The Barbarian Nurseries A Novel - By Hector Tobar Page 0,2
nineteenth-century streets, a city built of ancient lava stone and mirrored glass, a colonial city and an Art Deco city and a Modernist city all at once. In her solitude her thoughts would wander from Mexico City to the various other stops on her life journey, a string of encounters and misfortunes that would eventually and inevitably circle back to the present. Now she lived in an American neighborhood where everything was new, a landscape vacant of the meanings and shadings of time, each home painted eggshell-white by association rule, like featureless architect models plopped down by human hands on a stretch of empty savanna. Araceli could see the yellow clumps of vanquished meadows hiding in the unseen spaces around the Torres-Thompson home, blades sprouting up by the trash cans and the massive air-conditioning plant, and in the rectangles cut into the sidewalk where young, man-sized trees grew.
When Araceli stood before the living room picture window and stared out at the expanse of the ocean a mile or two in the distance, she could imagine herself on that unspoiled hillside of wild grasses. Several times each day, she walked out of the kitchen and into the living room to study the horizon, a hazy line where the gray-blue of the sea seeped into a cloudless sky. Then the shouts and screams of the two Torres-Thompson boys and the intermittent crying of their baby sister returned her to the here and now.
When there were three mexicanos working in this house they could fill the workday hours with banter and gossip. They made fun of el señor Scott and his very bad pocho accent when he tried to speak Spanish and tried to guess how it was that such an awkward and poorly groomed man had found himself paired with an ambitious North American wife. Guadalupe, the nanny, cooed over the baby, Samantha, and played with Keenan and the older boy, Brandon. It was Guadalupe who taught the boys to say things like buenas tardes and muchas gracias. Araceli, the housekeeper and cook, was in charge of the bathrooms and kitchen, the vacuum cleaners and dishrags, the laundry and the living room. And Pepe, with the hands that kept the huge leaves of the elephant plant erect, that made the cream-colored ears of the calla lilies bloom, and the muscles that kept the lawn respectably short. They filled the house with Spanish repartee, Guadalupe teasing Araceli about how handsome Pepe was, Araceli responding with double entendres that always seemed to go right over Pepe’s head.
“Your machine is so powerful, it can cut anything!”
“Es que tiene mucho horsepower.”
“Yes, I can see how much power there is in all those horses of yours.”
Pepe was a magician, a da Vinci of gardeners, worth twice what they paid him. How long would the orange beaks of the heliconias in the backyard open to the sky without Pepe’s thick, smart fingers to bring them to life? The money situation must be very bad. Why else would el señor Scott be outside in this white sun, burning his fair skin? The idea that these people would be short of money made little sense to her. But why else would Maureen be changing the baby’s diapers herself, and looking exasperated at the boys because they were playing on their electronic toys too long? Guadalupe, the aspiring schoolteacher, was no longer there to distract them with those games they played, outside on the grass with soap bubbles, or inside the house with Mexican lottery cards, the boys calling out “El corazón,” “El catrín,” and “¡Lotería!” in Spanish. Through the picture window in the living room, Araceli studied el señor Scott as he struggled to push the mower over the far edge of the lawn where it dropped off into a steep slope. toro said the bag on the side of the lawn mower. No wonder el señor Scott was having so much trouble: the lawn mower was a bull! Only Pepe, in a gleaming bullfighter’s uniform, with golden epaulets, could tease the Toro forward.
Araceli made el señor Scott a lemonade and walked out into the searing light to give it to him, as much to inspect his work as anything else.
“¿Limonada?” she asked.
“Thanks,” he said, taking the wet glass. Beads of water dripped down the glass, like the beads of sweat on el señor Scott’s face. He looked away from her, inspecting the blades of grass, how they were sprayed across the concrete path that ran through the middle of