Chapter 2.1 The Kitchen

Enter two new main characters!

Juliana Barnet

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While Demetrius is in the basement…

Marlie Mendíval is breaking her no-caffeine-after-noon rule, just this once. She feels justified because a roaring helicopter jerked her awake in the wee hours, swooping so low over the house she feared it would fly into her bedroom window. 

Normally, Marlie blocks out helicopters, sirens, and other threatening noises, but this one caught her off guard, stirring up the old dread, banishing sleep. 

Marlie sits down with her mug. Almost all her activist experience in Mexico had been thrilling and fun: singing at strikes; intense late-night discussions with student comrades; afternoons painting banners and joking around; the buoyant feeling of marching shoulder to shoulder with kindred spirits.

But there had been those days when helicopters circled and the Federales, in their dark jackets and black cars, snatched and disappeared dozens of students, including her classmates at the Escuela de Antropología, Rodrigo, Jaime, and Leticia. 

Marlie shakes her curls out of their messy bun, hoping they’ll warm her neck. The kitchen feels especially chilly today—another good reason for an afternoon cup of hot coffee. “Chica,” she admonishes herself aloud, “It’s ridiculous for helicopters to scare you here in peaceful Rainwood, Maryland, USA.”

She regards the structure Samantha built on the table that morning out of the week’s mail. With a huff, she topples the envelopes in a white splash.

“Sorry, amor,” Marlie remarks, though her granddaughter isn’t in the room. She picks up six or seven envelopes from organizations she usually contributes to. Worker rights, immigrant rights, environmental justice, Latin American and Indigenous struggles…

She grimaces, then stuffs them in the recycling, unopened. 

Her gaze rests on the Flamingo lily, Boston fern, and other plants crowding the window sills. They flutter in the breeze she can never keep from sneaking in through the rotting window frames.

She conjures her air guitar. “Capitalism!” she sings, improvising on Pink Floyd’s classic, “go away! You’re the root of all evil to-o-o-day. Duh, duh, duh-duh, duh, duh, duh, daaah-duh...” She scats a few bars of the guitar riff, picturing a crowd of protestors demanding fair utility prices. Long ago, she might have written the chants and set them to rock ‘n roll tunes.

The leaves of the kangaroo vine rustle in the drafty window. Polite applause for her singing, Marlie decides, and makes the plant an ironic bow.  

The back door slams. A lanky child in a baggy orange sweatshirt bounds into the kitchen and throws herself onto the couch. In a practiced move, she flips off her soccer cleats without using her hands. “¡Hola, Abue! I bounced the ball on my knees six thousand times!” The girl lifts each of her dirty knees as evidence, running a hand through dark red hair gathered into several messy ponytails, one tied up with a wilted yellow balloon. 

“Excelente, amor,” Marlie crosses the kitchen to pick up the dusty shoes. “You’ll be the next Jess.” Bend It Like Beckham is one of their favorite videos. 

Her granddaughter bounces to her feet to reach for a book. Marlie heads her off by thrusting the cleats into her grubby hands. “Put these in the mudroom, chulita. That’s what it’s for. Y lávate las manos. If it wasn’t so chilly, I’d hose you off outside. Rainwood House’s plumbing won’t like all that dirt going down her drain.” Marlie smiles, but with the corners of her mouth turning down, a smile that contradicts itself. 

“My Rainwood House is strong enough for anything!” Samantha asserts, then notices the strewn envelopes. “Abue, you ruined mi casita!”

“Lo siento, chulita. Unfortunately, your building material was bills.”

“Hey, it was a bill-ding!” Chortling at her own wit, Samantha flies back out to the mudroom with her shoes.

With another upside down smile, Marlie hums a reprise of her “Capitalism” song as she opens a missive labeled ‘Retriever Masters.’ “Oye, chulita,” she calls out as Samantha reappears, “you didn’t order a perrito from the Internet, verdad?” Marlie pictures a voracious hairy animal bouncing from a giant box.

“Abue, you know my own true love is Melau. I’m waiting for him to have puppies.”

Doesn’t Samantha know which gender has puppies? Marlie wonders. How much would a nine-year-old in public school be learning about all that, in class or on the playground? Marlie resolves to ask for an age-appropriate book on reproduction next time they go to the library. She squints at the retriever bill and sees it’s a collection agency with a cute name dogging her for payment of Ranger Rick. Marlie has let most of her own subscriptions lapse, but not her grandchild’s favorite magazine.

She watches Samantha turn on the faucet, which emits a groan of mild protest. After a perfunctory washing, the girl shakes her fingers over the plants on the table, sprinkling many drops on the envelopes. Marlie quirks her mouth, but decides the bills deserve it. 

Everybody says to plan for disaster, Marlie thinks. Well, she’s an expert at envisioning disasters, but that doesn’t summon the money to pay for them. 

True, she did just splurge on the four-foot tall Bird-of-Paradise in the fabulous Puebla ceramic pot. She turns to admire the graceful plant, like an avian dancer with a long beak and outstretched wings, bought last month to celebrate her forty-seventh birthday. After all, as her friend Laranda assured her, she was entering her prime. “A prime number,” Marlie had scoffed. “Not quite the same thing.”

What really set them back financially were the sudden deaths of their old computer and the clutch of her beat-up Civic. She glances over at the “office” corner of the kitchen where the new laptop sits, its bright magenta color at least partly compensating for its unanticipated expense.

Samantha loads  the “World Playground” disk into the  little blue tape and CD player that sits on the orange bookcase and fast-forwards through the list of international kids’ songs to her favorite. “She sang and she sang and she waited ‘til her belly broiled!” the girl bellows, adding a percussive accompaniment of thumping dance steps. “We’ll go a-waltzing, Matilda, for free!”