The Queen of Water (23 page)

chapter 36

I
PEER OUT FROM THE DARKNESS
behind the curtain. Doña Amelia is onstage, in the spotlight, talking into the microphone. Every one of the five hundred seats before her is full. She’s talking about how hard we all worked and how we all became friends and how really, every one of us is a queen in her eyes. She introduces the judges, in the front row, who stand up and wave at the audience.

In the wings, the other girls are nervously whispering. Our hair is shiny, every strand in place, our lips pink, our teeth smeared with Vaseline to make them glow. Susana did my makeup—sparkly silver eye shadow on the lids, a dark pencil to make my eyebrows dramatic, blush to accentuate my cheekbones.

The smell of hair spray and gel and perfume clouds the air backstage, and the girls ask each other, “Do I have lipstick on my teeth? Is my blouse tucked in evenly?” I run my tongue over my own teeth and check my
faja.
I’ve tied it super tight to make sure it stays up; the worst thing in the world would be if it came unwound and fell down in front of hundreds of people.

“And now,” Doña Amelia says, “I present to you … our lovely contestants!”

At that, the audience applauds, an ocean of clapping and whistling. As we’ve rehearsed dozens of times before, we stream onstage from both wings, shortest to tallest, dancing an indigenous harvest dance. We dance down the stairs and along the side aisles and then meet in the back to dance down the center. The spotlights follow us and people crane their heads and murmur, “Look, how beautiful.”

We divide into two lines again, one on either side of the stage, graceful and smiling, and then disappear behind the curtains. A huge wave of applause sounds. Our next three dances go smoothly, each one met with loud cheers and whistles.

After the dancing segment, each girl walks like a model across the stage when her name is called, silently praying she won’t trip and fall. She stops in the center, turns around, and pauses with a smile pasted on her face as Doña Amelia reads a little about her. Most every girl is a star student, loves her friends and family, hopes for world peace.

When my name is called, I glide across the stage, imagining I’m a bird or a deer as Doña Amelia suggested in our lessons. I pause at the center and smile big and let my eyes dance.
Stand tall, little radish flower.
Doña Amelia says nice things about how I’m on the honor roll and especially excel in science class.

Next comes the part that has kept me up worrying at night. The speech in Quichua. Every night I’ve gone over it, again and again in bed, struggling to get the intonations right and strike the perfect nasal tone. It’s a flowery speech, more or less written by Susana, about how important preschool is for indigenous kids.

The girl in front of me, Luz, is talking about her organization, which helps bring health education to the indigenous communities, and although she rocks back and forth nervously, her words flow effortlessly from her mouth, her accent perfect, her sounds flawless. I can’t understand most of what she says, but it sounds noble, about how we all have rights to good health care.

At the end of her speech, the audience applauds. Their applause is getting a little weaker, because it’s been two hours and they’ve already heard about forty girls give one-minute speeches, and they’re ready for the queens to be chosen already. Luz curtsies, and a few people call out, “Way to go, Sis! You’re great, Cousin!” Everyone but me seems to have their whole extended family here to cheer them on.

“María Virginia Farinango,” Doña Amelia calls.

I glide onstage, imagining a golden string holding up my head.
Querer es poder,
I say silently.
Yo puedo, yo puedo. I can do it, I can do it.
I stand behind the microphone. The spotlight is so bright in my eyes, I can’t make out any faces. I hear people moving and shifting, and some babies babbling and their mothers shushing them.

My mind is as blank as a cloudless sky. I can’t remember a single word in Quichua. I can’t remember the first line of the speech that I’ve repeated hundreds of times.

Think, Virginia, think. Just remember the first line and then the rest will come to you.

But the moment has stretched out as long as it can and I have to do something.

I open my mouth, praying the Quichua words will tumble out. Instead, Spanish emerges.
“Buenas noches,”
I begin. Good evening.

Talk about education, Virginia. Preschool education for indigenous kids. Talk!

“I grew up in Yana Urku,” I hear myself saying in Spanish. This is not my planned speech. This is something entirely different, and I don’t know where it’s headed, but I keep going. “In the poorest of the poor indigenous communities around Otavalo. There was not a single book in my house. My parents couldn’t read. They thought school was a waste of time. They thought I would grow up to be a farmer like them, renting out land from
mestizos.
They thought I’d have no need for an education.

