January

1

They talk about the harvest but they don’t know that by then there’ll be no turning back, Nefer thinks. Everyone here and everywhere else will know by then, and they won’t be able to stop talking about it. Her eyes cloud with worry and she slowly lowers her head as she herds a small flock of crumbs across the worn oilcloth. Her father mentions the harvest and then reaches for the tea towel used to wipe all the hands and mouths around the table. Her mother stands to pass it to him, stepping on the dog who yelps and takes refuge under the bench. Her shadow looms over the table as she moves past the lantern hung on the wall. The day will come when my belly starts to show, Nefer thinks. The insects buzz, flutter, and fall into the lantern. They climb back up, singe their wings and fall back down again. No one pays any attention to her, still and silent in the corner, as they lean over their plates eating and listening to the occasional exchange between Don Pedro and the Turk, who slurps a spoonful of soup, still out of breath from unhitching his horses.
            “Holsteins,” the Turk says. “About a hundred of them . . . Good-looking cows.”
            “Where did you say you passed them, Nemi?” Doña María asks.
            “Near the crossing. On their way to the market, I reckon . . .”
            “That’s right, the market’s tomorrow . . . But whose could they be? . . .  You don’t know, do you, Juan? Who was planning to sell cattle tomorrow?”
            Juan yawns, not hearing her as he stares into the lantern with bleary eyes.
            “Juan!”
            “Yes, ma’am!” Juan is new to the ranch’s outpost and doesn’t want to look dumb.
            “I was asking you who might be sending cattle to the market, the Turk saw some Holsteins . . .”
            Nefer measures the distance between her body and the table, thinking how before long she won’t be able to slip past and sit at the end of the bench. But by then I won’t be coming to meals. By then I might be dead. And she pictures herself surrounded by flowers and sad faces, and Negro leaning in the doorway with a serious expression, finally laying his eyes on her. But even then he’ll probably be looking at Alcira, she thinks, discouraged, and her desire to die fades as she watches her sister distractedly scratch her arm while she waits for the Turk to finish eating so she can clear his plate.
            Shadows dance along the rough wall and merge with the darkness of the roof where the thatch stretches out like hair. Alcira turns on the radio and tunes from station to station until stopping on a comedy show with a voice screeching in a fake Italian accent.
            Don Pedro resumes his conversation with the Turk, the radio like a waterfall drowning out their voices.
            “So, it was expensive, huh?”
            “Sure was, but like I said, if we get a good harvest it’ll be cheaper in the end . . .”
            The harvest, impossible for it to come without everyone knowing. A howl climbs up her throat, crashes against her teeth, then slides back down to where it came from. She longs for a moment of fresh air, to get out of this kitchen where the heat from the lantern laps at their faces and the air vibrates with the hum of the radio and Doña María laughs with Alcira at the actors’ jokes.
            But to leave she would first have to ask everyone else on the bench to stand, and also explain why she wants to go outside. No, better not to call attention to herself; maybe a sip of wine will make her feel better. She reaches for the bottle that Don Pedro has just set down, brings it to her lips and closes her eyes as she drinks. Then she pushes open the little window beside her and a waft of fresh air hits her face. She leans out to look for the lights of Santa Rosa Ranch in the distance, but all she can see is the foliage of a nearby tree.
            If only Negro knew that it’s his, that it’s his, then maybe he’d notice me, maybe he’d love me and marry me. Maybe the three of us could all ride off in a buggy to live the rest of our lives on another ranch, far away from here.
            But it’s not his . . . Yes, yes it is, it’s his . . . No, it’s not . . . But it is Negro’s fault, it’s definitely his fault. What’s a young woman to do? Out in the country all alone with nothing but the horizon. So wide and so green, the trains coming and going to who knows where. What can she do?
            It’s a different story for rich girls. She thinks of Luisa, who at this time of night must be sitting at the dining table in the estancia. Nefer’s mother once said, “Those girls are all the same, they can roll in the hay with whoever they like and no one will find out. They have their ways.” Is that true? But dear God, what about me? What have I done? Nothing, it was nothing, she hardly even remembers it. It was like a dream. But now, seated among all these carefree people living their lives, she feels only worry and fear.
            Because there’s no going back, time keeps passing and everything grows, and after growth comes death. But you can never go backwards.
            And Negro, when he finds out, when Edilia hears about it – that sharp tongue of hers, that laugh of hers – Negro might smile, might even make a joke . . . No, oh no, and it’s all his fault, it’s Negro’s fault, because she doesn’t even know how it happened, but it’s all Negro’s fault.
            She thinks about how she might have never even met him, and then it’s as if she’s been transported back to the day she first saw him. She feels the lightness in the air again, the fresh breeze. The entire family had gone to the rodeo because it had been a while since the prizes were so big. Her cousin, a pale, skinny, bowlegged fellow, had a good shot at winning. Nefer remembers squinting to see him mount his horse, then his body swaying in the saddle, one arm held up timidly in the air, too scared to crack the whip.
From behind her someone had said: “He’s gonna make off with quite a prize if he keeps whipping that horse so hard . . .”
            The joke was met with several laughs. Nefer, humiliated for her cousin’s sake, turned her head in contempt to confront the wisecracker, but when she saw him, with one leg crossed casually over the other and a cigarette in his mouth, she looked down. That was the first time she’d ever laid eyes on Negro Ramos, but his fame as a horseman preceded him.
            “Nefer! Someone’s talking to you! You’d think she’s dim! Are you falling asleep?”
            She looks up to see the Turk, Nemi Bleis, his bushy mustache leaning toward her. And she stares at the web of veins crisscrossing his nose to avoid thinking about how long he might have been speaking to her before she noticed.
            “What were you saying?” she asks.
            “About that fabric I sold you the last time I came through, for your sister’s wedding; the floral print, remember? How’d it turn out?”
            “Yes, of course. It turned out real nice, thank you.”
 
