even just a little bit and then maybe at last he’ll be satisfied and feel proud of you and happy here with all of us, but Bicho is weak, he fails his sister when she needs him most, he only knows how to take it and take it until he’s had enough and then he goes up to his room to bawl like a girl. Then all of my hatred is turned on my father and I want to shout in his face that he’s a monster, a disgusting beast, a tyrant, that he’s a coward mistreating a child, but in the end I don’t say anything because the powers flee in disarray, and panic overtakes me, and then I think that maybe the same thing happens to my mother, who can bear anything so long as my daddy doesn’t leave her.
But our ceremony is something else altogether, because during our secret ceremony Bichi and I become powerful beyond anyone’s control, it’s the supreme moment of our rule and command, our victory ritual. We climb up on the wardrobe, get the photographs out from the crack between the wall and the beam, and put them on my bed, first any which way, however they fall, while we organize everything else with the television turned up loud so that no one suspects. Bichi waits for me without his underwear, while I, with no panties on and that tickling feeling, go down the back stairs to the pantry and steal one of the linen napkins that my mother says used to belong to Grandmother Blanca, the German’s wife. They’re wide napkins, starched, that our mother puts out in the big dining room when guests come for dinner, and they have old-fashioned initials embroidered in one corner. During this part of the ceremony, Agustina must be very careful because her uniform skirt is short and pleated and if it sways the servants will realize that she’s not wearing anything underneath. Taking the napkin would get me in trouble but that would be the least of it, the really bad thing would be if someone told my mother that I was running around with no panties on, because she’d be capable of killing me for that.
I bring a washbowl full of water from the bathroom, and once I’m back in my room we close the door, light the candles, and turn out the light, and with the water in the washbowl we perform our ablutions, which means that we wash our face and hands until they’re free of sin, and then Agustina folds Grandmother Blanca’s napkin into a triangle, makes her little brother lie on the bed and lift his legs, puts the napkin under him like a diaper, shakes on Johnson’s baby powder and rubs it in well, then fastens the diaper with a safety pin. Next we dress ourselves in our vestments, mine an old burgundy velour robe of my mother’s with the black mantilla that my grandmother used to wear to church around my shoulders; yours, Bichi, the diaper, and over the diaper a black kimono with white-and-yellow flowers from one Halloween when they dressed me up as a Japanese girl, we’d like to paint our faces but we don’t for fear that afterward the traces of paint would give us away.
To put on their vestments, Agustina and her brother stand back to back and don’t look at each other until they’re ready, and then begins the most important part, the part with the photographs, the center of everything, the Last Call, because those photographs are our power cards: the aces of our truth. You and I know very well that the photographs are more dangerous than an atomic bomb, capable of destroying my father and ending his marriage to my mother and making our house and even all of La Cabrera explode, which is why before we lay them out on the black cloth we must always take the oath, speak the Words. Do you swear that you’ll never reveal our secret?, I ask you in a low, solemn voice and you, Bichi, half closing your eyes, say, Yes, I swear. Do you swear that you’ll never, under any circumstances or for any reason, show anyone these photographs that we’ve found and that belong to us alone? Yes, I swear. Do you swear that even if you’re killed, you
But our ceremony is something else altogether, because during our secret ceremony Bichi and I become powerful beyond anyone’s control, it’s the supreme moment of our rule and command, our victory ritual. We climb up on the wardrobe, get the photographs out from the crack between the wall and the beam, and put them on my bed, first any which way, however they fall, while we organize everything else with the television turned up loud so that no one suspects. Bichi waits for me without his underwear, while I, with no panties on and that tickling feeling, go down the back stairs to the pantry and steal one of the linen napkins that my mother says used to belong to Grandmother Blanca, the German’s wife. They’re wide napkins, starched, that our mother puts out in the big dining room when guests come for dinner, and they have old-fashioned initials embroidered in one corner. During this part of the ceremony, Agustina must be very careful because her uniform skirt is short and pleated and if it sways the servants will realize that she’s not wearing anything underneath. Taking the napkin would get me in trouble but that would be the least of it, the really bad thing would be if someone told my mother that I was running around with no panties on, because she’d be capable of killing me for that.
I bring a washbowl full of water from the bathroom, and once I’m back in my room we close the door, light the candles, and turn out the light, and with the water in the washbowl we perform our ablutions, which means that we wash our face and hands until they’re free of sin, and then Agustina folds Grandmother Blanca’s napkin into a triangle, makes her little brother lie on the bed and lift his legs, puts the napkin under him like a diaper, shakes on Johnson’s baby powder and rubs it in well, then fastens the diaper with a safety pin. Next we dress ourselves in our vestments, mine an old burgundy velour robe of my mother’s with the black mantilla that my grandmother used to wear to church around my shoulders; yours, Bichi, the diaper, and over the diaper a black kimono with white-and-yellow flowers from one Halloween when they dressed me up as a Japanese girl, we’d like to paint our faces but we don’t for fear that afterward the traces of paint would give us away.
To put on their vestments, Agustina and her brother stand back to back and don’t look at each other until they’re ready, and then begins the most important part, the part with the photographs, the center of everything, the Last Call, because those photographs are our power cards: the aces of our truth. You and I know very well that the photographs are more dangerous than an atomic bomb, capable of destroying my father and ending his marriage to my mother and making our house and even all of La Cabrera explode, which is why before we lay them out on the black cloth we must always take the oath, speak the Words. Do you swear that you’ll never reveal our secret?, I ask you in a low, solemn voice and you, Bichi, half closing your eyes, say, Yes, I swear. Do you swear that you’ll never, under any circumstances or for any reason, show anyone these photographs that we’ve found and that belong to us alone? Yes, I swear. Do you swear that even if you’re killed, you
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