Mambó and "Pelofino"

This is the first part of an unfinished short story I started last fall, obviously semi-autobiographical. If nothing else it depicts one of my favorite students, Mambó, better than I could do summarizing her in a couple paragraphs.

Mambó was six years old. Seis, she decided, and she liked how that sounded, short and rounded both in dominicano and haitiano, the language of her country and the language she spoke to her mother. Seis. Sis. To make six fingers she had to hold one hand out flat and stick the short finger out like a little stump from the other, like the Americana had showed her. It looked like a lot, and it made her laugh.
She didn’t know when her birthday was. Her birthday meant the day she was born, and that had a number too, like uno dos tres cuatro cinco. When the Americana asked Mambó what day she was born, she went home and asked her mama, and Pelo said it was a Tuesday in the evening and cold and raining and she was about to boil bananas when she realized Mambó was about to come out of her bouboun, so then instead of making dinner she just laid down on a wooden bunk, and when Mambó came out a woman called Natacha caught her and said she was long and thin just like Pelo, and then when her papa came back he was hungry but instead of giving him dinner Pelo gave him Mambó, and he was happy. But Mambó didn’t tell that to the Americana because it wasn’t a number like seis and she had a feeling it wasn’t what the Americana wanted to know.
But one day she heard the Americana say to someone else that Mambó was probably five or six, and then another day she heard her saying that she was probably six or maybe even seven, and Mambó liked the number seis and she liked how it looked on her fingers, so from then on she told all the other kids she was seis. And after awhile they forgot about when Mambó used to say she didn’t know her age, and they all knew that Mambó had six years.
It was still early, and the fog was slowly burning off the mountaintops as the sun gained strength. Mambó felt the hot sun on her back as she walked down the hill, but it felt good after her chilly early morning bath. She was holding both her elbows in her hands and looking down at the movement of her feet when she heard her aunt call out to her.
“Mambó, kikote ale?”
“I’m going down to Miguel’s,” said Mambó.
“Pou ki sa?”
“To buy something for my mama.”
“Wait, take these cuartos and buy me a quarter pound of sugar,” said her tía, switching to Spanish. She scurried into her house and came out with two coins in her hand.
Mambó took the change from her tía and continued down the hill. On her left was the Ramirez farm, where her mama and most of her family picked coffee. On the right was the other farm of the family that was called Vasquez. Today there was some ripe coffee to be picked, but not as much as other days. All of the men were working but most of the women weren’t, including her mama, who had stayed just outside the workers’ quarters, washing her and Mambó’s clothes with a bucket of water.
A little farther down Mambó came to the Dominican part of town. Yaqui was hanging clothes out to dry on the barbed wire fence. “Mambó, adónde vas?”
“To Miguel’s,” answered Mambó. “To buy something for my mamá.”
“For Pelofino?”
“Yes.”
Yaqui paused and kept her eyes on Mambó, holding a wet, bright blue blouse that she had been about to hang on the fence. “Mambó, why do they call your mama Pelofino?”
People always asked Mambó that question, and one day she went home and asked: “Pelo, how did you get your name?” Pelofino told her that when she met Mambó’s papa he thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, so he called her Fine Hair because to him her hair seemed as fine as any white girl’s. But once Mambó told that story to Miguel at the colmado, and he laughed.
“I don’t know,” said Mambó, and kept walking, twirling one of the twists in her hair. She did this whenever she felt nervous or tired. It made her think of her mama.
“Ay, hombre.” Yaqui was shaking her head now, almost as if she were sorry for Mambó, except she had a grin on her face. “Has your mamá ever looked in a mirror? She don’t got no pelo fino. She’s a prieta like all the rest of ‘em and she’s got pelo malo.”
Mambó kept walking and twisting her hair, her own pelo malo. Yaqui’s words brushed by her like the wind. Mambó knew what they meant and didn’t need to let them enter her again: she was a prieta. Her mama was a prieta. Some Dominicans were dark too, like the young woman she saw now who was always sitting out on her front porch with her baby. She almost looked like a haitiana, but her baby boy was more white than she, so everyone said he was precioso. Mambó never got too close to the baby because she knew that if she touched it some of her dark tint might rub off and the boy could become a prieta like Mambó or her mama. Then Mambó’s best friend, Denís, would probably be angry with her and might not want to play with her anymore.
Mambó stopped when she got to the house where the Americana lived. She stood still facing the door and listened to see if the Americana was awake. Her mama had not instructed her to go see the Americana, only to make a purchase down the hill at Miguel’s colmado. But maybe today Mambó could convince the Americana to give her veinte pesos, or the pairs of jeans her mama wanted for going out. Or maybe the Americana would walk with her down the hill and sing her the alphabet song again. But putting her ear to the door, she heard no sound inside the Americana’s little casita.