Porota’s wedding, where her trouble all began. How could she forget the party? The hot day, the fire pits between the barn and the corral, how Negro had shown up on the chestnut horse he was breaking in. She’d been looking forward to Porota’s wedding because of him, she’d sewn that new dress for him, and even before, when the Turk came through with his wares, she’d chosen that floral fabric because she thought Negro would like it.
            Mending sweaty bombachas ripped from so much rubbing in the stirrups is a chore; darning shirts is a bore, but a dress – a dress you’ve made a pattern for and tried on a thousand times, unstitched and reworked until its final form takes shape in your hands – a dress is something else.
She remembers how carefully she’d pressed the dress, filling the iron with hot coals and then taking it out to the yard for the breeze to revive it.
            If the patrones of El Retiro Ranch hadn’t called a priest to come out and give a special Mass for some saint, the bride and groom would’ve had to get married in town. They would’ve gone by bus, on a weekday, all solemn, carrying Porota’s dress on a hanger. But since the priest was coming they could get married in the chapel across from the general store, and the reception could be held on the ranch.
            While Nefer stayed home to iron her dress, Porota and Alcira had gone into town to perm their hair and they came back looking like little lambs. She remembers it well; she’d pressed that dress so carefully. Thinking about it now makes her want to cry.
 
All day she’d waited, until suddenly, flanked by two or three other riders, she saw him appear with a big silver knife across his waist. The trotting of his horse jingled the coins on his shiny belt and Nefer was serving yerba mate for the guests alongside her sister. She couldn’t bear to look; she turned her back and scalded her hand with the water she was pouring, but she listened intently as he dismounted, tied up his horse, and joked with his friends; she heard his footsteps cross the yard before he came in to greet everyone in the kitchen. When it was her turn she answered quickly: goodandyou, and then offered him the yerba mate, lowering her gaze.
            Lunch came, serving the guests, coming and going, the heat, the coals throbbing in the dirt next to the spits dripping fat; the men bending over to slowly carve the meat. There had been wine and empanadas – rolling out dough for hours the night before with her mother and cousins. The sun beat down on the dirt yard, everyone’s faces were red in the shade of the hackberry trees, then Jacinto started to play the accordion and lively music filled the air. But she, Nefer, with the plate of empanadas or the tray of meat, Nefer, with the wine or splitting the hardtack, had eyes in the back of her head, up and down her arms, her neck, all over her body. Without looking at him directly, she could see Negro the whole time. She watched him seated with his friends, eating meat with his big knife, one bite and then another, nimbly and leisurely smiling and talking.
            The whole day went on like that, with Negro at the center of it all. But right beside Negro was Delia.
            If only Nefer’s nails had not been worn down to the nubs from so much work; if she had not been the sister of the bride; if instead she had been someone else, she would have ripped Delia’s face to shreds, silencing that squawking laugh of hers! She would have ground her hateful body into the dirt, tied her hair to the tail of a colt, strung her up naked by her feet over the fire. And once Delia was charred and destroyed, Nefer would have fed her ashes to the caracaras, to the dogs, to the weasels, to the foxes. Delia, the daughter of the general store owner, pampered and arrogant.