“I went to school for six weeks, but then I stopped. I stopped because when the teacher heard me speak Quichua she pinched my ear and called me a stupid
longa.
”

Murmurs ripple through the audience. The room is humming with a new energy. I can feel the audience listening, hanging on my words.

“I thought that speaking Quichua was a bad thing. When I was seven, my parents gave me to a
mestizo
family, and I worked for them for free. For eight years. My boss called me a stupid
longa.
She said that
longas
are not meant to read. That they’re meant to serve. And during that time I forgot how to speak my language. I learned to feel ashamed of my culture.”

Again, the audience murmurs; although I can’t see their faces, I feel their presence. I feel them with me in my story.

“My boss refused to let me go to school, so I studied in secret. I taught myself to read. I taught myself about the wonders of nature, like photosynthesis. The wonders of the world and the wonders of the universe. After I escaped from this family, I knew that the most important thing for me was to go to school. I knew that education was the way I would succeed, the way I would have a career and a voice in the world.”

More murmurs.
“Sí, sí, sí,”
people whisper.
Yes, yes, yes.

“I represent an organization that believes education is a right everyone should have, indigenous or not. This education should begin early, at preschool. And it should be an education that values our language and our traditions as
indígenas.
No child should feel that her mother tongue is bad. No child should grow up in a house with no books. No child should be told she is only fit for serving. I ask you—”

I pause, because tears are slipping from my eyes and my voice is quavering, not from nervousness, but from the sheer force of speaking from my heart. I wipe my eyes and take a deep breath and go on. “I ask you to support our organization so that no child has to go through what I did. So that every child can learn about the richness of her world, the richness of her culture, the richness of her self.”

I give a small curtsy.
“Pagui,”
I say in Quichua. Thank you.

A burst of applause sounds, so loud it fills me. As I walk offstage into the wings, it’s as though I’m swimming through a sea of sounds—clapping and whistling and foot-stamping and whooping.

Backstage, the other girls hug me and whisper, “That was incredible, Virginia!” and I whisper, “Thanks,” but I can’t say anything else because my knees are weak and my heart is pounding. As the last ten girls give their speeches, I feel my pulse race and think how good it feels to say what I believe with every molecule in my body, while hundreds of people listen. It doesn’t matter that my speech wasn’t in Quichua, that there’s no way I can be voted queen now. Something inside me feels full.

After the last girl gives her speech, a band comes onstage, an
indígena
band, playing the panpipe music MacGyver played on his cassette years ago. It fills the room, creating landscapes of mountains and valleys and lakes with its wind notes. The musicians blow into their flutes with passion, their cheeks puffed out, their braids swinging. The music swirls around me and sweeps me up and makes my heart swell with pride.

During this time, the judges are conferring in another room, deciding on the winning queens. Five songs pass, and the band moves off the stage as the judges file onto it. All of us girls are onstage, too, in three rows—the tallest in back, shortest in front. I’m wedged in the middle row, hoping that Luz will be one of the winners, since she’s always helped the other girls with the dance steps. Who will the other winners be—maybe Elsa or Cristina? Elsa has always made an effort to be friendly to everyone, especially to the shy girls. I’d be happy if she won.

Doña Amelia stands behind the microphone, excited. “It wasn’t easy, but the judges have chosen the winners. First, we’ll announce the Queen of Sky, then the Queen of Water, and finally, the star, the Queen of Corn.”

The news reporters are crouched in front of the stage, cameras ready to snap photos. In the audience people are whispering about who they think will win. I’m holding hands with the girls next to me, and we squeeze each other’s sweaty hands.

“For the Queen of Sky … Elsa Quimbo!”

Screams and squeals of joy erupt from one row of seats, which must be her family. “Elsa!” they shout, and rush to the stage with flowers. “Sister! Cousin! Niece!” There are at least a dozen of them—parents and brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles. They reach up their hands, whistling and clapping and glowing with pride. Doña Amelia puts a blue sash around Elsa that reads, in Quichua,
The Queen of Sky
. TV cameramen push through to get a better angle, and the reporters are snapping photos like crazy.

Once the applause calms, Doña Amelia says, “And now for the Queen of Water … María Virginia Farinango!”

The audience explodes in applause and whistles and whoops. I look around, thinking there must be some mistake. I couldn’t have won. My speech wasn’t in Quichua. Maybe I’m dreaming. Maybe I’ve gone overboard with one of my fantasies.

