabout (my mother called it a glorieta) in the center of which was a statue. The three statues I liked best were of a horse (the Caballito, my mother explained); Diana, a naked woman with a bow; and the third was a golden angel on top of a tall pole. “We’re going to have supper with Edmundo,” our mother said. She parked near a tall, modern apartment building near Chapultepec Park, and we went up in the elevator to a high floor. She rang the bell even though she had the keys in her hand. Edmundo came to the door. He was over six feet tall and he had slicked-back black hair. I think he oiled it because you could see the channels where the comb ran through it. He was wearing a guayabera, a starched white shirt with two lines of narrow pleats running down the front and back. He smelled good, some kind of cologne, probably expensive. He had a big smile as he leaned down and gave Blair and me each a hug. “Beautiful girls!” he exclaimed to our mother. “What marvelous girls you have!” So, he liked us. That was good.

  He led us into his living room, took bottles of Coca-Cola out of a small refrigerator, and gave us each one. He and our mother drank tequila. There was a bowl of salted peanuts on the coffee table, and he told us we were welcome to eat them. A maid served dinner in the dining room: filete (steak), potatoes, and zucchini—nothing problematic. And there were tortillas instead of bread. Edmundo told us that even though he never brushed his teeth, he had never had a cavity because he ate tortillas. Indeed, his teeth were extremely white. They were even, too. He and our mother chatted about friends, art exhibitions (he had helped my mother find a gallery to show her paintings the year before), and possible houses to rent. Edmundo told all kinds of funny stories. He laughed a lot, a hilarious high-pitched laugh, almost like a mariachi singer’s wail. He made us giggle. And he really was handsome, just as our mother had said.

  Edmundo Lassalle

  23 Cuernavaca

  After another week of our living at Pepita’s, our mother returned. “I’ve found a house!” she said. “It has a swimming pool. You are going to love it!” We said good-bye and “Muchas gracias” to Pepita, who seemed sad to see us leave, climbed into the Coche de Mama, and headed south toward the range of mountains that lies between Mexico City and Cuernavaca. On the side of the road there were boy
s selling bunches of red carnations. We stopped and bought some. “For our new home,” our mother said. At the top of the mountain were fields with long, yellow grasses blowing this way and that. Our mother pointed to a grove of pine trees on the left side of the car. “Over there is the perfect picnic spot,” she said. “We’ll come back up here soon.” A minute later she pointed to the left again. “Look!” she cried. “You can see Popocatépetl! See that mountain covered with snow? That’s a volcano. Maybe next weekend we can have a picnic near the snow.” She told us that if we looked out the back window, we would see another volcano in the distance. It was long with two bumps instead of being shaped like a cone. “That’s Iztaccíhuatl,” she said. “Popo is said to be a warrior prince and Izta is a sleeping lady.” Just before we started down the other side of the mountain and into the valley where the town of Cuernavaca (meaning cow’s horn) lies, we stopped at Tres Marías, a village that consisted of a few huts and a line of charcoal braziers on which tamales and tacos were cooking. The tamales here were better than the ones we’d had in Brownsville. I ate three.

  As we drove down the mountain, our mother honked the horn at the beginning of each curve. Mexican drivers, she explained, do not always stay on their side of the road. After a final hairpin turn that threw our bodies back and forth, we looked down on Cuernavaca. We entered the town through a gigantic white gate. After about half a mile of driving downhill, we turned right onto a side street lined with high walls in different colors. Our mother explained that behind the walls were houses and gardens. A few minutes later, the Coche de Mama stopped in front of a blue wall festooned with bougainvillea, some white and some magenta. Our mother had the key to the gate. It opened on to a garden so big that you couldn’t tell where it ended. To the right was a low, dusty-pink. one-story house with a veranda. Edmundo rented this for us, she said. He was an executive at Celanese, a company that made synthetic textiles, so he would have to work in Mexico City during the week. But he would join us in Cuernavaca on weekends.

  We carried our bags into the house and dropped them in our bedroom, which had twin beds with matching bedspreads with fringed hems. I unpacked my books and put the unread ones on my bedside table. The house came with a cook and a maid. “Mucho gusto,” our mother reminded us to say. And, “Cómo está usted?” Our mother told the cook what to make for dinner. Except for when we visited Gaga or our great Aunt Martha, we had almost no experience with servants. Our mother appeared to be used to them. The way she told them what to do was different from the way Gaga talked to Annie and Bessie. Gaga spoke as if she were asking for a favor. Our mother made commands. And Gaga not only asked Blair and me to help clear the table, she also gave us detergent with which to wash our underpants. Even the Queen of England, she insisted, washed her own underwear. In Mexico, the maids did everything. They laundered, folded, and put away all our clothes, even Blair’s new bra.

  Me and Blair on the veranda of the Cuernavaca house, 1950

  The next morning, our mother suggested a swim before breakfast. She led us across the lawn and through a group of enormous guava trees. The pungent smell of fallen and rotting guavas revolted me. I had to pick my way around squished fruits. The pool was green with algae. “It needs to be cleaned,” my mother noted. “But there’s no harm in green.” She dove in. I climbed down the metal ladder and partway into the water. It smelled green. I was sure there were snakes in there, maybe lizards, too.

  The maid, her name was Chavela, served breakfast on the veranda. “Huevos revueltos y tocino,” my mother said—scrambled eggs and bacon. “Y pan tostado” (toast). I looked at my mother as if I could tell by her face how she acquired this new sense of authority. When she was married to my father or to George Senseney, she did her own cooking and cleaning. During breakfast she taught Blair and me some Spanish words that we would need every day. Even though she couldn’t sing, she taught us two Mexican songs—“Cielito Lindo” and “La Cucaracha,” easy songs for children to learn. She took a long swallow of her coffee and then put her hands palms down on the table. “I’ve found a school for you,” she said. “It’s called Miss Heart’s. It’s an English school: Miss Heart is from London and she has a beautiful speaking voice. She called last week and told me that she has a place for each of you.”

