Sefiofa 
 Rodriguez 
 and Qtheh 
 Wo^ds 
 
A book in the series 
 Latin America in translation 
 En traduccion 
 Em tradu^ao 
 Sponsored by the Duke- 
 University of North Carolina 
 Joint Program in 
 Latin American Studies 
 
Martha Cerda 
 
 Translated from the Spanish 
 
 by Sylvia Jimenez-Andersen 
 
 Duke University Press 
 
 Durham and London 1997 
 
Translation of the books in the series Latin America in 
 Translation / En Traduction / Em Tradu^ao, a collaboration 
 between the Duke-University of North Carolina Joint 
 Program in Latin American Studies and the university presses 
 of Duke and the University of North Carolina, is supported 
 by a grant from the Mellon Foundation. 
 
 © 1997 Duke University Press All rights reserved 
 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 00 
 Typeset in Galliard by Keystone Typesetting, Inc. 
 
 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear 
 on the last printed page of this book. 
 
Acknowledgments 
 
 Special thanks to the following people: 
 
 Don Joaquin Diez Canedo Mortiz, Joaquin Diez Canedo 
 Flores and Aurora Diez Canedo Flores, publishers of the first 
 edition of La senora Rodriquezy otros mundos in Spanish: Editorial 
 Joaquin Mortiz, Mexico, 1990. 
 
 Milagros Palma, director of Indigo & Cote-femmes Editions, 
 the publisher of La senora Rodriguez et autres nwndes , Paris, 1993. 
 
 Luis Mario Cerda, publisher of the second edition of La senora 
 Rodriguez , La Luciemaga Editores, Guadalajara, 1994. 
 
 To theater directors, Gerardo Maldonado, Sergio Lasso, Dr. 
 Juan Hernandez-Senter, and actresses Maria Elena Saldana and 
 Irma Lozano, who brought La senora Rodriguez y otros mundos to 
 stages in Mexico City, Guadalajara, Monterrey, and Long Beach, 
 California. 
 
 To Sylvia Jimenez-Andersen, the translator. 
 
 To Laura Dail and Duke Uni vers it}' Press, who made this 
 English-language edition of La senora Rodriguez possible. 
 
Contents 
 
 One i 
 Multiverse 3 
 Two 6 
 
 After the Canaries 7 
 Three 10 
 
 A Happy Family 12 
 Four 15 
 Good Habits 16 
 Five 18 
 
 The First Time 20 
 Six 22 
 
 The City of Children 23 
 Seven 25 
 
 In the Dream Clock 27 
 Eight 29 
 
 Last N ight at N ight 31 
 
 Nine 36 
 Hide-and-Seek 38 
 Ten 41 
 
 The Best Night 42 
 
 Eleven 44 
 
 No One Knows for 
 Whom One Works 45 
 
 Twelve 48 
 
 Blue in the Family 50 
 
 Thirteen 52 
 
 German Dolls 53 
 
 Fourteen 55 
 
 Between the Lines 57 
 
 Fifteen 59 
 
 With Respect to the Sky 
 Sixteen 63 
 
Without Knowing That It 
 Is You 64 
 
 Seventeen 68 
 
 Office Machine 69 
 
 Eighteen 72 
 
 Geography Lesson 74 
 
 Nineteen 76 
 
 The Congregation in the 
 Park 77 
 
 Twenty 80 
 
 N o -Man’s -Land 81 
 
 Twenty-one 83 
 
 And the Crows Cawed 85 
 
 Twenty-two 88 
 
 Heard in Passing 89 
 
 Twenty-three 91 
 
 The Same Stock 92 
 
 Twenty-four 94 
 
 At the Baptismal Font 96 
 
 Twenty-five 99 
 
 A Time of Mourning 101 
 
 Twenty-six 105 
 
 Last Night, Mariana 106 
 
 Twenty-seven no 
 
 It’s Their Fault 112 
 
 Twenty- eight 116 
 
 Right Place, Wrong 
 Time 117 
 
 Twenty-nine 119 
 
 Blame It on Hormones 120 
 
 Thirty' 125 
 
 Amanda’s Motives 127 
 Epilogue 134 
 
I 
 
 s 
 
 X^r enora Rodriguez reached into her purse with her left hand 
 searching for a Kleenex and grabbed a half-licked lollipop. “The 
 drops!” she shouted, “I forgot to give Carlitos his drops” and, 
 sighing, she clasped her hands together before reaching into her 
 purse again, this time with her right hand, and took out a comb, 
 which reminded Sehora Rodriguez that she had to dye her hair 
 because she was going to have a party the following Saturday. 
 “How time flies, it seems like only yesterday my niece Laurita was 
 bom, and now she’s about to turn fifteen. It’s too bad her mother 
 died and that shameless brother of mine went, in less than a year, 
 and remarried, that. . And saying this, she went back to grop¬ 
 ing through her purse without any luck. Something became en¬ 
 tangled in her fingers, and she pulled out the sandalwood rosary 
 that her mother-in-law had brought her from Rome, with a papal 
 blessing. “What could the good lady, may she rest in peace, have 
 been thinking — but she did not like me at all, as if her son were 
 going to be her mama’s boy forever. And me so foolish: Yes 
 ma’am, no ma’am, while she told me what her son should eat, 
 what time he should go to bed, and I don’t know how many 
 other things.” Sehora Rodriguez put her rosary away and pulled 
 out a crumpled paper. “The phone bill!” Sehora Rodriguez 
 shouted and ran to her car and headed for the nearest phone 
 company office. “That’s all I need, to have my phone discon¬ 
 nected and be cut off from the world; I hope I get there on time. 
 
It’s my only source of pleasure besides tv,” groaned Senora 
 Rodriguez while she parked her car in a no-parking space. She 
 was about to get out of the car when she heard, ‘Tour license, 
 please.” Senora Rodriguez plunged her hand into her purse once 
 again and after taking out some matches, a lipstick, a recipe for 
 bread pudding, a pen without ink and some ancho chiles, she 
 finally found the Kleenex and blew her nose with a loud blast. 
 ‘Tour license, please,” repeated the officer. Senora Rodriguez put 
 her dirt}' Kleenex away and continued searching; her fingers stuck 
 to Susanita’s gum. “It’s just too much that this kid is so sloppy,” 
 Senora Rodriguez complained. “When will she learn not to leave 
 her gum in my purse, what’s the officer going to say?” After many 
 tries, Senora Rodriguez was able to pull out Carlitos’s report card 
 full of Fs, the rubber bands for Susanita’s ponytail and a ten- 
 thousand-peso bill, with which the officer was satisfied. Then 
 Senora Rodriguez remembered that she didn’t have a license be¬ 
 cause she had not passed her driver’s exam. When she took the 
 exam she couldn’t find her glasses. Naturally, she was carrying 
 the same purse, a gift for her thirtieth birthday from her mother- 
 in-law. 
 
 2 
 
Multiverse 
 
 T 
 
 fi 1 he day I turned one year old, I woke up wet. In their bed¬ 
 room my parents were snoring after a night of partying three 
 houses down from city hall, where Don Manuel was discussing 
 the new economic program, not with his ministers, but with 
 Columba, his wife, who listened to him, thinking to herself that 
 in a few months she would no longer be the first lady and proba¬ 
 bly not even a lady, which tormented her, even though deep 
 inside she thanked God, something she had not been able to do 
 in public since Don Manuel had become president. At the stroke 
 of six o’clock in the morning I let out my first scream, feeling 
 abandoned in that house in the same neighborhood in the same 
 city where we all five. The light shone on me from my mama’s 
 nightstand. I knew that from that point it would be at least fifteen 
 minutes until I was taken out of my crib, during which time my 
 dad would growl, pulling the blanket up to his eyes and Mama 
 would yawn without waking up completely and Don Manuel 
 would put on a robe to go to the bathroom and Doha Columba 
 would not do anything except dream, probably about her new 
 life. When Mama arrived with my nice dry diapers and my warm 
 bottle and, before changing my diapers, gave me a kiss that tick¬ 
 led my nose, Don Manuel was already phoning his secretary and 
 Doha Columba and Papa were turning over in their respective 
 beds in the same city. However, in London, where it was seven 
 hours later, the queen was peering out discreedy from a balcony 
 
in Buckingham Palace and watching an old man off in the dis¬ 
 tance who wasn’t an old man but a disguised guard making his 
 daily rounds as always. 
 
 Just like every night. Papa and Mama shook the bed and sighed 
 for a while until they fell asleep, just like Don Manuel and Doha 
 Columba and also the queen and the prince consort. My parents, 
 however, had my sister, who took over my crib, but I, fortunately, 
 could already get out by myself and climb on the bed in another 
 room in the same house in the same city that my sister and I 
 began our lives in and where Don Manuel was finishing his term 
 many kilometers outside of London, where the queen didn’t be¬ 
 gin or finish anything, since her reign was for life. Therefore, now 
 that I am about to turn twenty, the queen continues to be the 
 queen even though all the rest have changed, for although Papa 
 and Mama continue to sigh during the night, each one does it on 
 their own, just like Don Manuel and his wife: he in Paris and she 
 in London, where the same queen peers out from the same bal¬ 
 cony and sees the same old man who no longer needs to dye his 
 hair gray but continues to guard the same queen that Doha Co¬ 
 lumba admires while she looks at pictures from twenty years ago, 
 when I was a baby and she was the first lady and met the same 
 queen who now doesn’t know her because she is no longer the 
 first lady and certainly not the last, because since the term ended 
 she decided to literally unmask herself and, after having surgery 
 by the best plastic surgeon, she told Don Manuel: “Thanks for 
 everything” and she hit the road and that’s what she’s still doing. 
 
 Also in London, but at number 76 in the Roman District of 
 Mexico City, my grandparents live, my Mama’s parents, and in 
 the Naples District my Papa’s parents do not five because they’re 
 dead, but that’s where they lived when I was in the crib, wet, and 
 Don Manuel was in power and Mama woke up at six in the 
 morning to give me my bottle and at the corner of our house 
 there was corn on the cob being sold from a little cart. At that 
 same comer the Rosas used to five, who were five in all: the papa. 
 
 4 
 
the mama. Memo, Paty, and Petra, except Petra lived in the ser¬ 
 vice room and would come down daily to clean and buy groceries 
 and meet with Jose, our gardener, and then would spend her time 
 talking with him, and Memo’s and Paty’s mama would scold her 
 because she would show up without the bread or tortillas or 
 anything since she would forget what she w ent for because she 
 w r as with Jose, but that she did not forget; until one fine day they 
 took off, and we never again heard the Pedro Infante songs that 
 Petra used to play at full volume beginning at seven in the morn¬ 
 ing. Memo and Pan’ continue to live there and they grew up just 
 as we did, except they did so without Petra and we did so without 
 Jose. Paty and my sister are the same age and Memo and I are not, 
 but in any case w r e still get along very well, except when we go to 
 the movies and I want to sit with Paty and he with my sister, 
 because we both know why we go. And because of that, we got 
 into a fight once and each of us felt that the w’orld turned with us 
 and with our houses and with the queen of England and with 
 Petra and with our grandparents, the ones who are still alive and 
 the ones who are dead, and Papa and Mama, carrying all the 
 world’s burdens. And at that time w'e realized that the world 
 w'ould continue to turn with our cribs and our beds and our 
 graves, with our grandparents and our parents and our sons and 
 daughters and also with our presidents and our kings and queens 
 and our gardeners. And that Petra w'ould continue to run away 
 with Jose every day and the queen look through the same win¬ 
 dow and Pedro Infante sing the same songs in the same service 
 room of the same house in the same city in the same world, which 
 w'ould continue to turn just as we were taught in school. 
 
 5 
 
2 
 
 s 
 
 enora Rodriguez received a purse from her mother-in-law, a 
 gift for her birthday. Senora Rodriguez turned thirty years of 
 age and two of marriage, which made her deserving of Senor 
 Rodriguez’s mother’s recognition, who, until now, could not re¬ 
 sign herself to this undeniable fact: she was not the only Senora 
 Rodriguez in the family. Her idiot of a son duplicated her by 
 marrying her daughter-in-law, thus granting her the same title. 
 However, for the purpose of the present book we shall consider 
 “Senora Rodriguez” the daughter-in-law and not the mother-in- 
 law, if she’ll excuse us. 
 
 Well then, Senora Rodriguez was touched and took the purse 
 (bought on sale at the Puerto de Liverpool department store) 
 and put her keys, her coin purse, some mint lozenges, and her 
 marriage certificate inside, just in case. She put the latter inside 
 the zippered compartment that most purses usually have. “One 
 never knows,” sighed Senora Rodriguez, enumerating all the pos¬ 
 sibilities that she might have to use the document in order to 
 prove her legitimacy to those who would dare doubt her. “One 
 never knows,” Senora Rodriguez sighed again, taking the purse 
 by the handle, passing it up her arm until it rested on her shoul¬ 
 der; the normal position (of the purse), from that day forward, 
 on Senora Rodriguez’s physiognomy. There are those who say 
 they would not recognize her without it. 
 
After the Canaries 
 
 I 
 
 »a»t’s not that I don’t want to see you, it’s that I can’t. Ever since 
 Adela began watching me I close my eyes to hide myself. Adela, 
 with her coarse, shaggy hair, like a crown of thorns, training her 
 eyes on me from the moment I asked her: “How old are you?” 
 and she responded, “Forty.” And I could never get away from her 
 again. “Forty?” I would repeat to myself, as I watched her drag¬ 
 ging herself through the house, without a sound. Or when I 
 wasn’t watching her and she abruptly surprised me when I was 
 naked in my bathroom. “What are you doing there, Adela?” I 
 yelled at her, and she responded: “Nothing, ma’am.” And, in fact, 
 she wasn’t doing anything. “It’s incredible that at your age you 
 are so clumsy, Adela,” I scolded her constandy, after she broke a 
 glass or dropped a vase or broke some appliance. She would agree 
 with two words: “Yes, ma’am,” accentuating the “yes” with her 
 look. 
 
 The tone of my insults gradually increased, without any pro¬ 
 test from her. “You are an idiot, Adela, I’ve never met anyone as 
 stupid as you,” until, at the height of my exasperation, I slapped 
 her. She did not react. With my hand still shaking I continued: 
 “See what you’ve made me do, Adela? Please, leave.” Adela didn’t 
 move. 
 
 The next morning I could no longer reprimand her, nor the 
 next, nor the next. I didn’t feel like ordering her around. Never¬ 
 theless, everything in the house was in order, thanks to her and in 
 
spite of her sunken eyes and her sneering expression and her dark 
 voice—just like her dresses. 
 
 “Breakfast is ready,” she announced when she saw me in the 
 kitchen about to prepare it. I barely sat down when my coffee was 
 served, and before I finished the last sip, she had my bath ready. I 
 couldn’t open a drawer without finding Adela’s presence in my 
 things: the clothes were always clean and so meticulously ar¬ 
 ranged that I didn’t dare touch them. The living room, impecca¬ 
 ble, was no longer the place where I could sit and listen serenely 
 to music, for fear of messing it up and Adela noticing it. If Adela 
 entered through one door, I exited through another, pushed 
 away by her breath. Then Adela began to make insinuations: “Do 
 you feel ill, ma’am?”; “You look pale today, get some rest”; “You 
 are losing a lot of weight, eat well.” And I began to follow her 
 around without her seeing me. When I realized it, we were back 
 where we had started. 
 
 Adela woke up at five o’clock every morning, and I could no 
 longer sleep, sensing her footsteps, which sometimes stopped 
 very near my bedroom and other times would fade away until 
 they disappeared in the dawn, forcing me to get up right after her 
 and exclaim, “Adela, Adela,” then I felt ridiculous, yet at the same 
 time calmed by her voice behind me, which made me stutter, 
 “Well, has the bread arrived yet, Adela?” She turned away, and I 
 went back down the same hall as always to bed. 
 
 Other times, on waking up, the first thing that I recognized 
 was her outline vanishing behind the window and reappearing in 
 the doorway: “Did you sleep well?” she interrogated me, poking 
 in her shallow face like a warning.... 
 
 ‘Yes, Adela, thank you, and you?” 
 
 She looked over my shoulder, as if she had discovered that as a 
 child I wore dirty underwear and twisted socks, and she would 
 not reply. 
 
 Then things began to turn up missing. First it was the milk, 
 
 8 
 
and Adda said, after a prolonged “Ma’am,” which made me think 
 she would say no more, “they stole the milk.” 
 
 “Who?” I asked, surprised. 
 
 “Someone who is not afraid of God,” she said in judgment, 
 terminating her explanation. 
 
 Later the plants dried up one by one, and in the end the cat ran 
 away after killing the canaries. Adela and I are the only ones left in 
 the house. Adela hardly eats anything, but she prepares my favor¬ 
 ite dishes for me and brings them to my bed, for I am so weak 
 that I no longer get up. Adela doesn’t let anyone bother me, not 
 even the doctor. On her own she prepares some herbal brews 
 which she uses to bathe me at midnight every time there is a new 
 moon, and right away she bolts the doors so that the evil spirits 
 can’t come in. And it’s not that Adela is crazy, I assure you, it’s just 
 that she doesn’t like to go out except on Sundays, to go to church. 
 It’s the only time that she leaves me free, and I am using it to write 
 and ask you to forgive me for not visiting you. I can’t, really. You 
 don’t know what it’s like for me to be sitting in my own urine, 
 waiting for Adela to come and change me. But the poor girl has a 
 right to go to mass; if it weren’t for her . . . 
 
 9 
 
3 
 
 S 
 
 kJ' enora Rodriguez visited the dentist, who, after checking 
 her from head to toe, congratulated her: she was pregnant. 
 Senora Rodriguez didn’t know what to say and said nothing. She 
 put her dental X rays in her purse and left. “I had a feeling,” she 
 mumbled between her teeth, “that toothache always hit me at the 
 precise moment, I don’t know why I listened to my husband; 
 have that molar pulled out, can’t you see that it gets in the way of 
 my inspiration? But, it’s the wisdom tooth. . . .” And the conse¬ 
 quences weren’t long in coming. Most assuredly, it had happened 
 when she fell in the water tank and he took off his clothes to 
 rescue her because she couldn’t swim. Or when they climbed the 
 orange tree and between one orange and another . . . , Senora 
 Rodriguez turned pale. What excuse would they give her mother- 
 in-law? She wasn’t going to like it, how was she going to accept 
 her son’s going around and impregnating a woman? It was incon¬ 
 ceivable since she had brought him up so well. It would be 
 shameful. 
 
 With guilt written on her face Senora Rodriguez got on a bus 
 and didn’t get off until it reached the end of the line, where she 
 took another bus back. Senora Rodriguez spent all afternoon 
 going back and forth, until she found the solution: artificial in¬ 
 semination. That’s it, she’d swear to her mother-in-law that it was 
 the result of artificial insemination, and her husband would be 
 free from sin. 
 
Senora Rodriguez’s mother-in-law screamed, cried, fainted, 
 and, when she regained consciousness, ordered: “Don’t let it hap¬ 
 pen again.” That’s how Susanita entered the world. 
 
 ii 
 
A Happy Family 
 
 p 
 
 lr apa had done with us what no one had done with him: loved 
 us, pampered us, played on the bed, splashed in the garden foun¬ 
 tain, gave us money, and made each one of us feel that we could 
 not live without him. So now after forty years we are still by his 
 side, letting him love us, pamper us, play with us, give us money, 
 and make us feel that we cannot live alone. 
 
 Mama, on the contrary, did exactiy what had been done to her: 
 overprotected us, corrected us, and imposed her will on us, mak¬ 
 ing us feel that she couldn’t live without us, which was the same 
 thing that Papa did, but with other words. In short, the “not able 
 to live without. . .” gradually enveloped us; some of us revolved 
 around the others, attracting each other, loving each other, irritat¬ 
 ing each other, more and more intensely, until the day Mama 
 died. She left our lives to the astonishment of all, and we watched 
 her go, sent away by the centrifugal force we had generated in 
 that dizzying revolution. When we lost sight of her we realized 
 that, just as she had foreseen, we could not live without her and 
 that is when we began to die. This has been going on for five 
 years. All of a sudden we felt more childlike, and before doing 
 anything we would wonder what Mama would say. It never oc¬ 
 curred to us to wonder what we would say, as that would mean 
 offending her. Her clothes were still untouched in the closet, and 
 we were still untouched, watching over each other as she used 
 to do. 
 
Upon Mama’s death, I inherited Papa, in receivership until 
 Papa dies, that is to say, as long as Mama allows it, because I am 
 sure that she will come for him at the right time. Yes, because 
 Mama used to take care of him just as she took care of us. How 
 could she abandon him like that, forever? That is why I, as soon 
 as she died, became responsible for taking care of him until I put 
 him back in her hands. It’s terrible to think that something might 
 happen to Papa and that I might not be able to turn him over to 
 her just as she had left him to me. Fortunately, up to now every¬ 
 thing has gone well. Papa goes on loving us, pampering us, giv¬ 
 ing us money, and making us feel as if we could not live without 
 him. And more and more I look like Mama; it’s possible that in a 
 few years even I will not notice the difference. 
 
 Nevertheless, we used to be happy. Papa loved Mama, Mama 
 loved me, I loved my sister, my sister loved Papa and, so, we all 
 loved one another. Papa never made Mama mad. I clearly remem¬ 
 ber that she did not like motor boats, and Papa never bought her 
 one. On the other hand, she didn’t need one, we didn’t live on the 
 coast, or next to a river, not even next to a lake, so Mama, who 
 hated to make a fool of herself, was happy not having a motor 
 boat in the middle of the living room. For her part, she tried to 
 make Papa mad so that he would show his strength of character 
 in front of us and we could admire him more. We didn’t know 
 what to make of so many demonstrations of love and we did 
 nothing. 
 
 The famous incompatibility of personalities was never appar¬ 
 ent in our family. Mama spent her time being and Papa doing.... 
 What better way to adapt to each other? 
 