But Doña Amelia is looking at me and the girls are hugging me and pushing me forward to receive the sash. Doña Amelia hugs me and whispers, “Beautiful speech,” into my ear. As she puts the sash around me, the journalists are clicking their cameras frantically and Susana is running up to the stage with a bouquet of lilies. No one else runs up to me, no family or friends, but plenty of people I don’t even know are cheering and calling “María Virginia!” The applause goes on and on, and I stand, dazed and smiling, holding the flowers and sweating in the spotlight. Finally, Doña Amelia has to hold up her hands to make the audience settle down.

The Queen of Corn is next. It’s Luz, and as she steps forward, we hug, and whisper “Congratulations” in each other’s ears. In the midst of more applause and photo snapping, her family rushes up, showering her with flowers and cheers.

Maybe I should have invited my parents and brother and sister and cousins and friends and coworkers. It might have been nice for them to be here. It would feel good if all the pieces of my life could find a way to somehow fit together.

We three queens hold hands as Doña Amelia talks about our prizes—all-expenses-paid trips to the Galápagos Islands. I think of myself as a little girl perched in the tree, pretending to be an elegant, beautiful
indígena
riding in my truck to exciting places. I think of how wishes can come true, but not always in the way you expect. I think of what Matilde said about who I really am. Someone with spunk, someone who lets nothing stop her from reaching her dreams.

chapter 37

O
N
M
ONDAY MORNING
, I walk from the bus stop to school full of jumpy energy, wondering how people at school will react. My picture along with those of the other queens is on the front page of this morning’s newspaper. The article is long, describing the ceremony and quoting parts from my speech. Anyone in town who missed reading about it in the newspapers will have seen it on the morning news, which showed close-up footage of us queens in our sashes.

Earlier this morning, I was sipping my
jugo de tomate
in the hotel café when Don Lucho cried, “Look! It’s our Virginia!” My coworkers stopped what they were doing and crowded around the TV in the corner. Even the
gringuitos
took their noses out of their guidebooks to watch Doña Amelia putting the sash over me.

Now I turn the block and walk toward the school, my insides leaping around. My coworkers are one thing, but the students and teachers are another. What will they say? Will they act differently toward me from now on? Will I no longer be one of them? I barely reach the gate when a crowd of students rushes over to me, not just seventh graders but upperclassmen, too.

“Congratulations, Queen Virginia!”

“Why didn’t you tell us, Virginia? You’re so modest!”

“Wow! You look beautiful in the pictures!”

All morning long, students I hardly know are asking me to run for class president, begging me to join their clubs, their sports teams, to sit with them at lunch. My teachers keep me after every class to congratulate me.

My science teacher is especially excited. “Virginia!” she says. “We’re so proud of you! Now I understand why your grades haven’t been as high as usual lately. All these rehearsals, all this work!”

I nod. “Yes, it’s been busy.”

“You should have told us what was going on!”

“Yes, I should have.” And it’s true, I should have.

After school, I have an hour before work starts, so Carmen and Sonia and Esperanza and I decide go to the ice cream stall at the food market to celebrate. A few people stop and stare as I pass, and some ask, “Aren’t you one of the queens?”

My friends giggle, loving this. “It’s like being with a celebrity!” Sonia says.

I blush and lick my ice cream cone, a little embarrassed, but mostly happy.

“Hey, Virginia,” Esperanza says, “why don’t you wear your
indígena
clothes more? Like at work and hanging out. I bet they’d even let you wear them to school instead of a uniform.”

“Why would I do that?” I ask, shifting on my stool.

“Because you look gorgeous in them!” Carmen says, throwing her arm around my shoulder. “
Chica,
those pictures in the paper were amazing!”

“Maybe,” I say.

“But now you have a responsibility to dress that way,” she insists. “You’re the Queen of Water! You’re representing this organization! It’s your queenly duty,
chica
!”

A week later, on Sunday afternoon, before the dinner shift, I put on Susana’s
anacos
and blouse and jewelry—which she insisted I keep as a gift. As I leave the hotel, all my coworkers ooh and ahh and whistle.
“¡Qué guapa, esta reina!”
How beautiful, this queen!

