by Jan Baross

The blue shutters are half open in Mamá's yellow kitchen. She stands over the tin sink washing her face with rainwater. She rubs her gums and teeth with a slice of lime and spits into the sink. Mamá's blue robe hangs so loose it could be the curtain for a traveling show.

She turns toward me, sweeping her long peppered strands into a big bun, and pierces the bulb of her hair with an abalone comb.

"You are the slowest thing on earth!"; she says. "Go!";

I snatch the straw tortilla basket off the table. Since my sleep must be sacrificed, I slap my sandals loudly across the floor to wake my dreaming sisters and snoring father. Jumping down the back stairs, and off the last uneven step, I hear my loud echoes through Papá's store. His open barrels of grains and stacks of dried roots smell like old people's shoes. I skip past the cellar door where Papá makes his intoxicating aguardiente, fire water, that burns the throat with happiness.

I grab a stem of red licorice from the open jar on the counter. Stolen candy is the taste of morning.

My last revenge is to slam the front door shut so hard it rattles our neighbors' shutters. Villagers sleeping in the white buildings lining our quiet Plaza de Allende know when Tortugina has been unbedded.

Calle del Mar is my street. Anything named "street of the sea"; should have gray waves curling down the cobblestones, sweeping the youngest ones who run for morning tortillas into a quiet place where dreams are never interrupted.

Gabito's white shirt is a distant sail across the plaza. The heavy leather of his sandals rudders by habit toward the soft chugging of the tortilleria.

I have loved Gabito since I was six and he was eight and he beat me senseless on the black sand when I stole a kiss. I would willingly follow him through the most dangerous shoals.

He passes the small church with one white spire. Saint Assisi by the Sea, administered and swept by fat Padre Abstensia and horse-faced Mother Mary Inmaculada, who runs the nunnery that was once a stable. When Gabito and I marry, it will be in this white church.

At this hour, the plaza is barren of footsteps and covered in a light mist. Fat grackles chirp in the trees trimmed square as green boxes. Curled at the base, Salsa, the three-legged street dog, raises his patient brown head that is white from the birds' night droppings. al

Gabito sees me coming and sprints past wooden shutters closed as sleep. It is our running game. I have always chased him, believing that I could catch him. We fly past the cast-iron bandstand covered in flaking black curls from centuries of painting and repainting. Magicians, fat políticos, troubadours, all left their echoes under the pointed roof. Here the village band plays the same sour notes every Saturday. The old tunes inspired generations of calloused feet to dance, to court, to wed. I am the result of so much footwork.

I follow Gabito through the vegetable market, dodging between the empty stalls sheltered from the sun by bolts of colored canvas. In an hour, the vendors will be shouting their poems of produce.

"Caaa-caaaa-hueee-te! Peanuts! Naaaraaanjaaa! Oranges!";

Up ahead, Gabito runs past Señora Grosera. Under her faded red umbrella, the tiny vendor waves first at Gabito then at me. Her family has a lifetime claim to the coveted space in front of the Office of All Public Concerns.

"Carne caliente! Hot meat!"; shouts toothless Señora Grosera.
The old witch divines weather and predicts who should marry. She winks at us.
"Gabito! Tortugina! Hot meat!";

Señora Grosera shoves a slender stick into a marinated strip of beef. She drops it onto the grill. Her frying rooster-chilies sting my eyes. I hold my breath and hurry past her stand.

Outside the Chicken Palace, Señor Aves picks up the buckets of marigolds he feeds to the chickens so the yolks of their eggs will be bright yellow.

"Tortugina, what plague have you brought today?"; he says.

Señor Aves has never forgiven me for accidentally killing his rooster with my slingshot.

I hurry past him up the winding street.

"Assassin!"; he shouts after me.

As I follow Gabito around the last winding corner of upper Calle de Serpiente, his broad shoulders fill the street in front of Señora Porcion's tortilleria. Our hearts beat from the morning run, faster than the chugging of the old tortilla machine inside.

A breeze ruffles Gabito's hair, and I wish it were my fingers in his curls. Gabito is not the youngest and does not need to run for tortillas every morning. He is here so that we may stand side by side, arms barely touching in the tortilla line. As he enters through the low door of the tortilleria, he looks back over his shoulder and smiles at me. I slap the straw basket against my hip so he will notice my figure and follow Gabito into the dim warmth. In line, we stand close, elbow to elbow, and I breathe in the sweetness of baking corn and his diver's sea scent. It is my shame that my blood has not come so we cannot marry.

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