Read Online Eva Luna by Isabel Allende - Free Book Online

important,” my madrina said, cutting off my mother’s long hair with three clicks of the scissors, planning to sell it later in a wig shop. “We need to get her out of here before the patrón discovers her and makes me bring her to the laboratory.”
    I picked up the braid of hair, wrapped it around my neck, and huddled in a corner with my head between my knees; I did not cry, because I still did not realize the magnitude of my loss. I stayed there for hours, perhaps all night, until two men came in, wrapped the body in the bed’s only cover, and carried it away without a word. Then the room was pervaded by unremitting emptiness.
    After the modest funeral coach had left, my madrina came to look for me. She had to strike a match to see me because the room was in shadows; the light bulb had burned out and dawn seemed to have stopped at the threshold. Shefound me in a little bundle on the floor. She called me twice by name, to bring me back to reality: Eva Luna . . . Eva Luna. In the flickering flame of the match, I saw large feet in house slippers and the hem of a cotton dress. I looked up and met her moist eyes. She smiled in the instant the uncertain spark died out; then I felt her bend over in the darkness. She picked me up in her stout arms, settled me on her lap, and began to rock me, humming some soft African lament to put me to sleep.
    *  *  *
    â€œIf you were a boy, you could go to school and then study to be a lawyer and provide for me in my old age. Those sticky-fingered lawyers are the ones who make the money. They sure know how to keep things in a muddle. Muddy waters,” she used to say, “means money in their pockets.”
    She believed that men had it best; even the lowest good-for-nothing had a wife to boss around. And years later I reached the conclusion that she may have been right, although I still cannot imagine myself in a man’s body, with hair on my face, a tendency to order people around, and something unmanageable below my navel that, to be perfectly frank, I would not know exactly where to put. In her way, my madrina was fond of me, and if she never showed it, it was because she thought she had to be strict, and because she lost her sanity at an early age. In those days she was not the ruin she is today. She was an arrogant dark-skinned woman with generous breasts, a well-defined waist, and hips that bulged like a tabletop under her skirts. When she went out on the street, men turned to stare; they shouted indecent propositions at her, and tried to pinch her bottom. She did not shy away, but rewarded them with a smack of her pocketbook—What you think you’re doin’, you black devil, you?—and then she would laugh and show her gold tooth. She bathed every night standing in a tub splashing water over herself from a pitcher and scrubbing with a soapy rag. She changed her blouse twice a day, sprinkled herself with rose water, washed her hair with egg, and brushed her teeth with salt to make them shine. She had a strong sweetish odor that all her rose water and soap could not subdue, an odor I loved because it made me think of warm custard. I used to help her with her bath, splashing water on her back, enraptured at the sight of that dark body with the mulberry teats, the pubis shadowed by kinky fuzz, the buttocks as stout as the overstuffed armchair that cushioned Professor Jones. She would stroke her body with the rag, and smile, proud of her voluminous flesh. She walked with defiant grace, head high, to the rhythm of the secret music she carried inside. Everything else about her was coarse, even her laughter and her tears. She became angry at the drop of a pin, and would shake her fist in the air and swing at anything in reach; if one of those swipes landed on me, it sounded like cannon shot. Once, not meaning to, she burst one of my eardrums. In spite of the mummies, which she did not like at all, she worked as the Professor’s