twisting on the rag she was using to apply the polish. He ought to have been sleeping, like everyone else.
“I was going to go to your room and wake you up, but you’ve saved me the trip,” he said.
“What did you need?” she asked, her voice curt despite her attempt at keeping a neutral tone.
“The old man wants you to remind the barber he needs to come and clip his hair this evening.”
“I reminded him this morning already.”
Her cousin was smoking, and he paused to grin at her and let the smoke out of his mouth in a puff. His skin was pale, showing some of the European heritage the family valued so highly, and his hair curled a little, the reddish-brown tone he owed to his mother. They said he was good-looking, but Casiopea could not find any beauty in his sour face.
“My, aren’t you being industrious today? Say, why don’t you clean my boots too, since you have the time. Fetch them from my room.”
Casiopea cleaned floors when it was necessary, but the bulk of her obligations were to her grandfather. She was not Martín’s servant. They employed maids and an errand boy who could shine his shoes, if the oaf couldn’t figure out how to do it himself. She knew he was asking in order to encroach on her personal time and to irritate her. She should not have taken the bait, but she could not help her fury, which stretched from the pit of her stomach up to her throat.
He had been at her for several days now, starting with the moment she’d had the audacity to tell him she wanted to change her clothes to run the errands. It was a tactic of his, to wear her down and get her in trouble.
“I’ll get to it later,” she said, spitting the words out. “Now let me be.”
She ought to have simply said “yes,” and kept her voice down, but instead she’d delivered the answer with all the aplomb of an empress. Martín, a fool but not entirely stupid, noticed this, took in the way she held her head up high, and immediately smelled blood.
Martín crouched down, stretched out a hand. He clutched her chin, holding it firmly.
“You talk to me with too much sass, eh? Proud cousin.”
He released her and stood up, wiped his hands, as if he was wiping himself clean of her, as if that brief contact was enough to dirty him. And she was dirty, polish on her hands, it might have gotten on her face, who knew, but she was aware it was not about the dirt under her fingers or the black streaks of grease.
“As if you had anything to be proud of,” her cousin continued. “Your mother was the old man’s favorite, but then she had to run off with your father and ruin her life. Yet you walk around the house as if you were a princess. Why? Because he told you a story about how you secretly are Mayan royalty, descended from kings? Because he named you after a stupid star?”
“A constellation,” she said. She didn’t add “you dunce,” but she might as well have. Her tone was defiant.
She ought to have left it at that. Already Martín’s face was growing flushed with anger. He hated being interrupted. But she could not stop. He was like a boy pulling a girl’s pigtail and she ought to have ignored him, but a prank is not any less irritating because it is childish.
“My father may have told tall tales, and maybe he did not have much money, but he was a man worthy of respect. And when I leave this place I will be someone worthy of respect, just like him. And you will never be that, Martín, no matter how many coats of polish you apply to yourself.”
Martín yanked her to her feet, and instead of trying to evade the blow he would surely deliver, she stared at him without blinking. She’d learned that cowering did no good.
He did not hit her and this scared her. His rage, when it was physical, could be endured.
“You think you are going to go anywhere, huh? What, to the capital, maybe? With what money? Or maybe you are thinking the old man will leave you the one thousand pesos he is so fond of mentioning? I’ve seen the will, and there is nothing there for you.”
“You are lying,” she replied.
“I don’t have to lie. Ask him. You’ll see.”
Casiopea knew