Isabel's Texas Two-Step

by Annie Bryant

  I followed Fidencia up some stairs to the second floor, then came to the end of a long hall that turned into another short flight of stairs. I heard a radio blasting more of the accordion music from a nearby room as we turned the corner.

  “¿Esa música, que es?” I managed to ask.

  “Eh?” Fidencia answered. I guessed my accent sounded funny to her.

  “The music. La música. ¿Que es—?”

  “Ah! La música,” she said. She ducked into the room and spoke in Spanish to whomever was inside. The radio shut off instantly. I peeked inside and saw an attractive woman standing over an ironing board. She was probably Mercedes, the housekeeper my aunt had referred to earlier. She looked nice, and I gave her a little wave.

  Fidencia hummed until we reached a door. Enrique reached in his pocket and pulled out a key to unlock it. Then they said good night and left.

  The room was small, but it was very pretty and “charming,” as Aunt Inez said, in a quiet, spare kind of way. It reminded me a bit of the Tower back at Charlotte’s house in Brookline because it was a strange shape. Three of the white walls had tall, narrow windows, hidden by closed wooden shutters. A kid-size bed covered with a beautiful quilt was pushed against one wall. Next to the bed was a small, painted wooden table. On top of the table was a pink candle in a glass container and a pretty white lamp in the shape of a cookie jar.

  I took out a family photo I’d tucked into my sketchpad and laid it against the lamp. I felt a little settled now, but still I wondered where in the house my mom was staying.

  Suddenly Aunt Inez bustled in. “Isabel, you can put your clothes in the chest of drawers. There is a bathroom at the other end of the hall. I think you’ll be quite comfortable here, dear.” She gave me a kiss on the cheek.

  As she turned to walk out the door, I asked, “Tía? Where are Mom and Aunt Lourdes?”

  She looked at me for a second before answering. “They’re downstairs on the opposite side of the house. Your mother should not be climbing stairs, you know, and Lourdes needs to be near her, just in case. Mercedes is right next door if you need anything.” Need anything? Did Aunt Inez remember that my Spanish needed work? How was I supposed to talk to Mercedes?

  I nodded, even though what she said made no sense to me. “Tía, is there a computer I might use?”

  “Computer! ¡Muchacha! It’s much too late for that. We have a busy day tomorrow. We must shop for some items for the honor court. It’s bedtime for you, my dear.”

  Bedtime? It couldn’t be later than nine o’clock! I was surprised by how bossy my aunt was. Even more than Aunt Lourdes. I hoped bossy wasn’t some gene that ran in the family.

  She gave me another swift kiss good night and mumbled some blessings in Spanish in my ear. “Get some sleep.”

  “I want to say good night to Mom.”

  “Your mother is already asleep. She’s had such a long day. Now the best thing you can do for her is go to bed yourself.” She left, closing the door behind her.

  Oooookay. I almost felt like crying. There was no TV and I had nothing to read; I had only my sketchpad. But I didn’t feel particularly creative. I kicked off my shoes and put on my slippers.

  With nothing else to do, I started to unpack and soon heard voices coming from the room next door. I stuck my head out the door. It was Ricardo, talking in Spanish to Mercedes.

  “Isabel, they put you way over here?” he said when he saw me. “That’s so bogus. There’s a party going on in the billiards room.”

  “Your mom told me to go to sleep.” I wasn’t sure I wanted to hang out with Ricardo. He seemed to think he was all that, and I didn’t want to get in trouble with my Aunt Inez.

  “Get outta here. It’s way too early, Izzy. Come on, I’ll show you around,” he said, like he was king of the castle or something.

  I hesitated.

  “Don’t worry, my mom really won’t care. She likes a party. The grown-ups have all gone to their side of the house, anyway. Come on!” Sides of the house? A billiards room? This place really was a castle!

  I followed him through hallways filled with beautiful Mexican-style rugs. Soon we were in front of a huge door that Ricardo said was the entrance to the sala. He opened the door and flipped on switches to various lights. “You like art, right, Isabel? Check this out.”

  I was almost speechless. The room was right out of a decorating magazine. If my friends Maeve and Katani, the two BSG who most loved style and fashion, were here, they would have been swooning.

