Fiebre Tropical by Juliana Delgado Lopera

Author:Juliana Delgado Lopera [Lopera, Juliana Delgado]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781936932757
Google: NZ2dwAEACAAJ
Amazon: 193693275X
Publisher: Amethyst Editions
Published: 2020-03-03T23:00:00+00:00

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Milagros picked up Myriam in a taxi. When they arrived La Tata had transformed the living room into a healing cocoon: carefully laid-out pillows, ruanas, and blankets, warm water, aguapanela for an entire batallón, chicken caldo, beef caldo, vegetable caldo. Vickvaporú for days. Isodine, Dolorán, gauze, a rocking chair. Curtains parted, the midafternoon sun warming Myriam’s frail body. When I asked La Tata how she knew her daughter was beat, La Tata responded she felt the pálpitos, mija. A mother knows, a mother knows. And I knew, she continued, that Myriam’s pain ran deep, and I was right. Her soul came back broken.

They didn’t speak. Mami’s silencing shame didn’t allow for any small talk but also she still could not just outright ask for forgiveness. Cachaco, you do not know stubborn. And more than orgullo, it was the saddening gaze, chills running down her spine every time Nicolás’s memory imposed itself on her like a bucket of ice slowly released on her back. Myriam was más allá que acá. And the sueño! The riches! Not only broken but pulverized. Mansur at times a beautiful mirage warming her toes, her neck, the tip of her earlobe—then quickly swallowed by the darkness rippling inside. Heart clouded by an uncomfortable heaviness but Myriam dared not cry. She would never admit it (even to herself) but girlfriend hit her first rock bottom (congratulations!) and La Tata right there, wrapping her in a motherly blanket of tenderness and Merthiolate. La hija pródiga returning home. At night Myriam would wake up panting, sweating, like Bogotá didn’t rest 2,600 meters closer to the stars, running a 104 fever only lowered with sliced lemons in her socks and leche magnesia. In Milagros’s words: Francisca, tu mamá was nothing but a threadbare trapo.

Dios mío.

And it was during those sleepless nights, between nightmare fevers and mumbles, that Myriam started speaking to Dios.

Just outside the bedroom La Tata left the radio on for most of the day, humming boleros, listening to the few old radionovelas that still aired, but mostly it was El Minuto de Dios tuned in day and night. The unofficial official white noise of the house was Padre Ignacio’s fervor in the name of the Father and the Son and the Espíritu Santo. Padre Ignacio’s muffled voice, like someone speaking into a plastic cup, directing todos los oyentes to leave their worries at the door and give themselves to the One Above. Like most souls in our berraco country, la cartagenera was a cultural Catholic attending mass on Sundays, crossing herself when in front of a church, sometimes lighting the Virgen a candle but never taking The Power of El Señor too seriously. The fever changed that. Rock bottom changed that. The murky forest of gloom swaying inside her called for release, and girlfriend understood she needed help from someone bigger than herself, perhaps that mister from above? A foam of clouds began appearing during her dreams. A gold radio right in the middle of the gray cotton clouds and Myriam sitting on those clouds stroking the radio, repeating the songs and prayers.

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