Gumbo

by E. Lynn Harris

  —Get yourself a whipping branch, Pai said days later to Graciela after he had devoured an avocado. He sat in front of the house repairing his only pair of shoes while she reluctantly climbed the cashew tree. As she handed over a thin branch, Graciela saw where mercury still stained the cuts on his hands.

  —I told you to get a thicker branch, girl, he said.

  After she had chosen the branch and wet it as he had instructed, Graciela followed Pai to the back of the house; Mai had already laid out the rice and stood a few feet away with her arms crossed. Without being told, Graciela removed her dress and knelt on the grains.

  —You beat her good so she learns, Mai said to Pai. Then she disappeared into the kitchen, where Graciela could see her spying between the wood planks.

  The first strike of the branch burned across the back of her thighs.

  —Cry hard, girl, and satisfy your mai.

  Pai thrashed the dirt around them. Graciela kept the smirk that she knew could make Mai's voice turn to pieces of breaking china. Finally, Pai cut the branch across the soles of her feet and hurled it to the bushes. Exasperated, he set a brand-new lard can full of peas on her head.

  —Girl, you stay there till you lose that insolence.

  Rice grains cut into her knees and the can of peas ignited a migraine. Still, Graciela would not confess; nothing she could have said would put her in a favorable light. Better to withstand the bursts of pain in her knees than to tell of her travesties with Silvio and multiply the existing worries in the household.

  To numb herself Graciela sang songs, counted to ten twenty times, made popping sounds and saliva bubbles, concentrated on the caterpillar by the outhouse. Her thighs pressed tighter to hold back urine. After the breeze had chilled her raw skin, she began to itch where Pai's forgiving whip had left inevitable welts. A bug tickled her ankle. A sneeze crippled her side.

  —¡Move and I shoot! Fausto said. He wore a gourd on his head, pointed a long piece of sugarcane at her, and revealed his own gaps for front teeth.

  Two lizards copulated behind the barrel of rainwater. And suddenly Silvio waved pesos across Graciela's mind. He had not snuck around to their grove of cashews with his telltale whistle since the day of the yanqui. The clouds above Graciela did not move. In her agony, her anger and longing for Silvio became interchangeable.

  Had Pai known of what she did with Silvio, he would have let the whip open her skin. He might have had Silvio hunted like a guinea hen. Might have scared him with a fresh-oiled pistol. Or turned him over to the yanquis.

  With the frozen clouds and the sun baking circles in her head and the can of peas tumbling to the ground and the rice grains up against her flushed cheek, Graciela decided she would hunt for Silvio herself and make him put a zinc roof over her head.

  SILVIO • 1917

  Silvio never gave Graciela her share of the earnings. He spent the pesos on spicy sausages, on the winning cock, Saca Ojo, and on his favorite patient whore. Nor did Silvio dare muddy Graciela's name on porches or storefronts. (—You liked it too, he remembered her knowing words.)

  Silvio withstood a year of Graciela's demands for a house of their own. He joined the yanquis' new Guardia Nacional Dominicana, where he was outfitted in starched slacks and sturdy shoes. It was an accomplishment, Silvio insisted to naysayers, for a man as dark and illiterate as he to be entrusted with yanqui guns. He was not a traitor, he explained, but a quality man with goals, who had already started wearing long pants. At fifteen, his penis swelled when the same elders who had tattled on him took off their hats in his presence. And when, at the sound of his voice, porch girls fanned themselves faster.

  A quality man of goals must also head a household. Silvio agreed to elope with Graciela. One night at last, he blew his telltale whistle among the cashews. Like sudden thunder, Silvio invaded her home in his fresh yanqui haircut and pushed aside Pai's machete while Graciela ran past her shrunken mother to gather her few belongings.

  Silvio had cleared a plot of land for them. He knew Graciela was disappointed to find that, instead of the turquoise palmwood and zinc house behind her lids, their new place was not much different from the thatched cabins she had left behind.

  —This will have to do for now, Silvio said and brushed off dust from the knees of his slacks.