  The room was bathed in a soft light and there were several sitting areas—long leather sofas and deep, plushy velvet chairs in a dark red at one end, a beautifully carved gaming table and Spanish-style leather bucket chairs at the other. But what I really noticed was the art. My fingers start to tingle. Inspiration was everywhere. There was a stunning bronze statue of a cowboy on horseback, a collection of old silver spurs in a glass cabinet, ornate Victorian lamps with smoky stained-glass shades. I felt like I was in a museum.

  When I looked up at the dark wood walls my heart skipped a beat. The massive painting before me looked familiar: a very happy man in a bright blue suit, holding a watermelon slice on his lap. The background was an eye-popping hot pink.

  “It’s an early Rufino Tamayo,” Ricardo rattled off, like he was repeating something he’d heard his mom say a million times. “And that’s an original Diego Rivera over there.”

  I spun around. Diego Rivera, the husband of my absolute favorite artist, Frida Kahlo! I walked over to get a closer look. The picture was of a little girl in a polka-dot skirt receiving a bundle of golden flowers from a woman seated on the floor, wearing Indian clothing. The girl looked shy, the woman sad. I held my breath. I had never been that close to the work of such a famous artist before. I knew better than to reach out and touch it.

  “It’s called ‘Mother’s Helper,’” Ricardo said. “My father gave it to my mother this past Christmas.”

  “Oh my gosh!” I was thunderstruck. “I can’t believe you actually have a Diego Rivera painting in your house! All this is Mexican art, right?” I waved my hand about.

  Ricardo nodded as he jumped up and down on the leather sofa like it was a trampoline. Boys were so weird sometimes. It never would have occurred to me to jump on such a nice couch. At least he’d taken off his shoes. When he jumped back onto the floor, his hair stuck out all over the place.

  “I guess so. Most of it is, anyway. Look at these sculptures. They’re made by a famous lady from Mexico, Josefina Aguilar. Some of them are really funny.” He ran to a corner of the room and pushed a button. A light shone on a table that had about a dozen clay figures. They were simple statues, crudely made, but colorful and eye-catching. One was of a woman holding a bunch of calla lilies. Another was obviously Frida Kahlo. She had a parrot on one shoulder, a monkey on the other, and a cigarette in one of her hands.

  “I know who this is,” I said.

  “Yeah, who doesn’t?” Ricardo answered smugly. Sometimes Ricardo was nice, but sometimes…

  Then a big glass statue of a bird caught my eye. When I walked closer, I realized it was an image of the Mexican national emblem. An eagle with a giant wingspan stood on a branch of prickly pear cactus, grasping a snake with one of its talons and its beak. The eagle’s eye was deeply polished. It looked almost like a black diamond. For a second, I wondered if the eagle could fly.

  I’d seen this image a thousand times, on everything from Mexican coins to the Mexican flag. But never like this, with such expression. The eagle’s wings were so detailed I could make out the lines on individual feathers. The snake had scales so thick it looked like it had a plate of armor on, even if it was only made of glass.

  “I love this,” I said, and reached out my hand.

  “But you better not touch it.” Ricardo stopped me. “That one’s new. It’s pretty cool, I guess,” he went on casually. “My mom just got it from some famous artist.” He acted as if that was no big deal to have a sculpture from a famous artist
. I ignored him. I just couldn’t take my eyes off the statue. “Do you know the story behind the emblem?” he asked me.

  “I can’t remember the whole thing,” I said and turned away. I suddenly felt tired, and Ricardo was starting to get on my nerves a little. Like now. He wanted to give me a history lesson.

  “Well, it represents the founding of Mexico. The ancient Aztecs were a nomadic tribe. It was foretold they could not settle until they came across an eagle on top of a cactus, feasting on a snake. Well, they found it all right, on an island in the middle of Lake Texcoco. So they started building but soon crowded out the island. They built land extensions, called chinampas, over the water to make room for more people and to grow food, by moving dirt and stuff to fill in the lake. Pretty soon the place was huge.”

  “Ricardo, did you learn all this at school?” I was kind of impressed at how much he knew.

