But Encarnación laughs and hugs her daughter. “There are too many ladies in the world already. I’ll make something else of her.”
Perla watches as her sister returns to the sewing machine and wonders what else she thinks there is for a woman. Perhaps she fancies that earning a living by stitching blouses together is enough to make a woman happy, though God knows Encarnación receives precious little money from her work.
In Puebla, Encarnación tells her, she was friends with other seamstresses and a few shopgirls. Perhaps her sister considers the life of a common shopgirl to be sufficient for her daughter, or for herself. Perla finds the thought distasteful. Shopgirls are crude, coarse creatures. Sewing costumes for actresses doesn’t seem to her much better.
“How did you learn to make all these things?” Perla asks, running her hand over the dresses her sister has placed in the armoire.
“I was always good at sewing.”
“Not these sorts of clothes.”
“They’re striking, aren’t they? My friend, the one who works at a studio now, she taught me how to make patterns and how to copy the expensive dresses they have in the fancy shops in Mexico City. We sold them to ladies in Puebla who wanted to look nice but couldn’t shop in the capital. We’d go every couple of weeks into Mexico City, look at the shop windows, and sketch the dresses that we saw. Perla, you have no idea how busy the city is! And the clothes! They’re wonderful.”
Perla grabs her sister’s smart hat from above a dresser, spins it between her hands, and pictures Encarnación wearing it as she walks armin arm with her friend, stopping at a café, then laughing as they head down a wide avenue.
It must have been a happy life. But she’s here now. She’s here in Puerco Ahogado with Perla. She places the hat back where it was.
—
Encarnación’s presence improves their mother’s disposition, and though Osorio grumbles about his youngest child, Perla appreciates her sister’s support. It’s busy now, their house. Some rooms have two beds, and they have plenty of lodgers. Coffee attracts workers, and when it’s not coffee it’s the orange groves. The town, which has slumbered for years and years, has begun to twitch back to life.
“If things continue like this, we might be able to hire a houseboy. Remember when we had a proper staff? Now we have Estrella and Rita, and Rita is lazy. But she comes cheap, at least. She says the piece rate at the beneficios is much lower than the men’s rate, and she’d have to stand for eight hours straight. She can’t, not with her bad leg. I might even buy a car. Things can only improve in 1929.”
Perla pauses to inspect the finely embroidered clothes for the Christ Child that her sister is working on. The clothes are crucial for the Christmas celebrations. They must be white the first year the Christ Child is exhibited, pink the second, the third and fourth years purple, and there are other variations that ensure a steady need for new outfits for the porcelain doll.
“Who are these for?” she asks.
“Emilia Durante.”
“But she has no money.”
“She borrowed it from someone. You know how people are in Puerco Ahogado, they wouldn’t dream of cutting back during the Posadas, and they must dress the Christ Child and later, during Candelaria, take him to be blessed; they know people will notice if they have the wrong outfit. So they ask their friends for money and hope to pay it back. It’s a silly tradition, but it’s money coming in. I want to get Inés a big doll withcurls, the kind that opens her eyes and says ‘Mama.’ Remember how we used to have many toys?”
They used to have so much of everything and be free of all worries. Now Perla carefully measures the amount of rice and beans her lodgers eat in a week. What an awful thing it is to have lost their status and stained their pride.
“Venidos a menos.” Even the phrase itself is ugly. It conjures decay in each syllable.
Encarnación puts the cloth she’s embroidering down and smiles. “Perla, what do you say we go for a walk and buy candy for Inés?”
“She’ll get cavities the way you feed her candy.”
“Then we’ll buy it for ourselves. Come on, let’s go out for half an hour. Estrella and Rita can manage without us for a little while.”
“Father hates it when we go out alone. Ladies are not supposed to wander around town without the men of their family,” she says, repeating the phrases she’s grown up with, even if by now they hold little meaning for her.
“He’s not going to walk with us. Come on, you can blame me if he gets huffy. We’re too old to be needing chaperones.”
They head out, laughing like a couple of schoolgirls.
—
Around this time, their father begins to chafe at Encarnación’s presence in the house. He complains about the clothes she wears, the way she does her hair, the jaunty melodies she wants to play on the piano.
“She’s not grateful enough,” he says when Encarnación does not submit to his criticisms, when she continues to wear the skirts she favors and places the partiturs she’s brought from the city by the piano. “She comes back with a bastard child and expects us to fulfill her every whim.”
“She’s been away for a long time,” their mother says. “She’s forgotten what Puerco Ahogado is like.”
“She better damn remember, and fast.”