The Bookseller(92)

De colores, de colores . . . Se visten los campos en la primavera. De colores, de colores . . . Son los pajaritos que vienen de afuera.

And then I know all sorts of things about Alma that I haven’t remembered until now. I know that she is forty-seven years old. I know she and Rico grew up together in a small town in Sonora, the northwest part of Mexico, and that they married young. I remember how Alma’s eyes teared up, years ago, when she told me about their eldest children, a boy and a girl; as toddlers, the two were fatally trapped while staying with relatives whose house burned down one summer night. I know that although Alma and Rico grieved for this loss, they went on to have two more children. Not long afterward, Rico, with urging from his brothers, immigrated to Denver, where he joined those brothers working restaurant jobs. It took Rico four years to save enough money to send to Sonora for Alma and their daughters. The children were young when the family immigrated; they received most of their schooling here in the States. I know that Alma is fiercely proud of both girls—the elder, who is attending the University of Colorado-Denver with the intention of becoming a journalist, and the younger, who married right out of high school and recently gave Alma her first grandchild.

I think about the first time I saw Alma—the first time after I began going into the other world, the world where I was Kitty. I think about how, as Kitty, I did not really understand this system, this world in which darker-skinned people serve lighter-skinned people. I did not understand it because Kitty had not become accustomed to it gradually, over the course of many years, the way Katharyn did. As Kitty, I was thrust abruptly into this lifestyle, and—quite understandably—it jarred me.

But in truth, I have been Katharyn, not Kitty, for a long time now. So is the view of this world through Kitty’s eyes—a new awareness that, even as Katharyn, I need not treat someone working for my family as somehow less than me—another gift? Is it like the gift of imagining myself quietly conversing with my mother? I believe it is.

The fact is, I owe everything to Alma. If not for her intervention, when would I have realized how Jenny was treating Michael? How much longer would it have taken me to grasp that? How much more cruelty would my child have had to endure, were it not for this woman who today is washing my bathroom floor?

“Alma,” I say.

She stands and faces me.

“Thank you.” I look around, feeling suddenly foolish for interrupting her work. Hastily I go on, “Thank you for everything you do. For taking care of my family, when you have your own to take care of, too.”

She nods. “Sí, se?ora.”

“How is your family?” As soon as I ask this, my cheeks redden. In this context, with work to do, Alma will surely find my chitchat silly and distracting.

But she smiles, visibly pleased to be asked. “Bebé is getting so big,” she tells me. “He sits up now, all by himself.”

I find myself genuinely delighted to hear about her grandson’s development. “Oh, I love that stage,” I say. “When babies learn to sit up, when you can put them on the floor on a blanket with a few toys, and they stay there happy as clams.”

Alma nods. “Sí, I love that, too. And so does his mamá.”

“Alma,” I ask her, “when was the last time you had a raise?”

She looks thoughtful. “It is a year ago, maybe,” she recalls. “Se?or Andersson, he raise me from one dollar fifty an hour to one dollar seventy-five.”

I’m shocked. “That’s all we pay you? You ought to make more than that. As of today, we’re doubling your wages.”

She tilts her head. “You discuss this with Se?or Andersson, se?ora? No?”

“No.” I shake my head firmly. “But trust me—he won’t mind.”


After Michael and I have lunch, I ask Alma what her plans are for the afternoon. “No mucho,” she says. “I think I go after the kitchen drawers. They need organización. And cleaning.”

“How would you feel about watching Michael for a few hours?”

She eyes me suspiciously. “You sure, se?ora?”

“Alma.” I put my hand on her arm. “If I have ever acted as if I didn’t trust you . . . please believe me, it’s not because of you.” I can feel my eyes pleading with her. “It’s because of me. It’s my guilt, and . . . this is my life.” I remove my fingers from her arm, but keep my gaze on her. “In the meantime, I think Michael would have a fine afternoon with you.” I turn to glance at him, still seated at the table. “Wouldn’t you, buddy?”

He does not look up. “Can I count the money again?”

I’d hoped he’d want to page through the dictionary some more, but counting money is better than nothing, I suppose.

Baby steps, Katharyn, I remind myself. Baby steps.

“Sure,” I say to him. “Why not?”

He nods. “Well, then I think I’ll have a fine afternoon with Alma.”


And so it is that at exactly one fifteen on a snowy Thursday afternoon in early March 1963, I find myself opening the garage door of the big house on Springfield Street and sliding behind the wheel of my green station wagon.

Starting the car’s engine and waiting for it to warm, I take a look at the bicycles, in a haphazard pile near the east wall of the garage. Michael’s blue bike is among them, next to my old Schwinn. I study the two bikes, side by side, and remember the day I was so determined that Michael had to learn to ride a bike. Why did I think this was so important? I can no longer remember. Who cares if he learns to ride a bike now, at age six? Who cares if he ever learns? I shrug. He might never learn. Or someday he might decide—as he did this morning, when he voluntarily looked in the dictionary and found the word anchor all by himself—that he is ready to take it on.