  He shook his head. “I read about it in this book I have. Mexico City was built on a lake. That’s why a lot of its old buildings are sinking.” I remembered that my grandfather told me that. “Crazy, huh? That one of the world’s largest cities was built on mud? But in the olden days, it was called Tenochtitlán,” he explained.

  “Boston was sort of built the same way,” I told him. “Except in the 1800s, they used wooden pilings, like big telephone poles, to extend the land into the bay. Parts of the city, like the Back Bay, were built right where the water used to be.” I paused, and asked him, “How do you know so much about Mexican history?”

  “Isabel, look where you live. You’re way up in the north. Down here, you practically can’t forget for a second that this was once Mexico.”

  I nodded again, realizing that Ricardo was one smart kid. I took one last look around the room before he started to turn out the lights. My eyes lingered on the huge paintings. “Wow. Those paintings are pretty cool, but that statue—I love birds. This is my favorite piece in the whole room,” I said.

  “Yeah, of all the stuff we’ve got here—and believe me, my mom likes to buy a lot of art—it’s my favorite too. She says she’ll keep buying stuff until she has to do the dusting. But for now, Mercedes does all that.”

  I wanted to e-mail the BSG and tell them I was sleeping under the same roof that housed a Diego Rivera painting, with cooks and a housekeeper and a magical glass eagle to guard the house. Ricardo had the biggest smile on his face. He knew I was impressed, and he was obviously eating it up. I guessed this was his time to shine a little.

  Finally I said, “Your family must be really rich.”

  He shook his head, like he was embarrassed. “If you say so.”

  “Um, is there a computer I can use, for just a few minutes?” I asked.

  “Why?” he asked. What was with everybody here? It was like no one wanted me to make contact with the outside world.

  “I just want to touch base with my friends, the BSG,” I explained in a kind of whiny way. I was starting to feel pretty tired, and I really wanted to talk to my best friends before I went to bed. “I have to give them my first impressions of Texas and life on the ranch. It’s this cool thing we do sometimes. Like if we are experiencing something new we have to tell each other what we think, and then a week later see if we still feel the same way. It’s really kind of funny.” Ricardo looked unimpressed, but I kept going anyway.

  “For example,” I continued. “The first time my friend Avery tasted my sister’s mole sauce, she about gagged. She said it tasted like chocolate chalk. A week later she said it tasted worse, like chocolate dirt. My friend Charlotte, who has been to a lot of different places, loved it. She wanted my sister—”

  “You sure talk a lot, Isabel,” he interrupted.

  “Whatever.” Boys…it’s like they can only handle listening to a certain number of words before their brains shut down.

  “Come on, Isabel, we better split before we get caught in here.” Get caught! Had Ricardo broken a house rule or something? I looked around, suddenly afraid that a fiery Tía Inez might come flying through the door on a broom.

  “Ricardo, why did you bring me in here when you weren’t supposed to?” I spun around to walk out. Unfortunately for the art world, Ricardo, and me, as I lifted my arm up, my sleeve caught on the glass eagle. Before I realized what was happening, the glass sculpture started to tip.

  What happened next was like one of those terrible movie scenes where time stands still before the whole scene explodes. As if in slow motion, the eagle fell forward. Both Ricardo and I went in for the save as I yelped, “Ah!”

  For one terrible second it was touch-and-go. A vision of the eagle smashed to smithereens on the floor buzzed through my head. But lucky for us, we managed to keep the huge sculpture from hitting the floor. In relief, we both sighed and began to giggle at the same time. And then we stood up. Huge mistake! Huge! The eagle’s wing nicked the table, and the glass tip flew across the room.

  “Isabel, look what you did!” Ricardo accused.

  “That’s not fair!” I practically screamed. “You made me come in here.”

  A guilty look crept across his face.

  “Well, what do we do now?” I was nearly in tears. The thought that I might have ruined my sister’s quince and put my family in debt forever was beginning to form in my spinning brain.

  “I have an idea.” He paused.

  “What?” I asked, thinking that my cousin was going to tell me to hide the sculpture under my bed or something ridiculous like that.

