Read The Queen of Water for Free Online

happy blond children drinking red juice. I think carefully before I give her an answer.
    You see, I’ve been to school before. For six terrible weeks. I was about five years old, and, against my mother’s wishes, I went to school instead of pasturing the sheep. That first morning, with high hopes, I tromped down the dusty, pebbled dirt road toward the school, a low cement building. Inside the classroom, everything smelled of chalk dust and pencil shavings and disinfectant. I started out the morning with my most charming smile, hoping the teacher would notice how my eyes danced, how irresistibly vivísima I was.
    I learned quickly that this mestiza teacher ruled her little kingdom with a cruel hand. Three times that first morning she pinched my ear with her sharp fingernails. Four times she called me a stupid longa. “How many fingers?” she demanded during math time, stabbing the air with her pointy nails.
    I knew my numbers in Quichua from playing market so much; I could even add and subtract and make change. But in Spanish I was speechless.
    “Stupid longa, ” she said, hitting the side of my head.
    Over the next six weeks, my ears had permanent red marks from the teacher’s nails, as did the other indigenous students’. Whenever I whispered to my classmates in Quichua to ask what letter comes after c or how to make a lowercase f, there came the nails again.
    I blinked hard, over and over, and bit my tongue and thought of Cheetah, waiting for me outside the classroom. Cheetah, who believed I was the smartest girl in the world. For six weeks I suffered through this, and here is why.
    Mamita gave me a few riales every day to buy a snack at school. But I decided to save my riales for my first pair of shoes, because my bare feet looked ugly next to all my classmates’ shoes and boots. At snack time, while the other children bought little plastic bags of popcorn, I cuddled with Cheetah. I hung on to my riales in my sweaty fist, my stomach growling as I pictured the little pile of riales growing in a cloth bag at the bottom of my cardboard clothes box.
    Once I had enough money, my sister brought me to the market to spend it. And that afternoon, back at home, I stood tall in my brand-new black rubber boots and jutted out my chin and announced to Mamita, “I am never going back to school again.”
    “Fine.” She shrugged. “Now you can make yourself useful and pasture the animals.”
    This was one of the few things we agreed on. School was a waste of time.
    “No,” I finally say to the Doctorita. “I’m not going to school.” My muscles tense instinctively, preparing for her fists.
    At first her eyes flash with anger, as though she’d hit me if my bodyguard Niño Carlitos weren’t nearby. But a sour smile creeps over her face. “Fine. No school for you. You’ll stay an ignorant longa all your life. You’ll never know how to read or write.”
    Something about her words stings more than a slap. I turn away from her smug face and look at the TV. The commercial has ended and the show is back on. There’s a beautiful lady in a glittering dress onstage, belting out a romantic song. Her sequins flash in the spotlight like thousands of little mirrors.
    An idea forms inside me, an idea that gives me happy shivers. Maybe I can be a famous singer when I grow up. That way it won’t matter if I can’t read or write—except for my name, of course, to give autographs. I imagine myself onstage, my fans going wild. After my last song, they stand up and cheer and shower me with rose petals and flowers and everyone is begging for my autograph, even the Doctorita. Niño Carlitos gives me a giant bouquet, the biggest of all, so big I can barely carry it. I am proud of you, my daughter, he says, and kisses the top of my head.
    Now, in the mornings, while the Doctorita and Niño Carlitos are gone, I practice being a famous singer. I turn up the stereo and let my hair loose and swing it around and clutch an invisible microphone