Afterward I was haunted by an inability to recapture her expression. It was a terrible moment, not just because she had left the vicinity of the girl and gone out under the sky-something that felt forbidden to me then-but because of the disorder in her face. I saw that she had gone into the garden, something that she did only rarely the hem of her robe was starred with seedheads. She rushed forward, gown trailing behind her. Once she caught me scattering purple violets and the paler ones they call Confederates on the lid of the chest. Careful about how the girl was presented, she showed me at length how to clean and polish the glass so that it would not become marred by scratches. My mother had designed the gown and the slippers and was a marvelous needlewoman. Because of those clothes, I know the words for the old-fashioned magics of stitchery and lace. The useless slippers had been crafted from tatting, and were tied with ribbons of white grosgrain. She wore a white batiste dress, finely ruched, with pearl buttons and handmade buttonholes.
She seemed to emanate a faint lunar glow, and I was fascinated by her perfection-the fine, long eyelashes, the smear of lavender on the eyelids, the curls that were as cursive and tendrilous as a line of embroidered calligraphy. The first memory that I can conjure quite clearly is one of lying on the glass box in the claustral living room, staring at the girl. I like that story because it suggests that other children may be acquainted with metamorphosis. In a last indignity, after obliterating the houses of Cresencio’s village with a relentless black confetti, the volcano stole its name: Paricutin, no longer home but a district of hell. Liquid stone shouldered through streets, plugging everything but the bell tower of a church. Cresencio spied a tongue of smoke, like the mockings of a demon he bent, staring into the jagged mouth that was about to spatter the nearby trees with sparks and set his childhood on fire. Perhaps you’ve heard an anecdote about a child named Cresencio who was skipping barefoot between hills of corn when a shallow bowl in the field, long turbulent with mutterings, broke into pieces.
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