Eva Luna by Isabel Allende

blue-green iridescence of flies.
    â€œThere’s my madrina ’s house!” I shrieked when I spied the blue-stained boards. I had been there only once or twice, but since it was the closest thing I ever had to a home, I remembered it well.
    The shack was closed but a neighbor woman shouted from across the street to wait; my madrina had gone down to market and would be right back. The time had come for us to say goodbye, and Huberto Naranjo, cheeks blazing, stuckout his hand to shake mine. Instead, I threw my arms around his neck, but he pushed me away so hard I almost fell backward. I held on to his shirt, though, and gave him a kiss. I meant it for his mouth but it landed right in the center of his nose. Huberto trotted down the hill without looking back, and I sat down on the doorstep to sing a song.
    It was not long before my madrina returned. I saw her climbing the hill along the crooked street, big and fat and decked out in a lemon-yellow dress; she had a package in her arms, and was sweating from the effort of the climb. I called to her and ran to meet her, but she did not even wait for me to explain what had happened; she had had a report from the patrona , who had told her of my disappearance and the unpardonable treatment she had received at my hands. My madrina lifted me off my feet and shoved me inside the shack. The contrast between the noonday light and the darkness inside left me blinded, and before my eyes could adjust, she walloped me so hard I flew across the room and landed on the ground. She beat me until the neighbors came. Then they used salt to cure me.
    Four days later, I was marched back to my place of employment. The man with the strawberry nose patted me affectionately on the cheek, and took advantage of the others’ inattention to tell me he was happy to see me; he had missed me, he said. The doña of the locket received me in the living room; seated in a chair, stern as a judge, she seemed to have shrunk to half her size. She looked like a little old rag doll dressed in mourning. Her bald head was not, as I expected, wrapped in bloodstained bandages; she sat there in the same towering curls and iron-hard waves, of a different color but intact. Dumbfounded, I searched my mind for a possible explanation of this incredible miracle, ignoring boththe patrona ’s harangue and my madrina ’s pinches. The only comprehensible part of the reprimand was that from that day on I was to work twice as hard: thus I would have no time to waste in the contemplation of art—and the garden gate would be kept locked to prevent a second escape.
    â€œI will tame her,” the patrona assured my madrina.
    â€œIt will take some good smacks, God knows,” my madrina replied.
    â€œKeep your eyes lowered when I’m speaking to you, you naughty girl. The devil is in your eyes, but I’ll not tolerate any insolence,” the patrona threatened. “Do you understand me?”
    I stared at her, unblinking, then turned and, with my head very high, went to the kitchen where Elvira was waiting, eavesdropping behind the door.
    â€œAh, little bird . . . Come here and let me put something on those bruises. Are you sure nothing’s broken?”
    The patrona never mistreated me again, and as she never mentioned the vanished hair, I came to believe the whole thing was a nightmare that had filtered into the house through some crack or other. Neither did she stop me from gazing at the painting; she must have guessed that if I had to, I would sink my teeth in her to see it. That painting of the sea with its foaming waves and motionless gulls was essential to me; it was the reward for the day’s labors, the door to freedom. At the time of the siesta, when the others lay down to rest, I repeated the same ritual, never asking permission or offering an explanation, ready to do whatever was necessary to defend that privilege. I would wash my face and hands, run a comb through my