The Barbarian Nurseries A Novel - By Hector Tobar Page 0,41
man. She had framed a couple of these sturdy old images and placed them in the living room for guests to see, but they were artifacts in a historical vacuum, since in her few conversations with the old man he refused to talk much about his life in the black-and-white, Spanish-speaking past. “We had a raw deal when we were kids, but we never complained about it. And I sure as hell ain’t going to complain about it now.” The old man had dedicated his life to the erasure of the language and rituals he associated with short hoes and lettuce fields, with the transience of old Ford trucks and night arrivals at labor camps and menacing urban ghettos. The old man confused amnesia with reinvention, and thus the only trace of Mexican in her husband was that very faint brownish red she saw when he allowed himself to stand under the sun for an hour, and perhaps his Julius Caesar nose, which may or may not be Indian. Everything else about Scott was as pale and severe as the Maine winters her late mother-in-law used to talk about, though Maureen never would have dared to say such a thing out loud, to anyone, because as an American “white” woman it wasn’t her place to make such judgments.
Her journey through the albums having failed to transport her away from the messy and complicated present, Maureen put her family memories back in their shoe boxes and decided to start cleaning the house. As she picked up dirty pajamas and towels, she marveled, not for the first time, at how much work Araceli did. This home, even when you thought of it in the most abstract sense, as a place of security, order, and happiness, depended on the Mexican woman as much as it did on Maureen. Allowing Araceli to leave for two days was, Maureen realized, a way of claiming it as her own.
She was in the kitchen, holding Samantha and heating up a bottle of milk, when her oldest son entered the kitchen to ask for something to eat.
“How about a sandwich? Turkey and cheese?”
“Okay.”
“Is the movie over? Did you turn off the TV?”
“Yes,” Brandon said. “And yes.”
She looked at the dishes in the sink, remembered to scan the backyard for toys, and thought about what she would make for dinner and what she could get the boys to do this afternoon: perhaps a game of Scrabble Junior. It takes concentration to do all these things at once. Already today she had played Risk with her boys and had set them to work with aprons and paintbrushes and butcher paper. Later she would wade into her boxes of colored scrap paper and fabric strips and assemble another art project. There was an element of performance to being a good mom, but no one gave you executive bonuses for getting through the day, for keeping three kids fed, entertained, and stimulated without doing the easy thing and leaving them in front of the television. It took stamina and a certain optimistic and demanding outlook.
Maureen had the baby on her hip and was walking to the bedroom to retrieve her children and call them to an early dinner when she caught a glimpse of her husband, sitting on that boomerang-shaped chair before the mirage of a high-definition television monitor, a series of color images quick-flashing in response to the movement of his fingers. Again? What is the fascination? I am carrying the baby and he is playing. She took in his frantic fingers, and the intense look of excited concentration she could see in profile, and decided the moment presented an opportunity.
“Honey, I wanted to ask you something.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, giving a quarter turn in her direction without taking his eyes off the screen. “Sorry, I’m in my two-minute offense here.”
“Okaaaay. Well, I came up with a plan for the garden. Something that will save us some money in the long run. But it’s gonna require a big expense to get started.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m going to have them put in some desert plants.”
“Cool.”
“I’ll go ahead and do that, then.”
“What?”
“The desert garden.”
“But how much is it going to cost?” he said, giving a half turn in her direction while the screen behind him replayed the last running play.
“Not too much. Honest.”
“Really,” he said, and then the pull of the game caused him to turn fully to the screen.
“Honest, I promise,” she said to the back of his head.