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Show in my father's house/ 133 "If nothing else, maybe this trip will help us count our blessings," Aunt Helga stated firmly. There was no middle class in Monterrey, and we would stay in the richer part of town, a friend of my father's --a man who was just beginning to live the Principle. Although he was only moderately successful by American standards, in Monterrey he was wealthy. Just as I had never seen such poverty, neither had I known that such wealth existed for ordinary people. Statues and figurines adorned the grounds and exterior of the three-story white stucco house with red trim where we would live for the coming month. Inside a huge marble staircase led to seven or eight bedrooms, and another broadened into a living area, the ground floor with fish pond and dining hall, the kitchen backed by servants' quarters. I wandered through the house, pretending to be a movie star, but it wasn't fun; I kept thinking of the hungry children and their glassy eyes. Corinne and I spent the first week sliding down the marble stairs, with our dresses tucked under our bottoms to keep the flesh from sticking. Then my mother helped me write notes to my father. At first, I didn't want to write; even his memory sent jets of pain into my left arm and through my heart, leaving me with a distracted, half-realized feeling of having lost something without knowing what. Then I pretended I was really talking to him, cradled on his knee, and I began to enjoy our note-writing sessions, me dictating as my mother printed hurriedly on |