 When I got married, I don’t know whether I couldn’t live 
 without them, or they couldn’t live without me, but the fact is 
 that in less than a year I was divorced, as soon as Tonito was born. 
 He is now fifteen and is also loved, pampered, brought up, and 
 spoiled by us: Papa, my sister, who never wants to get married, 
 and me. Perhaps one day we will be able to reproduce ourselves 
 
 13 
 
without need of the opposite sex, only through the love we have 
 for each other. Although recently I saw Tonito devour Papa’s 
 picture, almost in a fury. The poor boy must have been hungry. 
 Adolescents are that way, they don’t understand how happy they 
 are. The same thing used to happen to us; Mama wanted us to be 
 like her and Papa like him. Finally Uncle Quico won, whom we 
 only knew from a picture, since he had split twenty years before 
 and no one knew of his whereabouts. 
 
 One thing sure about Mama was that she was a lot of fun. At 
 parties she used to sing and dance for hours and never tired of 
 applause. Now we’ve become so bored that, no matter how 
 happy we are, we can’t even fake it; and it’s like I said earlier, we 
 began to die five years ago. No matter how much effort I put into 
 resembling Mama, Papa misses the Sunday afternoons, in front 
 of the television, with his hands between hers; Mama’s somewhat 
 flavorless food that he was by then used to; her voice, her look, 
 her support . . . and every day his sadness increases. And that’s 
 why I try to joke, retelling the story of his life to make him laugh, 
 but we end up crying. 
 
 14 
 
4 
 
 A 
 
 # »t the age of one Susanita was exactly like her grandmother. 
 “Marvels of science,” the blessed woman would say, contemplat¬ 
 ing her granddaughter with the fear of being supplanted. “First 
 they usurp my last name, now my physiognomy, no doubt they 
 want to drive me crazy,” deduced Senora Rodriguez’s mother-in- 
 law when the former, by mistake, caressed her instead of her 
 daughter. “All that’s missing is for her to put diapers on me,” ex¬ 
 claimed the mother-in-law, running away each time that Senora 
 Rodriguez approached her. Despite the resemblance, Senora 
 Rodriguez took Susanita to have her portrait taken with her 
 organdy dress and her little patent-leather shoes. Senora Rod¬ 
 riguez’s mother-in-law brisded: a girl born through artificial in¬ 
 semination did not merit such extravagance. She thought even 
 more poorly of the part)' with balloons and a clown that her 
 daughter-in-law organized for Susanita, without inviting the 
 grandmother. In response, Senora Rodriguez gave her mother- 
 in-law Susanita’s portrait. From that day on, the blessed woman 
 began sucking her thumb, peeing in bed ever\ r night, just like the 
 girl, and calling her daughter-in-law “Mama.” So Senora Rod¬ 
 riguez took the picture away from her and kept it in her purse, 
 along with a balloon, some part)' favors from the birthday part)', 
 and a prayer to Saint Jude asking God the grace of a good death 
 for her mother-in-law, since it had never occurred to the latter 
 that she was the first test-tube grandmother in the world. 
 
Good Habits 
 
 ■i’ve already told you he’s not here, come back later.” 
 
 It had only been three days, and already I missed the knocks on 
 the door followed by a prolonged whisde that substituted for the 
 doorbell, which was too formal for Rene. I also missed his brown 
 eyes looking up at me, his messy hair, and his Mickey Mouse 
 T-shirt, one side longer than the other. Rene knocked at any hour 
 and with any excuse looking for Paco. It was not possible to 
 forget him, he always arrived at the least opportune moment. 
 Paco wasn’t home that afternoon, and when I told him that Rene 
 had come, he asked, “Did he leave any message?” 
 
 “I’m not sure,” I answered. It was the third or fourth time that 
 he’d come, I was busy, perhaps he said something like . . . He 
 already knew the answer and turned away, throwing his baseball 
 cap on the easy chair. I picked it up, covered with dust, a week 
 later. Paco never played baseball or asked about his friend again. 
 
 Paco finished high school with top grades; it seemed that he 
 wasn’t interested in anything else. However, one morning I 
 caught him reading the big-league scores. I was suddenly hit by 
 the image of Rene in his anguish of a twelve-year-old asking 
 about Paco. I had never thought about his words, which now 
 rang clearly in my memory: “Tell him that I’m going to live in the 
 United States, and that when I’m big I will be famous like Fer¬ 
 nando Valenzuela.” Paco began to follow the sports section every 
 
day, and even though he appeared not to pay much attention to it 
 I would later find the cut-up newspapers in his room. Rene had 
 sent a postcard from Minneapolis, and we didn’t hear any more 
 about him. The neighborhood continued to change, and the lot 
 where they used to play baseball in the old days had become a 
 shopping center. 
 
 Paco attended the university. A few years later he would earn 
 his degree and then get married. Everything would happen nor¬ 
 mally, with that orderliness in which we are born and we die, 
 without even realizing it, busy going up and down stairs, eating, 
 dressing; there was no reason for things to be different. Paco 
 would have kids, I would be a grandmother, his kids’ friends 
 would go to Minneapolis, and . . . The door was open, I had 
 opened it myself when I heard the doorbell. Outside, Rene’s 
 brown eyes looked down on me: 
 
 “Good afternoon, ma’am, is Paco home?” he asked me with a 
 subde accent. The tanned skin and the broad back denoted his 
 occupation. 
 
 “I plav with the Dodgers, I want to invite Paco to the United 
 States, it’s possible that he could work there.” 
 
 I observed him in silence, finally I answered: 
 
 “I’m sorry but no one by the name of Paco lives here. We 
 moved here just a year ago, you must be mistaken.” 
 
 After dinner, as usual, Paco was reading the sports section. 
 
 “I wonder what happened to Rene?” he said. “Today I thought 
 about him.” 
 
 “He’s probably an office worker in Minneapolis, or perhaps a 
 pilot or a laborer, what does it matter,” I concluded, while I 
 washed the dishes just like every other night. 
 
 “Yes,” agreed Paco, dragging out the sound of the s. 
 
 17 
 
5 
 
 $ 
 
 X^usanita had an attack of tonsillitis and Senora Rodriguez 
 one of nausea. Immediately Senora Rodriguez took out her cal¬ 
 endar and counted the days: “Forty-five, forty-six,” fifty days since 
 her last menstruation. Again, she asked herself, cursing Senor 
 Rodriguez, now what would they come up with? They could 
 explain to her mother-in-law that they had won the baby in a 
 raffle or in a coin toss; no, better not, she couldn’t stand games of 
 chance, or superstitions, or... that’s it, a miracle. They would tell 
 her that the baby was in a basket at the side of the river, just like 
 Moses. Yes, at Lake Xochimilco, to be exact. But her stomach? 
 There was no alternative but to wait; she hoped it wouldn’t show 
 too soon. With Susanita she didn’t need maternity dresses un¬ 
 til the seventh month. “Those artificial insemination kids,” her 
 mother-in-law used to say. Except that with the second one the 
 muscles are already flabby... “As long as it doesn’t look like her,” 
 sighed Senora Rodriguez. 
 
 Senora Rodriguez began vomiting every morning and eating 
 ice cream every afternoon. In the seventh month, she and Senor 
 Rodriguez convinced her mother-in-law to take a trip to Europe 
 that would last two and a half months, after having concealed 
 Senora Rodriguez for a month at Aunt Clotilde’s. Upon return¬ 
 ing, Senora Rodriguez’s mother-in-law found Carlitos, the puta¬ 
 tive son of her daughter-in-law and her son, who was strangely 
 
identical to him. Senora Rodriguez’s mother-in-law brought her 
 daughter-in-law a rosary, which she keeps in her purse, along 
 with one of Carlitos’s pacifiers and some condoms. “One never 
 knows,” sighs Senora Rodriguez. 
 
 19 
 
The First Time 
 
 T 
 
 0 he cockroaches, every day the cockroaches get bigger and 
 bigger. Before, they used to be tiny and skittish; they would hide 
 when they saw me. But that was before, when I was still getting 
 out of bed. They were cranny-dwelling cockroaches, they would 
 only come out at night, like the whores of my youth. And I 
 despised the cockroaches just like them, and I crushed them with 
 my shoe. Shameless creatures, they made fun of me because I 
 walked by them without seeing them, spitting at their feet. And 
 all of them wearing lots of makeup and with their dresses stuck to 
 their naked skin. I hated them as much as the cockroaches; I 
 hated them from corner to corner, from night to night, from 
 cranny to cranny. After a while they began to come out earlier. In 
 plain daylight the cockroaches came out of their nests and the 
 whores out of their brothels. By then I was already walking 
 slowly and they no longer feared me, they would not even move 
 when they saw me limping by in front of them. And there were 
 always more. They no longer appeared on the corners or in their 
 crannies, rather they gathered in pairs, in the middle of the 
 streets, looking for clients, or they crossed my path anywhere at 
 all in the kitchen. 
 
 All at once they invaded the second floor, and the whores 
 began to look like young ladies. One of them helped me get off 
 the bus and I did not realize who she was until she gave me her 
 card. When the cockroaches began to look like whores I decided 
 
to exterminate them with an aerosol insecticide that only gave me 
 a rash: they kept coming and going at will. 
 
 As a result of the rash I was bandaged, and as a result of the 
 bandages, sores appeared and became infected; and as a result 
 of everything I ended up here in the hospital. My roommate is 
 here because of a knife wound inflicted on him by one of those 
 women. He also mocked me the day I told him that I never had 
 anything to do with any of them because sex disgusted me. Since 
 then every time he goes to the bathroom he returns with a trium¬ 
 phant smile, while I struggle in my excrement. Behind him the 
 trained cockroaches follow. On his command they fly over me 
 and the biggest one lands on my paralyzed face and walks all over 
 it. I feel it walking on my sweaty skin, encircling my lips, climbing 
 up my nose to look into my eyes and then plunging into my hair. 
 The others get under the sheets and completely cover mv body. 
 Since I became paralyzed they do this every day. I try to scream 
 and I can’t, but if I could, no one would listen to me because the 
 nurses are a bunch of blind whores who do not see them. “What 
 cockroaches, let’s see, where are they?” They would respond 
 when they heard me scream, “Get them off of me, for the love of 
 God.” 
 
 This morning I heard that I was dead. A nurse took my pulse 
 and said, “He’s dead.” I don’t know, there is no difference be¬ 
 tween being dead, or paralvzed with terror. But this is the first 
 time that the cockroaches are entering my open mouth. ... 
 
 21 
 
6 
 
 c 
 
 arlitos and Susanita fought with each other. Senora Rodri¬ 
 guez spanked them and sent them to bed without dinner. “Imper¬ 
 tinent kids, they made me miss the best part of my soap opera.” 
 Senora Rodriguez took out a Tin Larin chocolate from her purse 
 and ate it to remove the bitter taste from her mouth. Everything 
 seemed to be going from bad to worse: Senor Rodriguez did not 
 have a job, she had gained ten kilos, and, to top it off, her mother- 
 in-law was ill. Senora Rodriguez took out some dry-roasted pea¬ 
 nuts from her purse and began to eat them one by one. She would 
 have to sell the emerald ring that Senor Rodriguez had given her 
 eight years before for saying that Carhtos had been adopted. But 
 it wasn’t the ring that weighed on her, rather those surplus kilos 
 and a lack of energy, which Senora Rodriguez tried to mitigate 
 with chocolates, popcorn, and soap operas, unable to control a 
 slight air of rebellion that shook her already messy hair. And 
 then Senora Rodriguez remembered that in the morning she had 
 bought a shampoo, which was being advertised on television, 
 precisely at that moment, and which was guaranteed to be mar¬ 
 velous. With that Senora Rodriguez cheered up and forgot her 
 husband, her kids and her mother-in-law, imagining the new hair¬ 
 do that she would show off the following day when she washed 
 her hair. This is what Senora Rodriguez was thinking, putting the 
 last dry-roasted peanut in her mouth and throwing the cellophane 
 bag in the trash, without taking her eyes off the television. 
 
The City of Children 
 
 T 
 
 0 he boy with the red beret put the packages in a bag; then he 
 filled another one and another one until he had filled five big 
 plastic bags, imprinted with the red initial of the supermarket 
 chain they belonged to. The boy also wore an apron, on which 
 his face appeared on an identification card, as if it were peering 
 through an acrylic window. He must have been about ten years 
 old. 
 
 Something about him seemed familiar; I didn’t know what. 
 Then I remembered when I used to wander through the hospital 
 rooms looking for help. I wasn’t sick, but I needed to prove it to 
 myself by seeing true pain and desperation with my own eyes. 
 There I saw for the first time, in the nursery, the section desig¬ 
 nated for baggers. They were in uniform with their red caps and 
 they weren’t crying; their eyes were open and they were very 
 alert. At the exit, the mothers from the previous day formed a 
 long line, and when it was her turn each received her child, with 
 his respective uniform and identification card. They couldn’t keep 
 the children for more than ten years, said a voice through a loud¬ 
 speaker. At that age, the company took them in and from that 
 point on they lived in the supermarkets. The mothers took their 
 children in their arms and called them by their number. Thar’s 
 where I had met him, I thought, as I gave him a tip. I recalled his 
 mother’s words when she caressed him: “Sixthousandfivehun- 
 dred, mv Sixthousandfivehundred.” As a matter of fact, I could 
 
read on the identification card “Sixthousandfivehundred,” and in 
 his eyes I saw his hatred for me and for everyone who had a real 
 name. I opened the car trunk, Sixthousandfivehundred arranged 
 the bags inside, and before closing it he asked me, feigning disin¬ 
 terest, what my name was. “Fourhundredandtwenty,” I answered 
 and added: “But don’t tell anyone.” I saw him smile for an instant. 
 At the hospital, number eighthundredandfiftythousand was be¬ 
 ing born at that very moment. 
 
 24 
 
7 
 
 s 
 
 Vjr enora Rodriguez cleared out Carlitos’s room to make room 
 for her mother-in-law. The poor woman could not stay in the 
 hospital for this long a time, and Senor Rodriguez decided to 
 bring her home, that’s why she had a daughter-in-law to whom 
 she had given that purse bought at a bargain sale in the Puerto 
 de Liverpool department store. Senora Rodriguez was sulkily 
 sweeping the bedroom, when the phone rang. “Really?” asked 
 Senora Rodriguez with a smile and immediately grabbed her 
 purse and left the house. She was wearing black, for in the morn¬ 
 ing she had said, “Just in case,” and had put on a dress that had 
 belonged to her sister-in-law, Laurita’s mom, that was a little 
 tight on her, but it wasn’t right, in this crisis, to go out and buy a 
 mourning gown. So, with the dress hugging her hips, she arrived 
 at the funeral home. On the way there Senora Rodriguez recalled 
 the chastity belt that her mother-in-law had given her as a wed¬ 
 ding gift, along with a copy of The Life of the Saints in which 
 she had highlighted the chapter dedicated to the virgins of the 
 Church. She also recalled the day she asked her mother-in-law 
 how Senor Rodriguez had been born and the woman’s eyes had 
 sparkled for a second, before she gave her a slap. 
 
 Senor Rodriguez was waiting for her in a sea of tears. Senora 
 Rodriguez hugged him and for the first time in her life exclaimed: 
 “Alone at last.” At that point they realized that Senor Rodriguez 
 
already had the gout, he was bald and fat, and she had bad breath 
 due to her poor digestion and wore bifocals; which she took out 
 of her purse in order to read the Magnificat at the foot of the 
 coffin. Inside, the mother-in-law was laughing. 
 
 26 
 
In The Dream Clock 
 
 H 
 
 I I e had met Noemi at the end of a dream, of which all he 
 remembered was a stickpin and the hour when he awoke: one in 
 the morning. Noemi was going to tell him something when a 
 pain brought him back to reality. He would have to go back and 
 start again from that point. How would she be? Would she recog¬ 
 nize him? They were at a party, Noemi was in a hurry ... he felt a 
 sharp pain between his fingernail and the flesh: “The fingernail,'’ 
 he thought, “the finger, the hand,” and he saw himself squeezing a 
 strange hand while he heard: “Good evening.” 
 
 “Good evening,” he repeated without letting go of the hand 
 which was dragging him out of his vigil. 
 
 “Would you like to drink something, Miss ... ?” 
 
 “Rocio,” answered the young lady. Had he forgotten? 
 
 “Rocio,” he spelled out silendy trying to remember without 
 losing his smile. “Might she be a friend of Noemi?” he asked 
 himself, glancing around the room full of laughter, voices, faces. 
 He didn’t know how long he would be in the dream; realizing 
 that he was dreaming, he had to take advantage of it. 
 
 “Rocio ...” The voices, the laughter, and the faces zeroed in on 
 him. He took a swig from a flavorless amber drink: “Do you 
 know where Noemi is?” 
 
 His eyes begged for the truth. It was difficult to dream what 
 one wanted, and he remembered the pain between his nail and 
 the flesh, which would ultimately wake him up. 
 
“Yes,” Roci'o responded. “I’ll point her out.” And she went 
 away, steadily fading away among the voices, the laughter, and 
 the faces. He followed her at a distance. At the far side of the 
 room, in front of a window, Rocio stopped. Next to her, another 
 woman, older, seemed to be looking for something. When she 
 saw him, she was not surprised. 
 
 “Is it you? Yes, it’s you,” concluded the woman, lighting a 
 cigarette. 
 
 “Only twenty minutes left,” she continued. On her blouse she 
 wore a stickpin, which drew him to her. He reached out his hand 
 and the pin stuck between his nail and the flesh. 
 
 He woke up at one in the morning screaming: “Is it you? Is it 
 you?” without recalling who he was. 
 
 28 
 
8 
 
 S 
 
 enor Rodriguez was an ex-seminarian when he met Senora 
 Rodriguez, who back then was Senorita Osorio, daughter of 
 Doha Trinidad Villa and Don Artemio Osorio, from two of the 
 oldest families in the city and of recognized Christian values. 
 Their courtship took place according to the best traditions, and 
 lasted for a period of one year, even though the very distin¬ 
 guished Senorita Osorio was on the verge of becoming an old 
 maid. The wedding was celebrated at six in the morning, by 
 request of Senor Rodriguez’s mother, who also planned the hon- 
 evmoon and accompanied the newlyweds so that they would not 
 be led into temptation. In Acapulco they rented a room with 
 three beds, the mother-in-law slept in the middle; it was she who 
 enjoyed the honeymoon the most. This is why Susanita and Car- 
 litos met their parents much too late and were in danger of never 
 meeting them, thanks to their grandmother, who threatened her 
 son with divine wrath if he stained his virginity. Nevertheless, 
 Senor and Senora Rodriguez managed to find a way. Although 
 each had his and her own bedroom, they escaped at night and 
 made love in the bathroom, on the stairs, or in the kitchen, where 
 Senor Rodriguez used even' means within his reach to seduce his 
 wife. Once he shaved her downy hairs with his electric razor; 
 another time they went rolling down the stairs together without 
 separating, and, one other time, he covered Senora Rodriguez’s 
 
body with honey in order to sweeten their union. Senora Rod¬ 
 riguez remembered all of this while wiping away a tear with the 
 litde handkerchief from Brussels that her Aunt Clotilde had given 
 her and which she had in her purse the day of her mother-in-law’s 
 death. 
 
 30 
 
Last Night at Night 
 
 T 
 
 t had to be last night, with the burning heat that we had ... 
 
 “Open that door.” 
 
 “It’s open, Don Lalo.” 
 
 ... and the flies buzzing around in my head. 
 
 Between the boxes stacked against the door one could see a 
 crack, where with a little effort a hand could fit in to turn the 
 doorknob. The words, all the words, piled up in my head: 
 
 “They didn’t find the doctor, Don Lalo, what shall I do?” 
 
 “Take down those boxes, this is suffocating.” 
 
 “Doha Trini is complaining a lot, she asks for water, what shall 
 I do?” 
 
 “Put them over here on this side, can’t you see that they’re 
 blocking the way?” 
 
 “It seems that she wants you, but one cannot make out what 
 she’s saving, what shall I do?” 
 
 “What a bother, how many boxes are there?” 
 
 I believe I began placing them there a year ago, so that the kids’ 
 shouting wouldn’t come through. Through the storage room 
 one could reach the patio of the house of the deceased Arnoldo, 
 my former landlord. Trini, his widow, was left behind with three 
 children. They screamed like the damned when they were bathed 
 in the patio water tank. 
 
 “Put some of the boxes there, yes there.” 
 
(Because Trini also bathed with them, and her wet slip stuck to 
 her legs, revealing the dark triangle of her pubic hair.) 
 
 Don Amoldo had never tried to block off the door: 
 
 “There’s trust on both sides, isn’t that right?” 
 
 “Of course, Don Amoldo.” 
 
 Through the cracks one could see Trinidad’s breasts when she 
 nursed Arnoldito. Damn kid, he was two and he still seemed like 
 a tadpole; and the damned boxes allowed you to see it all. 
 
 “Stack the boxes up higher, some on top of the others.” 
 
 By the time Amoldo had been dead for three months I already 
 knew by heart how many bricks there were in the patio, where 
 dawn ended, and how many freckles Trinidad had on each arm. 
 
 “Send Doha Trini the rent, and she says that next month it will 
 cost you more.” 
 
 (Shit . . . this is the last straw. I can’t stand it when women 
 become bosses, and I like it even less when they’re alone.) 
 
 Back then we didn’t have the burning heat that we have now. 
 The patio, recendy scrubbed, would exude coolness when Trin¬ 
 idad, after putting the kids to sleep, would begin to sew. 
 
 “I’ve come to see if we can negotiate.” Trinidad stuck the needle 
 into the patched-up pants and faced me. “Don Amoldo promised 
 not to raise my rent, and he was a man of his word.” 
 
 “He’s no longer here to keep his word.” 
 
 “But I am.” 
 
 Trinidad went over to the water tank.... 
 
 “You’ll have to look for another place.” 
 
 The water splashed all over me.... 
 
 “Is that your final word?” 
 
 Her dress was getting wet.... 
 
 “That’s it,” she responded, now in my arms. I knew her body 
 through the cracks. That body couldn’t be indifferent, it had to 
 feel the same warmth that I felt, and at that moment it was trem¬ 
 bling, defenseless before me. She knew how to respond, there 
 
 32 
 
was no doubt, but we weren’t even finished when she made me 
 promise that it wouldn’t happen again: 
 
 “I’m a decent woman, Medardo, if you’re a real man, don’t 
 come back.” 
 
