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

emphatically. “La Pachamama was angry. No one should challenge a power that strong.”

A cold, slightly slurred voice speaks over my shoulder before any of us has the chance to respond.

“The 2011 cone collapse happened because the tunnels underneath were empty and unstable, and no one had shored them up before moving on. There was nothing mystical about it, Mamá. It’s physics.”

Abuelita closes her mouth and the rest of us stiffen slightly. None of us contradicts Papi. Mami gets to her feet and walks over to him.

“How was your day?” she asks, taking his helmet and satchel from him. The satchel is oddly stuffed. It should be empty. He would have chewed the coca leaves and drunk the alcohol that was in it this morning while he was working. From how unsteady he is on his feet right now, I know he drank more than what was in the bag. I’m curious what might be in there and why he’s home so much earlier than usual, but I know better than to ask questions when I don’t know how drunk he is.

“It was a good day,” he slurs. Papi’s face, usually all angles and hard lines, is softened around the edges by the drink. “A very good day! They came . . . the news came . . . from the city. The prices of zinc and tin are up. There’s money to be made in mining again!”

We all make appreciative noises, but they’re not enough for Papi.

“You all”—he sways slightly on his feet before recovering himself—“you all don’t know how hard I work to feed you. The price of mineral went up! We should celebrate! Mónica! We should . . . celebrate . . .”

It seems to me that maybe Papi has done enough celebrating with his miner friends already. Mami steers him into the house, making soothing noises. Now that Papi is home, she will focus on making dinner. Daniel, Abuelita, and I bend our heads to our task without talking. Talking annoys Papi.

The price of mineral went up! I think, remembering my words to Victor this morning and feeling weirdly like I made it happen. Maybe this will be a good thing. Maybe he really can make some quick money and come back to school.

I pick up a rock from the pile and smash it against another until one of them cracks. I peer carefully at the cross section, rubbing my finger along the rough ridges, squinting for the stripes of color or texture changes that would mean there’s enough of something in it—zinc, aluminum, tin, maybe even a spiderweb thread of silver—to make it worth selling. Nothing: the middle is a uniform, pockmarked reddish rock. I toss the useless halves down the slope and pick up another one. And then another and another and another. Only when we run out of daylight, nearly five hours later, do we stop and head inside.

Abuelita holds her outmost skirt to make a pouch. I pick up the pile of rocks the three of us found that we think are worth trying to sell and set them inside it for her to carry. They fit easily. Even at a higher price, we won’t make much off that. Sighing, I loop Abuelita’s free hand through my elbow and guide her over the uneven ground to our house. She puts the pile of rocks beside the door and we go inside. Daniel, carrying the schoolbags, is a step behind us.

Three of the walls of our one-room house are built from chunks of reject stones loosely mortared together. Once, when Daniel had pneumonia and needed to stay home sick for a month, he complained it was like living in a cave of failure, but I try not to listen to him when he’s crabby. The fourth wall of the room is chipped into the side of the Cerro Rico itself. I’m sure it saved the builders some time and energy to borrow part of the house from the mountain, but the cold radiates off it and there are days when I feel like I can never get warm, even indoors. Winter, summer, it doesn’t matter. Nights are always cold this high up the Andes.

Mami carries in the pot of soup she has made and serves it into bowls, handing Papi his before anyone else. We sit in a circle on the floor since our house is too small to fit a table, chewing on the softened strips of llama jerky and freeze-dried potatoes in the soup. I’m hungry, but I know better than to rush.

We usually eat in silence, so I’m surprised when Papi finishes his bowl of soup and starts talking.

“Mónica, pass me my bag.”

Mami puts down her bowl immediately and fetches it for him. I bite down on the inside of my cheek, annoyed. He could have reached out and picked up his bag, but instead he made her get it for him. Not that she had far to go: our house is tiny. But still. He was finished and she was still eating. I duck my head so that he won’t accidentally read something in my face he doesn’t like. It’s better to let Papi have his little victories. Then he doesn’t feel the need for bigger ones.

Mami hands him the bag without a word.

Papi opens the flap and digs inside. We all stare at him. Though none of us said anything, I guess we were all curious about what was in it.

When Papi pulls out a miner’s zip-front coveralls and helmet, for one second I think that he wasted our money buying himself a spare set of work clothes. There’s no point in spare clothes. They get filthy by the end of any day of mining, so there’s barely a point in even washing them. Mami only cleans the clothes he wears inside the coveralls, his sweaters and slacks and shirts, never the coveralls themselves.

It’s only when he throws the outfit into Daniel’s lap that I realize they’re not full-size coveralls and that he didn’t buy them for himself. My heart stops.

I