Chapter 8
Minerva
After unpacking most of Senora Encarnación’s belongings, I scurried down to the kitchens to report to Cosme before dinner.
The scale of the room made me feel as though I were shrinking as I entered.
The stove was broad; the pantries as spacious as a slum home for a family of five, and packed with goods.
A side door was propped open, and men and women wearing kitchen whites were unloading goods from carts outside, passing items from hand to hand, as industrious as a line of ants.
There was white flour and maíz. Fruits. Root vegetables.
Dried meats and fresh. It was difficult to tear my eyes from the abundance to join the line of staff standing before Cosme, where I became the sole black blouse and skirt in a row of dark green livery.
I had worn black since entering Senora Encarnación’s service as a sign of respect for her husband, many decades since deceased.
All black, from collar to stockings to shoes, save for the pop of white and green that was the del Valle gardenia on a brooch at my throat.
I folded my hands before me as Cosme detailed the choreography of the family’s nightly supper service. It was a dizzying litany of which spoons went where, where to use white china dishes versus silver, and how we should each stand behind the family member we serve.
“Antonio to Senor Leoncio. Guillermo to el senor. Minerva, you will serve Senora Encarnación. She will be sitting—”
“Can’t we get on with it?” a young footman asked, shifting his weight from one foot to another.
The agitation that rose in his voice—and all around me, humming as if I stood in a beehive—meant only one thing. Cosme was doing this for my benefit, and it wore on the others’ patience.
My cheeks flushed with heat.
“Maybe someone can write it all down for her,” a footman standing next to me suggested. He was elderly and stately and the tone of his voice made me think that he was trying to be helpful. “So she can study on her own and not waste time.”
“If she’s even literate,” a third voice from down the line—female this time—muttered.
I broke out of orderly formation to search for the speaker. It was a young woman with light brown hair and green eyes, slightly older than me, her fair face fixed in a delicate sneer.
“I beg your pardon,” I said in my best imitation of Senora Encarnación’s disdainful reproach.
I knew girls like her on Calle Jacaranda.
Ones who thought that because their families had served the rich for decades, nobility had rubbed off on them.
Their eyes glanced over me as if I were cockroach in the gutter.
Taunt the brat right back, Arnulfo would goad me. I dare you.
Ignore her. Armando’s voice was a balm: steady, soothing. Keep your dignity.
But Armando was gone.
He was a step missed in the dark. A soft, pale stomach, exposed to blows, as the girl spoke again.
“Speak when you’re spoken to, slum rat,” she snapped, her voice mocking and light. “And some more advice: unlike in the slums, in this house, we use the commode instead of shitting in the stre—”
“Enough, Filomena.” Cosme’s voice was the click of military heels: clipped, metallic, no-nonsense. “Everyone to their stations.” To me, he said: “Senora Encarnación will be sitting opposite la senora. When in doubt, mirror me.”
I pulled my shoulders back. I forced my expression into a blank canvas, one that I hoped was impassive. “Understood.”
At Casa Azafrán, Senora Encarnación expected me to respond to her monologues. This did not require much. A nod or a well-timed gasp at how her nieces and nephews had turned their backs on the del Valle name to rub elbows with half-bloods in Parliament would suffice.
At the clubs with her friends, however, I was expected to be invisible.
That was the case here as well. I mirrored Cosme as I lifted silver covers from plates of steaming fish in salsa verde, hot from the kitchens.
I did my best to ignore the visions, hovering just behind my shoulders, of my clammy fingers letting the covers slip and fall with a reverberating clang.
As the family ate each course, I scanned the faces of those sitting around the table.
Octaviana I knew from the carriage ride, but when I met her, I recognized her and her husband, Cirilo—all white mustache and aquiline nose—instantly from Casa Azafrán’s portraits.
So, too, did I recognize their pale son, Leoncio, a boy of about sixteen or seventeen who sat to Octaviana’s right.
The hollows beneath his sensitive eyes were more pronounced than in the oil portrait, but the weak chin and slope of his shoulders were exactly as the artist saw them.
These were the turncoats, the weak-willed. The ones Senora Encarnación cursed in her daily ritual.
“I will be returning to the Capital on Wednesday,” Cirilo announced.
“So soon?” a woman asked. She was of the same generation as Leoncio, but several years older than him; if I recalled the name on the portrait in Casa Azafrán correctly, her name was Eugenia, and she was Cirilo and Octaviana’s niece.
