The Barbarian Nurseries A Novel - By Hector Tobar Page 0,19

Other immigrant servants might be made uncomfortable by being forced to hear their employers baring intimate and apparently irreconcilable grievances, they might even shed a tear at the sense that “their family” was spinning apart—Araceli did not. She felt distant from their dysfunction. But it was annoying, all this shouting, so she quickly and without much hope for success took some basil leaves from the refrigerator and placed them inside a glass jar filled with water. This was an old Mexican folk remedy against angry spouses, one her mother used frequently. Fifteen minutes later, the arguing had stopped and the dishwasher too. She threw in the last of the bowls and serving spoons like the good employee she was, and snuck out the side door of the kitchen, across the lawn, empty and quiet under the yellow bug light, and into her room, her sanctuary.

When the argument finally exhausted itself, Maureen withdrew to her bedroom and slipped inside the cotton and wool cocoon of her quilted comforter, alone. On any other day she wouldn’t have been able to go to bed before restoring order in the rooms beyond the closed pine door, without forcing her two sons to help recover the scattered toys around the home and backyard, returning them to storage bins and shelves, but the boys had retreated to their room hours ago. Now she took comfort in the silence and order in this one room, where a vintage clock gave a steady and reassuring click and an incandescent bulb glowed through the maroon fabric of the lampshade, its light suggesting a hearth in a mountain cabin. Once again, she’d take the lamp’s companionship over her husband’s. He was sleeping on the couch, or in his beloved game room, and in his absence this shared niche of theirs had a feminine pulse, it was an organism of finely spun fibers, wood grain, and old metal. Scott sullied it daily with his discarded clothing, the stacks of memos and the electronic toys masquerading as office tools that she gathered up and placed in the drawer of his nightstand. How many computer chips did a man need to order his life? This gadget man, this collector of ring tones and black plastic slabs with glowing green lights, had wounded her with viciousness and sarcasm for daring to express her hurt and humiliation over the garden fiasco.

All that was left was to surrender before the weight of sleep, a mass made heavier by the torture-memory of many nights of sleep interrupted by Samantha’s crying in the predawn darkness. Would the baby have a nightmare as she remembered her father’s straining eyes and gritted teeth, like the toothy goblins that populate a child’s scary story? Maybe we would be better off alone, my daughter and boys and I. She pulled the comforter up to her chin, and was aware how childlike that gesture was, to seek solace in the softness of fabric. Nothing looks right when you haven’t slept. Sleeplessness made them both slaves to their reptilian brains and brought them to the brink of shouting. That is why he is less forgiving, why he is less willing to bury what I said on La Rambla. In the morning, when they were rested, they would see the abundance of blessings in their lives, the sharp and clear voices of their boys, the flower-bud mouth of their daughter, the powerful sense of nurturing purpose she felt when the five of them traveled and ate together, when they assembled before breakfast tables with pancakes, orange juice, and chocolate milk.

There was still so much to do in this house, but it was getting late. Araceli would take care of it all in the morning.

Stepping out of her room the next morning, Araceli noticed bits of trash in the backyard that had escaped her attention in the fading light at the end of the party the day before, shredded pieces of papiermâché armor that gave a light dusting of newspaper snow to the grass. The vanquished shell of the piñata, a traditional Mexican ball with seven spikes representing the seven deadly sins, had been split into several pieces, with one spike at the base of the banana tree. She moved quickly to pick up what she could and resolved to return later with a rake, then opened the door to the kitchen, where the white-tile sparkle and faint scent of detergent told a story of order and calm. There was nothing left to do here. She