holiday

Today is International Women´s day. We did nothing to celebrate it here. Yesterday seemed the real holiday. There was nothing to celebrate but the fact that the two egg eating guests were on a day long trek and thus the grounds were free of outsiders. When I arrived at the Casa Principal to perform my usual morning tasks of sweeping, mopping, fluffing pillows and beating rugs, the girls were already at work. The furniture was all moved to the edges of the living room or turned on it´s side. They were playing, blasting, euro-club hits. Mostly remixes of american or eastern european dance hall classics. Such a festive air, as if we were all finally preparing for an event we had been anticipating for quite some time. It was like spring cleaning or else Thanksgiving preparations. Everyone had their task and seemed genuinely thrilled to be doing it. My task was to wash the outside of the windows. I was indeed happy to be doing it. Eugenio was cutting the grass nearby and the sun was bright and the wind fresh. I could watch the girls inside often dancing or singing along to the club music, only slightly muted by the triple pane glass. When the place was spotless, Vani, Gladis and I ate fruit and fried chicken in the kitchen.
Vani and Gladis are cousins, but this is a secret. For reasons I could not seem to understand, they want no one to know. Vani is bad, like a naughty child bad. She lies a lot and says mean things and makes dirty jokes. She loves to say english words and is obsessed with money. She wants to know the cost of everything, my plane ticket, my shoes, my rent, my salary, my boyfriends salary, my moms salary. She wants me to be rich. She has this very grand vision of the United States--all disneylands and hollywoods-- and my being here mopping floors with them distorts her image. Regardless, she is glad I am here. I can tell. She has cruel little nicknames for me and always brings me special pastries left over from breakfast.
I like Gladis and Vani together. Vani acts bad and Gladis laughs. I like to think of them growing up together. Gladis has two sisters while Vani has five. Now, they both have children. Vani has one boy and Gladis, three. Vani said she killed the father of her child and also her father and gladis giggled a lot. I assumed it was a lie and so laughed too. They told me all this while we sat and ate chicken during our break from holiday cleaning. We then shared with one another all the words in english and spanish for male and female genitalia. Vani was especially intent on learning the words, though Gladis, whose english pronunciation is nearly perfect, repeated the english words with more ease than even I. Gladis is cool. So collected, unfased, observant. We laughed quite a bit and then Diego came in to wash his calloused hands and pick at the chicken. The girls repeated the words for him and then a lot of other spanish words I didn´t know, which made the girls laugh a lot and Diego smile and blush. Jokes concerning human genitalia are a universal crowd pleaser.
After lunch, we polished the silverware at the same low table we had been eating chicken at (also the same low table the guests had eaten ten eggs at the previous afternoon). There is something about polishing silverware that inevitably makes one feel a certain anticipation for something grand. It is a hopeful activity. It speaks of someone coming to dinner.
The fact is, someone is always coming to dinner here. Today, a retired british couple came to dinner in travel sandles and fast-drying pants. They spoke so softly as they ate their venison that I had trouble making out the conversation, which was frustrating. I do know that they are going to go horseback riding tomorrow to see if tony, the man, can keep up with lisa, his wife. She rides and he doesn´t and they want to know if it is a potential activity for them to share in their retirement. I also know that he only brought one pair of pants on this trip, the rest all shorts. He also likes to run, though has only managed two runs in the last three weeks. I hope they get more exciting.