Miña was secretive and guarded.
She seemed to be made of wood.
So slow and sure were her movements,
but she never made a blunder, or left a chore undone.
She never spoke unless spoken to, except to her parrot.
She had high cheekbones, and her gaze was like an eagle's.
It seemed to assess you from a distance,
as if measuring your strengths and weaknesses.
Miña got along very well with Clarissa and my aunts,
but she couldn't stand tío Alejandro.
When he kicked his sisters or pulled their hair,
Miña would stand in front of him, arms akimbo, and say,
you think that little prick of yours is your scepter
because you were Emajaguas's prince.
But you're no different from my other children.
You've suckled my milk, and gone to sleep in my arms,
just as they have.
They are a part of you, that was born in Barrio Camarones,
and have slept on straw mats on the floor,
four persons to a bed, and four mats to a room,
and has gone barefoot, like I have.
So you have no reason to get high and mighty,
and abuse other people.
And Alejandro would bow his head and slink out of the room.
Miña was up before dawn, because she was in charge of cleaning
and laundering.
Every Thursday, she would set a huge cauldron
over an open fire, and sit patiently
in front of the boiling soap and water,
churning and swirling the family's underwear and bed
linen with a long pole.
I'm sure that was why Miña knew so many
of our family's secrets, because she was in charge of our dirty
laundry.
She always knew when abuelo Alvaro over and abuela Valeria
had made love, and when a new child was on the way.
And she also knew when they didn't make love
and things were tense.
Because she scrubbed the toilet, she
knew when there was trouble at the mill,
because strife gave abuelo Alvaro diarrhea.
She knew when my aunts became señoritas before abuela Valeria
did.
And she also knew when tío Alejandro began to have wet
dreams, and hate girls because none of them liked him.
Miña also had to clean the bathtub,
so she knew when Alejandro stayed out late drinking
at the bars, because the next day he always shunned baths.
But what really let Miña in on the family secrets was
the beautiful multicolored ball of soap she kept on a glass
dish on top of her wash basin.
She had fashioned it through the years,
sticking together all the scraps of soap
she had saved from the slivers she found discarded
in the family's bathroom.
I saw it for the first time one afternoon,
when I went to visit her in her room.
We had just arrived from La Concordia,
and I scampered up the dark wooden staircase
of the carriage house, and hid in the bathroom,
wanted to give Miña a scare.
I saw the soap resting on its dish, all shiny, and larger
than a softball.
I picked it up, and it smelled of every single person
in the house--
of abuela Valeria, tía Siglinda, tía Dido, tía Artemisa,
tía Lakhmé, and tío Alejandro.
I turned it around slowly, inhaling everybody's secrets,
abuela's anger when she bickered with Clarissa,
Siglinda's desire when she thought of tío Venancio,
Dido's excitement when she was writing a new poem,
Artemisa's devotion when she was praying in church,
Lakhmé's delight when she wore a new dress, and above all,
Miña's smell, which held all the scraps of soap together in one
marvelous perfumed globe.
But I never dare asked Miña about the soap ball.
I put it back gingerly in its dish,
and ran down the stairs, and out of the carriage house.