The Barbarian Nurseries A Novel - By Hector Tobar Page 0,7
would have made very fine pottery, or papel picado, or been an excellent stage manager for a theater group wandering through the suburbs of El Distrito Federal.
Araceli took the bowl of completed paste to la señora Maureen in the playroom. She found her jefa kneeling on the floor over a piece of yellow construction paper with a red pencil grasped between her fingers, wearing an artist’s smock over her brown yoga pants.
“Señora, aquí está su paste,” Araceli said.
“Thanks.” After a few seconds passed without Araceli walking away, Maureen looked up and found Araceli examining her work with that neutral expression of hers, a half stare with passive-aggressive overtones. Maureen had seen Araceli’s wide, flat face assume this inscrutable look too often to be unsettled by it, and instead she gave her maid a half shrug and quick eye-roll of ironic semi-exasperation, as if to say, Yes, here I am again, on my knees, scratching away at an art project like some preschooler. Araceli broke her trance by raising one eyebrow and nodding that she understood: it was the sort of exchange that took place several times each day between these two women, a wordless acknowledgment of shared responsibilities as exacting women in a home dominated by the disorderly exertions of two boys, a baby girl, and one man. Maureen was writing happy birthday keenan in the classic, serif-heavy font of Roman buildings and monuments. Below these letters, la señora was trying to draw what looked like a Roman helmet, a birthday theme inspired by Keenan’s recent fixation with a certain Eur opean comic strip. Maureen drew one more line with Araceli watching, and then they were both startled by the cry of a baby, seemingly just behind la señora‘s shoulder. Turning around quickly, Araceli saw a burst of red lights on the baby monitor as Maureen calmly rose to her feet and headed for the nursery.
A few moments later Maureen appeared in the hallway with Samantha, a baby girl of fifteen months with hazel eyes still moist from crying to escape from her crib. She had her mother’s milky complexion and fine hair, though the baby’s locks were a deeper chestnut. La señora held her daughter, bounced and made kissing noises until she stopped her crying, and then did something she had never done before: she handed Samantha to Araceli. In the Torres-Thompson household, this baby girl carried the aura of a sacred and delicate object, like a Japanese vase on two teetering legs. In the last few weeks, she had started to walk, entering a world of possibility and danger, stumbling across the room to her mother’s embrace with a precarious Frankenstein step. Guadalupe carried the baby for hours every day, but now that Guadalupe was gone it appeared that some of this responsibility would fall to Araceli, who wasn’t sure if she was ready or willing to help take care of a baby. In fifteen months, Araceli had disposed of several hundred soiled diapers, but she had changed Samantha herself not more than three times, and always at the behest of Guadalupe. The truth was Araceli had never been close to children; they were a mystery she had no desire to solve, especially the Torres-Thompson boys, with their screams of battle and the electric sound effects they produced with their lips and cheeks.
But a little girl was different. This one led the life any Mexican mother would want for her baby, with an astonishing variety of pinks and purples in her wardrobe of onesies, bibs, T-shirts, nightshirts, her closet in the nursery overflowing with Tinker Bell Halloween costumes and miniature sundresses, and outfits like this casual track suit of velvety ruby-colored cotton she was wearing today. In El Distrito Federal, these clothes would cost a fortune; if you could find them at all it would be in the marble-floored malls in the affluent satellite fringes where there was valet parking at the front doors and perfume piped into the air ducts. Araceli gently touched one of the lavender barrettes in Samantha’s thin strands of hair, and the baby wrapped her small hand around one of Araceli’s fingers. In an instant, Araceli found herself cooing, making infantile noises. “¡Qué linda! ¡Qué bonita la niña!” Samantha smiled at her, which was so unexpected that it made Araceli lean over and kiss the baby on the cheek. Maybe that is not something I should do.
Araceli carried the baby and walked in circles as Maureen built a small collection of papier-mâché helmets,