She shifted in her chair, a hand absent-mindedly rubbing her pregnant belly.
Filomena stood behind her head of flaxen hair.
“The Viceroy has said that the situation demands more officers,” Cirilo replied.
“But we shot the usurper and took the mine,” Leoncio, Octaviana’s son, chimed in. The chispa light in the room hollowed his face. It might be considered attractive in daylight, but cast in shadow, it looked skeletal. “So it’s over.”
“It’s more complicated than that, mi hijo,” Octaviana said, her voice pitched as if she were speaking to a small child. A delicate scowl crossed Leoncio’s face.
If I had ever reacted to Papá like that, I wouldn’t have been able to sit for a week.
“Valbuenista guerrillas have taken the southern half the city,” Cirilo said. “People cannot leave their homes without the fear of being shot in the street. It might take weeks to smoke them out.”
The pregnant woman set down her fork with a sharp ring. “Weeks,” she repeated. “How many weeks? Two? Five? Ten?”
A few months away was Senora Encarnación’s estimate when she ordered me to pack her belongings in Casa Azafrán. She hummed gaily to herself as our carriage rattled through the smoky outskirts of the Capital, stopping only to flash the gardenia sigil at military checkpoints.
“You can never predict, with strife like this,” she had told me. “It could be a year.” This thought lit her face as if she were talking about meeting her friends at Palacio Monterrey.
“Will you take Leoncio with you?” Senora Encarnación asked Cirilo.
Leoncio wiped his mouth delicately and opened it to reply.
“Absolutely not,” Octaviana cut in. “He’s still a child.”
“It’s far too dangerous,” Eugenia agreed with a grim set of the mouth. “If ever a day goes by when I don’t hear from Santiago, I fear the worst.”
“If Santiago del Valle were to die defending the Viceroyalty, it would be a long overdue sacrifice,” Senora Encarnación interrupted flatly.
What little color Eugenia had in her face drained; when her eyes turned on Senora Encarnación, they were wide with horror.
Octaviana slid a look at Cirilo. “Tía,” she said, her voice level as she addressed Senora Encarnación, “let’s not upset Eugenia. She is in a delicate state.”
“It’s true, though. She knows it and should prepare herself for the worst,” Senora Encarnación said, lifting her head.
Standing behind her, I could not see her expression, but I could guess it: a steely flash in her rheumy eyes.
I could practically hear the castigating tap of her cane on the floorboard before the family portraits.
To Eugenia, she said: “The Viceroy’s men shot the usurper in the head, point-blank.
Do you think the Valbuenistas will give any of ours the same courtesy?
They are animals. Santiago chose to turn his back on the del Valle name and work in Parliament alongside insurgents.
Now those same animals will gut him if they get the chance. ”
Eugenia looked gray. Filomena pulled smelling salts from a hidden pocket and perched on the balls of her feet, ready to offer them.
“They must be wholly destroyed. If Santiago dies, he’ll die doing what is right. For once.” Senora Encarnación stabbed her fork into her fish.
Eugenia waved Filomena’s smelling salts away, but her eyes glimmered as she lowered her chin and blinked, attempting to compose herself. A tear slipped down one cheek, catching the golden glow of the lamps.
“Tía,” Octaviana said, with more force than necessary. “What do you think of the fish?”
“Overseasoned,” Senora Encarnación said crisply. “But tender. Your cook is too fond of salt. My Mariquita would never use such a liberal hand.”
Around the table, cutlery clinked. The temperature of the room shifted. A wave of coldness swept toward Senora Encarnación. It washed over me, too: the attention of the servants slipped toward me, thick with judgment, as if I had just loudly echoed Senora Encarnación.
I settled my weight back over my heels. I wanted to melt away into the wall behind me. To vanish like a ghost. I kept my expression carefully impassive, but I clutched the silver tray cover until my fingers ached.
After dinner, the family retreated to the living room. I cleared Senora Encarnación’s dessert plate, mirroring Cosme’s actions as smoothly as I could, and followed him into the kitchen.
“And then the look he gave me—” Filomena whispered coyly to the younger of the two footmen. “You saw it, didn’t you?”
They pulled apart as the kitchen door shut behind Cosme.
“Enough gossip,” Cosme snapped. “Neither la senora nor I will tolerate any of that behavior in this household.”
The footman looked contrite, but Filomena gave Cosme a flippant look over one shoulder and resumed clearing dishes.