Outside, I walk down the street slowly, relishing how strangely comfortable I am. I don’t feel the need to scurry along quickly, hiding my face, as I did during all the rehearsals. As I pass, a few people murmur to each other, “Is that one of the queens?” At the square, my girlfriends are waiting for me by the fountain, under an apple tree.

“Yay! You did it!” Carmen says. The girls touch the beads around my neck, the red beads at my wrist, the shiny blouse, the soft
anaco
fabric, the ribbon wrapped around my ponytail.

“You look so pretty!” Esperanza says.

And Sonia chimes in, “Can you let me try this on sometime?”

Not long after the election, an official invitation arrives at the hotel, addressed to me. The card is thick creamy linen paper with raised gold lettering, with so many swirls and flourishes it’s hard to read.

I already know about the luncheon from Don Walter talking about it. It’s a big deal, with the daughter of the president of Ecuador coming. At the hotel we’ve hosted big, fancy luncheons and dinners before, but nothing quite this big.

The whole week before the event, Don Walter and the cooks and waiters are excitedly planning the menu and ordering fresh lilies and roses for the table in the formal dining room upstairs. “The president’s daughter!” everyone is buzzing. “Here, in our hotel!”

I can’t quite bring myself to tell them that I will be one of the guests, so I just help them with the preparations, giving a new coat of wax to the wood floors, polishing the banister to a high sheen. I’ve told them I won’t be able to work that day because of a queen commitment, but when I try to tell them the truth, it stops in my throat. I want my worlds to come together, but I’m not sure how. How can I be a queen and a dishwasher at the same time?

Saturday arrives. At eleven, my coworker Quines and I are checking the table, making sure all the napkins are perfectly folded, all the silverware perpendicular to the table edge, the flowers arranged just right.

“Virginia,” he says, placing the glasses of water from a tray onto the table, “if you have time before your royal duties, why don’t you stay and help us? There are only three servers and we’ll be super-busy.”

“Well, Quines.” I pluck off a few wilted rose petals, stalling. “Actually, this
is
my royal duty. I’m a guest at this luncheon.”

He nearly drops the tray of water glasses. “What? You’re eating with the president’s daughter?”

“I should change now, actually,” I say, and run downstairs, leaving him there, bewildered.

An hour later, I’m dressed in my
indígena
clothes, sitting with the other queens at a long table with the president’s daughter. Panpipe music is playing lightly from the speakers, and reporters and photographers are snapping photos and talking to the more-famous guests—senators and city council members. The president’s daughter looks about thirty years old, around Susana’s age, and is an expert on mingling and posing graciously for pictures. She wears a tailored blue suit with a white ruffled blouse and low heels and a pretty pin at her neck.

Niçoise salad is the first course, which I spent all morning making, arranging the hard-boiled eggs and olives perfectly on each of the twenty-five plates. Daintily, I pick up the proper fork to use for the salad, and notice that two of the councilmen use their main-course forks by mistake.

I know the menu by heart. Next will come cream of asparagus soup topped with blue cheese crumbles, then sautéed chicken in a mushroom-raisin-wine sauce garnished with curlicues of carrot and sprigs of fresh cilantro. The cilantro and carrot curlicues were my idea, from a magazine I read, and Don Walter agreed it would be a nice touch. Finally, for dessert, dark chocolate mousse layered with fresh raspberry coulis and topped with a dollop of whipped cream.

As Quines collects our dirty dishes, I whisper, “Delicious salad.”

He shakes his head, grinning. “Good thing Lucho lent you
Modern Etiquette,
” he whispers back. Before rehearsals, he and Lucho would quiz me on which spoon to use for soup, which for iced tea, when to put the napkin in your seat to signal you’ll be back or on the table to signal you’re finished.

During the soup course, the president’s daughter starts talking to me. “What a lovely blouse you have. Those flowers must have taken someone a long time to stitch!”

“Thank you,” I say, a little tongue-tied. I remember
Modern Etiquette.
When someone compliments you, say something nice back. “Your outfit is beautiful too. I like your pin.” It’s a gold cameo with a creamy pink face in the center.

We sip our soup soundlessly. Everything looks different from this spot at the table, compared with when I’m clearing dishes. It’s easy to revel in the elegance, trust that everything will flow smoothly, like silk. And I can sink into this, but at the same time, I can imagine the scene in the kitchen—Quines and my other friends whizzing around and sweating and frantically getting twenty-five plates of food ready, making them look perfect, timing all the courses so they’re the right temperature when they come out: the salad cool and fresh, the soup hot but not too hot.