  “You’re an artist, right?” he asked hopefully.

  “Yeah.” Even though I didn’t consider myself a real artist yet, and I wasn’t sure where he was going with his question, I was hoping against hope that his idea was a good one.

  “How about we glue the piece back on? You can make it look really clean and everything.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but I was too freaked out to think of anything better to do, so I said, “Okay.” Then I remembered the poor eagle. “Do you think that we can lift this back onto the table? My arms are killing me.”

  “You’re funny, Isabel,” he said with a laugh as we gently rested the beautiful bird on the table. I was beginning to feel really sad. I had just ruined an incredible piece of art. Would my family ever forgive me? More important, would the art world?

  Ricardo slunk out of the room to find some glue while I went in search of the glass tip. Fortunately it was resting, intact, under the chair facing the fireplace. I carefully picked it up and polished it off with my sleeve. “Bad sleeve,” I scolded. “Look at all the trouble you caused.” I sadly carried the broken piece back to the table.

  “I am so sorry, beautiful eagle,” I whispered to the amazing glass bird, which almost felt alive in my hands. I tried to fit the shimmering tip back on the wing and said softly, “I hope you will forgive me for damaging your beauty.” Art meant everything to me, and thinking that I had broken this wonderful work made me want to cry with shame.

  Lucky for Ricardo and me, the break was a clean one, and perhaps the glue would work. I sat down in the leather chair facing the fireplace to wait for his return. A smidgen of hope was starting to creep into my brain.

  Suddenly I heard the doorknob turn behind me. I slunk deep in the seat and made myself as small and invisible as I could. Then I crossed my fingers. Please let it be Ricardo, please, please.

  It wasn’t.

  “Who left these lights on?” Tía Inez huffed. She paused. I figured she was looking around the room, and I prayed she couldn’t see me. I held my breath when I heard her step farther into the room. She was quiet for another moment, then Aunt Inez spoke softly. “Good night, beautiful art. Thank you for gracing our home.”

  Suddenly it was dark.

  I pinched myself just to make sure I was still alive and had heard right. Tía Inez was a true art lover, not one of those people who buy art for decoration. I leaned my head against the back of the chair. Will my aunt ever forgive me for ruining her sculpture? I wondered.

  The doorknob turne
d again, but this time I was too exhausted and guilty to move. If it was Tía Inez again, I would just have to throw myself on the floor and beg for mercy.

  “Isabel?” Thankfully, it was Ricardo’s voice. I turned around to see him walk into room, a bottle of glue in his hands. Phew. Together, we managed to do a fair job of gluing the tip back on.

  “Isabel, we better not tell anyone about this,” he said in a worried tone.

  “Ricardo, what if someone notices? What then?” I looked him in the eye.

  “They won’t. We aren’t even going to use this room for the quinceañera. By the time somebody notices, the quince will be over, and…” He stopped midsentence and looked at me with a funny expression on his face. I don’t think he totally believed what he was saying.

  Both of us tiptoed silently out of the room.

  Before he went to his own room, Ricardo grabbed my hand and gave it a squeeze. “We’re in this together, Isabel. We have to stay loyal.”

  “Ricardo, we have to tell someone…soon,” I said as I let go of his hand. I walked back to my “charming” little bedroom, far away from everyone. I could hear my sister and her friends in the billiards room laughing it up. I was thankful to be alone, because I planned on crying myself to sleep. My sister’s happiest time had turned into one of the worst days of my life.

  Later, as I fell asleep to the sounds of accordion music coming through the wall from Mercedes’s room, I thought about all the ways to confess. My favorite was having Ricardo confess and take all the blame…but I knew I wouldn’t really let that happen.

  CHAPTER 5

  Pink Dresses and Blue Turtles

  Cock-a-doodle-dooooo!”

  For a second my sleepy brain didn’t register the sound. “Go back to sleep, Elena,” I mumbled, burying my head in a pillow. Then I remembered…I was in Texas! And what I was hearing was a real rooster!

  It took me about a split second to get to the windows. The light coming through had colored the room golden yellow. I ran from one window to the next, throwing open all the shutters, and saw before me the landscape that was…my uncle’s ranch.