Monkey Boy, Francisco Goldman [best story books to read .txt] 📗

When Lexi was in the fifth or sixth grade, she had a friend at school, Caroline Biddle, who lived out near Riverbend Street, in a remote corner of town even more exclusive than the Ways. Caroline, like my sister, was tall, with wide shoulders, heavyset. Her ginger hair dangled in springy curls to her shoulders, and her blue eyes had a teasing shine that could quickly turn querulous. My sister’s other friend, Bonnie, even taller, long hair, strikingly pretty, played the guitar. All three girls would shut themselves into my sister’s bedroom and sing along to records by the Cowsills and the Troggs. Through the closed bedroom door, their voices sounded as if they were emanating from frail children. They were going to form a rock group, they said, Bonnie on guitar, my sister, who had easily learned some guitar, too, and Caroline, who would play tambourine and be lead singer. Lexi invited Caroline and Bonnie to sleep over one Saturday night so that they could practice during the weekend. Caroline said that she wanted to but that her mother had to give permission, and for that to happen, her mother would first have to come to our house and meet my mother.

Mrs. Biddle, a housewife, with Caroline, must have come to Wooded Hollow Road on an afternoon when my mother didn’t have to teach. She wouldn’t have canceled a class just to receive Mrs. Biddle. The two women had coffee or tea and lemon cream–filled cookies, sitting on the sofa in the living room, facing the oil paint portrait in an ornate white frame with gilded trim on the opposite wall of my young mother in a silvery-blue evening gown, her shoulders bare, an orchid on one side of her cleavage, against a cerulean backdrop; my father’s boyhood friend, Herb, who became a Boston portrait artist, had painted it. Mamita would have brought out her best silver and china, put on a nice dress, arranged her unruly hair into the usual dyed black loaf. Lexi and Caroline sat in some chairs eating cookies, too. During that tête-à-tête, as years later Lexi recalled it, Mrs. Biddle pointed more than once at one or another of the Guatemalan folk objects displayed among Hummel and porcelain ornaments on the side tables and said something like: That’s an interesting piece, Yolanda. To which my mother would respond: That is a wood carving of a Mayan Indian man carrying a load of firewood on his back. Or: That clay figurine is of a Mayan woman selling her wares at the market. Often when people who didn’t know anything about Guatemala came to our house, Mamita would launch into the same speech that she surely gave Mrs. Biddle, about how the country was famous for the native Maya who lived in the mountains, keeping their ancient traditions, so picturesque, but also, you know, backward. The capital, Guatemala City, where she was raised, was a modern city, with tall buildings and shopping centers, like Miami. She would also have told Mrs. Biddle about the family stores, especially the flagship toy store on Sexta Avenida downtown, and her brother’s weekend morning children’s show on Guatemalan television, which featured Jingle Hop, yo-yo, and Hula-Hoop contests. He’d even made a television commercial with children and teenagers Hula-Hooping on the steps of an ancient Maya pyramid at Tikal. Those were the same spectacular ruins that Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge had visited. The ambassador had been so impressed by Guatemala. She knew the ambassador and some of the other Cabot Lodges and Boston Brahmins from the Latin American Society of New England. Of course, she also would have told Mrs. Biddle about how she’d become a college Spanish teacher, about her studies in Boston and abroad, and also, with pride, about how the women’s junior college in Brookline where she was on the faculty sent her on trips to South America, to Buenos Aires, Bogotá, Santiago, to recruit students. She must also have told Mrs. Biddle that her husband, Bert, a chemical engineer, was in charge of dental prosthetic tooth production at the Potashnik Tooth Company in Cambridge.

Mrs. Biddle seemed satisfied with what she’d heard. Why wouldn’t she have been, said Lexi, recounting the story years later. Mom was warm and gracious, and Mrs. Biddle must have realized how exceptional she was, a woman from Guatemala who’d made herself into a college Spanish teacher and the treasurer of the Latin American Society of New England.

So, Caroline can sleep over then? asked my mother, posing the question as a polite formality.

No, I’m afraid not, Yolanda, Mrs. Biddle answered. I’m sorry.

Mamita gaped at Mrs. Biddle, truly at a loss for words. After an agonizing moment, Mrs. Biddle said, Well, I guess there isn’t anything else for us to talk about, Yolanda, so Caroline and I had better be going. My mother remained rigidly seated, still speechless, as Mrs. Biddle got to her feet. Lexi has told me she has never forgotten the look on my mother’s face, that it has troubled her ever since. Caroline and my sister never spoke again. Years later, Lexi found out, Mrs. Biddle had a nervous breakdown. So the incident wasn’t what it seemed. Mrs. Biddle was “unstable.” Sure.

As the Latin American Society of New England left its 1950s Cold War heyday behind, the surnames of philanthropic banana cronies resonated less and less, until there was hardly any reason to name-drop them anymore. By the time Mamita was elected the society’s treasurer, the new president was Bruno Irigoyen, the MIT astrophysicist and telescope expert from Argentina who was a friend of Borges. Now the society invited people of opposing viewpoints to speak, and they furiously argued over such issues as the coup and military dictatorships in Chile and Argentina, and there was almost always weeping in the audience, or, afterward, glasses of wine contemptuously tossed on shirtfronts or even folding chairs hurled, Bruno