“Don’t bother,” said Kate. “Don’t think of it any more.”
“But yes. But yes!” and away she limped in distraction.
Till an hour later, loud cry from the far end of the house. Juana waving a scrap of greenery.
“Mire! Niña! Compré perjil a un centavo—I bought parsley for one cent. Is it right?”
“It is right,” said Kate.
And life could proceed once more.
There were two kitchens, the one next the dining-room, belonging to Kate, and the narrow little shed under the banana trees, belonging to the servants. From her verandah Kate looked away down to Juana’s kitchen shed. It had a black window hole.
Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap! Why I thought Concha was at school! said Kate to herself.
No!—there, in the darkness of the window hole was Concha’s swarthy face and mane, peering out like some animal from a cave, as she made the tortillas. Tortillas are flat pancakes of maize dough, baked dry on a flat earthenware plate over the fire. And the making consists of clapping a bit of new dough from the palm of one hand to the other, till the tortilla is of the requisite thinness, roundness, and so-called lightness.
Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap! It was as inevitable as the tick of some spider, the sound of Concha making tortillas in the heat of the morning, peering out of her dark window hole. And some time after mid-day, the smoke would be coming out of the window hole; Concha was throwing the raw tortillas on the big earthen plate over the slow wood fire.