Gods of Jade and Shadow - Silvia Moreno-Garcia Page 0,2
hard and ugly from beating the laundry against the stone lavadero, but her mind had the worst of it. She yearned for a sliver of freedom.
Somewhere, far from the bothersome grandfather and impertinent coterie of relatives, there would be sleek automobiles (she wished to drive one), daring pretty dresses (which she’d spotted in newspapers), dances (the faster, the better), and a view of the Pacific sea at night (she knew it courtesy of a stolen postcard). She had cut out photos of all these items and placed them under her pillow, and when she dreamed, she dreamed of night swimming, of dresses with sequins, and of a clear, starlit sky.
Sometimes she pictured a handsome man who might partner with her for those dances, an amorphous creation glued together by her subconscious using the pictures of movie stars that appeared between the print ads for soap and bobby pins, and which she’d also preserved, safe at the bottom of the cookie tin that contained every precious item she owned. Despite this, she did not engage in the gleeful whispering and giggling of her female cousins, who spoke their dreams. She kept her mouth tightly shut; the pictures were in the tin.
Casiopea purchased the items she needed and began circling back home, her steps leaden. She stared at Grandfather’s house, the best house in town, painted yellow, with elaborate wrought-iron grilles at the windows. Grandfather’s home was as pretty as El Principio ever was, he claimed. That had been the famous hacienda nearby, a huge building where dozens and dozens of poor workers had toiled in misery for decades before the revolution freed them and sent the old owners fleeing abroad, though it didn’t improve the workers’ conditions.
A big house, as fancy as one could get, filled with the same valuables a hacendado might have, this was Cirilo Leyva’s house. With his money the old man could have kept his family in Mérida, but Casiopea suspected he longed to return to Uukumil so he could parade his wealth before the people he’d grown up with. It was the opposite journey Casiopea wished to make.
How beautiful this yellow house!
How much she hated it.
Casiopea rubbed away the beads of sweat above her upper lip.
It was so hot Casiopea felt her skull was being baked. She ought to have taken the shawl to protect herself. Yet, despite the heat, she dallied outside the house, sitting under a Seville orange tree. If Casiopea closed her eyes she might smell the scent of salt. The Yucatán peninsula, Uukumil, they were distant, isolated from everything, and yet the scent of salt was always nearby. This she loved, and she might miss in a distant, landlocked city, although she was willing to make the trade.
Finally, knowing she could not wait any longer, Casiopea went into the house, crossed the interior courtyard, and delivered the provisions. She saw her mother in the kitchen, her hair in a tidy bun, chopping garlic and speaking with the servants. Her mother also worked for her keep, as the cook. Grandfather appreciated her culinary abilities, even if she had disappointed him in other respects, mainly her marriage to a swarthy nobody of indigenous extraction. Their marriage produced an equally swarthy daughter, which was deemed even more regrettable. The kitchen, though busy, was a better place to spend the day. Casiopea had helped there, but when she turned thirteen she had hit Martín with a stick after he insulted her father. Since then, they’d had her perform meaner tasks, to teach her humility.
Casiopea stood in a corner and ate a plain bolillo; the crusty bread was a treat when dipped in coffee. Once Grandfather’s meal was ready, Casiopea took it to his room.
Grandfather Cirilo had the largest room in the house. It was crammed with heavy mahogany furniture, the floor decorated with imported tiles, the walls hand-stenciled with motifs of vines and fruits. Her grandfather spent most of the day in a monstrous cast-iron bed, pillows piled high behind him. At the foot of the bed there lay a beautiful black chest, which he never opened. It had a single decoration, an image of a decapitated man in the traditional Mayan style, his hands holding a double-headed serpent that signaled royalty. A common enough motif, k’up kaal, the cutting of the throat. In the walls of old temples, the blood of the decapitated was sometimes shown spurting in the shape of snakes. The image etched on the lid, painted in red, did not