dancer,” said Adel.
“She kisses boys in the shed!” Teline called out.
“Teline!” I covered my mouth for hers.
The troubadour continued singing. Nobody else heard or noticed, but Delia did. She locked eyes with me, so dark and shiny that I had to look away. The troubadour sang of a beautiful woman who loved to dance, but fell in love with a one-legged man who could not. And so, all her life, she danced alone with only dreams of being in his arms. It was a funny but sad song.
They continued to sing while we ate pasteles and roasted pork. Mamá and Titi Lola brought out the coquito in an old wine bottle. Mamá sipped on passionfruit juice, but the rest of the mamás and papás passed around the bottle until it was empty and their eyes sparkled in the moonlight. Then the head troubadour announced it was time to move on to the next house in the parranda , so we helped Mamá put away the food in the kitchen before setting down the gravel road to the beat of a bongo drum.
The next stop was the Santiagos’. Their house was on a flat cliff near the edge of the road. From the yard, you could see all the lighted houses on the side of the mountainand into the dark valley below. The colorful Navidad strands and trios of glowing plastic kings made the mountain look bejeweled.
We sang at the Santiagos’ front door until they came out, pretending to be surprised, and led us inside where plates of arroz con dulce and fried plantains waited along with more guests joining the progression. There I noticed a face I hadn’t seen before, and there weren’t too many I didn’t know in our barrio . Usually, new faces came with births and old faces left in funerals. But this one was different.
“Who’s that?” I asked Teline.
She giggled spit everywhere. “That’s him!” she said. “Delia’s boyfriend, Carlos. He came from San Juan. Got a job on the Santiagos’ finca .”
He was nice looking. Older than us. Older than Delia, but nowhere near Papi’s age. His skin was dark and smooth, and he had no hair on his arms. His eyes were blue-purple; they seemed to change with the blinking strands of lights. I followed them, fixed on Delia. She sat on the other side of the room, drinking a can of guava juice and talking to the maraca troubadour. Flirting. I could tell by the way she played her fingers over the bones below her neck; the way he leaned in, forehead first, to hear her speak. The men and women on the telenovelas did it all the time. Their movements were slow and heavy, like strands of seaweed flowing in invisible currents. Carlos watched. Delia seemed not to notice.
“Mami calls him Pasita because of his hair,” Teline laughed. “He runs errands for us at the salon when he’s not busy at the Santiagos’. If Papá knew about Delia and him,” she shook her head, but kept a smile, “he’d kill him.”
The lead troubadour strummed his guitar and, one by one, the other instruments joined in. The maraca man left Delia, giving her a nod and a wink and a shake-shake of his batons. The music began, and it felt like I’d left my body, my spirit hovering somewhere between the notes and the voices, the vibrations and the colors, tasting only spicy coconut, even though I’d since eaten rice and pasteles . Delia stood and went toward the kitchen. The troubadour’s high voice cried out. Another song was beginning, another story to tell.
“Verdita.” Teline pulled hard on my arm. “Come!”
I followed her unsteadily, my legs wobbling beneath my candy-cane skirt.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
We flew through the kitchen, where the heat of the stove and the bodies made the air sticky, hot, and suffocating. Teline pulled me onto the veranda overlooking the jewel-sprinkled mountain, where it was cool and easy to breathe. Outside, the troubadours’ song was no more than a hummed lullaby, a tiny rhythm against the co-qui-co-qui of the frogs and the ocean breeze rushing through palm fingers.
“Quiet. This way,”
Tamora Pierce
Brett Battles
Lee Moan
Denise Grover Swank
Laurie Halse Anderson
Allison Butler
Glenn Beck
Sheri S. Tepper
Loretta Ellsworth
Ted Chiang