Beautiful Maria of My Soul - By Oscar Hijuelos Page 0,1

sad and sometimes a little careless in his treatment of his family, even his lovely daughter, María, on whom, as the years had passed, he sometimes took out the shortcomings of his youth. That’s why, whenever that driver Sixto abruptly reached over to crank the hand clutch forward, or swatted at a pesty fly buzzing the air, she’d flinch, as if she half expected him to slap her for no reason. He hardly noticed, however, no more than her papito did in the days of her own melancholy.

“But I heard it’s a nice city,” she told Sixto.

“Coño, sí, if you have a good place to live and a good job, but—” And he waved the thought off. “Ah, I’m sure you’ll be all right. In fact,” he went on, smiling, “I can help you maybe, huh?”

He scratched his chin, smiled again.

“How so?”

“I’m taking these pigs over to this slaughterhouse, it’s run by a family called the Gallegos, and I’m friendly enough with the son that he might agree to meet you…”

And so it went: once Sixto had dropped off the pigs, he could bring her into their office and then who knew what might happen. She had told him, after all, that she’d grown up in the countryside, and what girl from the countryside didn’t know about skinning animals, and all the rest? But when María made a face, not managing as much as a smile the way she had over just about everything else he said, he suggested that maybe she’d find a job in the front office doing whatever people in those offices do.

“Do you know how to read and write?”

The question embarrassed her.

“Only a few words,” she finally told him. “I can write my name, though.”

Seeing that he had made her uncomfortable, he rapped her on the knee and said, “Well, don’t feel bad, I can barely read and write myself. But whatever you do, don’t worry—your new friend Sixto will help you out, I promise you that!”

She never became nervous riding with him, even when they had passed those stretches of the road where the workers stopped their labors in the fields to wave their hats at them, after which they didn’t see a soul for miles, just acres of tobacco or sugarcane going on forever into the distance. It would have been so easy for him to pull over and take advantage of her; fortunately this Sixto wasn’t that sort, even if María had spotted him glancing at her figure when he thought she wasn’t looking. Bueno, what was she to do if even the plainest and most tattered of dresses still showed her off?

Thank goodness that Sixto remained a considerate fellow. A few times he pulled over to a roadside stand so that she could have a tacita of coffee and a sweet honey-drenched bun, which he paid for, and when she used the outhouse, he made a point of getting lost. Once when they were finally on the Central Highway, which stretched from one end of the island to the other, he just had to stop at one of the Standard Oil gas stations along the way, to buy some cigarettes for himself and to let that lovely guajira see one of their sparkling clean modern toilets. He even put a nickel into a vending machine to buy her a bottle of Canada Dry ginger ale, and when she belched delicately from all the burbujas—the bubbles—Sixto couldn’t help but slap his legs as if it was the funniest thing he had ever seen.

He was so nice that she almost became fond of him despite his ugliness, fond of him in the way beautiful women, even at so young an age, do of plain and unattractive—hideous—men, as if taking pity on an injured dog. As they started their approach towards one of the coastal roads—that air so wonderful with the scent of the gulf sea—and he suggested that if she got hungry he could take her out to a special little restaurant in Havana, for obreros like himself—workers who earn their living honestly, with the sweat of their brow—María had to tell him that she couldn’t. She had just caught him staring at her in a certain way, and she didn’t want to take the chance that he might not turn out to be so saintly, even if it might hurt his feelings. Of course, he started talking about his family—his faithful wife, his eight children, his simple house in a small town way