The Moths and Other Stories by Helena María Viramontes
Author:Helena María Viramontes
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Arte Público Press
Published: 1985-02-14T16:00:00+00:00
III
He’s got lice. Probably from living in the detainers. Those are the rooms where they round up the children and make them work for their food. I saw them from the window. Their eyes are cut glass, and no one looks for sympathy. They take turns, sorting out the arms from the legs, heads from the torsos. Is that one your mother? one guard asks, holding a mummified head with eyes shut tighter than coffins. But the children no longer cry. They just continue sorting as if they were salvaging cans from a heap of trash. They do this until time is up and they drift into a tunnel, back to the womb of sleep, while a new group comes in. It is all very organized. I bite my fist to keep from retching. Please, God, please don’t let Geraldo be there.
For you see, they took Geraldo. By mistake, of course. It was my fault. I shouldn’t have sent him out to fetch me a mango. But it was just to the corner. I didn’t even bother to put his sweater on. I hear his sandals flapping against the gravel. I follow him with my eyes, see him scratching his buttocks when the wind picks up swiftly, as it often does at such unstable times, and I have to close the door.
The darkness becomes a serpent’s tongue, swallowing us whole. It is the night of La Llorona. The women come up from the depths of sorrow to search for their children. I join them, frantic, desperate, and our eyes become scrutinizers, our bodies opiated with the scent of their smiles. Descending from door to door, the wind whips our faces. I hear the wailing of the women and know it to be my own. Geraldo is nowhere to be found.
Dawn is not welcomed. It is a drunkard wavering between consciousness and sleep. My life is fleeing, moving south towards the sea. My tears are now hushed and faint.
The boy, barely a few years older than Geraldo, lights a cigarette, rests it on the edge of his desk, next to all the other cigarette burns. The blinds are down to keep the room cool. Above him hangs a single bulb that shades and shadows his face in such a way as to mask his expressions. He is not to be trusted. He fills in the information, for I cannot write. Statements delivered, we discuss motives.
“Spies,” says he, flicking a long burning ash from the cigarette onto the floor, then wolfing the smoke in as if his lungs had an unquenchable thirst for nicotine. “We arrest spies. Criminals.” He says this with cigarette smoke spurting out from his nostrils like a nosebleed. “Spies? Criminal?” My shawl falls to the ground. “He is only five and a half years old.” I plead for logic with my hands. “What kind of crimes could a five-year-old commit?”
“Anyone who so willfully supports the Contras in any form must be arrested and punished without delay.” He knows the line by heart.
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