  Inhumane military training demoted many an eager cadet back to civilian status. Silvio's own starched slacks, real shoes, and arrogance disappeared after a Marine ordered him to string his own friend Euclides from a mango tree. Euclides, in his zeal for trouble, had stolen the Marine's shoes. Euclides had taken them in jest, Silvio explained to the shrimp-skinned Marine, who, in near-perfect Spanish, had called him in for “a little talk.” By the time Silvio tracked down Euclides to warn him, he knew that despite three meals a day and an enviable uniform, belonging to the yanqui police force came with too many problems. As did life with Graciela.

  Within a year of their eloping, the fever of Silvio and Graciela's clandestine meetings had dwindled to predictable lukewarm pleasure during siesta and after sundown. Graciela was no longer Silvio's, despite his having her under a roof and being able to hitch up her skirt at will. Just a year ago, she had been completely his when she let him pick off every baby tick that had stuck fast to her ankles from running through a field of grass. And Silvio certainly believed Graciela his shortly before the yanqui-man incident, when she confided about a deadly disease afflicting the women in her family, which causes them to bleed between their legs every month. But the patient whore he frequented recently told him that all women had the disease, and now, more than ever, Silvio felt he had lost Graciela to a world bigger than himself.

  But those were crazy moonshine thoughts, because daily life itself seeped into Silvio and Graciela's bodies like cement. As when, throughout their meals, Graciela would chew her food slowly and stare at him with what Silvio increasingly saw as the wide eyes of a cow. ¿What? ¿What? he would yell, hoping she would not bring up again the goddamned turquoise palmwood and zinc house.

  Graciela's cow eyes and Euclides' murder convinced Silvio that he preferred the unpredictable ways of the waters to the whims of shrimp-skinned generals and to Graciela's irritating company. Silvio planned to join a fishing fleet that circled the Caribbean. He let his hair sprout out from its yanqui haircut. One night he sat by the fire he had made of his uniform and shoes, and the next morning he kissed Graciela goodbye after a hearty breakfast of cocoa, breadfruit, eggs, and boiled bananas.

  On the morning of his first voyage, Silvio had dragged Graciela to her parents' house. Even with his grip, Graciela stirred the dust around them.

  —¡Don't need to swallow my own spit 'cause you wanna fish!

  —Just for peace of mind, mi cielo, he said.

  —Don't worry yourself, Silvio. Not one of your kids will look like you. Graciela punctuated her words with a fisted index finger.

  Mai received Graciela and Silvio with crossed arms.

  —You're a man of few words, Silvio, but you need to be firm with this one, she said and jutted her bottom lip toward Graciela.

  Once Silvio left for the docks, however, Graciela walked back to her own house in another haze of dust, followed by a grumbling Fausto, whom she forced to help file down the series of padlocks. In turn, Fausto ran home to tell Mai of Graciela's hammock-rocking, and the idleness of his sister's broom, the cold in her kitchen.

  In the evenings, neighboring women brought Graciela some food. Then they undid the kindness as if slowly unraveling a swatch of silk by a single thread.

  —¿That you want to ride on a ship? ¿With feet in lace-ups and those raisins of hair under a hat?

  Celeste, Graciela's childhood friend, always spoke the loudest and made the others cackle. She wondered aloud when the trail of daily chores left undone would catch up with Graciela and freeze over her dreams.

  —Ah, but you'd wear lace-up shoes too if El Gordo had them for you, Celeste my love. Because Graciela knew how much Celeste would give to bed down El
Gordo, who had more ranch cattle than Celeste's impotent husband.

  There was also the not-so-pious woman they all called Santa, who brought Graciela lavish goat meat and vegetable dishes. After Graciela consumed her portions, Santa would sweetly say to the women gathered in the kitchen,

  —Our dear Graciela's hearth is colder than a witch's breath.

  One day, to everyone's surprise, Graciela invited Santa over for a midday meal of mashed plantains, ham, and cheese. Afterward, Graciela offered Santa a rock-candy sucker. Only after Santa' had sucked the candy down to a nub, did Graciela say,

  —¿Was it all good, Santa?

  —¡Oh by far the best I've had!

  —Well, that sucker is what my armpit tastes like after a long hot morning at this hearth.