            Like a pale scar that suddenly burns red with exertion, her grandmother’s blood flared up in her veins. Nefer had barely known the woman and yet she lived on inside her. The grandmother who wandered the Carhué lagoons and the sandy fields of the Indian encampments to the West; the dark-skinned grandmother who died at the age of one hundred without a hint of gray, well-versed in the most punishing of words. Mamá never spoke of the woman because her own bloodline had come from Italy on both sides. Papá had no need of mentioning his mother, nor did her granddaughters. 
 
What is a day? What is the world when everything inside you shudders? The sky darkens, houses swell, merge, topple, voices rise in unison to become a single sound. Enough! Who is that shouting? Her soul is black, a soul like the fields in a storm, without a single ray of light, silent as a corpse in the ground.
Nefer passes around the yerba mate. There’s dancing in the barn and she takes turns with several fellows under the bright light of the lanterns. Then she runs, flees. Nicolás, who works on the railroad, blocks her path and says, “Nefer.”
She stops.
            “What do you have there? Yerba mate?”
            Nefer looks at him but she doesn’t see his face, she doesn’t see his mustache, all she sees is Delia and Negro, dancing and laughing. She says yes. She could’ve just as easily said no. The man says:
“Can I have some? I’m thirsty.”
“It’s all out. I have to change it.”
Tears run down her cheeks, but she doesn’t know it. The man reeks of wine, she’d seen him laughing and talking all afternoon.
He takes her by the arm, past the tree line, and the brambles stick into her back. His mustache stinks of wine, it’s hot, the branches of the trees are a world unto themselves. Negro is with Delia, the man is sweaty, it’s hot, I’m suffocating. Oh Negro, Negro, what have you done to me? Look at my dress, it was supposed to be for you. I’ve been waiting months for this day to finally talk to you . . .
 
Bottles clink as don Pedro pushes the table back so the Turk can stand up. Dinner is over and Juan gets up murmuring “thanks for the meal” as he picks his teeth with the blade of a knife. Nefer waits for the bench to empty before she slides out; her mother pours boiling water into a tub full of soapy plates and silverware that Alcira then dries and puts away. Nefer wipes the table with a rag in slow circles, herding crumbs to the edge, letting them fall to the ground for the dogs and chickens to fight over.
“Let’s find something else on the radio,” her mother says, because the comedy program has given way to some dramatic music followed by a soap opera heavy with sighs.
“Wait,” says Alcira. “Leave it here. It’s Claudia Reyes.”
Nefer moves away from the radio and turns back to her rag, but she quickly drops it and rushes out into the night where she grabs hold of a tree and vomits. Pain overtakes her; her eyes cloud, her throat burns, and her ears throb with despair. In the distance, a never-ending train glides over the shadowy plains.
Dying, she thinks, would be better. She sighs, her desperation merging with the whispering of the trees. She watches as Nemi Bleis carries his bedding into the room where Juan is undressing by candlelight, and Don Pedro disappears around the side of the house for one last check before turning in. The light thrown onto the yard by the open kitchen door is suddenly blocked by a thick shadow.
“Nefer!” Doña María shouts. “Nefer!”
“Coming!”
Before going inside she turns her head and looks over the horizon toward the unwavering light of Santa Rosa, where Negro must be finishing his dinner. Farther west, the stands of trees rise up protectively around the little homesteads, which one by one turn out their lights and dissolve into the plains.