  After breakfast the next morning our mother led us downhill, past Cuernavaca’s central plaza and to a building that looked more like a home than a school. She pushed open a heavy wooden door, and we followed her across a patio to Miss Heart’s office. To me, Miss Heart, a delicate-looking woman with wavy white hair done up in a bun, looked old, but she was probably in her fifties. We shook her hand—I wondered if we were supposed to curtsy—and then she took me to a classroom with ten-year-olds and Blair to the third-form room. I was used to entering new schools well after the term had begun, but this was a foreign country and I didn’t know what to expect. Miss Heart introduced me to my teacher. Then she turned to the class of about eight children, all seated behind wooden desks, and said, “Hayden Phillips has just arrived from the United States. She is going to join your class.” The children nodded and murmured and stared. I was relieved when the teacher led me to a desk in the back row.

  There was a red-haired boy at the desk next to mine. He was wearing shorts held up by suspenders, something I had only seen in children’s books. He must be German or Austrian, I thought. He glanced at me and quickly turned his attention to the blackboard upon which the teacher was writing. After a while I realized that this was history class. It was the history of England about which I knew nothing. Next came math. At Miss Heart’s, English and arithmetic were more advanced than at the Buckingham School. In English class we were reading Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities. It was long and hard with lots of words I did not know. We were told to look up new words in a dictionary and to keep a list of them in a notebook. We had a special book for vocabulary, and every week we learned at least forty new words. To me each new word was like a rung in a ladder: the more I knew, the more grown up I felt.

  At the end of our first day at Miss Heart’s, our mother picked us up. “I want you both to learn how to walk to and from school on your own. So, let’s try to memorize the streets on our way home.” The way home was simple: we followed a back street straight uphill for about half a mile. Blair made note of certain landmarks: “Okay, when we get to this red house we go left.” I memorized a bar with swinging doors and then a coffin-making shop in whose dark interior I saw a stack of small white coffins for children. I was shocked: in the United States they always keep coffins hidden. Also, I didn’t want to think about the little children that would die and that were the right size for these coffins.

  About a block from our house we passed a building under construction. The workmen yelled things at Blair and me. “Güerita!” they cried, meaning little pale skinned blonde girl. I wasn’t all that blonde and at nine years old, I was plump verging on fat, so I didn’t see why they had to yell at me. They must have been yelling at thirteen-year-old Blair. She had bosoms. After keeping my eyes on the sidewalk for a couple of days, I decided to cross the street well before I reached the construction site. I still walked quickly and didn’t look up. Blair thought I was being a baby. When the men shouted at her, she just threw her shoulders back and raised her chin a fraction of an inch. After about a month the catcalls didn’t scare me anymore. My mother said they were harmless. But she did warn us never to look into the men’s eyes. They would take that as an invitation.

  On Saturday nights our mother and Edmundo took us to Cuernavaca’s central plaza. At dusk the sky turns indigo blue and the leaves on the laurel trees turn black. “Listen,” our mother said. “Listen to the laurels.” Hidden in the leaves were masses of birds, all of them singing at the top of their lungs. On one side of the plaza the Cortez Palace was lit up. Our mother had taken us inside where, on the walls of an arcade, Diego Rivera’s murals showed the Spaniards’ cruelty to Indians. The most beautiful panel portrayed the campesino hero Zapata, dar
k and mustachioed, dressed in peasant white, and leading a white horse. He was the kind of man my mother liked, and I liked the looks of him, too.

  Sunday night was the paseo. In an ornate hexagonal bandstand, musicians played Mexican music and the girls walked one way around the plaza and the boys walked in the opposite direction. That way we could look at one another. Blair and I wore our new three-tiered, blue-and-white striped skirts that our mother had bought for us at the Borda shop on the uphill side of the plaza. This skirt made me feel like a dancer. When I twirled, it went straight out. Remembering how Dasya’s underpants showed when she twirled, I pinned my arms against my body to keep my skirt from flying up.

  When we passed them, the Mexican boys looked at us but almost never approached us. There was one boy about my age that I really liked. I could tell from the way he avoided my eyes that he liked the way I looked. Blair attracted more attention. She had tucked her blouse tight into her waistband to show off her new breasts. Sometimes she let the elasticized neckline of her blouse fall off one shoulder. She had beautiful shoulders—like a Greek statue. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. With her straight nose, narrow nostrils, and firm chin, she looked, our mother said, Junoesque. If we thought things were getting out of hand, if a boy came too near, we could always cross the street and sit with our mother and Edmundo who were drinking copitas, little glasses of tequila, at the outdoor café that was part of the Borda shop. Our mother never worried about us. Her attitude was that we could take care of ourselves, and we could.

  Blair and me, in front of a street photographer’s screen, Central Plaza, Cuernavaca, 1950

  After the band went home, Blair and I joined our mother and Edmundo at the café. Every few minutes a beggar approached our table. Some of them were mothers carrying infants wrapped tight in their rebozos, but most of the beggars were men and boys. The blind beggars frightened me. So did the ones whose skin looked as though they had leprosy. But the scariest one was a man with no legs who propelled himself around on a flat piece of wood with wheels. Edmundo warned us never to give the beggars anything. If you did, you would soon be surrounded by beggars. They pressed in close and touched you. Maybe they thought if they touched you, you would give them something just to make them go away. It was hard not to give money to the mothers with children, but we obeyed Edmundo and it soon became second nature to ignore beggars.