The Barbarian Nurseries A Novel - By Hector Tobar Page 0,108

their own moderately elevated sense of accomplishment, by revealing just how small their achievements were relative to true American success and affluence. The compadres with kids in parochial school imagined they were paying top dollar, but in fact it was a small fraction of the sum Araceli had just divulged, even though those gringo boys didn’t look so much different than theirs, not especially special, and certainly not that rich.

“Es lo que cuesta,” Araceli insisted. She explained that she knew this startling fact not because she’d made any effort to find out, but rather because her employers were exceedingly casual with their paperwork and left letters and bills lying around. And with a dollar figure that big screaming from the kitchen countertop, even a normally circumspect housekeeper like Araceli had to take a look.

“You’re pretty sure about that number?” Lucía asked.

“Claro que sí,” Araceli said.

“No,” one of the compadres insisted. “Estás confundida.”

I might be just a housekeeper and a chilanga, Araceli wanted to say, but I know basic English and math and the meaning of commas and decimal points and dollar signs. But instead she gave a long glance at her disbelieving audience, then shook her head with a dismissive chuckle that was instantly recognizable to Lucía for its thick layering of intellectual condescension. With that all the compadres and Lucía drifted away, leaving Araceli amused and finally able to take a first real bite of the carnitas, which were quite juicy. She searched for the boys and spotted them, and then decided she could forget about them again, because here in this big backyard they would be safe.

Brandon and Keenan were running about the backyard with the children of the extended Luján clan. Having watched the men with the shovels remove their dirt and then the foil-wrapped meat, and a few hot rocks, Brandon had persuaded himself that he was no longer in danger from the fires in the earth, though now there were various firecrackers and flames and explosions going off in the air around him. Salomón’s brother Pedro had brought three large boxes’ worth of assorted handheld pyrotechnics from Tijuana, and the children were playing with them, the most popular being small silver balls that burst into sparks when the children flung them against the patio’s concrete floor.

“I got you! I got you!” a girl yelled as one of her “fire rocks” exploded at Keenan’s feet, and Keenan replied by throwing one back at her, and laughing as she squealed.

“Be careful!” Brandon shouted at his brother and anyone else in earshot, though no one listened. A boy was lighting firecrackers and throwing them into the now-empty pig pit and there were no adults stopping him. Gunpowder tickled Brandon’s nose, and bits of paper and cardboard from the firecrackers were littering the patio floor and the lawn, and there were other kids igniting sticks that spit fire and whistled, holding them too close to their eyes, and they wouldn’t stop even when Brandon shouted out “¡Cuidado!“ in Spanish. He looked for Araceli, but she had drifted away into the crowd of people tearing at meat from the buried pig with their teeth, and for the first time since leaving his home on Paseo Linda Bonita, Brandon felt truly alone and afraid. The firecracker explosions pinched his eardrums and the neighborhood dogs were suffering too, filling the air with their wailing and barking on this block and all the others surrounding it, begging the humans to cease fire. It was one thing to play war when all the sounds came from your mouth or your imagination, and quite another to be standing in a cloud of gunpowder. Now he heard a powerful explosion, felt the thumping vibration in his chest, and then the echo of the boom. “An M-80!” a boy shouted, and Brandon wondered why no one in the backyard was ducking for cover when there were bombs exploding out on the street.

A flash of light on the horizon caught his eye, and he turned to see three fire bursts growing in the shape of dandelions against the dark gray sky, followed by the muffled sound a few seconds later of distant cannons.

“¡Son los fireworks de la ciudad!” someone shouted, just as more burning dandelions emerged, their light shining on the distant transmission lines and the towers. “The city fireworks show!” someone else said, and now everyone was turning and watching as more bursts followed, some in the shape of flying saucers, in green and crimson and yellow,