The Wormlips Scrapbook

Two posts in one day. Guess I write when I’m miserable. This is the next chapter of The Fruit Incident, just posted, in which I sliced mold off my papaya and disposed of it.

Well, I thought I’d heard the end of it, but no. I was working all day upstairs until the witch screeched up to tell me to come downstairs for comida. I wasn’t sure of her Spanish so I asked, Ahorra? Now? Her response translated approximately into “What do you think, you idiot.” She is mean as a viper, but only when Magdalena isn’t there to witness.

During the meal I poured myself some juice.

—“You can’t drink that,” Magdalena said.

—“Excuse me?”

—“From now on, only Reyna and I will eat the fruit, because you’re allergic to it.”

Oh, so they’d continued to discuss my crime. Magdalena seemed upset, while Reyna looked pleased. In fact, they both know perfectly well I can eat fruit, because I’ve been doing it with gusto every day for the past three weeks. They were punishing me, but I’m not sure for what.

—“Of course I can eat fruit,” I replied. “You know that.”

—“No, you can’t. You’re allergic to it.”

So I was forced into telling the mold story, which I didn’t want to do.

—“I’m allergic to mold, not to fruit,” I said, “and I was only scraping off the parts that I couldn’t eat.”

What came next was predictable.

—“Do you think we would feed you dangerous food? Everything you eat here was made by me. Why would I give you something that would make you sick? There was no mold. We know how to store our food.”

But I know mold when I see it.

—“I guess it was my imagination,” I said.

—“It was,” she confirmed.

Reyna is an evil fecking bitch. My sympathy for her has evaporated. After a prolonged meltdown rooted in the knowledge that I’ll be stuck in this hell a month more, I lost my spirit to prepare for classes. I escaped from the house, evading Reyna on the way out. I always feel like I’m sneaking here.

When I returned three hours later, she charged from her room and asked why I didn’t tell her where I was going. I considered unleashing a barrage of English in reply, but I refrained. Gloating, she informed me that I’d missed a visit from a friend, but she wouldn’t say who.

She and I exchanged glances: enemies face-to-face. In her eyes was sadistic contempt. Mine were like ice, and if you knew me you’d have seen the pulsing of murderous thought.

And the only thing I’ve done wrong is to be here and to try to leave as small a footprint as possible.

Here’s a chat Molly and I just had about it. The connection froze just as she was making a face at me. I haven’t heard from her since.

The day after tomorrow is Yo-Nenny’s birthday. She’ll be thirty-two. I just can’t believe it, as I’ve said to her every birthday for the last 31 years. If you want, call her to wish her a happy day, or leave her a message here. I’ve never been unable to talk to my wee ones on important days, so I’m distraught. Maybe she’ll get her google chat going in time.

I descend the cold tile stairway in my nightgown, blinking myself awake. I cross the cold tile floor, wrapping my shawl more tightly around me. I walk toward the…

—“VENGAAAAA.” I hear the ear-splitting cry of the beady-eyed crow, Reyna, the housekeeper. It is too early to be dealing with her impenetrable Spanish and her disdain for me. “Get over here,” she yells. “Hang your laundry out back. Don’t put it here on the sofa!”

Last night my house-mother Magdalena had told me to put my clothes on the sofa for pickup by the dry cleaner. Sadly, I don’t have “dry cleaner” in my vocabulary. Plus, I think sometimes The Crow purposely doesn’t understand.

I retreat with my coffee to my room, but have to reemerge for breakfast. The Crow sits across from me and we eat in silence. As every day, it is moldy papaya with yogurt. I surreptitiously try to slice off the grody bits, but it is impossible to be invisible in front of The Crow. I glance up. Her head is bent, but her mean eyes watch my every action. I almost expect her to start pecking lice from under her wing. I eat half of what’s on my plate. She leaves the room for a moment and I run to the trashcan, scrape in my papaya and sit back down. The carrion-eater returns. “Nawwwwwk. Don’t put your fruit in the trash!”

Magdalena returns. As I eat my ham and eggs, The Crow starts cawing to Magdalena: “She left her clothes on the sofa. She wasted the food. She threw it in the trash.” She thinks I don’t understand. I continue to look down at my plate. “ She wasted it. She didn’t eat any of it…”

I couldn’t take it. “I did too! I ate most of it.” I wanted to explain. “Pero tengo alergia a…” But I didn’t know how to say “mold,” and I also realized that would sound pretty rude: “Can’t eat your food cuz I can’t eat rotten stuff.”

