But I didn’t have time to ponder any further because there was a noise in the hall. I looked around in despair, but before I could move a single muscle, I heard someone at the door, and that someone was turning the knob.

CHAPTER 20 - Catalina

CHAPTER 20

Catalina

Vinces, 1907

Yesterday I saw that girl again. She waved at me from the other side of the pond. Part of her allure was that she didn’t have to wear fancy clothes like Angélica and I did. I was tired of fluffy sleeves and long stockings. I wished I could just wear a slip all day and run along the stream like Elisa did. I waved back and circled the pond to meet her.

“I have something for you,” she said. She was kneeling by the edge of the water, her fingers buried in the mud. One of her tight plaits fell on her shoulder.

“It’s not a snail, is it?” I said, grimacing.

“No.”

I jumped up and down. “Then, what is it? What is it?”

“I can’t tell you.” She turned around to make sure no one was behind us and whispered. “Tonight. At your house.”

“But Mamita will be cross with me.”

“She won’t see me.”

I hoped she was right. The last time Mamita had seen me talking to Elisa, she’d yelled and spanked my bottom. “I don’t ever want to see you with that girl again! You hear?” she’d said.

I’d promised I wouldn’t talk to her again, but Elisa was so much fun. Much more pleasant than Angélica, who never let me touch her dolls.

“You’ll get them dirty,” she would say, wiping Ursula’s porcelain cheeks with a moist handkerchief. “Look at your hands! Don’t you see that these dolls are ornaments? You’re too young to understand now, but when you’re thirteen, like me, you will.” She smiled that awful, evil smile of hers. Her teeth in perfect alignment already, unlike mine which were just coming out, big and awkward in a foreign mouth. “Well? Don’t you have something better to do? Why don’t you go practice your violin or play with Alberto?”

Oh, if I could just pull those blond ringlets out of her stiff head!