 “Stack up more boxes, all the way to the top, all that you can 
 find, do you understand?” 
 
 They stacked them up by day, and I took them down by night: 
 from the storage room to the patio, from the patio to the cor¬ 
 ridor, the kitchen door, the kids’ door, and right after.... 
 
 “I’m telling you that we’ll be ruined.” 
 
 “That’s because you want it that way. I’m offering to many' 
 you.” 
 
 “What would people say?” 
 
 “What they’re saying now, you think they don’t know what’s 
 going on?” 
 
 “Don’t be so crass, Medardo, you make me feel like a nobody.” 
 
 “You aren’t a nobody, you know that.” 
 
 “It’s because I promised Arnoldo....” 
 
 “Bring more boxes, heavier ones, dammit, what do you mean, 
 you aren’t strong enough?” (I can move them all by myself and 
 put them back every night.) 
 
 From the storage room to the patio, from the patio to the 
 corridor.... 
 
 “Leave, Lalo, I beg you.” 
 
 “Let’s both leave, Trinidad. It’s not right for you to dedicate 
 your life to a dead person. ...” 
 
 “Who is the father of my children.” 
 
 “That’s because you don’t want me to be their father, too.” 
 
 “No one can take his place.” 
 
 “Put some metal bars on top of the boxes for support, I don’t 
 want some thief to come in through the back door.” 
 
 “And why don’t you put up a wall, Don Lalo?” 
 
 “Stupid kid, don’t be giving me orders.” 
 
 33 
 
. . . the kitchen door, the kids’ door, and . .. 
 
 “I’m pregnant, Medardo, it’ll show soon.” 
 
 “We’ll get married tomorrow, Trini.” 
 
 “I’d rather be dead than offend my children.” 
 
 “The baby’s yours just as much as they are, what difference is 
 there between his and mine? The baby will have my name.” 
 
 “Never, Medardo, never.” 
 
 “You’re crazy, Trinidad, you and I. ..” 
 
 “I never thought I would cheat on him, Medardo.” 
 
 “He’s dead, Trinidad.” 
 
 “And I want to be dead because I can’t forget him. So I can’t 
 have your child, look for another woman.” 
 
 “But, Trini...” 
 
 “I’ll have a wall built, Don Medardo, and you won’t come into 
 this house except through the front door.” 
 
 “And my child? Have him and give him to me, you wouldn’t 
 dare get rid of him like an animal.” 
 
 “Later I’ll repent, and God will forgive me.” 
 
 “It’s not possible, Trinidad, I won’t let you.” 
 
 “Don’t try it, just leave, I’m in charge of my own body.” 
 
 “Do you love me, Trinidad? Do you love me? Answer me, 
 Trinidad.” 
 
 Trinidad kept backing up and disappeared into the brickwork; 
 the walls grew up around me. 
 
 “Don’t leave me, Trini,” I shouted, “don’t leave me.” 
 
 And I kept shouting to her all night. All night. Yesterday the 
 midwife entered and left Trini’s house, leaving the front door 
 closed. 
 
 “She seems very sick, Don Lalo.” 
 
 “Then go and fetch a doctor, why are you telling me.” 
 
 “I think she wants to talk to you.” 
 
 (No, not that. I don’t want to see her again, I don’t care what’s 
 wrong with her, I don’t want to go, no, no, Trini. . . !) 
 
 34 
 
I barely made it in time to ask her to forgive me and to forgive 
 her. She couldn’t speak. 
 
 “Can you hear me?” I asked her, taking her hand. Her fingers 
 did not move. 
 
 “If you love me, squeeze my hand,” I pleaded. 
 
 A slight pressure grew stronger until she left the marks of her 
 nails on my skin. Then her fingers loosened up. 
 
 “Trini, please, listen; why not until today, Trini; why. Trim, 
 why?” 
 
 “Did you spend all night here alone, Don Lalo? I’ll bring you a 
 nice drink to make you feel better. You were so good to Dona 
 Trini, if it hadn’t been for you, there wouldn’t have been anyone 
 to comfort her in her final moments, since she didn’t want anyone 
 to find out.” 
 
 “Be quiet, boy, and give me a cigarette.” 
 
 “You’re the boss. Look, they’re bringing the coffin. Say, and 
 what are we going to do with all the boxes that we removed?” 
 
 “Put them back up again, can’t you see that it’s freezing?” 
 
 35 
 
9 
 
 s 
 
 usanita and Carlitos seemed to have taken after their uncle 
 (Laurita’s father), who was nicknamed “Saint Mary” by every¬ 
 body. At sixteen Susanita had been divorced once, and at thirteen 
 Carlitos had gone off to see the world as a stowaway on an Italian 
 ship. Free from them, Senora Rodriguez felt emancipated and 
 got her second wind, without getting rid of her purse, for, al¬ 
 though she could very well have exchanged it for another one, 
 thanks to her mother-in-law’s estate, she was no longer able to, it 
 was part of her. In it she still carried her marriage certificate next 
 to her children’s birth certificates and her mother-in-law’s death 
 certificate, a dry rose that Senor Rodriguez had given her twenty 
 years ago, the balloons and part}' favors from Susanita’s party, and 
 the bifocal glasses that she no longer used because she was wear¬ 
 ing contact lenses. 
 
 One night Senora Rodriguez dreamed that she opened her 
 purse, and from it she herself came out, opening her purse; and 
 from this one another Senora Rodriguez came out, opening her 
 purse again; and so on ad infinitum. Senor Rodriguez, on the 
 contrary, dreams that the purse is a bottomless well where what 
 goes in never comes out. He remembers the day Senora Rod¬ 
 riguez accidentally put her mother-in-law’s picture inside the 
 purse and soon after that she died. And also when by chance she 
 put Senor Rodriguez’s watch in the same purse and Senor Rod¬ 
 riguez lost the notion of time forever. That’s why he gets up at 
 
three in the morning to bathe and goes to sleep at five in the 
 afternoon, while Senora Rodriguez goes to the movies and out 
 for a cup of coffee with her friends and pulls out the checkbook 
 from her purse, caresses it and puts it back, just like she put away 
 the keys to her house and even to the gates to heaven, so that no 
 one can enter without her consent. Because Senora Rodriguez is 
 not who they make her out to be, says Senor Rodriguez; and he 
 must know better than I do, for he has lived with her in these 
 pages ever since the story began. 
 
 37 
 
Hide-and-Seek 
 
 IB ^ o one noticed me that day. I remember it as if I’d been in 
 many places at the same time: outside with my godfather, and 
 inside when the priest said that he was going to give the last 
 rites to my godmother, provided my godfather didn’t see her 
 again. I don’t know why, but I realized that he wanted to be with 
 her, and Aunt Micaela pretended not to know him and didn’t let 
 him come inside the house. 
 
 My godfather didn’t move from the one spot the entire time. 
 The shade of a tree began to run over him from top to bottom 
 until it divided him in half. I’d never seen him like that, hidden 
 right in the middle of the street, with foggy glasses, waiting, just 
 like the people inside, but in silence, because the others began to 
 pray and light candles before it was dark. 
 
 Later on people began arriving, and the patio filled with small 
 groups, with shadowy figures, with muffled laughs. The women, 
 sitting in a row, seemed to be covered with the same black skirt. 
 
 Throughout the entire night they held a wake for my god¬ 
 mother. Aunt Micaela led the lamentations and the rosary. I 
 didn’t know what to do, it was the first time I had been at a wake. 
 My cousin and I went from one room to the other. In one of 
 them I heard someone say: “She moved, she’s not where we 
 placed her.” And then, “She was very brave, when they wanted to 
 give her medicine to get rid of the pain she pleaded: ‘Leave me 
 
alone, I’m going to die now.’ ” If only I had been allowed to let 
 her know that my godfather was there, outside.... 
 
 “Pray for her soul, pray for her soul,” the voices repeated louder 
 and louder. My cousin and I went to play in the backyard where 
 we couldn’t hear the monotonous litany. We went through many 
 doors until we got to the back. “Me first,” screamed my cousin 
 running ahead. The one that guessed where the other was hiding 
 ran to home base and yelled: “One, two, three, you’re it” and the 
 other had to come out. I always lost and had to be the one to seek 
 again. As I recall this, I get lost between so many doors, and no 
 matter how hard I try I still can’t find the exit, but I can’t forget 
 either. I was behind a planter, waiting for my cousin to find me 
 when Aunt Micaela appeared: “And you, why don’t you cry? You 
 weren’t sorry, were you? You’re like your mother who never 
 could forgive her.” 
 
 “One, two, three, I’m it,” I exclaimed. 
 
 Afterward everything was different. My godfather stayed all by 
 himself in his old house. I liked to go into his bedroom to see a 
 portrait that hung on the wall of my godfather, my godmother, 
 and me; but we never visited or talked to him again. It seemed as 
 if he had never existed. 
 
 One afternoon my godfather sent someone to get my mother; 
 when she returned, she said nothing. I knew he was dead because 
 my mother brought my portrait, the one he had in his bedroom. 
 That’s why I tried not to believe what Aunt Micaela said: “Your 
 godfather didn’t like you.” My vision got blurry as if my eyes were 
 full of splinters. I saw everything in a blur, probably as he did that 
 day. 
 
 I asked my mother why my aunt had said that, for when I 
 was little I used to go to the circus with my godfather and he’d 
 buy me toys. “Don’t pay any attention,” she answered. I tried 
 not to, but I did, and I learned to keep it all inside, just like they 
 did. 
 
 39 
 
The only time he phoned me was right before he died: “Why 
 don’t you ever come over?” he asked, and added: “I miss you a 
 lot.” 
 
 “One, two, three, you’re it,” I thought. It was the last time I 
 plaved hide-and-seek. 
 
 40 
 
10 
 
 s „ 
 
 X^r enora Rodriguez took a full-length mirror out of her purse, 
 a gift from her aunt Clotilde, who had inherited it from Don 
 Porfirio. A mirror that had belonged to the queen, Snow White’s 
 stepmother, according to Snow White’s neighbor, a friend of 
 number five of the seven dwarfs. Senora Rodriguez looked in the 
 mirror and asked: “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest 
 in the Republic?” And the mirror replied: “The president’s wife.” 
 Senora Rodriguez continued asking: “Who is the fairest in the 
 United Kingdom?” The queen, the mirror replied. “And in the 
 United States?” “Mrs. Bush.” “And in Russia?” “Raisa Gorba¬ 
 chev.” . . . Senora Rodriguez checked the mirror and found that 
 there was a cassette tape hidden between the quicksilver and the 
 glass. Senora Rodriguez put the mirror back in her purse as a 
 souvenir of her assumption of political standing and now she’s 
 active in the opposition. Senor Rodriguez is apolitical because he 
 doesn’t have a purse. 
 
The Best Night 
 
 L 
 
 ^ ^ ove is unrecognizable behind those old shoes covered with 
 mud, behind that coffee stain on the shirt. However, seeing him 
 and feeling wanted, is one and the same thing to Rebeca. The 
 smell of his perspiration engulfs her, the smell of a man that 
 works, that squeezes her with his callused hands, barely giving 
 her time to become excited under his weight; without any caress¬ 
 ing or preambles, almost in rage. But Felipe’s walk, half sluggish 
 and half deliberate, indicates that something is wrong at work; 
 now he won’t take her, he’ll limit himself to drinking until the 
 words pile up and come spilling out of his mouth. Maybe he’ll 
 cuss her out without any reason and then he’ll cry. Although . . . 
 the cigarette; he only smokes when he’s happy, surely they gave 
 him a raise, and he’ll stay up all night, calculating all that he’ll be 
 able to buy, perhaps a dress for her, his “big-titted momma.” It’s 
 your fault, she’d tell him, every time Felipe bit her until he made 
 her bleed. But he had already dropped the cigarette, and he was 
 now putting it out with his shoe as if he wanted to release his 
 anger that way. And she who was planning to prepare some re¬ 
 fried beans with tortillas fried in lard, just so that he’d come out 
 and tell her that he had been fired from his job. What else could it 
 be, all that was missing was for him to hit her and leave her 
 covered with bruises, just like the time she came from her friend 
 Chema’s wake and somewhere between the where are you com¬ 
 ing from and damned bitch, he put her out flat on the floor. From 
 
that incident Pelon was born, that’s why he was the best kid in the 
 family, since she spent all night creating him, enraged by the 
 blows. And he was right, that’s what she’s there for; and she does 
 whatever he wants, as long as it feels good. 
 
 Yes, love is unrecognizable behind that dirty window from 
 where Rebeca peers, without being seen, with her Ups lined with 
 anguish. 
 
 43 
 
II 
 
 s 
 
 enora Rodriguez was bom on the eleventh day of the elev¬ 
 enth month, in room number 11, in some hospital or other, where 
 three years earlier Sehor Rodriguez had been bom. Both were 
 held by the same nurse, Sister Angela, and they used the same crib 
 where they cried, slept, and urinated for a few days, but they never 
 knew it. Just as they don’t know that the same nanny took care of 
 them, first one and then the other. What they do know is that 
 Chepa, the nanny, used to pinch them and threaten them that the 
 devil was going to take them away because they were brats. One 
 Sunday Senora and Sehor Rodriguez played together at the park, 
 and.Sehor Rodriguez pushed Senora Rodriguez down a slide. 
 She scraped her knees and ran to her mother. However, neither he 
 nor she knew that they’d marry twenty years later. Sehor Rodri¬ 
 guez’s mother pulled her son’s ear, and Senora Rodriguez’s 
 mother bought her daughter some cotton candy, to comfort her. 
 
 When Senora Rodriguez was fifteen, she left a movie magazine 
 on the seat of a movie theater, the same magazine that Sehor 
 Rodriguez later found. Both read it secretly, since their parents 
 didn’t like them to waste their time on foolish things. From then 
 on Senora Rodriguez was predestined to carry the purse her 
 mother-in-law would end up giving her, but she never knew it; 
 on the contrary, she always believed that she was going to marry 
 the crown prince of England, because at home she was always 
 called “the queen.” 
 
No One Knows for Whom One Works 
 
 IT W e early swimmers, spread out along the beach, were all 
 focusing on the same spot: a long boat was crossing Audiencia 
 Bay, pulling something that couldn’t be distinguished from afar. 
 When it got to shore three of the six men that were in it disem¬ 
 barked, and the remaining three sailed back by the same route, 
 returning to the place where they had started. It wasn’t until then 
 that we realized there was a piling embedded in the sand, to 
 which was tied a rope that went off under the sea. The three men 
 who had stayed jumped up from their landing place and began 
 giving signals to those at the far end. There was a guy next to us 
 who had a belly that stuck out and milk-white legs and a T-shirt 
 displaying the legend “I love Manzanillo.” Further down there 
 was a firinga in her fifties, with an orange bikini and flabby legs, 
 who was purposefully staring at one of the men from the boat, 
 the one that appeared to be the captain, who at the same time was 
 shouting to the youngest of them, “Come on, asshole, what are 
 you doing standing on dry sand, can’t you see that you can’t get a 
 grip? Come to where it’s wet.” The boy, a kid about sixteen, 
 slightly blond, became embarrassed, and with his head down he 
 scooted to another spot. It took us a while to figure out what was 
 going on; those men were fishermen and they had thrown a net 
 across the bay. The buoys ran along the line of the net. After a 
 while, we were all pulling the rope, the guy with the T-shirt, the 
 £frinp)a, and us, along with the three fishermen. Someone said that 
 
the fishing was good at that time and that the net would come out 
 full of fish. Another one explained how grilled fish are prepared 
 and how tasty they were when they were fresh out of the sea. Fol¬ 
 lowing the captain’s instructions, we walked slowly toward the 
 middle of the beach to meet up with those who were pulling on 
 the other end of the net, including a few kids and an old man that 
 had tagged along. The net weighed more than we had imagined. 
 “Do you feel the fish?” asked the old man, and we all answered 
 yes, with our hands stinging from pulling the rope. Paco and I 
 joined forces to offset the gringo and the guy with the T-shirt: 
 “That guy is not going to handle it with a T-shirt like that.” “Nor 
 the gringo, wearing that bikini.” “Move it,” the captain yelled, “put 
 some gusto into it.” “What did he say?” asked the old man. “To 
 move it and pull hard,” Paco answered. “ What ?” the gringo re¬ 
 peated, with breasts swollen from pulling so hard. “This is really 
 a solidarity pact, not like the government’s,” Paco commented. 
 “Are you going to give us some fish, captain?” “Of course, just let 
 me know how many you want.” Paco tried to remember how 
 ceviche is made, and the guy with the T-shirt offered to help: 
 “You just slice some tomatoes and onion, and I’ll take care of the 
 rest, that’s why I was a cook at a hotel in Acapulco.” Paco told 
 him that he was studying medicine and ended up talking about 
 Marcela, his girlfriend, who had dumped him because . . . 
 
 The circle was gradually closing; the ones from the other side 
 were now ten meters away from us and their laughter could be 
 heard mixed with the fishermen’s swearing: “Come on, don’t just 
 stand there.” The sun reached the palm trees, and the number of 
 curious people increased and began cheering us on. “There you 
 go.” “You’re almost there.” “Man, you guys couldn’t even get it up 
 if you tried.” I could no longer feel my hands when I shouted to 
 them, “Check it out, let’s see if you can handle it.” “Check it out?” 
 repeated the gringo. It’d been almost an hour, and we had less 
 than half the net in. “You’ll see how neat the fish flop as they come 
 out, Paco, it’s hard to know where to begin.” “Begin what?” asked 
 
 46 
 
the guy in the T-shirt. “To protest against the damned govern¬ 
 ment,” replied Paco, telling me in a low voice, “He’s not a cook, I 
 bet he’s a bureaucrat.” “The president is a great man,” rebutted 
 the guy. “Bush?” xht gringo intervened. “I think this is screwed,” 
 said Paco, “I don’t see any fish.” “Hang on, you’re not experi¬ 
 enced in this, you'll see,” I answered without much confidence, 
 wiping the sweat off. Meanwhile, the gringo had managed to get 
 next to the captain and whispered to him: “ Tonight ?” “Toonait,” 
 said the captain, shooting a glance of acknowledgment through 
 her brassiere. Paco’s eyes flashed at me, and he told me that we 
 were dumb, the only ones pulling were us, for a long time the guy 
 with the T-shirt had just been massaging the rope, “Don’t you see 
 his hands? They aren’t even red.” “Don’t worry, when we’re savor¬ 
 ing our fish we won’t give him any.” “Well, it’ll be the next time, 
 pal,” Paco said as he dropped the net. A few empty cans, some 
 rubber boots, seaweed, and two toad fish, inflated, not edible, 
 that was the whole contents. The kids took the boots, the guy 
 with the T-shirt burst out laughing, the old man protested to the 
 boatman, and he in turn to the captain, who answered that he 
 was the authorin' there and to shut up or .. . Paco threw the fish 
 back into the sea, and the gringo asked: “OK?” “OK,” replied the 
 captain, extending his hand. “How much is the dollar worth 
 today?” I whispered to Paco. 
 
 47 
 
12 
 
 s 
 
 V^enora Rodriguez saw a purse just like hers at the super¬ 
 market. It was hanging on the shoulder of an old lady, whom 
 Senora Rodriguez began to follow, not daring to speak to her. 
 The old lady bought tomatoes, bananas, toilet paper, and de¬ 
 tergent; Senora Rodriguez bought the same items and thought 
 about the plane ticket to Europe that she had never bought. “I’ll 
 buy it today,” she promised herself. The old lady leaned against 
 the cash register and looked for her coin purse. From the purse 
 emerged a pacifier, a chewed piece of gum, a sandalwood rosary, 
 a dirty Kleenex, and the coin purse, in that order. Meanwhile 
 Senora Rodriguez did the same, suddenly recalling all the alms 
 that she had refused to give. “When I get home I’ll send a check to 
 the children’s home,” she promised herself once more. The old 
 lady supported herself on her cane as she walked out into the 
 street, and Senora Rodriguez, feeling tired, recalled that she 
 never had made time to visit her Aunt Clotilde, who had recently 
 died. “I’ll place her picture in the living room as soon as I get 
 home,” Senora Rodriguez promised for the third time. The old 
 lady turned right at the first comer, which was where Senora 
 Rodriguez turned everv day of each week, of each month, year 
 after year. The old lady walked down three blocks; Senora Rod¬ 
 riguez followed her, even though she felt like she was suffocating, 
 as she remembered her first boyfriend, whom she didn’t marry. 
 “As soon as I get home the first thing I’ll do is to look up his num- 
 
ber in the phone book.” The old lady stopped in front of Senora 
 Rodriguez’s house, took out a key from her purse and opened the 
 door. Senora Rodriguez ran, but she couldn’t get there before the 
 door locked. Senora Rodriguez knocked, shouted, rang the door¬ 
 bell, without an answer and, despite all her searching she could 
 not find the key to her house. 
 
 49 
 
Blue in the Family 
 
 1 
 
 ■it’s better not to mention it, Dad had said to Ines. Clara didn’t 
 understand, nor did she notice the decision in her father’s look 
 that rainy August afternoon. The same look that Ines had picked 
 up and tucked away inside her own look. And there it was, stuck 
 stubbornly in her memory: her father’s blue pupils became wa¬ 
 ter}' before denouncing her. The smell of roasting corn cobs fol¬ 
 lowed the rain, and this smell was followed by the smell of Ja¬ 
 maica fruit punch, and later the smell of bread pudding. With the 
 smell of fresh-cut flowers Enriquito was born. Clara had seen the 
 swelling of her sister Ines and the birth, without any explanations 
 of the child, just as one sees the sunrise. No one asked themselves 
 why. Ines continued with her life and the boy with his big blind 
 eyes, quietly became part of her. No one asked themselves why he 
 was blind either; it just had to be that way. 
 
 It’s better not to mention it, father said again the day he be¬ 
 came ill. The mother had lost her sanity some time ago. Perhaps 
 when her only male child died, or when Enriquito was born, with 
 blue pupils so like his grandfather’s. And the mother wandered 
 through the house without anyone noticing her, looking for her 
 son down the halls and up the stairs, certain that he would come 
 up at any moment. And she’d prepare cakes for him, while the 
 father was dying. 
 