  And though Santa did not speak to her for weeks, the rest of the women could not stop asking Graciela how she had managed to cook with the sucker lodged in her armpit the entire time. News of the prank spread, with camps dividing between those who liked Santa and those who didn't, between those who liked Graciela and those who were beginning to distrust her.

  Still, the women liked to forget their work as Graciela wrung the rain out of their clouds. When there was no major news to chew on, they could always set their tongues on Graciela and her ways:

  —That poor girl's lazier than an upper jaw.

  —Show me her pots and I'll show you her bed.

  —That fool's wasting her life waiting on that other fool.

  For months after Silvio's departure, Graciela rocked in a hammock when visitors were not coming around. Out of loneliness, she would sometimes visit her parents, where she found herself having cordial, yet strained morning teas with Mai and clipped exchanges with Pai, when he descended from the hillside. He would occasionally slip a coin into the pocket of Graciela's apron; from the way Graciela quickly slurped her tea and darted her starved eyes when Mai clattered the dishes, Pai suspected that Silvio had not been sending any fishing money home after all. Pai's concern grew when he realized that Silvio would not be returning any time soon. He then forced a reluctant Fausto to go protect his sister from the “roaming men of low virtue” that had assaulted the city and its outskirts. Just two years younger than Graciela, Fausto had already mushroomed into an animal of a boy who, according to Pai, was built like a yanqui on an ox. Though Pai was giving up a much-needed workhand, he armed his bumbling twelve-year-old son with a pistol and sent him off to live with Graciela until Silvio's return.

  —Learn now how to really defend a household, he told Fausto. Always careful, Pai had already sent word to neighbors to keep watch over Graciela.

  Outside on her hammock, Graciela could ignore the disarray inside her home and stare at the wispy cirrus ships in the sky. In the clouds, she wore lace and carried a parasol in the park of a place where the talk was garbled but pretty. Rocking in her hammock, Graciela imagined Silvio on the high seas, sprawled on the deck, maybe looking for her in the clouds. Fool with ideas, she scolded herself. Her eyes closed against the humid breeze.

  Forget dirty tongues, she told herself further. They were all over the place: in the town, in the soup, even in her own head. Always trying to stop her from doing what she wanted. She would sit and let her home shrivel if she wanted. It was hers. And if she wanted to wait for Silvio for months, she would. He was hers as well.

  Graciela stood up and stretched until she heard a snap somewhere inside her body. Now that Fausto was here, maybe he could help her finish the little plot she and Silvio had started behind the main cabin a few months back.

  —Fausto, she called out. He emerged from the kitchen shed, chewing on a piece of lard bread.

  —¿Can't you do anything but eat 'round here? Graciela said. Fausto looked down at her, then brushed some crumbs from his lips.

  —I got the pistol, so I do whatever I want. Pai says I run this house, Fausto said. From his shorts pocket he pulled out a piece of cheese and brushed the lint from it.

  —And if a yanqui were to come here this minute, ¿what the Devil would you do to save us?

  Fausto reached into his other pocket, then dropped the piece of cheese.

  —¡My pistol! ¿Where the hell is my pistol?

  Fausto turned in circles, patting himself on the hips. When he looked up at Graciela, he found himself face-to-face with the pistol's barrel.

  —Donkey-face. I dare you to go and tell Pai. You tell him to send Graciela herself to defend me next time. She's a better son than you are.

  In one deft move the pistol disappeared behind the neckline of her blouse.

  Graciela had always been a fool with ideas, everyone said, long before she had waited for Silvio to whistle for her in the cashew grove and take her away.

  —Mai, God willing, I'm gonna ride ships. Big ones with tiny waists, she had sung at nine years old.

  Mai had not looked up from her ironing. A pair of Pai's underwear lay smoothed out on the table. Graciela stretched the underwear to show the width of the metal whale that could take her to where sky and water met.

  Mai looked up from her ironing. A momentary glimmer. Then she saw Gracicla's idle hands.

  —Ideas, ideas. That head in the clouds won't do your chores or fill your gut.

  Mai spat and let the iron sizzle.

  And then there were the three Spanish nuns with bunioned feet who had paid everyone in town a missionary visit when Graciela was four. Graciela had snuck behind the kitchen to hear the added s's in Mai's speech, the lisp reserved for rare visitors.