Mambó was a very beautiful, intelligent little girl and motivated student, the only child for whom the Montessori literacy method I was attempting to use (for lack of any other literacy training) actually seemed to be working. She started off not knowing even one letter of the alphabet, and was too timid and/or apprehensive to even to pick up a crayon and express herself. Within a couple months of me working with her in the library, both one-on-one and with groups of other children, she not only knew the sounds of several letters but was creating a series of expressive drawings of human figures in which males and females were distinguished by their genitalia (an "O" shape representing a vagina, an "I" for a penis).

She was my biggest success story, and I loved working with her. But at times I also felt uncomfortable in her presence. Her mother (who was actually universally called "Pelofino"), was very poor and had taught Mambó to be a very effective beggar. Sometimes she would send Mambó down to the library at times of day when I hadn't been planning on opening it, and would instruct her to just hang around for lunch because she knew I or someone else in the farm office would eventually give her food (which we did on several occasions). Mambó sometimes would ask me for money, often for her mother, but giving out cash was where I drew the line. I was only living on a volunteer stipend after all, and even though that stipend was still a lot more than most families in the community earned, I didn't want to be seen as Miss Moneybags.

Once, Mambó told me very matter-of-factly that her mother would like two pairs of pants that she could use for "going out". (I later heard rumors, unconfirmed but believable, that Pelofino's boyfriend was exploiting her as a prostitute.) She didn't want me to buy her clothes, but rather, just give her some out of my supposedly infinite supply. I repeated the request to Mambó just to clarify: "Your mom wants me to give her a pair of pants?"

"Two pairs of pants," Mambó corrected me. I told her I was very sorry but that I only had 3 pairs of jeans total, and I didn't think her mom would want them because they were old and stained and not really any good for going out. Still, it wasn't the last time the request was brought up.

The most strange and vivid memory I have of Mambó and her mother is one day when I went outside of my casita to use the outhouse, only to find Mambó and Pelofino standing right outside my door and kind of staring at it. They hadn't actually knocked and I can't remember if I had any inkling at the time of why they were there. I hardly ever invited people into my house, but put in that position it seemed like the only thing I could do. I offered Mambó and her mother seats at my small kitchen table, feeling self-conscious because even if I'd been able to communicate easily with Pelofino (who spoke hardly any Spanish) I wouldn't have known what to talk to her about.

Generally when you enter the house of any campo Dominican they immediately offer you a cup of coffee. Since I didn't have any coffee in the house, I asked Pelofino, with Mambó serving as a translator, if she would like some hot chocolate. She said yes, but no milk. I heated up some water and served Mambó and her mother a mug of hot chocolate each. But they had each only taken a few sips before Pelofino took both the mugs and brought them to the sink. At first I thought that she hadn't liked it and was pouring it down the sink, but it turned out she had taken an empty water bottle she'd found in my house and was pouring the hot chocolate into the water bottle, presumably to save for later.

I will never forget that moment. Any American and even most Dominicans would have considered her behavior very rude, but when you are poor you do what you have to do, and practicality equals survival. That night, or maybe the next morning, Mambó and her mother, and probably also their friends and extended family in the batey, would be in for a rare treat: a few sips of sweet hot chocolate, reheated in an old dented pot above the fire.