 Ines closed his eyelids and sat next to him, as he himself would 
 have done, without any emotion. She gazed at him, and then saw 
 
her mother, looking like a butterfly dazzled by the light, walking 
 in all directions; then she saw Enriquito, who did not see her, 
 holding the hand of Clara, the twenty-year-old girl who hid her 
 mongolism behind a smile. Esther felt the impulse to shout rising 
 up in her throat, but not even a whimper came from her lips. 
 Father was right, she said, closing her own eyes in turn. 
 
 5i 
 
13 
 
 c 
 
 arlitos searched through his mother’s purse when she wasn’t 
 watching and found the eyeglasses, the dry rose, Susanita’s gum, 
 and the recipe for bread pudding. He continued searching and 
 found the first baby tooth he lost, five years before, a lock of Susa¬ 
 nita’s hair, some safety pins, and the Mexican constitution, with a 
 few amendments made by his mother. Further down he found 
 Aunt Clotilde’s photo, one of Grandfather’s tie pins (Carlitos’s 
 grandfather, not the aunt’s), some earrings that had belonged 
 to Great-grandmother (the aunt’s great-grandmother, not Car¬ 
 litos’s), and the gun of Pancho Villa, who was Aunt Clotilde’s 
 uncle. Then he stumbled upon Maximilian’s shield, Carlota’s cri¬ 
 nolines (Carlota Perez, not the Haps burg Carlota), Juarez’s frock 
 coat, the Declaration of Independence (the original), and Don 
 Miguel’s cassock. Later came the crown that had belonged to 
 Charles V, Columbus’s stockings, a feather from Moctezuma’s 
 crest, and a calendar, Aztec in origin. Before his wrist got stuck, 
 with his fingers in the void, he was able to take out a mammoth’s 
 tusk, a dinosaur’s tail, and a few ashes. Senora Rodriguez stopped 
 Carlitos when he was about to pawn the purse at the Monte de 
 Piedad, for the sum total of one thousand pesos. 
 
German Dolls 
 
 f you look at it carefully, the bald doll is the prettiest one of all, 
 with her round cranium and her blackish eyes. I don’t remember 
 if her wig was blond or brunette; it wasn’t black; there are hardly 
 any dolls with black hair, they have to be blonds, brunettes, or 
 redheads, and have blue eyes. I had a lot like that. My dark hands 
 held them with fear of getting them dirty, and I cooed to them for 
 a while before sending them to the concentration camp, where I 
 undressed them, bathed them with icy water, and shaved their 
 heads, as I saw it done to the Jews in a movie on tv. Except that 
 my blond dolls with blue eyes were German not Jewish. They say 
 that’s what Germans look like; I never met any. At school the 
 majority of us were dark, some more than others, but not white 
 white. We made fun of the only blond kid, whom we called 
 Cocono due to his freckles, because his mother was dark and 
 everyone asked her where did she get Cocono, so blond. After 
 hearing the same things over and over again, she became annoyed 
 and took him out of school. That’s why my dolls had to be Ger¬ 
 man, even though in reality they wer efjrinjjas, because my uncle 
 brought them to me from across the border, but I didn’t know if 
 the jjrinp/os didn’t like Jews either, so I continued pretending that 
 they were German and I was Jewish and I couldn’t keep them. I 
 found names like Helga, Gretel and Marlene, to baptize them so 
 that they could go to heaven after I burned them, for they say that 
 the children who die without being baptized go to Limbo and cry 
 
when someone spills salt. They stank real bad when they were 
 crackling, and soon they ended up twisted, scorched, and melted. 
 When I turned twelve I was given Maria. When I pressed her 
 stomach she said ma-ma. From the first time I heard her I knew 
 that I wasn’t going to do to her what I had done to the others, 
 and that’s why I named her Maria and hid her, so that no one 
 would make fun of me, like they did Cocono’s mother, asking 
 where did she come from, so white with me so dark. But even 
 though she was hidden, I feared that someone would find her and 
 mock me. Her blue eyes watched me in fear when I approached 
 her with the hot burning stick. I didn’t stop crying until her eyes 
 turned blackish and then I put a bandage over them. “It’s for your 
 own good, Marfa,” I explained, smearing her with soot from the 
 same half-burned stick so that she didn’t look so white. Finally I 
 pulled off her wig, and I laid her on my bed. Now no one will 
 believe that Maria is not Mexican, or Jewish. 
 
 54 
 
14 
 
 s . h 
 
 X Jr enora Rodriguez decided to clean out her purse to start the 
 day off right. She opened it as if it were the first time, and with 
 the same devotion with which she had inserted each object, once 
 again she began taking them out one by one. The first thing that 
 appeared was a couple of size five insoles. Senora Rodriguez 
 threw them in the trash, while at the same time removing her 
 shoes and tossing them into a corner. At that minute her mother- 
 in-law was completely erased from her mind. In stocking feet, 
 Senora Rodriguez removed from her purse a postcard from Aca¬ 
 pulco, sent by her niece Laurita; and she took off her sweater 
 because she was hot. Never again did Senora Rodriguez think 
 about Laurita, or her sister-in-law, or her brother. Senora Rod¬ 
 riguez took off her blouse and slacks, after having removed from 
 the purse Carlitos’s pacifier, Susanita’s fancy shoes, the dress she 
 wore on her fifteenth birthday, and the phone bill from February' 
 1965; whereupon Senora Rodriguez completely forgot about 
 Carlitos, Susanita, and everything that had occurred before 1965. 
 At the moment that Senora Rodriguez tossed out her marriage 
 certificate, she removed her wedding band, and, incidentally', all 
 memory of Serior Rodriguez. After emptying the purse of all its 
 contents, Senora Rodriguez looked in the mirror and didn’t 
 recognize herself. Senor Rodriguez found her naked, crawling 
 around the living room, dragging the purse, whose contents were 
 spread throughout the house. Senor Rodriguez figured out what 
 
had happened and rushed to put everything back into the purse 
 before it was too late. In his haste he mixed up days with nights, 
 present with past, and joined an Ash Wednesday with a Good 
 Friday. When he finished closing the purse he looked at his 
 watch: it was seven o’clock in the morning on the nineteenth day 
 of September, 1985. Senora Rodriguez recovered her memory in 
 the middle of an earthquake that measured eight on the Richter 
 scale. Inside the purse, chaos prevailed. 
 
 56 
 
Between the Lines 
 
 am the aunt. In any respectable story an aunt is indispens¬ 
 able; she may be the bad one, the rich one, the old maid, or the 
 go-between, and I’m no exception. I have a mustache, I wear 
 black, and I’m single; I see it all, I hear it all, and without me 
 America, Agamenon, and Rosendo couldn’t live. They’re my cats, 
 of course, and they tip-toe through the text or hide under the 
 bed, where Julio and Laura don’t make love, or they stay behind a 
 door and listen . . . : “Aunt?” I stroke my mustache and rub my 
 hands before answering: “Yes?” The scream comes from Laura’s 
 imagination, who doesn’t dare confess the anguish that makes 
 her look into the mirror time after time; finally she tells me: 
 “Aunt, do you think I’m attractive?” Sitting in a corner of the 
 story, I see Agamenon pass slowly by, very slow ly, with his tail in 
 the air. Laura is fortv and has the attractiveness of a woman who 
 feels wanted; only an idiot like Julio, her husband, doesn’t see 
 that. Now r I see America and Rosendo pass by, I could sw ear that 
 they are laughing, and I can almost guess at whom. Laura, with 
 her eves fixed on the mirror, holds her breath and sticks out her 
 chest, smiles. It has been a long time since I saw r her like this, 
 pensive, unreachable. . . . Agamenon from the edge of the page 
 looks at me out of the comer of his eye; he w ants to jump to the 
 next one, to get ahead of the narration. “Agamenon? Agamenon? 
 Wait, Agamenon.” Tw o pages further ahead I find him snooping 
 around another character. He looks as if he came out of a fairv 
 
tale, but the truth is that I’ve known him for some time, since 
 Laura was a child. He is the perfect lover, twenty years of loving 
 her in spite of his own wife, and Julio. Laura comes running from 
 the previous page: “Aunt, how did you find out?” I feign indif¬ 
 ference while I knit a scarf for Rosendo. America is pregnant, and 
 I don’t know from which of the two, but this is material for 
 another story. Laura sees Ricardo, openly stares at his face, she 
 stops at the mouth that speaks her language, then the eyes which 
 invest her with womanhood, which remind her of Julio, blind 
 Julio. . . . “Aunt, it’s not my fault that Ricardo continues to love 
 me, right?” America comes by shamelessly with her enlarged 
 stomach. I realize that something has happened, something that 
 wasn’t written. Ricardo approaches, his anxiety is reflected in 
 Agamenon’s pupils: “I shouldn’t be in this story, Aunt, if we 
 could only retell it, without Julio. ...” I clear my throat, yank off 
 the scarf, and begin again. Rosendo can wait. 
 
 58 
 
15 
 
 A 
 
 / munt Clotilde, Don Porfirio’s lover, in spite of the fact that 
 she was Pancho Villa’s cousin, was Senora Rodriguez’s favorite 
 character in her younger days. Senora Rodriguez knew her aunt 
 by hearsay, because, when she was born, Aunt Clotilde had al¬ 
 ready made historv in Europe. Aunt Clotilde had no children. 
 From far away she became fond of her niece and began writing to 
 her without the permission of the girl’s parents, who considered 
 her the black sheep of the family. Senora Rodriguez clandestinely 
 read the letters her aunt sent from Europe, and dreamed of Paris, 
 la belle epoque, art nouveau, Mata Hari, and Aunt Clotilde dressed 
 like a princess. In turn, Aunt Clotilde imagined that her niece 
 continued to be a little angel. 
 
 Aunt Clotilde was on the Ipiranpja when Don Porfirio left for 
 France. Contrary to popular belief, the true reason for his trip 
 was the accusation that Clotilde’s father had made that Don Por¬ 
 firio had seduced his daughter, who was still a minor. Upon Don 
 Porfirio’s death. Aunt Clotilde traveled across Europe, and didn’t 
 return to Mexico until fifteen years after the end of World War II. 
 When she arrived she was disappointed to see her niece tied up to 
 that horrible purse and said only, “I brought you a hankie from 
 Brussels.” Senora Rodriguez thanked her and put it in her purse, 
 next to The True History of Both World Wars, written by Aunt 
 Clotilde, where she revealed that the heads of the warring nations 
 fell in love with her and declared war because of her; for the aunt 
 
never denied that she was frivolous and granted her favors equally 
 to one and all. Only her sense of humanity made her return to 
 Mexico, saving the world from World War III (pages 5,000 to 
 7,000 in the previously mentioned book, which is inside Senora 
 Rodriguez’s purse). 
 
 60 
 
With Respect to the Sky 
 
 A 
 
 / m display of birds broke the afternoon silence. Lined up on 
 the electrical power wire, some on their feet and others on their 
 heads, they interwove their songs, forming a net that settled on 
 the cluster of houses. The man who was entering the town at that 
 moment felt this tumult of voices weaving a net around him. As 
 he moved forward down the main street, bordered by the curi¬ 
 osity of its inhabitants, hidden behind windows, the melodious 
 net cast itself over the pavement, its mesh growing more and 
 more defined. The visitor began to walk bent over, as if to avoid 
 stepping on the pattern. 
 
 It was Good Friday. The population, after easing its conscience 
 in the confessional booth, was waiting for Holy Saturday in order 
 to sin again. Some, however, didn’t resist the temptation of lying, 
 coveting their neighbor’s wife, or fornicating in silence, in the 
 face of the increasingly stooped-over walk of the stranger, on 
 whom they cast their regrets, their trespasses, their animosity. 
 The traveler wasn’t able to avoid them, as he was trapped in the 
 warbling grid that surrounded him. 
 
 His first fall was due to a slander that got wrapped around his 
 feet. Then he slipped on a poorly hidden adulter}'. He tried to 
 scream before falling again, but the deafening noise of the birds 
 prevented him. Flat on the ground, with his face stuck to the 
 asphalt, he felt hot air burning his lungs. 
 
 The next day the sky was clean. No one knew at what time the 
 
birds had migrated. The municipal street cleaners picked up 
 the net, full of waste from the previous night. The body of the 
 stranger was buried in a pauper’s grave. Only the apprentice who 
 took him to the amphitheater noticed the incipient wings that 
 were hidden under his shirt. 
 
 62 
 
16 
 
 s 
 
 V^enora Rodriguez’s gynecologist discovered that she has a 
 baby tooth, not under her pillow, nor as a souvenir, but in Senora 
 Rodriguez’s own gums. And, to top it off, it’s loose, which de¬ 
 molishes all her experience, her maturity, her liberalism, and her 
 sex appeal. She who has always believed she was seductive, and 
 now all it took was for her to open her mouth to prove the 
 contrary. “It’s a dirt\ r trick of destiny,” Senora Rodriguez sniffles 
 while taking a rattle, for which she has special predilection ever 
 since she found out about the tooth, out of her purse. “How will 
 I look with a missing tooth? It will surely fall out while I’m 
 making love, and I don’t doubt that I will swallow it and it’ll get 
 caught in my throat. How the paramedics are going to laugh at 
 me if they find me suffocated in those circumstances. The worst 
 of it is that, if they suspect homicide, my husband will end up in 
 jail naked, and there someone will . . . The best thing to do 
 is write my will and observe abstinence until it falls out. And 
 the pain of the gums when a tooth is going to come in can even 
 cause fever and diarrhea. I remember that my mother used to rub 
 our gums with cognac to numb them. And what if it comes in 
 crooked? Me at this age with braces; so what, as long as it’s okay. 
 Had I known, instead of going to the gynecologist I would have 
 gone to the dentist and perhaps he would have told me that I was 
 pregnant again,” Senora Rodriguez sighs, taking a sip of calcium 
 supplement, just in case. 
 
Without Knowing That It Is You 
 
 T 
 
 G he afternoon begins with a new denial, a quick glance at 
 the mirror confirms it: no, you’re not there, you can’t be that 
 bleached blond who wears dark glasses; slamming the door, you 
 go out to look for yourself, your hair flying behind you. Among 
 guffaws and clinking wine glasses, someone behind the door says, 
 “Where is she gong?” “Let her be, you know how she is,” your ex- 
 husband answers. “It probably bothered her to see me with 
 Ofelia, too bad, it’s her problem, she’ll be back in a while, you’ll 
 see.” At the same time Ofelia is flirting with your partner and he 
 with her, just like the other times, but this time, you are no longer 
 here. 
 
 The street greets you full of noise and sunshine, clearing your 
 mind of the cigarette smoke, but you continue to feel lost. Ofelia 
 and your ex-husband no longer interest you, only you matter, like 
 twenty years ago, when you hid deep inside yourself for the first 
 time to escape from suspicious looks. Since that day you’re a 
 stranger in your own body: you peer through your eyes, you 
 don’t recognize yourself, and you run away from that other with¬ 
 out knowing that it is you. The last thing you remember about 
 yourself is that your mother prohibited you from inviting friends 
 home because of that business about your father. “You don’t have 
 to tell anyone,” she ordered, and you understood that she was 
 giving you permission to lie. Later you learned to invent excuses, 
 to pretend, to deny yourself. ... If only you could go far away. 
 
where no one knows you, before you completely forget the dark 
 girl that you abandoned somewhere twenty years ago. Perhaps 
 there’s still time to save her from that senseless life, except where 
 did you leave her? Which way can you go? The sun makes the 
 sidewalk sparkle, your ankles hesitate between continuing on or 
 turning left. You choose the latter, guided by the murmur that 
 whirls in the air and vanishes in the heights. You look up, seeking 
 open windows, peering faces, and your look is stifled in the midst 
 of the buildings, which rise above awnings and bars. No, you 
 can’t be there either, behind those broken windows where hope is 
 fading. You turn dubiously, and take the only taxi that comes by. 
 Your overworked high heels haven’t yet gotten used to your 
 swollen feet. The taxi stops in front of a park at the outskirts of 
 the city. You get out and sit down under the shade of a tree; you 
 look like an indecisive shadow. “I can’t return,” you tell yourself, 
 you don’t want to continue acting out the same role of the frivo¬ 
 lous, independent femme fatale. But you know that you don’t 
 have anywhere to go, you’d have to break all the mirrors in order 
 to start over again, and you don’t dare. You’re afraid of finding 
 nothing behind those glasses, behind that blond hair. You prefer 
 to continue pretending, crouched inside yourself, waiting for 
 someone to rescue you. You’ll say that you went out to buy some 
 cigarettes, you’ll ask for a drink, you’ll give a kiss to ... anyone at 
 all, and you won’t put up with the sarcastic laughter. 
 
 Little by little, thoughts are yielding to sensations: it smells like 
 a pine tree, it’s hot, you’re thirsty, very' thirsty. The fatigue wraps 
 around your arms, closes your eyes, you begin to fall asleep. Fake 
 smiles, half truths, an unfinished letter, are mixed up in your un¬ 
 conscious; had you finished that letter addressed to your mother, 
 you’d know who you are, but you were afraid to face the truth. 
 You’ve always been a coward and a sham. As a child you were the 
 perfect image of order and responsibility, in order to please the 
 adults and not be compared with anyone. You knew that you 
 weren’t like the rest of the girls, who had a mama and a papa. 
 
 65 
 
Your father spent all his life going on one trip after another; you 
 didn’t know him; finally, your mother explained, in her own way, 
 that he didn’t exist. So you made up an ideal one, with the eyes of 
 one artist, the smile of another, the voice of . . . and when you 
 were asked about him you became confused and he ended up 
 looking just like any papa: loving, strict sometimes, and so busy 
 that he was never home. You scrupulously kept the secret day 
 after day, anticipating the suspicious question with: “Today we 
 received a letter from Dad.” Or signing report cards with a fic¬ 
 titious name and even calling him on the phone in front of others. 
 On Father’s Day you were the most enthusiastic in making a gift 
 only to end up hiding it in the closet next to the one from the 
 previous year, and the one before that, and ... you couldn’t go on 
 like that, that’s why when he “died in an accident outside the 
 country,” you cried in front of your classmates and believed that 
 your reputation was safe, but they all knew. No one had ever 
 believed your story. You had to get out of school and dye your 
 hair blond in order to fool yourself. But, you spent hours in front 
 of the mirror, envisioning male features through your own. You 
 didn’t look like your mother, so you had to look like him. You 
 began to see him here and there. One day he was a literature 
 professor; another, a cab driver or a banker. They all had your face 
 and mocked your anxiety, your animosity, your insolence, until 
 from so much seeing yourself in the faces of others, you forgot 
 your own. Although, perhaps he knows you and is waiting for 
 the precise moment to approach you, or perhaps he already did it 
 and you didn’t know. It’s not easy to ask a stranger, “Are you my 
 daughter?” What would you tell him? How would he react? And, 
 what if nothing happened? You can’t escape so many questions, 
 wherever you go your father continues to follow you, intervening 
 in your life: “You are the daughter of an unknown father.” “Your 
 mother is a whore.” “You are worth nothing, you are worth 
 nothing, you are worth nothing.” That’s why you married the 
 first man who asked you. You would have a last name, perhaps 
 
 66 
 
you’d eventually love him. Love? Soon you became aware of your 
 frigidity. Your father was there, between the two of you. Your 
 husband began to drink, to seek consolation, while you con¬ 
 tinued to run, further away each time, looking for love in Luis’s 
 arms, in Hector’s, in Alberto’s. No one can live without love, 
 except that you are incapable of loving any man because you 
 aren’t capable of loving yourself. Your own insecurity shames 
 you, it makes you hate yourself. That’s why you don’t want to 
 wake up, you’re better off that way, in the darkness that sur¬ 
 rounds you. You don’t realize that you begin to laugh and sing 
 because you dream that you’re almost happy, no one can expose 
 you there. You tremble, your body shudders a bit, and then it 
 begins relaxing until it remains still. A sudden ladder takes you 
 out of the semidarkness of your night. You ascend and you see, 
 from above, a woman lying under a tree, with painless shoes, her 
 blond hair spread out on the grass, dark glasses in one hand and a 
 broken mirror in the other. You don’t recognize her. While you 
 continue to climb higher and higher, in another part of the city 
 the wine glasses also are empty. 
 
 67 
 
17 
 
 c 
 
 ailing Elisa made her feel terribly lethargic, thought Sehora 
 Rodriguez while searching for her address book in her purse. She 
 would have to wish her a happy new year, explain to her that she 
 wanted to call her earlier and hadn’t been able to, something 
 entirely false but necessary if she wanted to continue with the true 
 purpose of her call: to find out if she would collaborate in the rest 
 homes. So she had no alternative. But perhaps, she would first 
 call Carlota, Sehora Rodriguez told herself, not finding her ad¬ 
 dress book, which, even though it was also bothersome, at least it 
 would be more spontaneous to begin a conversation with her, 
 that is if she wasn’t busy and didn’t ask her to call back later on. 
 On second thought, Sehora Rodriguez contradicted herself, as 
 she extracted from her purse the first volume of The True Story of 
 Both World Wars, she preferred to call Victoria. Would she re¬ 
 member her after so many years? She couldn’t stand the thought 
 of asking, “Do you remember me?” It was probable that she 
 would answer yes; however, it was possible that she wouldn’t, 
 which would leave Sehora Rodriguez, obviously, without a topic 
 of discussion. And Marcela? Her phone is always busy, sighed 
 Sehora Rodriguez, terminating her search. Don’t even consider 
 Leticia, decided Sehora Rodriguez, closing her purse abruptly, 
 one never knows if one will catch her at a bad time. “They’re a 
 bunch of neurotics,” she proclaimed and unplugged the phone so 
 that no one would bother her. 
 
Office Machine 
 
 A 
 
 # m day to me is the sum of twenty-four hours, one thousand 
 four hundred and forty minutes, and eighty-six thousand four 
 hundred seconds ticked off one by one, even though you can try 
 to convince me of the contrary with that “nothing-happened 
 face” when you get off the train after enjoying a week of vacation 
 with your wife and your rosy-cheeked children. Everything is in 
 order, right, Lupita? you proclaim so very calmly that you resem¬ 
 ble a town church bell calling everyone to the rosary, sooo inno¬ 
 cent, sooo certain about me: you call and I come to you, a punc¬ 
 tual woman-clock who arranges her time to meet your time. 
 