I need a place to hide away, as John Lennon once said.

The housekeeper has it in for me. She complains about which cup I use for what (it’s the small, orange, plastic one for brushing teeth). She won’t let me use purified water for tea or tooth-brushing (so I sneak downstairs at night and get it when she’s asleep). And the other day she told Magdalena that I’m floja. She thought I didn’t know what it means, but I do: “lazy.” Loca, I could accept, but if there’s one thing I’m not, it’s floja.

She was concerned about how I maintain my room: a wrinkle in the bed covers, teaching materials stacked on my bureau, grooming products lined up next to them. When La Maestra is away, she gets particularly out-of-hand, interrupting my work to try to get me to do hers. My tiniest actions are scrutinized and it’s making me increasingly claustrophobic. Being continually polite and helpful in someone else’s house is hard enough; I don’t need Reyna’s beady little rat eyes on me. She beats the dog, Karlotta, who is terrified of her. She doesn’t talk; she screeches in Spanish that I don’t understand but the intent is clear enough.

I know what’s happening, I think. She’s a woman without tremendous brain wattage. She has nothing of her own except her place in this house. She’s worked for Magda for 35 years. She leaves just on weekends when she goes to visit her only family: a godmother. She’s illiterate and I’d be surprised if she’s traveled beyond the greater Pachuca area. So I think she’s a guard dog, jealous of her turf, or an older sibling resenting the arrival of the newcomer. She loves to tell on me. I feel bad for her, yet I also want to pummel her as she does poor Karlotta. I wish I had another place to do work, where I’d be safe from her evil ways.

I’d like to stop complaining but I can’t until I tell you about Mexican drivers in the rain. Earlier this week it rained without cease for five consecutive days: hard rain, too, that hurts when it hits you. On one of these days I went to Spanish class, walking a quarter mile to the bus. Within a block my bluejeans and shoes were drenched. Then I noticed something about pachuqueños [Pachucans]: when the streets are full of water and a pedestrian is nearby, they like to speed up and veer toward the deepest water, initiating a liquid curtain. At first I thought I was thinking bad thoughts about innocent people. I wasn’t. Evidence mounted, and my theory was later confirmed by Magdalena. I also told her about the guy who tried to hit me with his SUV (I’m not exaggerating; if I hadn’t jumped, I’d not be intact now). “Yes. They like to do that here,” she said. [By the way, my teacher never showed up for class.]

It’s been a Very Bad Couple of Days. But now I’ll stop complaining and get back to where I left off in my travelogue.

Last weekend after exploring all the other stuff I told you about, we went to a spot downstream, to a place called Santa Maria Reglas. They say it’s haunted and I think they’re right. It’s the ruins of a large silver mine and processing plant that was built at the start of the 1800s by the then-richest man in the world. His workers were ordered to construct a labyrinth of tunnels under the mountain, leading to the rich guy’s various other mines. When the trabajadores finished their job, they were killed. That way, the rich man posited, it would be difficult for them to reveal details of the secret underground routes. Other laborers were confined on the premises by the thirty-foot rock walls, so they couldn’t sneak out with a bit of silver in their pockets. Among their tasks was to tromp barefooted on the chunks of silver ore that was mixed with a dash of mercury. After about three months, these men generally followed the tunnel-builders to the grave. The owner named this mine after his sweet little daughter.

Here’s what the place looked like. (Page through full-size versions of the pictures by clicking that little arrow-y box on the bottom-right.)

I’m more than a week behind on this blog so what you’re reading is old news. But so you won’t feel left behind, here are headlines from today’s Pachuca newspaper:

• Lluvias Mortales: Last week’s unseasonal rains killed several in Mexico City and elsewhere in the país.
• La Creciente Inseguridad Ha Provocado Gran Indignación en los Pachuqueños: Drug related murder in Pachuca last night has parents worried. (But it’s far worse in Ciudad Juárez.)

• Suicidios Van a la Alza en Hidalgo: more depression and suicide here than ever. Practice your Spanish on a suicide note from a teenager to his brother: “Tienes que ser el fuerte. Deja el maldito alcohol que tanto hace sufrir a los que te queremos. Te quiero, Rigo, cuida a mi mamá…”

Uh, I’m gonna stop reading the paper now, ‘kay?