  —I have always tried to instill God into this little girl, her mother had said, hands clasped at her chest.

  The following week, Graciela found herself in the colonial church, hairline pulled taut with bits of cloth from old dresses. The church's dilapidation testified only to outward neglect; mission work was still going strong. Church beams spread out like protective arms above Graciela. Blocks of sunlight cut into the darkness to illuminate pews, statues, bits of floor. Graciela had the urge to stand inside the blocks of sunlight.

  —¿That where Jesus is? Graciela had asked, pointing to the blocks of light.

  —Jesus is everywhere, said the nun who called herself Sol Luz and led her toward a small room behind the altar. There were children already there, milling around an object in the middle of the room. They took turns spinning a colorful ball fixed to a metal arc. Graciela pushed and pinched her way through, until her fingers reached the ball, which she learned was called a “globe.”

  Only after she had sung all the holy songs and gulped down a hunk of stale bread with near-sour milk, was she allowed to return to the globe and turn it on its axis as if it were a rotisserie.

  —You are here.

  Sol Luz bent close to put Graciela's finger over a speck rising from the globe's surface.

  —¿Me? ¿On the head of an iguana? Graciela narrowed her eyes. The iguana head was but a nick on her fingertip. She saw other animals: the haunch of a sheep, a goat, a dog. They encompassed as many as four of her fingers.

  —I am from here—España—and came here.

  Sol Luz dragged her finger to the left of the dog's leg, across an expanse of blue.

  —I rode a ship all the way here, where you are, she said.

  —¿Why did you come to this iguana and not go to the dog's ears over there?

  Graciela moved Sol Luz's finger in the opposite direction.

  —I came to bring Jesus, she said, leaving some spittle on the globe.

  ¿Why bring Jesus to such a small iguana when there were bigger animals? New questions prickled Graciela's throat before she could finish asking the last; the answers mattered less.

  —Ah, the dilemma of mission work, the nun said, as if trying to sort out for herself why she was there on that speck of land with so much misery.

  —¿And does anyone live here? Graciela pointed to blue bulls and horses.

  —Not always good for a little girl to ask so many questions, Sol Luz said. —No one lives in the ocean. Sure, t
he Lord created fishes and sea animals, but not the sinful women with fish-tails, or pirate ghosts, or the water saints that you people talk about.

  Sol Luz's eyes became fixed stones and Graciela thought for a moment that she looked like a fish.

  Each Sunday thereafter, Mai would drag Graciela home by her pigtails.

  —¿Can't I bring the globe home with me?

  —Ask as many questions about Christ as you do about that pitiful ball, Mai said.

  ¿But how much bigger could the world be when the head of a tiny animal was her whole world? Graciela's fingers traced mountain ridges and the dips of rivers. ¿Would the people there be engulfed in a shadow and look up to the sky to see the swirls of her fingerprints hovering over their lands?

  Graciela begged Sol Luz to run outside and watch the sun as she ran her finger over their speck on the globe.

  —¿See my finger? Graciela's voice echoed throughout the church.

  —No harm in humoring the poor child, Sol Luz thought to herself as she walked to the church doors. Indeed, it was unusually dark outside, and with her heart in her throat Sol Luz lifted her eyes. She was ashamed of herself when, expecting colossal fingertips, she found a heavy cloud hovering over the church. A cool breeze signaled rain, and with a grunt at her own foolishness, she ran back inside.

  When Graciela thought she would pack her rags to break the monotony of her days, Silvio returned for the New Year celebrations. Sea breezes rushed ahead of him to their cactus fence. Fausto returned to Mai and Pai's home when he saw Graciela stuff her knotted mass of hair under a scarf and bury Pai's pistol near the rainwater barrel. Quickly, she stoked the fire for a meal, swept the yard, tried to erase the look of pining she was sure Silvio expected.

  Silvio returned with kingfish and squid strung on his back. There was licorice for Graciela in his pockets and Madame C.J. Walker grease to replace coconut oil for her hair. A yellow-ochre tinge lit up his crown from the sun and salt of his travels, making his hair look like the macaroni he told her he had tasted in St. Lucia. Kisses and long stories made her forgive his absence—only to discover later the rash on his groin.