 “I need an efficient secretary, salary commensurate with abil¬ 
 ities,” read the newspaper ad. My abilities were nonexistent, but 
 you made sure I knew what you needed me to know: flowers for 
 Claudia’s birthday, reservations for the wedding anniversary, 
 trips, theater functions, everything went through my hands be¬ 
 fore it went through your wife’s, even your children. First it was 
 for an hour or two, then the entire afternoon, with your permis¬ 
 sion or without it, and I took care of them because they were 
 yours, because of those eyes of theirs so full of you that they 
 seemed to kiss, just with a look. And you were so proud of them 
 and of your wife who took very good care of them, who didn’t 
 neglect them, who . . . 
 
 She always arrived ten minutes before you, and please don’t tell 
 him anything, Lupita, he doesn’t need to know. And me, no, it’s 
 
not worth it, he’s very tired, but fearing that someday you would 
 find out and they would no longer be brought to me and I who 
 had grown accustomed to them and they to me. I had never seen 
 any twins so alike and who had learned to lie so quickly. At five 
 they already knew how to say that they had spent the afternoon 
 playing with Mom at the park instead of with me. Whenever you 
 left for a trip, the office overflowed with laughter and games that 
 you almost discovered, more than once: “Senor Ochoa’s con¬ 
 tract, Lupita, Lupita, please what’s wrong, why are you so dis¬ 
 tracted? Why is there candy in the files, Lupita?” And those col¬ 
 ored prints, I couldn’t explain how they ended up in the price 
 lists. In any case, the business functioned in spite of my “extrava¬ 
 gances,” your trips and your children: “Lupita, take care of the 
 boys.” I saw less and less of your wife. The boys arrived with the 
 maid or alone because Mom was still changing into the dresses I 
 selected in your name. Your children began to comment about 
 how nice “Uncle Hector” was to them. He took them to the 
 movies, bought them chocolates, and all he asked was that they 
 didn’t tell Dad, so that they wouldn’t be scolded for eating be¬ 
 tween meals or for taking time away from their homework since 
 Dad was very strict about that, even though there was nothing 
 wrong with it, that’s why Uncle Hector gave them those small 
 pleasures, and in return, of course, they should let him be with 
 Mom who was so lonely, the poor woman, because Dad was 
 always busy or on a trip, and that’s how we went about falsifying 
 your life more and more without your knowing it. I used to see 
 you arrive with gifts for Claudia and the children, and for me the 
 paperweight with a pen and the same question as always: “Is 
 everything fine, Lupita?” And I nodded my head trying to excuse 
 Claudia’s excessive expenditures, everything is so expensive, espe¬ 
 cially when one has a plaything like Hector, so young, so well 
 dressed, so like a bell that he rings in Claudia’s ears and on 
 Claudia’s skin. And you near bankruptcy in spite of your effort, in 
 spite of mine: “We cannot reduce my family’s expenditures, that 
 
 70 
 
doesn’t have anything to do with the business, Lupita; by the 
 way, tomorrow I’ll be leaving for vacation with Claudia and the 
 children, please take care of everything and when I return . . 
 Hector will be waiting with eager Ups, and the kids will play with 
 him, Claudia will play with you, you will play like you don’t 
 realize that she and that I... 
 
 7i 
 
i8 
 
 cnora Rodriguez took out the phone directory from her 
 purse, opened it from the back, and pointed her finger at ran¬ 
 dom; then she looked down at the place where her finger was 
 pointing and read: Valle Inclan, Ramon. “Valle Inclan,” it sounds 
 familiar, said Senora Rodriguez as she dialed the phone number 
 that appeared next to the name. On the other end of the line 
 someone answered: “Yes?” 
 
 “Is Mr. Del Valle home?” asked Senora Rodriguez. 
 
 “He’s busy,” replied the voice. “Who’s calling?” 
 
 Senora Rodriguez hesitated and finally gave her name. 
 
 “One moment please,” the voice requested. Two minutes later 
 Senora Rodriguez heard: “Yes?” to which she inquired with: “Are 
 you Mr. Del Valle?” 
 
 “At your service, Senora Rodriguez.” 
 
 “Oh, do you know me?” she replied in a soprano voice. 
 
 “Of course,” he continued, “naturally, how were you able to 
 reach me?” 
 
 “I saw your number in the directory.” 
 
 “I didn’t know that there were such specialized directories, 
 where did you obtain it?” 
 
 “Let me look.” Senora Rodriguez took out the book from 
 her purse again. “Well, let’s see,” began Senora Rodriguez, “it’s 
 the ...” and here she interrupted herself; the cover read “Diction- 
 
ary,” not “Directory.” She looked once more under Valle, and 
 when she got to Valle Inclan, Ramon, she found the numbers 
 that she had dialed: 1866-1936. When Seriora Rodriguez picked 
 up the receiver again, it was giving the classic busy signal. 
 
 73 
 
Geography Lesson 
 
 D 
 
 I—/ arberena, Gloria?” 
 
 “Here, professor.” 
 
 Barberena, with her slender and firm waist underneath the plaid 
 uniform, stands up and begins to brandish her words with affec¬ 
 tation and boldness. 
 
 “Africa is located in ...” 
 
 And without hesitating she begins to invent what she doesn’t 
 know, taking full advantage of her choir-girl smile, unaware, per¬ 
 haps, of the effect she provokes in me. From my desk, where I’m 
 exposed to the scrutinizing look of fifty pairs of eyes, I make an 
 effort to distract myself by constructing in my mind the puzzle 
 that is Gloria Barberena, starting from that mouth that tries to 
 persuade me of her knowledge, from those eyes that look inward, 
 as if they were reading in her mind the geography lesson, from 
 that straight flowing hair that falls down her neck to the seam of 
 her blouse, where the trail is completely lost: the austere plaid 
 uniform, reminiscence of the chastity belt, dams up my imagina¬ 
 tion, which is about to overflow my thick glasses. With my index 
 finger I run through Level IIIC roster, to find Barberena; she’s 
 the fourth one on the list, after Ahumada, Ascencio, and Banda. 
 Yes, here she is, Barberena, with her chest thrust forward, in spite 
 
 of that horrible fabric_“Africa is located in ...” Africa’s borders 
 
 are less remote than her waist, which I would place halfway be¬ 
 tween the seam of her skirt and her head, now lightly inclined, no 
 
doubt, upon the limits of the dark continent. Limits that extend 
 far beyond what’s reasonable, I suspect, focusing on the uniform, 
 trying to situate the diminutive nipples, the tender pubic fuzz, 
 the bellybutton, over that plaid grid and without other references 
 but a piece of leg covered by a thick stocking, small hands that 
 sprout from narrow cuffs, and the dark skin which I suppose 
 extends underneath the merciless uniform without finding the 
 exit. Africa’s climate, in Gloria’s voice, makes me sweat: I’ve just 
 discovered the exact location of the groin thanks to an impercep¬ 
 tible knee movement, which caused a crease where I let my glance 
 slide while I slide my fingers over ... the grade book, and I write 
 down a ten for number four, who, gratefully, sits down and care¬ 
 lessly crosses her legs, revealing her thigh. “She will go far,” I tell 
 myself, writing down a point in my favor while I ask: “Casares, 
 Adriana?” Before I can focus on her, she replies: 
 
 “Here, professor,” directing her eyes to the bottom of my pants 
 from where they slowly ascend, very slowly. It’s a sure bet that my 
 socks don’t match my suit, I think, hoping that her gaze doesn’t 
 linger too long on the coffee stains that I wasn’t able to remove 
 this morning and on the torn pocket. Trying not to be noticed I 
 pull my jacket down to the most convenient height to avoid a 
 deliberate inspection of my crotch. I try not to move, and I suck 
 in my stomach as much as possible when I feel that a button is 
 about to pop off. The knot of my tie is choking me and heat is 
 rushing to my face, along with Adriana’s eyes which meet up with 
 mine, tired and blinking. The little plaid squares are beginning to 
 dance, and I’m only on number five. 
 
 75 
 
19 
 
 $ 
 
 \^r usanita and Carlitos were prepared for their First Commu¬ 
 nion by their grandmother. The good lady was determined to 
 implant in her grandchildren the eternal truths and good customs 
 that she had always practiced, along with endless prayers that 
 they had to recite before getting up, going to bed, eating, and 
 even before bathing; this they did with their clothes on, due to 
 fear of falling into temptation. And so that the children wouldn’t 
 forget her teachings, she had some cards printed with an illustra¬ 
 tion of the Virgin and the following text: “Remembrance of Sus- 
 anita and Carlitos Rodriguez’s First Communion, celebrated on 
 May io, 1965.” One of the cards lies at the bottom of Senora 
 Rodriguez’s purse. No matter how often she took it out with the 
 purpose of proving her children’s innocence, she wasn’t able to 
 convince Susanita’s ex-husband that she hadn’t cheated on him 
 with the caretaker of the zoo’s tiger exhibit; nor the police that 
 Carlitos wasn’t capable of smoking marijuana on an empty stom¬ 
 ach. “And to think that my mother-in-law had ten thousand cards 
 printed just in case,” sighed Senora Rodriguez, crossing herself 
 and smacking a kiss on her thumb while she recalled the thou¬ 
 sands of novenas and fervent prayers offered by her mother-in- 
 law to guarantee her own entrance in heaven, before the church 
 decided that there would no longer be plenary indulgences. 
 
The Congregation in the Park 
 
 T 
 
 To Cecilia Eudave 
 
 •V began to go to the park out of boredom. I would arrive and 
 sit on the first bench to the right. At first I used to spend the 
 afternoon all alone, reading, and sometimes staring between the 
 lines without paying attention to whatever I was looking at. A 
 few afternoons had passed when a man sat down next to me and 
 also began to read. He was wearing a blue suit. Suddenly he 
 looked at me, smiling with complicity', showing me his book, 
 which was the same as mine. 
 
 “Do you like Garcia Marquez?” he asked me. 
 
 I didn’t want to disappoint him and I answered yes, even 
 though I was just beginning to read the book. 
 
 He’s my favorite author, he continued with the familiarity' one 
 gets when something is shared. I’m glad; these day's it’s difficult 
 to find someone who reads, I remarked, concluding the conversa¬ 
 tion. Will \'ou come tomorrow? he said by way of farewell. I don’t 
 know, I answered as I left. I didn’t think about this encounter 
 until the next day on my way to the park. The weather was pleas¬ 
 ant and I had finished my chores ahead of time, so I could take a 
 few hours to relax, I told my'self, without anyone asking me about 
 it. When I arrived I saw the bench was empty' and felt at ease; I 
 didn’t intend to renew yesterday^s chat. I was there to take advan¬ 
 tage of the last summer days. I didn’t notice her presence until I 
 got up to leave. The first thing that I saw was a book, my book. 
 
that is to say, her book. A woman was looking at me over the top 
 of her glasses, waiting for me to look up. Are you the person 
 who’s studying Garcia Marquez? Yes, I answered. We also admire 
 him. Who’s “we”? I asked feeling annoyed. All of us, she said. 
 “All?” Yes, we who de-vo-ur Garcia Marquez, of course. Perhaps 
 you know them? I don’t, but he does, she explained showing me a 
 picture of the man with the blue suit; it was he who asked me to 
 come, he wasn’t able to come today, perhaps tomorrow; she fin¬ 
 ished speaking, giving me her hand. I ended up laughing about 
 the whole incident; they had played an innocent prank on me, I 
 thought. 
 
 I stopped going to the park for three days because I was busy 
 with other matters, but on the fourth day, I decided to go again. I 
 attributed my resdessness to work and to being tired, and I 
 needed some fresh air. When I got to the bench I saw them. They 
 seemed to have been waiting for me for a long time. I greeted 
 them, obligated by the anxious looks they fixed on my face. Have 
 you bought Gabo’s latest book? they exclaimed all at once, mak¬ 
 ing room so that I could sit among them. In spite of our uncom¬ 
 fortable position, the afternoon went by quickly between com¬ 
 mentaries about the pages each one had read. Around seven, one 
 of them pushed forward to say, Tell us something about Garcia 
 Marquez’s fife, you must know some interesting details. For the 
 second time I didn’t want to disappoint them, and I began telling 
 the little I knew. From that day on I began to go every day, even 
 during winter. Now there were more than one hundred of us 
 who gathered around the bench. The password was: Do you read 
 Gabo? and, even if they didn’t, no one dared confess it. I was in 
 the middle of all of them discoursing on One Hundred Tears of 
 Solitude, when I saw the man in the blue suit approaching. He sat 
 down on the bench to the left with a book in his hands. My 
 followers fell silent. We looked at each other in suspense. I was 
 the first one to break it. Garcia Marquez? I asked pointing to the 
 
 78 
 
book. And rubbing his chin with his fingers, he answered: No, 
 Fernando del Paso. The others heard us without knowing what 
 to do; then they began to get up one by one and walk in all 
 directions and bump into each other. And they were still bump¬ 
 ing into each other when I left them. 
 
 79 
 
20 
 
 A 
 
 M munt Clotilde is sad; she found in her niece’s purse a pam¬ 
 phlet from 1910, bearing the slogan “True Suffrage, No Reelec¬ 
 tion.” Immediately she recalled Juventino Rosas’s waltzes, Angela 
 Peralta’s arias, the popular songs and the afternoon parties of her 
 youth. When Senora Rodriguez’s father didn’t know Senora 
 Rodriguez’s mother, he did know her. Aunt Clotilde, who wasn’t 
 an aunt yet and who had cute dimples on her cheeks and others 
 even cuter on the back of her knees and ... who might have been 
 Senora Rodriguez’s mother if it hadn’t been for Don Porfirio 
 who, while passing down the Alameda one afternoon, stopped 
 his carriage in front of Aunt Clotilde, whose figure revealed itself 
 through her silk dress. That’s destiny, thought Don Porfirio when 
 he saw her. In fact the president’s destiny was so long that it got 
 entangled with hers. The horses ran wild, and Don Porfirio, with¬ 
 out destiny, would have died had Aunt Clotilde not cast to him 
 one end of her own destiny. 
 
 In that entanglement the elections got confused with the slen¬ 
 der waist of the aunt; the constitution with her French umbrella; 
 and Don Francisco y Madero with her tiny pigskin boots. Don 
 Porfirio went after Aunt Clotilde following his destiny, and, 
 when Limantour tried to stop him, destiny broke in two. The 
 best half was kept by Aunt Clotilde, as proved in The Other Side of 
 the Mexican Revolution, volume 95, written by the aunt and pub¬ 
 lished by the Joaquin Mortiz publishing house. 
 
No-Man’s-Land 
 
 if * e were a family just like every family, with a house just like 
 other houses, until he arrived. 
 
 We took him in when she had been living with us for two years, 
 a seniority' that gave her the right to use the house as she fancied. 
 It was all the same to her if she slept under the stairs, on a bed, or 
 in the garden. Perhaps that’s why she became resentful when she 
 heard him playing and making noise in front of the house and 
 realized that in order to open the carport, we had to first close the 
 door that led to the patio, leaving her in an intermediate zone 
 that she didn’t like because she felt trapped. She did not under¬ 
 stand that our intention was to protect her from any possible 
 attack. We did not know him yet. He had arrived at the house 
 limping, and even in this state he inspired fear. I do not know if it 
 was out of necessity' or out of caprice that we became fond of him. 
 After a few weeks he was so strong he didn’t allow any'one to 
 come near the fence. 
 
 We began parking the cars outside the carport, so that we 
 wouldn’t have to restrain him every' time we wanted to take the 
 cars out. Later, we paved the little garden adjacent to it, which he 
 had destroyed with all his digging, and we raised the wall higher 
 so that he wouldn’t be bothered by the kids in the neighborhood. 
 Finally we decided to build the wall all the way across and remove 
 the gate, having noticed that he had learned to open it. We ended 
 up isolated from the street. Luckily, there was a back door, which. 
 
even though we had to go around, became the only alternative to 
 getting rid of him. 
 
 We did not realize that she had observed our movements dur¬ 
 ing that period and that this side of the house was all she had left. 
 From the stairs, with her round eyes she would watch the com¬ 
 ings and goings of every family member. At first we did not 
 notice, but day after day her look became more insistent, espe¬ 
 cially if she heard his noises when he scratched himself, when he 
 drank water, or when he chased after a bird. 
 
 The first one to become intimidated was Raulito. Can you 
 come with me to the kitchen, Mama? he asked me one evening, 
 and when we passed by her, he made a detour. I told Raul about 
 it. It’s absurd, he answered, it’s all in your imagination, I do 
 not want the boy to become a good-for-nothing. I said nothing 
 about it after that. 
 
 The situation became worse in spite of our attempts to ignore 
 her. And we didn’t dare ask for help because it was ridiculous that 
 we were afraid of her, so loyal, so cute, so threatening. 
 
 At eight in the evening I used to go out and feed him. I would 
 close the door that led to the patio before opening the door to the 
 carport, and, after closing it again, I would feed her. Today I 
 repeated each step as always, except that when I reopened the 
 patio door, she stopped me with a look of determination not to 
 let me enter. My kids were away on vacation, and my husband 
 would be home late. I realized that this was the opportunity she 
 had been waiting for. I felt trapped when I saw her at the entry¬ 
 way, blocking my way. I tried to mollify her, but her hair bristled 
 and I gave up. Now I am in the intermediate zone, waiting for 
 someone to rescue me. From here I can see the keys to the rear 
 door, on top of the table where my husband left them. She knows 
 this and begins to bare her fangs. 
 
 82 
 
21 
 
 A 
 
 / ms far as anything happening, nothing had happened that 
 afternoon, except for the pictures. Senora Rodriguez closed the 
 old photo album as if she had read the story of her life for the very 
 first time. Her astonishment turned into nostalgia and then into a 
 bad mood. The rest of the afternoon she wasn’t able to erase from 
 her mind those unreachable images. She tried to place yesterday’s 
 faces with those of today and something was either missing in 
 them or something was left over. Senora Rodriguez went out¬ 
 side. When she got into the car she observed herself in the rear¬ 
 view mirror comparing her face with the one she had just put 
 away in a drawer, with identical results. Absentmindedlv, Senora 
 Rodriguez went into the supermarket; the prices were also differ¬ 
 ent; twenty' years ago no one imagined that things could change 
 so much. She couldn’t concentrate on shopping, thinking about 
 the little sunburned faces, of Susanita and Carlitos, looking at her 
 from the photographs. I wonder where they are now? she asked 
 herself, taking Carlitos’s pacifier and Susanita’s gum out of her 
 purse. On her way back home she turned on Lopez Cotilla and 
 went up La Paz. She went up to the address where she used to five 
 when she was single. She knocked with the pretext of paring a 
 visit to the new tenant, who surely would understand the reason 
 for her boldness. A maid opened the door: “No, the lady of the 
 house is not home, and I cannot let you come in.” Senora Rod¬ 
 riguez looked in from outside. Where there used to be a large 
 
window a wall stood; the living room was now a library; the 
 fountain was now covered over; it seemed as if the house were 
 hiding from her. She quickly said good-bye and went on her way. 
 Senor Rodriguez was watching tv when she threw herself at 
 him, covering him with kisses. “Hasn’t anything happened?” she 
 asked her husband. “Of course not,” he responded. “What could 
 happen?” Sehora Rodriguez took his hand and replied, “You’re 
 right,” while she recalled the mumps, the tantrums, the death of 
 one of her grandmothers, the death of the other one, the devalua¬ 
 tion, the first gray hair. . . . “You know what?” she whispered in 
 his ear. “I still keep contraceptives in my purse.” . . . Senor Rod¬ 
 riguez turned off the television. At the age of fifty-five, Seriora 
 Rodriguez became pregnant for the third time. 
 
 84 
 
And the Crows Cawed 
 
 A 
 
 / * t dawn take out the ‘compadre’ and charge him with de¬ 
 
 sertion.” 
 
 “Yes, captain.” 
 
 Do not worry. Father, at daybreak I will have the answer. I have 
 waited up so many nights, wanting to dream while swatting away 
 the memories with my hand time after time, feeling them flutter¬ 
 ing above my head: Jacinta was there, leaving a thousand times 
 through the same door, leaving it ajar.... And me twisting on the 
 bed out of pure shame. Ramon was like a brother, we were never 
 apart; together we went to the hills to hunt quail, we learned to 
 ride bareback, to smoke and to talk about women, in time. He 
 always won at everything, and I admired him, even though at 
 times I also envied him; but his sincere smile won me over, the 
 same smile with which he won Jacinta over. He met her first and 
 cheerfully made her his wife, never imagining that anyone, least 
 of all me, would stab him in the back. That’s why he asked me to 
 act as godfather for his boy. He began to do very well; every day 
 he was more prosperous, she was more and more a woman, and 
 the kid just as brave as he and as handsome as she, no doubt about 
 that. I was the one who remained behind, like their shadow, 
 watching them grow. Ramon had made me his administrator. “If 
 it weren’t for you, compadre,” he always said, making me feel as if 
 I were his brother, his younger brother. The envy that I carried 
 
inside began to get to me. “What does he have that I don’t have?” 
 I told myself, looking at Jacinta, who once in a while showed a 
 cunning that only prostitutes possess. “She doesn’t steal it, she 
 inherits it,” murmured the gossips, meaning that Jacinta was il¬ 
 legitimate. This made things easier for me. “It’ll be a game,” I 
 thought, calculating everything, except what happened. When I 
 realized, it was too late; Jacinta was more powerful than I and 
 knew how to get what she wanted: to dominate, to possess the 
 will and the feelings of everyone else. “I won’t be weak like my 
 mother,” she warned me each time I protested her coldness. “No 
 man will humiliate me.” She appeared to hate the world, but it 
 was the way in which she hated that attracted me even more. I fell 
 in love like a kid. Father. She, on the other hand, continued 
 calling me “compadre,” even when she was in my arms. “Don’t 
 make fun of me,” I pleaded to her, and she silenced me by holding 
 me tighter. And I feeling like a wretch and dying of jealousy. 
 Jacinta continued being Ramon’s wife, and I continued being the 
 loser, because Ramon was either blind or she had him totally 
 bewitched. “Take care of her, compadre,” he used to tell me when 
 he went out of town. And my soul was churning up within my 
 body. I recalled our friendship, which he had never stained, and I 
 felt like screaming, asking him to forgive me; then I recalled 
 Jacinta, with her legs wrapped around mine, and I lacked the 
 strength to do so. “Perhaps she loves me,” I thought. If I had been 
 certain that Jacinta loved me, I would not have deceived Ramon, 
 I would have said it to his face, but only God knows if the one 
 deceived wasn’t me. Now Ramon is already buried. He died all of 
 a sudden, that’s what everyone believes, onlv I know that he was 
 dead while he was alive. He had become an old man; it took only 
 two years for the pretense to consume him. “Can you hear the 
 crows cawing, compadre?” he asked me, before his wrinkles 
 became permanent, simulating mouths that one day had been 
 smiles. “No, Ramon,” I answered, “I don’t hear anything.” “Can 
 it be that you don’t want to hear?” That was the last thing he said. 
 
