The Barbarian Nurseries by Héctor Tobar Page A

job,” María Isabel said. “That’s how it was when
la señora
Bloom died …”
    “Again with
la viejita,”
Carmelita said. Juana and Modesta rolled their eyes.
    “I was telling the story to Araceli when you all got here. And I never finished.”
    “The Day of the Dead isn’t until November,” Carmelita said with a wry smile. Already Juana and Modesta were starting to drift away, walking closer toward their charges. “Why don’t you wait until nighttime to start telling your scary stories?”
    “There’s nothing scary about it. It’s a story about a human being. About two human beings. Me and
la señora
Bloom.”
    “Araceli doesn’t want to hear that story,” Carmelita said.
    “No, no, it’s not a problem,” Araceli said. Already, this woman’s rambling had revealed one unexpected truth, and if she allowed her to go on, she might reveal another.
    “Like I was saying,
la señora
Bloom lived by herself, with only me to keep her company. None of her kids even lived nearby. The one daughter who called to check in every week, she lived in New York. So one day, finally,
la señora
Bloom gave up and let go. I was talking to her, just like I’m talking to you right now, about my ungrateful children in Nicaragua. Then I looked at the bed and I saw her with her eyes open. I waited for them to close, but they never did. So I crossed myself about twenty times, and called the ambulance. Two very nice young men came, and they said, ‘She’s dead.’ And I said, ‘I know that.’ And then they said, ‘There’s nothing we can do.’ They said I had to wait for the coroner. And they left her with me. So here I am all alone with a body in the house! I call the daughter in New York and there’s no answer. Just the machine. I keep trying, all day long, and I’m thinking, I can’t say that into the machine,
Your mother is dead.
So finally I tell the machine, ‘Please call your mother’s house.’ But she never did. I was all alone with that body for fifteen hours, until the brown van came and they took my
viejita
away.”
    María Isabel stopped and saw Araceli looking off at the ocean, but plowed on. “The house smelled like death to me: so I cleaned all night long, until all the disinfectant was gone. Finally the coroner called: they wanted to know what to do with the body. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I can’t reach the family.’ So they tell me, ‘If we don’t hear from someone in forty-eight hours, we’re going to cremate her.’
Así de frío.
So I started yelling at them, saying, ‘Don’t you have a mother? Would you burn your own mother?’ “
    “Increíble,”
Araceli said flatly.
    “By the time I finally heard from the daughter, my
viejita
was just a box of ashes. After I got the box,
then
they all show up at the house. The daughter, the son-in-law, the other daughter, the long-lost brother, who I had never met before.
Todos.
And they start asking me questions as if it were all my fault. One of them wanted to search my things when I moved out, but when I started crying they let me go.”
    “I’ve never taken care of an old lady,” Araceli said distractedly. “And I’ve never taken care of children until now.”
    Araceli stood up, gave a perfunctory
“Con permiso”
to María Isabel, then walked over to the play structure, where Keenan was now running across the bridge with the girl María Isabel had brought. At the other end of the play structure, Brandon was sitting on a step, reading a book.
Where did he get a book? Is he always carrying one, the way other boys hold toy trucks or security blankets?
    “What are you reading?” Araceli asked him. In four years of living with the Torres-Thompsons, it was the first time she had ever asked this boy that question: it felt like a correct, motherly thing to do.
    “El revolución,”
Brandon answered, holding up the book to show her the title,
American Revolution.
    “La
revolución,”
Araceli corrected.
    She sat next to him, another