Treasure of the World by Tara Sullivan (free ebook reader txt) 📕

people offering sympathy pool and eddy around us. I find I’m having trouble remembering who we’ve talked to. It feels like every time I blink, a new person is standing there. I blink again and it’s César and Belén.

“Have you found Daniel?” I blurt out.

Abuelita tsks at me for being rude, but César answers me politely.

“Not yet. But I promise you, Doña Montaño,” he says, holding Mami’s hands in both of his, “and you, Ana, that I will do everything I can to find the boy or, at the very least, return you his body so you can properly mourn. I’m so sorry for your family’s losses. As supervisor, I feel personally responsible. Please, if there’s anything I can do . . .”

I stare at César’s hands, unable to look at his face. I can’t help but notice that his knuckles are raw from scrubbing, but that he wasn’t able to fully get the dirt out of them either.

“Thank you for your kindness,” says Mami, “but when the Tío decides to take a man, there is nothing anyone can do about it. Please don’t blame yourself.”

César doesn’t contradict her. No miner would ever speak against the power of the devil of the mines, even standing on the steps of a church.

“Such a disaster,” Abuelita murmurs. “Five dead and seven injured.”

“You’ve counted wrong,” I hear myself say. I’m surprised that my voice is clear and calm. Inside I’m boiling.

“Your grandmother is right, Ana,” César says softly. “There are twelve slots I need to fill on that shift.”

“You’ve both counted wrong.” I can hear the steel creeping into my voice. Belén’s eyes are wide at my tone. She always seems to catch me at my worst.

“Ana!” Mami snaps. “Don’t be rude to Don César.”

I close my mouth and stare angrily at my feet and stop listening to them.

Because they’re wrong, wrong, wrong.

There are four dead.

Seven injured.

One missing.

When we get to the house that night, I collapse on my mat, feeling drained. Mami sits heavily on her bed, mechanically unbraiding her hair. Abuelita stands in the corner, staring into space. I watch Mami, too tired to move. Her fingers flex and weave. Her smooth black hair falls to her waist in waves, threaded with silver like the mountain.

“Mami?”

“Mmm?”

“What will we do now?”

Her fingers still.

“I don’t know, Ana,” she says finally. “But we’ll find a way. We’ll be all right.”

The empty words make me think of something Abuelita says: Promises set for a banquet, but rarely fill the plates.

“How much money do we have left?” I ask, thinking about the roll in her skirt pocket.

She closes her eyes briefly.

“None. We’ll need to work extra hard to pay off the burial. I still owe the cemetery some money.”

“How much?” I ask. When I was little, I used to complain when Mami couldn’t buy me the things I wanted. I’m sorry, mi hija, she would always say. I have to buy the things we need before I buy the things we want. Living isn’t free. Now that I’m older, I know that living isn’t free. Apparently dying isn’t free either.

“Never mind,” she says, her fingers moving again, double-time. “With a little hard work and a little luck, we’ll be fine.”

There’s that word again. Fine. I’m learning not to trust fine.

I chew my lower lip, thinking. Hard work doesn’t help you as a palliri. It’s one of the things I hate most about the work: there’s no way to do it better. You bash two rocks together and you either get lucky and find enough mineral in it to sell, or you don’t. There’s no smarter way to pick rocks; no faster way to get through them. The only way to have a better chance of finding the needle is to have more people searching through the haystack. I remember Don Marcelino’s sad face yesterday when I said I wasn’t staying at school. This isn’t forever, I tell myself, and I make up my mind.

“I’ll come to work with you and Abuelita tomorrow.”

“What? No,” Mami’s response is automatic. “You need to go to school.”

“With three of us working as palliris we’ll be able to sort more. If we find some good ore, we’ll be okay again, and then I’ll go back to school.”

“I don’t like the idea of you missing any more school. I know your papi never had much good to say about it, but I still think an education could get you a better life.”

“The older kids skip school all the time for work. It’s not like dancing around and counting to ten in French are going to do me much good on this mountain anyway.” I swallow against the burn in my throat and force the words out. “The price of mineral is high right now. School is for little kids.”

Mami sighs.

“Just until we pay off your father’s funeral,” she finally agrees.

10

Mami shakes me awake before the sun rises. The day is cold and cheerless. When I fill the pot from the water barrel to make tea, Mami shakes her head.

“We need to get started,” she says. “Just bring some coca leaves. We’ll chew them as we work.” She smiles to take the sting out of her words. “The sooner we pay off your father’s funeral, the sooner we can get you back to school.”

Mami, Abuelita, and I walk to a new slag heap, a little farther from home. This heap is by one of the active mines and Mami hopes it might have better metal than the one next to our house. All day long, carts loaded with crumbled rock will come out of the mouth of the mine and pour out their contents. Someone will sort the mineral-laden rocks from the ones that don’t seem worth it. They will take the good ones to the mining cooperative, which will extract the metal and pay the miners. The trash they will throw down the hill.

The trash is for us.

I hunch beside