 86 
 
staring at Jacinta without any reproach, without any denuncia¬ 
 tion. I remained in doubt forever. “Compadre,” I used to hear 
 him calling at me in the night, “do you hear them? They are 
 cawing, the crows, compadre.” And a chill made me grind my 
 teeth. 
 
 Jacinta did not return again; that’s when I understood her 
 words: “I don’t want to owe you anything, compadre. I swear 
 that I’ll repay you for all that you suffered for me,” she told me, 
 the last time she was with me. When we were finally free from 
 each other, Jacinta revealed what she really was and I what I had 
 been: a poor devil, a wretch who lost his best friend because of 
 passion. I realized that I was all alone. No longer could I get 
 drunk with Ramon and get into a hell of a fight or cry with him. I 
 would have liked to confess to him that the little spotted calf we 
 both raised together had not escaped on her own; I opened the 
 door for her to leave; that’s why I hid myself when I found out 
 that he found her at the bottom of a ravine. I had spent twenty- 
 five years keeping it from him, and at that moment I remembered 
 that and many, many other things that were burning me deep 
 inside. Later came the Cristeros revolt, and I joined out of de¬ 
 spair, without even knowing what we were fighting about. I 
 found out that she was with the opposition and that she had 
 become the big chief’s lover. They began to light one cigarette 
 after another, one bullet after another, without hitting the target. 
 They considered me an idiot because I faced them unprotected. 
 “Do you want to get killed?” I heard before they caught me. 
 That’s what I wanted, to end up in their hands, once and for all, 
 to see if it’s true that one can hear the crows caw; and I did it. I 
 have only three hours left to fill with smoke or remorse. 
 
 “Give him some brandy so that he doesn’t feel anything.” 
 
 “All right, captain.” 
 
 “I don’t want him to suffer, those are the orders of Jacinta, la 
 Genemla.” 
 
 87 
 
22 
 
 u 
 
 pon seeing Senora Rodriguez pregnant, Susanita cried out, 
 “Mama, how was it possible?” Senora Rodriguez tried to explain 
 how, as she knitted an adjustable maternity dress, and only man¬ 
 aged to get entangled in the skein of yarn. With the hand that was 
 free Senora Rodriguez tried to show Susanita that she was still 
 young, drawing out of her purse the baby tooth that had fallen 
 out the night she became pregnant. Senora Rodriguez felt doubly 
 pregnant when Susanita explained to her: “What I mean is that 
 it’s not possible that you would be so foolish. You must know 
 about contraceptives.” Senora Rodriguez laughed through the 
 teeth that she had left. She had gone through menopause five 
 years before. 
 
 Fifteen months later, Baby Rodriguez was born, and from the 
 time he emitted his first sound he proved to be a precocious child. 
 Instead of crying he made fun of the doctor, the nurse, and his 
 own mother. Moreover, he had all his teeth with the exception of 
 the lower left canine, the same one that Senora Rodriguez had 
 lost. At two months, Baby Rodriguez spoke his first word, which 
 was not Mama, but Grandmother. Senora Rodriguez was in 
 agreement and registered him as her grandson, son of an un¬ 
 known mother. After putting the certificate away in her purse, 
 next to those of Susanita and Carlitos, she commented to her 
 husband, “It all turned out better than we had hoped for, right, 
 darling?” and began to rub his head. 
 
Heard in Passing 
 
 •V t would be great if life did not make us old, but all of a sudden 
 the days appear completely wrinkled. The hours cram together 
 and pass by all at once, two o’clock, three o’clock, four o’clock, 
 and without one’s realizing it, it’s already dark; and one is stuck 
 between a yellowish and used-up life, with a bunch of useless 
 minutes where nothing happens because it has already happened. 
 It’s because sometimes we get a second-hand life that others have 
 already lived. In my life someone has already beaten me to being a 
 bullfighter, another married the wife that I wanted, another one 
 became rich with my work, and there was even someone who 
 died in my place. So I was left with nothing to do. And life is 
 more and more dry and decayed. There are weeks that begin and 
 do not end; Sundays repeat themselves endlessly because they 
 lack the strength to become Mondays. And, if by chance they 
 make it, they start at six in the afternoon, when the sun is already 
 setting and women are covering up their birds, and the elderly 
 remember their dead ones. Oh well, some of us have to five with a 
 life that has been handled by others; I don’t know how they 
 manage to be the first ones and break it in. The only time that I 
 saw dawn it was cloudy and the roosters didn’t even sing, so I 
 went back to sleep until my boss found out and fired me. I tried 
 to explain it to her, and she acted as if she did not hear me. That’s 
 why I say that life resembles my boss, it passes in front of us 
 without seeing us or hearing us, without stopping. And we see it 
 
leaving without living it. I’ve spent a lot of time watching it pass 
 by, and each year I notice it’s farther away, more filled with people 
 who find no exit. And why not, if at this point, any end of a week, 
 end of a month or year, joins up with the end of the century. 
 Damned life, and then we don’t want it to get old. 
 
 90 
 
23 
 
 A 
 
 # lLt the age of five Baby Rodriguez became independent. He 
 ran away with his kindergarten teacher, a six-foot, twenty-year- 
 old blond, whom he raped during recess after getting her drunk 
 with a tequila-injected apple. Baby Rodriguez was accused of 
 corrupting adults, an accusation from which he was freed on 
 bail, paid by the blond, who couldn’t live without him from that 
 day on. 
 
 Together they set up a business selling objects made espe¬ 
 cially for precocious children. They sold fake birth certificates, 
 fake mustaches, dentures for toothless children, platform tennis 
 shoes, and all tvpes of paraphernalia for making love before age 
 ten. With the income they bought themselves a yacht and cruised 
 around the world. “I wonder which side of the family he takes 
 after?” Senora Rodriguez asked her husband, while taking an 
 apple out of her purse and setting it on the table. Senor Rod¬ 
 riguez was reading the paper. The apple was red and shiny. Senor 
 Rodriguez stopped reading the paper and crushed it. Senora 
 Rodriguez blinked toward the apple. Senor Rodriguez felt that 
 his underwear was too tight. The apple rolled to the floor. Senor 
 Rodriguez grabbed it in a flash and devoured it with a single bite, 
 spitting out the seed and taking off his pants. Senora Rodriguez 
 was waiting for him under the table, laughing. That was the third 
 apple Senor Rodriguez had eaten that day and there were still five 
 left in her purse. “I don’t know,” answered Senor Rodriguez. 
 
The Same Stock 
 
 T 
 
 I To Carolina Aranda 
 
 fl‘ hey were two, man and woman, but two. And they looked 
 with the look of the others, those who were not there. We knew 
 that the man and the woman had stayed among us to listen to and 
 to mock us and to take pleasure in watching us. I don’t know how 
 many we were, perhaps five, perhaps ten, however many we 
 were, we were sitting in a circle with them in the middle, so we 
 were not able to keep anything from them, nor speak without 
 their hearing us. 
 
 The man and the woman talked only to each other, and it was 
 as if everyone else, those who were not present, were there, just 
 like before, with their lovely perfumed bodies. We seemed not to 
 be there, also like before, while the others laughed and screamed 
 and we remained silent. The man and the woman knew that as 
 long as they were there, the others would also be there. That’s 
 why they remained in the same place, provoking the same dis¬ 
 trust, the same uneasiness as always. 
 
 Every afternoon they arrived on time, and as they entered, it 
 appeared as if they were coming from somewhere over there, and 
 as they left, it appeared as if they were going toward somewhere 
 over there. Perhaps someone was waiting for them and in this 
 way, we all remained together, except they didn’t let themselves 
 be seen. 
 
 Then, one of us, the one we called “the deaf one,” but really he 
 
was mute, fell in love with the woman. When he saw her he 
 shrieked and masturbated in silence, despairing at being unable 
 to speak. The old man, however, looked at the man and tears fell 
 from his eyes, remembering who knows what. He cried without 
 saying a word because no one paid attention to him, not even us, 
 because he was old. Chachalaca was the only one who dared to go 
 near them; she took a flower to the woman, who refused to take it 
 from Chachalaca’s deformed fingers, and we all went on hating 
 each other. If they could have, they would have decapitated us, 
 and if we had had the strength, we would have beaten them to 
 take away their beauty. But we could do nothing but look at them 
 from afar, and some of us couldn’t even do that, for example, the 
 blind man. 
 
 When the deaf one died, the woman started getting fat; after 
 three months the woman’s belly stuck out. The man, more than 
 just her lover, behaved as if he were her bodyguard. She, on the 
 other hand, was careful of her pregnane}' as if she feared that 
 someone, perhaps the others, would blame her if she didn’t come 
 full term. 
 
 The man and the woman continued attending our meetings 
 and they forced us to be isolated. Although there were more of 
 us, we remained at the edge of this transformation that was de¬ 
 veloping before our eyes and seized our attention. The body, 
 bigger and bigger, gave the feeling that it was spying on us. 
 
 Today when we arrived they were already there, sitting in the 
 same place; except that now, there were three of them. 
 
 93 
 
24 
 
 c 
 
 V»/ arlitos never met Baby Rodriguez: when the latter was 
 born, the former had already left to see the world as a stowaway 
 on a ship. Nevertheless, Carlitos and his brother were like two left 
 socks. So much so that when they bumped into each other, one 
 afternoon while walking on the sidewalk, they didn’t realize that 
 they were two, and they went off one behind the other, certain 
 that they were one. From that day on, if Carlitos raised his left 
 hand, Baby Rodriguez raised his right; if Baby Rodriguez closed 
 his right eye, Carlitos imitated with his left and if one of them 
 began to laugh, the other finished it. They looked at each other to 
 comb their hair or brush their teeth and both went to sleep at the 
 same time and dreamed the same thing. One time they almost 
 discovered that they were two. It was when one of them woke up 
 before the other, we don’t know which one. What we do know is 
 that the one who was awake thought he was still asleep, dreaming 
 that he had awakened; while the one sleeping dreamed that he 
 was dreaming he was awake; with which both were satisfied. 
 They lived this way for a few months until one day, as they came 
 to a corner, Carlitos turned to the right and Baby Rodriguez to 
 the left, and they never saw each other again. Still, neither of 
 them realized the disappearance of the other because they never 
 knew about each other’s existence. The only one who was upset 
 about it was the blond teacher who did know which was which. 
 Besides her, only Senora Rodriguez could tell them apart, by a 
 
birth mark that one of them has; but she jealously keeps this 
 secret in her purse, along with the secret of the Virgin of Fatima, 
 the map of the fountain of youth, and a picture of a young boy in 
 love, which bears the following dedication: “To Sehora Rod¬ 
 riguez from your fervent admirer: Dorian Gray.” 
 
 95 
 
At the Baptismal Font 
 
 hat Sunday, when I arrived, I saw Relampago still unsad¬ 
 dled. A lump came to my throat; by that time Don Antonio 
 should have been on his way to Mezquital. I went around the 
 back and entered through the back door; his voice stopped me 
 halfway through the patio: “And you, where are you coming 
 from?” That was all he said, and without waiting for a reply, he 
 left, never to return. The loathing with which he looked at me 
 was enough to make me break down. After a while I removed my 
 shawl, and, controlling my shame, I continued cooking, straight¬ 
 ening up the house, waiting for him. 
 
 I counted the days and nights. Yes, I missed his fast walk, his 
 cigarette, his hat, his man’s smell. 
 
 Don Antonio behaved as he should have with me, there was no 
 reason for him to be any different. I was grateful to him for 
 noticing me that afternoon at the fair. He, a full-grown man. I 
 was sporting a new dress and shoes, and, why deny it, I flirted 
 with him; I, too, was attracted. I agreed to dance with him even if 
 it angered Ramon, the brother of my friend Lupe, who was just a 
 kid. What happened was that Don Antonio took me into his 
 home. There, I turned fifteen. He told me that his first wife had 
 died of a miscarriage, it was the only thing I found out about her. 
 
 At first I felt happy to be his wife, then two years had passed, 
 and we still had no children. I began to fear that he would leave 
 me because I didn’t give him a child, but how could I, if whenever 
 
it was time he wouldn’t come near me. I thought that he didn’t 
 want me to die like his first wife; although I also imagined that he 
 already had another woman and he put up with me out of pit)'. 
 But as soon as we were together I forgot about everything, since 
 he did it with such eagerness that he ended up convincing me. I 
 would say each time: “Now it will happen,” but nothing did. And 
 I kept on taking remedies and asking the Virgin to send us at least 
 one child. The townspeople now were looking at me out of the 
 comer of their eye and gossiping about me, saying I wasn’t a 
 woman, that I was useless, and they would stare at my stomach. 
 At my age I should have been a mother already, just like all the 
 others. The last straw was that Lupe, my best friend, said that 
 Don Antonio didn’t love me. I ran to church to pray that my 
 husband would give me a child so that I could silence everyone, 
 one by one. 
 
 That morning, while going to seven o’clock mass, Ramon 
 caught up with me. 
 
 “Edelmira,” he stopped me, “Don’t you remember your old 
 friends any more?” 
 
 I remembered. His voice hadn’t changed, on the contrary, 
 he... 
 
 “Yes Ramon,” I answered. “I heard that you were up north.” 
 
 “Well, I’m back.” 
 
 I swear to you. Father, that that was the only time. At that 
 moment, if it hadn’t been Sunday, Don Antonio should have 
 been on his way to Mezquital. It was an opportunity to prove 
 myself. “If I get pregnant, I can make him believe that it’s his and 
 he’ll be happy,” I thought, not remembering what day it was. 
 
 Yesterday they brought me his body slung across Relampago. 
 They say that they saw him roaming around Ramon’s ranch many 
 times until a shootout occurred between them. They said that it 
 was because of some problem about land; and the two of them 
 shot each other. No one knows the truth. I didn’t know either 
 that Don Antonio wasn’t capable, nor that he killed his first wife 
 
 97 
 
for being unfaithful. But you did know it, Father, and you kept it 
 from me when I asked you to bless me so that I could have 
 children. You also deceived me, as I did him, so baptize him now 
 for me and name liim Antonio. Only you and I will know that he 
 is Ramon’s son. 
 
 98 
 
25 
 
 I ifteen years ago, at the same moment that Carlitos was peeing 
 on the new sofa and Susanita was screaming because she had 
 gotten her finger stuck in the door, Senora Rodriguez received a 
 posthumous letter from her Aunt Clotilde. After putting the let¬ 
 ter away in her purse for “later,” she pinched Susanita and made 
 Carlitos’s finger better. Today she came across that letter under 
 her mother-in-law’s dentures, between Lady Windermere’s fan 
 and the Amozocian rosary. “How I like to receive news,” said 
 Senora Rodriguez while opening the envelope: 
 
 “Dearest niece: 
 
 I hope that this letter finds you well. At eighty years I couldn’t 
 be better, you’ll see why. 
 
 Remember that little mole I had on my left arm? Well, it turned 
 into a little pimple. A fact which would’ve been of no importance 
 had it stayed that way, but no, the pimple kept growing, minute 
 by minute, and in a short time it had become a monumental zit. 
 One early morning I awoke to find it staring at me: In the middle 
 of the zit two diminutive eyes, just like mine, were watching me. I 
 opened my eyelids wider, wishing to see them better and the little 
 eyes also widened without interrupting their gaze. With difficulty 
 I got into a long-sleeved dress, being careful so that I didn’t hurt 
 the eyes. I decided to wait. The next morning, below the eyes I 
 recognized a nose identical to mine, which I had to blow with 
 one of my hankies from Brussels. It seemed to have a cold and I 
 
wasn’t about to let it stain the silk blouse that Porfirio gave me. 
 Another day passed and a mouth appeared, with a tiny, light 
 mustache, right above the upper lip, exactly like mine. It’s more 
 than enough to say that during these months I’ve been thinking a 
 lot about Porfirio, he would’ve been so happy. The only problem 
 was to hide what was happening to me. The sleeve got tighter 
 and tighter and the tickles which the little tongue gave me made 
 me laugh in the least appropriate places. Nevertheless, I was con¬ 
 tent. The mouth now would smile at me and soon it would utter 
 its first word. I anxiously hoped that an arm would sprout forth, 
 then another, then the body, the legs. What would it be, a boy or 
 a girl? 
 
 I’ve spent the last weeks indoors harboring my secret. There’s 
 little time left now. ‘Perhaps tomorrow,’ I think, looking at the 
 photograph that Porfirio gave me sixty years ago. If he only knew 
 that it has a wart on its inner thigh exactly like him. . . .” 
 
 ioo 
 
A Time of Mourning 
 
 II % I To Don Joaquin Diez-Canedo Mortiz 
 
 ' ™ ow I know that Joaquin was twenty years older than Sofia, 
 an inequality' that she softened under the downy lip of a small¬ 
 town woman, with tortoiseshell combs on each side of her head 
 and a generously sized apron. But back then it was difficult for me 
 to guess how old Sofia was, always behind the iron entry' gate, 
 receiving bread in the morning, or watering the garden in the 
 afternoon. Her husband, on the other hand, came and went in his 
 car, which was driven by a chauffeur who called him “Don Joa¬ 
 quin” as he opened the door with a bend of the waist, which 
 made his employer appear to be much taller than he really was. 
 The car bore Joaquin away, leaving the carport open, an oppor¬ 
 tunity' that his wife took advantage of to peek secretively out into 
 the street before closing it. 
 
 Sofia spoke only with children. Amongst ourselves we re¬ 
 marked that she spoke by singing and that she ended her words 
 with either “u” or “i,” from which the adults determined the 
 couple’s place of origin: “So far as I’m concerned they come from 
 Michoacan,” mv mother said. “No, it’s in Tepa where they speak 
 like that,” contradicted my father. “Except they look like the peo¬ 
 ple in Uruapan and if they make guava jelly', surely that’s where 
 they’re from.” I never learned how to differentiate between one 
 place and another, just as I didn’t know how to differentiate 
 between a woman who was pregnant and one who wasn’t. So I 
 
spent many years waiting for Sofia to have a child, and she never 
 had one. 
 
 When they arrived, there were many of us children on the 
 block. We all used to pass by the house on the corner to go to the 
 store, but none of us got to know the new neighbors the way I 
 did. First I became friends with the cat, which I picked up one 
 day when he was lost. I asked at various homes if it was theirs, 
 until the only house left was the one on the corner. I knocked 
 with my nine years palpitating inside of me; Sofia opened the 
 door. It was the first time she ever offered me cookies and tea. It 
 was her cat, it couldn’t have been anyone else’s: black, completely 
 black. 
 
 The mysteries about the couple began to disturb me when I 
 found out that Joaquin had died. The wake was held with so 
 much discretion that no one noticed Sofia’s sadness, dressed 
 as she always was. Nevertheless, behind her thick and long eye¬ 
 lashes hid a reserved cunning, the kind we had on Good Friday, 
 when we went to church only for the meatless pastries. Joaquin 
 died precisely on Holy Thursday without affecting that week of 
 mourning. When Easter arrived no one remembered him any¬ 
 more: Sofia, like a reminiscence of herself, continued water¬ 
 ing the garden, making guava jelly, and looking down the street 
 from afar, under her thick eyebrows, which accentuated her 
 widowhood. 
 
 Sofia’s house faced onto two streets and, from both, one could 
 see her sitting behind a window, embroidering, knitting, attend¬ 
 ing to her memories, wrapped in a black robe. 
 
 The second time I entered her house, making my way through 
 the flower pots filled with ferns and multicolored cages, I found 
 her talking to the canaries. Her hands, extremely white, trembled 
 under the yellowish wings of two chicks whose mother had died. 
 She looked at me without releasing the birds and said: “Joaquin 
 promised me that you would come sooner or later. Come in.” 
 Then she led me to the living room and served a boiling cup of tea 
 
 102 
 
which I drank in sips. Sitting in front of me, she observed me, 
 lighdy touching my skin with her look. 
 
 I went back the next morning, the next and the next, trapped 
 by Sofia’s long eyelashes or by the clamor of her hands, or by her 
 way of saying things as if she were singing. Without protesting I 
 helped her knit baby clothes, embroider and prepare a basket for 
 a baby. She, meanwhile, talked about her life with Joaquin, plac¬ 
 ing his picture below the erratic light given off by a candle which 
 sparked reflections in Sofia’s hair. 
 
 At first my house was three houses away from hers, then two, 
 then one, and finally I found myself looking through her gate. I 
 didn’t realize at what point I learned to differentiate between the 
 herbs of fecundation and those of rejuvenation, but one evening I 
 caught myself invoking the spirit of love and drinking out of 
 Sofia’s cup. I never thought she could go beyond making tea, 
 lighting candles, and mixing herbs, but in time, I realized that an 
 unknown Sofia took hold of her and me in the waning hours of 
 daylight. “Joaquin assured me that I would never be alone again,” 
 she exclaimed, with conviction, and I repeated her words without 
 remembering who had said them first, she or I. 
 
 One early morning I woke up thinking of Joaquin, as I might 
 have known him long ago, before I was born: and it’s because the 
 night before I had dreamed about him, he was calling me Joa¬ 
 quin. I explained to Jiim that I wasn’t him, he was mistaken. 
 Without recognizing me, he kept calling me Joaquin. When I 
 told Sofia about it, she wasn’t surprised: I had an identical dream, 
 she said, and then we both started humming the same song with 
 no forethought. From that day on, if she gets hurt I feel it; if I’m 
 hungry, Sofia eats and I feel satisfied. Nor can we keep anything 
 from each other; I know that Sofia awaits the new moon, which 
 is the day I’ll turn fifteen, to carry out her plan: each nightfall she 
 practices her nuptials all alone, laying naked her widowhood litde 
 by little; then her flesh is filled with diminutive tongues that 
 cover her from head to toe. 
 