“Mmm,” the president’s daughter says. “This soup is delicious, isn’t it? I’ll have to ask for the recipe to give to the cook at our house.”

I want to say,
Thank you! The blue cheese topping was Quines’s idea.
I want to tell her I picked out the soup with Don Walter and went shopping at the market for the ingredients and helped blend up the asparagus. I want to tell her these things, but they might shatter my image as queen.

But I wonder, what if I tell her the truth about my life? Will she still think I belong at this table? Is she willing to know what’s beneath the surface, behind the scenes? Or is she content to take me at face value, a cardboard cutout queen?

“The soup’s easy,” I say. “Steam the asparagus, sauté garlic and green onions, add some cream, blend it up, add salt and pepper.”

“My, that does sound easy,” she says. “So you enjoy cooking?”

“Actually, señora, I work here. I’m a dishwasher, but when we have big events I shop and cook, too. And I help with serving sometimes, but I can’t today.”

She stares, her spoon midair. “What an extraordinary girl you are! Tell me, how did you end up working here?”

Through the whole mushroom chicken course I tell her about going back to Yana Urku and needing money for school, and finding this job. As I talk, she nods and asks me questions, truly interested. It’s as though the fabric scraps of my self are being sewn together, in tiny, almost invisible stitches, with the finest of threads.

While Quines is clearing the dishes and the others are setting out coffee, I notice the sweat beaded on their foreheads and I can see in their eyes that they’re swamped. I know they need to serve the rest of the coffee and deal with the cream and sugar and then there’s the chocolate mousse with fresh whipped cream that will droop if it’s not brought out soon.

“Excuse me a moment,” I tell the president’s daughter, and put my napkin on my chair. I breeze into the kitchen and sure enough, there is a tray of chocolate mousse, the whipped cream dollops just on the verge of sagging.

“Thank goodness, Virginia,” the cook says. “Please, take it out now!” I emerge from the kitchen with my head high, as though it’s attached to a golden string, the platter of mousse balanced on one upturned palm. Quines has just cleared the last of the main-course plates, and he gives me a surprised but grateful smile when he sees me with the platter.

Everyone turns to me as I put down their dessert, and says politely, “Thank you, Virginia,” or “Thank you, señorita.”

I am not at all invisible. I am the served and I am the server. I am queen and I am dishwasher. I am rich and poor,
indígena
and
mestiza,
and no one can put me in a box.

I save the last mousse for myself, sit down, choose the small dessert spoon. Then I notice the president’s daughter. She has waited for me to take my seat before starting to eat. We raise our spoons in a kind of toast and dig in.

All week, more articles and pictures of me and the other queens have appeared in the newspaper. Don Walter cuts them out and puts them next to the others above his desk, and Don Lucho tapes some behind the café bar.

“Virginia!” Don Lucho calls to me on Saturday morning. “You have some visitors.”

I’m sitting at a café table, covered with pink eraser dust, sipping orange juice and trying to solve a geometry problem. My head is full of isosceles triangles and hypotenuses and formulas. I’m trying to get all my homework done today, because tomorrow morning is the big procession, the culmination of all the queen events, when I’ll be paraded through the city with Luz and Elsa.

I put down my pencil, glad of a break. “Who is it?”

“The president and his daughter,” Don Lucho says, walking over to me, peering at my homework. “She wants to hang out with you, since you’re best friends now. She brought her dad along.”

“Don Lucho!” I say, hitting him playfully.

He laughs and flashes his gold tooth.

“Do I really have visitors?”

“Yes, Your Highness. A woman and a man. But they didn’t give their names.”

Maybe it’s Susana and José, here to tell me last-minute instructions for the big parade tomorrow. It could be anyone, really. For the past two weeks I’ve had all kinds of unexpected visitors. One young man who made dolls for tourists wanted to make
indígena
queen dolls, and he took my picture to use as a model. A photographer from France came, too, and we did a modeling shoot near Lake Mojanda for his magazine.

I take my hair out of its ponytail, smooth it back, and wrap the band around again. I brush the eraser dust from my skirt and breeze past Don Lucho, whispering, “And stop calling me Your Highness, King Lucho!”