 103 
 
Today we woke up singing, certain that Sofia will not menstruate 
 for nine months, at which time, with her own hand, she will cut 
 our baby’s umbilical cord. At twilight, as I straightened out the 
 bird’s cage where the female laid her eggs, I began to desire her. 
 We went to the bedroom, closed the windows, and turned off the 
 lights. The edges of the night clung to her mouth, darkening it. 
 Nocturnal words, kept silent by day, awoke the silence, filling it 
 with suggestions, with demands, with anxiousness. Sofia opened 
 her body to desire, stripping off her clothes and covering herself 
 with dreams and making the new moon grow in me, until our 
 hands and legs were united in one single longing: Sofia’s, who 
 feverishly pronounced Joaquin’s name with more and more vehe¬ 
 mence. Just like in the dream, I screamed to her that I wasn’t him, 
 that she was mistaken. Sofia seemed not to hear me; at last, she 
 proclaimed: “It has to be this way.” 
 
 In front of Joaquin’s picture we loved and hated each other at 
 the same time, and all my repressed passions exploded with fury 
 in her womb. 
 
 Now I know that Sofia is twenty years older than I; that under 
 her apron, her skin is infinite, and from now on we will always 
 share the same sorrow: Sofia thinks of Joaquin: I, of her. 
 
 104 
 
26 
 
 s 
 
 X^enora Rodriguez built herself a two-by-two world where 
 there was only enough room for her. The world was round and 
 shielded, transparent and aseptic. Everyone could see Senora 
 Rodriguez sitting in a papal chair, which one day was placed on 
 Europe, the next day on America, the following day on Africa, 
 and so on. Senora Rodriguez, purse on shoulder, greeted those 
 who were outside by wrinkling her nose. The world of Senora 
 Rodriguez tirelessly revolved on its own axis until a small child 
 peered between Oceania and the Falkland Islands and asked, “Ex¬ 
 cuse me, are you Senora Padilla?” Senora Rodriguez tried to 
 change course, but the steering did not obey. Drawn to its own 
 likeness, the world went spinning toward an enormous mirrored 
 wall that reflected it, and it smashed against itself. Both collapsed 
 in a clatter of broken eggshells. 
 
 In the middle of the debris Senora Rodriguez found her best 
 friend, dead; her favorite professor, the one who had betraved 
 her; her first high-heeled shoes; her forgotten Aunt Clotilde. . . . 
 Senora Rodriguez gathered all the fragments and placed them in 
 her purse inside a match box. When Senor Rodriguez took it out 
 to light a cigarette, all the little pieces of the world had gone bad. 
 “This woman and her mania for collecting junk,” growled Senor 
 Rodriguez, hurling the match box into the garbage. 
 
Last Night, Mariana 
 
 i r 
 
 I Af To Mahsa Diez-Canedo 
 
 w * hen I first met Mariana she did nothing but cry, eat, and 
 sleep. She had blond hair and blue eyes, just like mine, and 
 we were the same size, except she wore diapers and I wore lace 
 underwear with pink bows. I also wore patent leather shoes and 
 hers were knitted. She was so helpless that I fell in love with her 
 and didn’t realize that she had begun to grow. Nevertheless, she 
 had not yet learned to talk. I, on the other hand, said ma-ma 
 when I was tipped forward. That’s how Mariana learned. Then 
 she said papa, tita, bow-wow, and baby. Ever since then that’s 
 what she called me. Mariana was soft and warm and had downy 
 fuzz on her face. 
 
 Mariana had a little brother; his name is Tono and he looks 
 like her, although Mariana says that he is very ugly and wants 
 him to be sent back. Her parents gave her a puppy so that she 
 would forget about him, but she didn’t. Every time that her 
 mother nurses Tono, Mariana cuddles with me and whispers in 
 my ear: “Don’t worry, I will never give you a little brother.” 
 
 The day before yesterday I didn’t see Mariana for quite a while. 
 Very early in the morning they brushed her hair into a ponytail, 
 put an apron on her, and gave her a kiss. When she returned 
 
she had colored pencils and a coloring book. “Look,” she showed 
 me, “I know how to make an A.” Yesterday she returned cry¬ 
 ing, with her knees scraped. “Kids are very mean,” she told me. 
 In the afternoons we play house or school. She’s always the 
 teacher. 
 
 Mariana has fat fingers that are somewhat clumsy, she has trouble 
 buttoning up my dress, after twisting my arms trying to put it on. 
 Now we only play on Mondays, the other days she has ballet 
 classes, piano classes, swimming or English classes. Sometimes 
 she gives me a bath on Saturdays, if she doesn’t have to go to her 
 grandma’s house. From the shelf where I spend the week, I see 
 her come home daily. She leaves me sitting but I lean sideways 
 little by little, until I end up crooked, fallen over to one side, 
 waiting for Mariana to come and straighten me up or to open my 
 eye, which shuts every time she runs out and slams the door. Here 
 I can feel the walls resound as buses pass by, and I know if some¬ 
 body is coming by the bark Blackie makes. I also know if Mariana 
 is happy with herself: she looks at herself in the mirror and smiles, 
 in spite of her lack of teeth. She does this when she wears new 
 shoes, a new dress, or when she blows bubbles with her gum. If 
 she’s angry she looks at herself out of the corner of her eye and 
 lowers her head, then she hides her feet under the blankets and 
 begins to cover herself completely, slowly, as if she were looking 
 for herself. 
 
 Last night Mariana fell asleep with great sighs and sucking her 
 thumb. At midnight she woke up and took me in with her. She 
 was sad because she was left alone with her grandma; her parents 
 had gone on a trip. We lay down on their bed for a while. Mariana 
 says that their pillows smell good, but they had changed the 
 sheets and the pillow cases smelled like detergent. Mariana cried 
 and said, “I think God is imprisoned because He doesn’t pay any 
 
 107 
 
attention to me.” Her grandma asked her, “Who are you talking 
 to, Mariana?” 
 
 Mariana hasn’t cried again; every day she talks more on the tele¬ 
 phone and less with me. When she goes to bed she no longer 
 prays like she used to. She falls asleep listening to music. She has 
 also changed from patent leather shoes to tennis shoes, and when 
 she laughs, she shows her braces. She looks so pretty with jeans 
 and her wild hair that she wants to become an actress. “Comb 
 your hair,” orders her mother, who knows nothing about fash¬ 
 ions. “Comb your own hair,” Mariana answers, locking herself 
 up in the bathroom and applying more hair spray. “Mothers are 
 very mean,” Mariana writes on the fogged-up mirror when she 
 showers. 
 
 Mariana hit me. They had punished her for getting bad grades by 
 not letting her watch tv. She looked at me, called me stupid and 
 threw me to the floor. It was the last time I said ma-ma. Then, 
 Mariana took out a picture of a boy and cut it up with some 
 scissors into many pieces. First she cut off his hands, next his legs, 
 then his head and finally she poked a hole in his heart. “Men are 
 very mean,” she cried, picking up all the pieces and putting them 
 back together as if it were a puzzle, and added: “He’ll see when 
 they take these damn things off my teeth.” 
 
 Mariana did not go to school because she had an exam. She pre¬ 
 tended she had a stomachache and stayed in bed. At noon she 
 woke up yelling, “They’re going to flunk me,” and, since she had 
 nothing to do, she started to clean the closet. I was happy waiting 
 for my turn to be dusted. “Here I am,” I thought from the corner 
 where Mariana had put me the last time she was punished. Mar¬ 
 iana took out her skateboard, her old book bags, her clips of 
 movie stars, her First Communion dress, and her tennis rackets. 
 “Pretty soon now,” I gave myself hope watching the sliver of light 
 
 108 
 
where all the things were going out. All of a sudden I felt a 
 pull and, along with some worn-out shoes and a deflated ball, I 
 landed on the bottom of the trash can. “To the trash,” exclaimed 
 Mariana. Do you suppose it’s because I no longer say ma-ma? 
 
 109 
 
27 
 
 s 
 
 enora Rodriguez left her house. When she passed by the 
 house right next door, she didn’t recognize it. “They must have 
 had it remodeled last night,” she assumed, continuing on her way. 
 She thought the same thing about the dog across the street, and 
 she went on thinking it about all the neighbors on her block. At 
 the corner she saw that the street name had changed: “Champs 
 Elysees,” it sounds familiar, she thought, and crossed over to the 
 other sidewalk. Further ahead, Seriora Rodriguez realized she 
 was in a different city from her own when she heard herself being 
 greeted in French. “Bonjour,” she responded, happy to have stud¬ 
 ied French in twenty lessons. “One never knows,” she had said. 
 Senora Rodriguez started to suspect that something was not 
 right when she noticed that the people were dressed according to 
 the fashion of the beginning of the century. Senora Rodriguez 
 took out a calendar from her purse, just in case, and was surprised 
 to see that it was a French calendar from 1912. “I grabbed the 
 wrong purse again,” she exclaimed, returning home. But she did 
 not find it. It was her Aunt Clotilde’s purse, and in 1912 Senora 
 Rodriguez still hadn’t been bom. 
 
 Without existing, Senora Rodriguez traveled all over the 
 world, was a witness to history, and taking advantage of not 
 being seen, modified the facts as she pleased, after donating her 
 aunt’s purse to a museum so that in the future something like that 
 wouldn’t happen to her again. But above all, she tracked down 
 
the herd from which the cow had come, whose skin her purse 
 would be manufactured from. She discovered the quality and 
 durability of the hide and calculated its duration before her 
 mother-in-law dreamed of giving the purse to her. The purse was 
 already very shabby at the time Senora Rodriguez switched it 
 with Aunt Clotilde’s and realized that she wouldn’t be able to 
 keep it for very long. Fortunately, since the date of her birth was 
 approaching, Senora Rodriguez was gradually forgetting every¬ 
 thing, until it was all completely erased when she let out her first 
 cry. In a similar way, upon approaching chapter 28, Senora Rod¬ 
 riguez felt insecure, without knowing why. 
 
 hi 
 
It’s Their Fault 
 
 n 
 
 I To Ernesto Flores 
 
 «L^ id you hear the snap of your vertebrae? Did you hear it? It 
 was right after the scream, or at the same time. You should know 
 better; although perhaps not, because at that moment you be¬ 
 came deaf. The scream and the crack exploded while your legs 
 dangled near the weeds. You felt the pressure of the rope on your 
 neck and the blood pumping into your sex, while your legs dan¬ 
 gled. You let your fingers relax their grip and urinated, while your 
 legs dangled. You realized that you would not be able to scream 
 again, while your legs dangled, while your legs dangled. 
 
 While your legs dangled, you daydreamed about Esther, that 
 she put figs in your mouth. Sweet figs that blended with her lips, 
 with her tongue, with your name pronounced in intervals; sat¬ 
 urating your senses with her skin, with her breath, with her 
 aroma, in exchange for your doing what she asked of you; and 
 you, letting yourself be convinced by her persuasive hands, which 
 came and went up the ladder of pleasure. The last doubt disap¬ 
 peared when she told you that, furthermore, she would pay you 
 to do it. With that money you would buy perfumes and fabrics to 
 anoint her, wrap and unwrap her each night. . . . 
 
 While your legs dangled you recalled, you did not recall, you 
 recalled a kiss, that other kiss with which you were going to pav 
 for hers. Thirty dinars of sweet figs just for pointing out die 
 Messiah, anyone would have done it if Esther had asked. 
 
He did not resist and was easily captured. You ran to give 
 Esther the news. You were thinking of her, of what she would tell 
 you with her mouth, with her eyes, with her hands. . . . You had 
 managed to forget about yourself, your childhood, your mother 
 who believed you were perfect and wished you were rich and 
 famous. Nor did you remember that you had grown up among 
 yes’s and no’s: “Yes, I can, no, I shouldn’t, is it okay?” Upon your 
 mother’s death you swore that you would become someone. She 
 expected so much of you that you couldn’t disappoint her, she 
 was the only woman worthy of your affection, before you met 
 Esther. Until then you didn’t believe yourself capable of loving 
 anvthing but power and money. To obtain both you joined up 
 with the king of the Jews. Immediately you realized that he didn’t 
 have anything y'ou didn’t have. Except the disciples did not fol¬ 
 low you; on the contrary', they looked at you with distrust; and all 
 for what, if it so happens that his kingdom is not of this world, 
 and you believing that you were the governor of some province, 
 after freeing your village from the Romans. Yes, y'ou were am¬ 
 bitious. How else can one escape mediocrity'? Esther was right, 
 y'ou’re the only intelligent one among your peers, y'ou and she, so 
 she wasn’t going to wait around for you to decide whether to 
 stay with her or with the Master. Esther always knew what she 
 wanted. Oh, what envy to know what one wants, because the 
 Master, the Master loved you, and y'ou did not want to bring him 
 any harm, even though Esther convinced you to do the opposite. 
 If only he had not been so ... so different from y'ou. Where did he 
 get those ideas? And then he also knew how to attract the crowds 
 and even heal them. Or were they' tricks? Perhaps he was in league 
 with the sick people, yes, that must have been it. While y'our legs 
 dangle y'ou relive the time y'ou tried to heal some blind man and 
 weren’t able, and out of rage you felt like killing the Master. More 
 than one had probably felt the same way, that’s why they fol¬ 
 lowed him, it wasn’t just because he went around proclaiming he 
 was the son of God. No one even believed him. Well, those who 
 
didn’t know him, but surely, the son of God? No, you imagined 
 God differendy. After all, if he weren’t who he claimed to be, let 
 them punish him for being a fake, and if he were, we would find 
 out. Esther said it well: “Yes, it’s true, he will not allow anything 
 to happen to himself, don’t worry.” Esther, what would she have 
 done if you had been the Messiah? And you, what would you 
 have done yourself? Don’t think about it anymore, it was neces¬ 
 sary to eliminate him, it was the only way you could get ahead, 
 and she would be proud of you. If you hadn’t accepted the deal 
 you would have lost her, you would have lost her and you would 
 have gone mad. If you were capable of hanging yourself from a 
 tree, you would be capable of that. Esther, so much like your 
 mother... 
 
 When you arrived with the news, you heard them, their out¬ 
 bursts of laughter could be heard outside. Then you heard the 
 man’s voice as he was leaving: “We no longer need him. Esther, 
 get rid of him; from now on he’ll just be in the way. And take the 
 money from him, thirty dinars isn’t a lot, but we could use them.” 
 Your hands trembled as you opened the door: The whiteness of 
 her naked body blinded you. You didn’t look when you strangled 
 her, nor when you fell to your knees before her to spit at her and 
 kiss her and forgive her and despise her and kiss her again and ask 
 her forgiveness. She did not answer. 
 
 At nightfall you started on your way to the field. You chose a 
 branch. The fact that Esther had deceived you, you alone, you 
 couldn’t stand. It was her fault; and the disciples for being dis¬ 
 trustful; and the Master for not understanding you; and your 
 mother for bringing you into the world; arid the one who bribed 
 you, all, all are GUILTY... screamed your scream while your legs 
 dangled. 
 
 Afterward you left your mouth wide open for a few minutes, as 
 if waiting for the scream to finish coming out; but the scream was 
 already on its way, filled with you. The audacity with which you 
 hurled it joined it and ended up caught in the tree or on the shore 
 
 114 
 
of the night. And you were biting your tongue until it was bitten 
 through. And a scream is not just a scream. Years of repression 
 have accumulated in your throat and are expelled by your entire 
 body, with all the frustration of not being the son of God, with 
 all the humiliation of the “farewells” that turned you into a 
 “cuckold” to those who watched you smile when you said fare¬ 
 well to her, instead of screaming like you did today. It’s better to 
 scream on time, before someone beats us to it; even though it is 
 not easy. The scream is carried inside because it only serves, at the 
 most, for some idiot to scoff at when he sees us with our eyes 
 bulging from the effort and our veins swollen from the excite¬ 
 ment. That is to say, the scream exhausts itself for lack of breath 
 and rage to hurl another. 
 
 The long chain of why’s that was suffocating you, when you 
 arrived at “why was I born,” broke and liberated your conscious¬ 
 ness. Your legs have stopped in the middle of the silence. Now 
 you have an empty mind, that is all. 
 
28 
 
 s 
 
 enora Rodriguez was feeling confused. She would open her 
 purse and would invariably find Carlitos’s pacifier, Susanita’s 
 gum, the recipe for bread pudding, the sandalwood rosary, the 
 hanky from Brussels, the balloons, the part}" favors, or the contra¬ 
 ceptives; but she could never find herself. “This is a fraud, I’ll put 
 an end to this farce”; and with her mind made up to end it all, 
 Senora Rodriguez started looking in her purse, where she only 
 found dots and dashes, new paragraphs, a colon, a semicolon, 
 and ellipsis, and no final period. “I must take further measures,” 
 Senora Rodriguez decided as she put her foot in her purse. That 
 way, when she opened it, the first thing she’d see would be her 
 face. . . . And who would open it, if she was inside? she reflected 
 when she was inside up to her chin. With difficulty, she emerged, 
 dragging with her Carlota Perez’s crinolines. Senora Rodriguez 
 put them away and continued meditating: “I’ve got it!” she said 
 excitedly to herself, “from now on I’ll be Mrs. Smith.” 
 
 Mrs. Smith delightedly opened her purse and found Charlie’s 
 pacifier, Susy’s gum, the recipe for apple pie, the . . . 
 
Right Place, Wrong Time 
 
 L 
 
 ^ rfucky number, eight; favorite color, green; birthstone, 
 ruby. Tomorrow you will receive a surprise.” 
 
 Tomorrow, forced to wait until tomorrow once more. Why do 
 things always happen the day after? Tomorrow I will not be me 
 because I will be one day older, a day less young; I will have seen 
 what I have not seen today and heard what I have not heard 
 before; what other surprise can there be? Although . . . perhaps 
 tomorrow I will be able to meet someone who is now in Rome or 
 Berlin and doesn’t know that I am here, hoping that he buys a 
 plane ticket to Mexico, gets on board twenty minutes before 
 twelve, fastens his seat belt, reads the “No Smoking” sign every 
 time it lights up during the flight, until finally he descends and 
 lands among one hundred other passengers, takes a taxi that 
 brings him to me, and asks me how to find a certain street, un¬ 
 aware that, since prehistoric times, in Rome or in Berlin, all the 
 factors were coinciding so that one day, tomorrow, a blond man 
 with gray eyes, almost six feet tall and with one foot shorter than 
 the other and a scar on his stomach, would meet me at one of the 
 four corners of the globe and would ask me if he should turn right 
 or left. In the meantime, I had to be born in this place exactly 
 thirty years, two months, five days, fifteen minutes, and ten sec¬ 
 onds ago, so that at this moment I answer him: left. He, in fact, 
 turns to the left following my instructions, after saying thank 
 you, I have an important meeting and I must be punctual. And I 
 
don’t know whether to stop him and explain to him that one of us 
 is wrong; that his today is my tomorrow, that I can still leave so 
 that I won’t be here when he arrives, that he should not decide for 
 me the date I will find him; that he went ahead or that I lived 
 anticipating what I was planning for later, with him, and this 
 means that I didn’t live one day, but which one?... I would need 
 to be reborn, to newly review each moment that draws me to this 
 one and see where I failed; because otherwise, the blond man 
 with gray eyes, almost six feet tall and with the scar on his stom¬ 
 ach and one foot shorter than the other, will go to a meeting he 
 can never make. 
 
 118 
 
29 
 
 r 
 
 ^ c ooking in her purse for the bread pudding recipe, Senora 
 Rodriguez discovered the manuscript of the book, Senora Rod¬ 
 riguez. Then it is true that I do not exist, she moaned. But she 
 immediately rectified her statement: Then it is true that I do exist. 
 Senora Rodriguez wanted to know what she was like (and so did 
 I); unfortunately in the text she did not find precise data. The 
 way I see it, she deduced, I have to paint myself on my own. And 
 she began to put on a straight nose, a thick mouth, and ample 
 hips, below a robust waist. She colored her hair brown and curly 
 and the eyebrows arched, and lastly, she put a mole near her 
 lower lip, on the left side. Senora Rodriguez continued looking 
 through the manuscript and lost her color when she realized that 
 she had become pregnant at fifty-five. She lost her smell when she 
 saw that the baby had run away with his kindergarten teacher, 
 and lost her taste when she found out that she was going to die on 
 page 134. Senora Rodriguez began to cry. The first thing that 
 faded away were her eyes, then her nose and mouth. Seeing that 
 the ink stain continued to run, Senora Rodriguez folded the pa¬ 
 per, put it in her purse, and just in case, hid a pen between her 
 breasts. Next time, she sighed, I’ll make myself blond. 
 
Blame It on Hormones 
 
 C 
 
 ^ To Ajjustm Monsreal 
 
 \jr he had always been lucky; this explains why, in forty years, 
 she got the measles in her thirties and apart from that had never 
 been ill, had surgery, or even had a late period. Nor could she 
 complain of greater misfortunes except for the death, due to old 
 age, of her paternal grandmother and the stubbornness of her 
 husband, of which, knowing how to handle it, she could make 
 the most. In summary, this was her life when she first became 
 aware of the discomfort. 
 
 She had spent her end-of-the-year vacation on the beach and 
 the circumstances appeared to indicate that the new year would 
 be as satisfactory as the previous year and the year previous to 
 that, and all the previous ones since i960 until today. Except for 
 the small irritation on her nose, she felt vigorous and had an 
 enormous desire to mark 1990 with a party. The crisis could wait 
 until she got old, and that was far from happening. She con¬ 
 firmed this by putting on some sweatpants and going out to run. 
 Once or twice she scratched her nose unconsciously, the third 
 time she looked at her hand so closely that she thought, “I should 
 paint my nails,” before scratching; and then dropped the subject. 
 
 Her tan generally iasted without fading up to a week after she 
 returned, so she planned the party for the following Saturday. It 
 would take her three days to call her friends, fix the house, and 
 prepare the dinner. Perhaps she would get a new carpet, “New 
 
year, new life,” was her slogan, although in reality her existence 
 had not varied much in those years. On some occasions she 
 thought that no matter how fortunate she was, she would always 
 have a problem, but right away she forgot about it and continued 
 to enjoy life without any remorse about her situation: good ser¬ 
 vice, an excellent husband — she scratched her nose — and ador¬ 
 able children, she acknowledged, when she finished scratching. 
 
 On Saturday night she picked a dress that contrasted with the 
 tone of her skin, touched up her makeup and went down to 
 welcome her guests. She liked to have a special comment for each 
 guest: Marcela’s suit fits her very well; Nora’s earrings are mar¬ 
 velous, surely they were a Christmas present. Silvia had lost 
 weight, and... again the itching of her nose, which distracted her 
 from admiring Ivette’s new necklace. 
 
 The reunion progressed happily, while her nose gained impor¬ 
 tance. She could no longer avoid feeling it, in spite of Ricardo’s 
 dirty jokes. Perhaps the cigarette smoke was irritating her; she 
 went as far as asking Nora if the tip of her nose was getting red. 
 Nora didn’t see anything, maybe she had been in the sun too 
 long, and soon the irritation would disappear. 
 
 The next day, however, the irritation continued, even though it 
 wasn’t visible. “That’s enough,” she told herself, and decided to 
 put some ointment on it. When she showed up with the white 
 ointment everyone stared: Mom using medicine? Leave that to 
 Dad who had already had hepatitis and typhoid fever, or to Uncle 
 Quico who was always breaking his bones; she didn’t have the 
 right to disappoint her children who had never heard her com¬ 
 plain from even a toothache. She ran to wipe it off and did not 
 mention the itch again. To disguise the itching she began to blow 
 her nose repeatedly: “Mom, do you have a cold?” her children 
 cried, as if she had acquired leprosy. 
 
 Until now she had been very proud of her straight nose, which 
 began to look sort of round due to the little blackhead. Yes, it was 
 a blackhead, probably a pimple. And at her age. The thought of 
 
 121 
 
being ridiculed went through her mind without settling, it was 
 nothing to worry about, yet, although it was getting on her 
 nerves. 
 
 She spent the rest of the afternoon looking for a solution: first 
 she’d have to extract the pus from the pimple without bruising it. 
 She needed to steam the affected spot to open the pores so that 
 the contents would run out. She boiled water and poured it in a 
 bowl and placed her towel-covered head over the steam. She did 
 everything herself to make sure every step was correct. Once 
 the necessary steps were done she took two handkerchiefs and 
 extracted the blackhead. “I’ve had enough, no more zits,” she 
 thought while she squeezed her nose with her fingernails. It had 
 been too easy, the pus came out clean, followed by a drop of 
 blood. She focused on the point through a magnifying mirror 
 which allowed her to see it perfectly clear . . . another one! This 
 time on the forehead. The thought that an acne invasion would 
 affect her face set in her mind. It began with that horrible black¬ 
 head on her nose, and now her forehead. Who could say she 
 wasn’t going to end up disfigured? She couldn’t spend her entire 
 life waiting for each zit to mature in order to extract it. Then she 
 thought of all the thousands of liters of water she’d have to boil to 
 steam her face, the amount of tissue she’d use, and her swollen 
 face the day the pimples came out from each pore of her skin. The 
 tragedy took on a life of its own. It became the subject of conver¬ 
 sation and even an excuse for her to come near her husband that 
 night and, after telling him she couldn’t sleep, she dared take the 
 initiative. Yes, it’s true that that nightmare never left her mind. 
 She felt capable of confronting the consequences of this act. Nev¬ 
 ertheless, as she touched the softness of his mouth, she remem¬ 
 bered the eruption, the one that would surely end up separating 
 them. How could he feel attracted to her? She decided to take 
 drastic measures: she would go to a dermatologist and demand 
 that he cure her as soon as possible. Of course this involved costs, 
 loss of time, discomfort, but anything was better than being re- 
 
 122 
 
jected. She knew that the dermatologist would examine her and 
 ask indiscreet questions: Was she satisfied with her sex life? How 
 often did she defecate? How old was she and did she have a 
 normal menstruation? only to end up telling her that he’d try to 
 help her without guaranteeing anything. She would come out of 
 the office with scheduled hours to take medicine and instructions 
 on how to wash her face, whether to eat or not eat, to return in 
 fifteen days, and, at the end of that time period, she would not 
 only be the same, but her nerves would be shot. If the treatment 
 did not work, which was more than likely, another diagnosis 
 would be necessary. Perhaps it was not just a simple case of acne. 
 She had heard of certain types of cancer that began with the same 
 symptoms. Better yet, the best thing would be to go direcdv to a 
 pathologist. 
 
 A week had gone by since the appearance of that gruesome 
 spot, and each day she was worse. She no longer dared to be seen 
 in public without a good dose of make-up and an even better an¬ 
 swer to those insistent questions. She couldn’t stand Nora’s stare, 
 which was somewhere between sympathy and mocker}'. Nor im¬ 
 pertinent Ivette with her brand-new plastic surgery. Would plas¬ 
 tic surgery help her? First the tissue of cancer needed to be dis¬ 
 carded. Yes, that’s what it was without a doubt, and they would 
 try to keep it from her the same way they did to poor Aunt Idalia. 
 “How much time do I have to live? Aunt Idalia died believing she 
 had tonsillitis, how naive. They won’t fool me. No wonder they 
 treat me with such pity, I must disgust them. And what if there 
 were some remedy? Science is very advanced. No ids useless, I 
 won’t allow them to experiment on me as if I were a rabbit. Poor 
 Aunt Idalia. Now I understand her. I won’t let the same thing 
 happen to me, I’ll leave everything so my husband won’t be able 
 to marry someone else. Silvia, that slut, is always staring at him, 
 and he’s not one to let himself be courted. I’ll fix that. It’s an 
 advantage knowing that one is going to die, that the funeral can 
 be planned. They’ll see what it’s like to be left without a mother. I 
 
 123 
 
can imagine how my friends will react. Ivette will say: ‘It was 
 about time.’ Silvia will be desperately awaiting my burial. Nora 
 will probably remember me for a week. And to think that when 
 we got married, he was the one who had the pimples. .. .” 
 
 “Darling?” 
 
 “Yes.” 
 
 “I need to speak with you, it’s useless for you to fake it, I know 
 everything, and before I die you’re going to listen to me.” 
 
 “Is it your premenstrual pimple again?” 
 
 “How do you know?” 
 
 “Where?” 
 
 “On my forehead.” 
 
 “I mean where would you like it, right here?” 
 
 124 
 
30 
 
 s „ 
 
 X^reriora Rodriguez, in the grip of an existential crisis since 
 discovering die manuscript of Senora Rodriguez in her purse, be¬ 
 gan to ask herself: “Who am I? Where did I come from? Where 
 am I going?” and arrived at the following conclusion: The author 
 put the manuscript in my purse because the author and I are 
 the same person. Therefore I am the author of the author; with¬ 
 out me she would not exist. And, doing it as she spoke, she 
 took the manuscript from her purse and burned it. Sehora Rod¬ 
 riguez was consumed in a second, fortunately she managed to 
 let go of her purse on time. When Senor Rodriguez opened it, 
 he took out a xerox copy of Senora Rodriguez which she had 
 saved “just in case,” and began to read it. Upon arriving at the 
 twelfth line of page 125, Senor Rodriguez took the xerox copy of 
 Senora Rodriguez from the purse and began to read it. Upon 
 arriving at the twelfth line of page 125, Senor Rodriguez took 
 the xerox copy of Senora Rodriguez from the purse and began 
 to read it. Upon arriving at the twelfth line of page 125, Senor 
 Rodriguez took the xerox copy of Senora Rodriguez from the 
 purse and began to read it, upon arriving at the twelfth line 
 of page 125 Senor Rodriguez took the xerox copy of Senora Rod¬ 
 riguez from the purse and began to read it, upon arriving at 
 the twelfth line of page 125, Senor Rodriguez took the xerox 
 copy of Senora Rodriguez from the purse and began to read it. 
 
upon arriving at the twelfth line of page 125, Senor Rodriguez 
 took the xerox copy of Senora Rodriguez from the purse and 
 began to read it, upon arriving at the twelfth line of page . . . 
 125. 
 
 126 
 
Amanda’s Motives 
 
 odav I turn fifty-three, said Raul, caressing the recendy pur¬ 
 chased book. The cover was blue, and on the back cover Amanda 
 smiled as she did from the other end of the table. Raul returned 
 the smile with a wink. 
 
 Amanda set a place for Irma and Laura who were just arriving. 
 
 “Luis is the only one missing” Raul pointed out without any¬ 
 one asking. Amanda did not answer. Luis would arrive. . . . 
 Amanda kept looking at herself on the book cover. She had 
 gone to a professional photographer; it was her first book, and 
 she wanted to appear younger. The camera’s lens filter made it 
 possible. 
 
 “You look very good,” Raul had told her an hour earlier, “I like 
 low-cut dresses.” 
 
 She looked attractive and she knew it, and now Raul, fifty- 
 three years old, made her feel better. 
 
 “Do you know what we’re celebrating?” Amanda asked, raising 
 her glass. 
 
 “The publication of your book,” everyone answered. 
 
 “No, Raul’s birthday.” 
 
 Luis sat on the only empty' seat which was next to Raul. When 
 Amanda saw them, Raul was raising his glass. 
 
 “Well, yes, today is my birthday, how do I look? A few months 
 ago they thought I had cancer; it was horrible, fortunately they 
 were wrong.” 
 
“Then, what are you worrying about, if s a good thing you’re 
 still coming and going. What about your book?” asked Luis sip¬ 
 ping his beer and patting Raul’s shoulder. 
 
 Raul was speechless for a moment, then finally he spoke: “I 
 hope next year, I’m sure.” 
 
 Amanda, from the other end, kept an eye on the blue book 
 which gradually began to blend in with the dishes and the table¬ 
 cloth. 
 
 The newspaper articles rated Amanda’s book between good 
 and excellent. The cover was featured a few times in the papers 
 until it began to blend in with the other books, just like it did on 
 the table. In response Amanda brought out some colorful pos¬ 
 ters, enlarged, and placed them on the walls of her house. 
 
 “Who encouraged you to publish?” she was asked in an interview. 
 Amanda recalled her first poems, her courtships: Alfonso, Jose, 
 Luis. . . . Her marriages: Luis, Alfonso, Jose. Thafs what had 
 encouraged her, life, in which she was the unopened letter. She 
 had to bet on Amanda against all odds and against everyone. 
 Literature became her husband and her lover. In it she invested 
 her dreams, her experiences as a woman. Only now she found 
 herself empty. A book is a high-risk birth, and Alfonso, Luis and 
 Jose appeared in it; pages 36, 50, and 82, in that order. 
 
 Raul arrived with some papers under his arm. They were a few 
 poems written twenty years ago that had won a prize in a contest 
 and had been published in a yellowish magazine that included 
 Raul’s picture, before Raul. 
 
 “How are you?” 
 
 “Fine, Amanda, thank you,” Raul said, showing her the papers. 
 “I’d like you to give me the address and phone number of the 
 publisher where you published; I’m going to finish my book. I’m 
 writing again.” 
 
 128 
 
“Of course, Raul, call me later.” 
 
 Raul left with the papers under his arm. 
 
 Page 36 
 
 He never did it; he would have made an attempt, but he was 
 faint-hearted. I don’t know why I loved him and lived so 
 many years in his shadow, resigning myself to tasteless dedi¬ 
 cations, in the prime of my virginity. Alfonso, if indecision 
 had a name, it would be “Alfonso.” ... 
 
 “Amanda, it’s Raul. Hey, give me the publisher’s address, see 
 I’ve already finished the book. It was very difficult. Remember 
 my poems, the ones I won a prize for? Yes, the ones that were 
 published in that magazine. Do you really like them? What did 
 you say? Oh, yeah. I’ll hurry, thanks for everything. Hey, if some¬ 
 thing comes up don’t forget to invite me.” 
 
 Page so 
 
 Then I met Luis. He wasn’t what I thought he would be, but 
 he entertained me. I liked feeling protected by him. I began 
 to write, motivated by Alfonso, by his suggestions, for him 
 and because of him. Luis did not know it. 
 
 The blue cover was fading along with Amanda. The euphoria 
 of the first days was growing bleak, and the book was no longer a 
 goal. Once again everyday things appeared in her life, except now 
 they were seen through a microscope. She’d have to find herself 
 again in the anonymous and rivalrous multitude. Was it possible 
 to stop being a writer from one day to the next? She saw Irma, 
 Laura, and all those who still struggled to publish. A compulsion 
 distinguished them from others, just like Raul with his poems 
 under his arm, showing them to the first person he could and at 
 the age of fifty-three. His wife threatened to leave him, his health 
 was weakening, but he had a reason to live. She, on the other 
 
 129 
 
hand, if her book wasn’t successful, would have the beginning 
 and the end of her career. How many had believed in her? How 
 many had followed her example? How many had fallen into the 
 trap? 
 
 Amanda opened the book to 
 Page 82 
 
 Jose’s hand clung to my hand. Luis was next to me, he did 
 not notice it. Jose, fifteen years older than me, was the 
 third corner along with Alfonso and Luis. After so many 
 years he seemed so interested, much more than before. What 
 did he see in me, the forbidden woman, the young girl of the 
 past? The truth is his wooing pleased me, I know he would 
 have liked to have had an affair with me. He, such a gentle¬ 
 man, so decent, so cynical, holding me tight in front of my 
 husband.... 
 
 “Mom, Bibiana is fighting with me, she wants to be the only one 
 who carries the Baby Jesus in the Christmas parade.” 
 
 Amanda went through her childhood itinerary, which was full 
 of twists: her adolescence, her youth, the present. Through her 
 life she had come across so many Bibianas she could no longer 
 recognize them. They had the same face, they all wanted to be the 
 only ones to carry Baby Jesus. He too had changed; lately, he had 
 the appearance of a writer. A smile can serve the same purpose, 
 either to betray or seduce, Amanda had proved it many times. 
 There aren’t good or bad men, only winners and losers, and 
 literature was a fratricidal struggle. Amanda took the last drink of 
 her cocktail and laughed heartily: “Raul is an idiot for putting up 
 with me; Alfonso is an idiot for forgetting me; Jose is an idiot for 
 looking me up.” And she fell asleep. 
 
 Laura woke her up. 
 
 “Leave me alone ” Amanda shouted. 
 
 “Is it true about Irma, Amanda?” 
 
 130 
 
“I tell you, leave me alone!” 
 
 “But Irma is your best friend.” 
 
 “Go to hell!” 
 
 Page 36 
 
 He was dark, really he was just common, but he made me feel 
 secure. I was insecure and this made him feel superior to me. 
 Now I congratulate myself for not marrying Alfonso. He 
 was only looking for someone inferior in order to survive. 
 
 “Amanda, Irma wants to see you and explain to you.” 
 
 “There’s nothing to explain.” 
 
 “She insists on talking with you.” 
 
 “It’s not necessary, Laura, I too have cheated and offended, I’ve 
 taken advantage of others. Tell her not to worry about me, some¬ 
 one will come and deceive her, offend her, make her cry. . . . We 
 are all the same.” 
 
 Page so 
 
 I don’t know if I love him. Our courtship has lasted in spite 
 of my love for Alfonso and in spite of Jose’s intentions. Luis 
 is reliable, a little cold. But does he like me for what I am or 
 for what he would want me to be? I’m in no hurry to get 
 married. In the meantime, perhaps Alfonso will make up his 
 mind. Yesterday he kissed my breasts.... 
 
 “Each one of us has a place in life. Writing a book is reaching 
 it. Irma wanted to take up two places, usurping mine. Two 
 places ... we are so insignificant that we go by unnoticed. Irma 
 with her naive face and her ambition of unmeasured recogni¬ 
 tion.” Amanda began to doubt whether she was inside or outside 
 of the book with the blue cover. She hated the woman on the 
 back cover, the characters on pages 36, 50, and 82. 
 
 “Amanda? It’s Raul, I want to ask you again for the publisher’s 
 address. It’s not that I’ve lost it, it’s just that I can’t remember 
 
where I left it. I’m going to submit my poems, the ones that won 
 a prize and the ones that didn’t. What do you think? Well, sorry 
 for taking up your time. Hey, what number did you say?” 
 
 Page 82 
 
 Jose called me, my husband answered, and they greeted each 
 other “cordially.” Luis did not suspect anything. Then Jose 
 told me he wanted to see me. I wanted to see him too, even 
 though I pretended not to understand him and wished him a 
 nice trip (he was leaving for Europe that afternoon). His 
 poor wife . . . And me. I’ve taken the story to its limit, the 
 characters are surpassing me, I’ll put an end to it. 
 
 “Every time I read the book it seems to want to escape from my 
 hands, it’s insatiable, it’s not satisfied with the number of pages. 
 Today it threatened to leave me if I didn’t add new chapters. You 
 cannot do that, I shouted, squeezing it shut. No? it replied, fall¬ 
 ing off the bookshelf. It had never scared me so much.” 
 
 “Mom, do you know the spider song?” 
 
 “The spider? Oh, yes, ‘Two characters were swinging on a 
 spider web; when they saw the thread was strong, they went to 
 call another one. Three characters were swinging on a spider 
 web; when they saw the thread was strong, they went to call 
 another one. Four characters were swinging on a spider web; 
 when they saw the thread was strong, they went to call another 
 one. Five characters were swinging . . .” 
 
 “Are you sure that’s how it goes?” 
 
 “Positively.” 
 
 “And the web never breaks?” 
 
 “The web?” 
 
 “Yes, with so many characters.” 
 
 “What characters?” 
 
 “I’d like to speak with Amanda, please. She’s not home again? Tell 
 her Raid called.” 
 
 132 
 
* 
 
 “Laura have you seen my book? I don’t know where I left it. 
 What if it was stolen, Laura? I need my book, Laura, Laura. . . .” 
 “Ma’am, have you seen a book like this? Look, like this, it’s 
 blue, I wrote it. I lost it this morning, no, a year ago, or . . .” 
 “Sir, have you seen a blue book? I’m on the back, Amanda. 
 What, don’t you know me?” 
 
 Page 36 
 
 If I don’t marry you, I won’t marry anyone else. 
 
 Page so 
 
 It’s about time we got married, everyone gets married. 
 
 Page 82 
 
 I married her without loving her because you married some¬ 
 one else. 
 
 “There are two men who love you; you’ll be happy with either 
 one.” 
 
 “And the third one?” Amanda asked the gipsy. And she began 
 to write the story of her life. 
 
 “She cannot find the book, she’s certain it abandoned her for not 
 adding more pages to it. She goes out ever)' day to look for it. 
 Raul came looking for her, he’s worried, he wants the address that 
 only Amanda has, he said that it’s urgent because today he. turns 
 fifty-four.” 
 
 133 
 
Epilogue 
 
 7 
 
 £ he dav Senora Rodnguez awoke with a tattered purse Senor 
 Rodriguez was particularly pleased. “About time,” he exclaimed. 
 He was tired of reading the manuscript entided Senora Rodnjjuez 
 rime and time again and, on arriving at page 125, starting all over 
 again. The only way of resolving this was to switch purses, so he 
 began to discuss with his wife that just the previous afternoon he 
 had seen, in the Puerto de Liverpool, one that he liked because it 
 was . . . Senora Rodnguez did not let him finish, she never ex¬ 
 pected this from him, she reproached him, clasping her purse 
 with both hands, and asked her husband for a divorce before 
 going to the doctor. After examining the purse for more than ten 
 hours and discovering that the inside was older that the outside, 
 the doctor advised Senora Rodnguez that it be operated upon, in 
 order to stop the disease from spreading to its owner and forcing 
 them to turn her inside out. Furthermore, the purse was already 
 ruined and about to fall apart. Senora Rodnguez did not hesitate: 
 she refused the mutilation. “Your life is in danger” the doctor 
 insisted. Exactly, she responded, and, placing some aspirin in the 
 purse, she went home, lay herself on the bed, and died. Alien 
 thev were about to be buried the purse opened up, allowing the 
 soul of Senora Rodnguez to escape. Senor Rodngaez picked it 
 up. planted it in his garden, and now he has a tree that bears 
 purses full of memories. 
 
Library' of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 
 Cerda, Martha. 
 
 [Senora Rodriguez y otros mundos. English] 
 
 Senora Rodriguez and other worlds / Martha Cerda ; 
 translated from the Spanish by Sylvia Jimenez-Andersen. 
 ISBN 0-8223-1886-5 (alk. paper). 
 
 ISBN 0-8223-1890-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) 
 
 I. Jimenez-Andersen, Sylvia. II. Tide. 
 PQ7298.13.E67S4613 1997863 —dc20 96-33336 CIP 
 
 Martha Cerda is founder and director of a writing school 
 in her native state of Jalisco, Mexico. She is the author of 
 three other novels, Juegos de dama, TApenas era miercoles , 
 and Las mamas, laspastoresy los hermeneutas. 
 
Other books in the Series Latin America 
 
 in Translation En Traduccion/Em Tradu^ao sponsored by the 
 
 Duke-University of North Carolina 
 
 Joint Program in Latin American Studies: 
 
 Repression, Exile, and Democracy 
 Saul Sosnowski and Louise B. Popkin, editors 
 Translated by Louise B. Popkin 
 Duke University Press 
 
 The Contemporary History of Latin America 
 Tulio Halperin Donghi 
 Translated by John Charles Chasteen 
 Duke University Press 
 
 Signs of Borges Sylvia Molloy 
 Translated by Oscar Montero 
 Duke Univesity Press 
 
 Artificial Respiration Ricardo Piglia 
 Translated by Daniel Balderston 
 Duke University' Press 
 
 Senofa Rodriguez and Other Worlds 
 Martha Cerda 
 
 Translated by Sylvia Jimenez-Andersen 
 Duke University Press 
 
 Paradoxes of Modernity in Latin America 
 Julio Ramos 
 
 Translated by John D. Blanco 
 Forthcoming, Duke University' Press