Until She Goes No More
210
Until She Goes No More
210Paperback
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781945680564 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | White Pine Press |
| Publication date: | 10/18/2022 |
| Pages: | 210 |
| Product dimensions: | 9.00(w) x 6.00(h) x (d) |
About the Author
Jacqueline Nanfito, Associate Professor of Spanish (Latin American Literature and Culture) is also a faculty member of the interdisciplinary programs of Women's and Gender Studies and Ethnic Studies. She has published several books on Latin American women writers: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, El sueño: Cartographies of Knowledge and the Self; Gabriela Mistral: On Women, a compilation and translation of selected prose writings about women by the Chilean Nobel Prize Poet, Gabriela Mistral; the translation of the short short stories (microcuentos) by award winning Chilean female author, Pía Barros; the translation of poems by the Chilean Jewish author and human rights activist, Marjorie Agosín, THE WHITE ISLANDS / LAS ISLAS BLANCAS; the translation of Agosin's prose poems about Anne Frank, ANNE: AN IMAGINING OF THE LIFE OF ANNE FRANK.
Read an Excerpt
Among the hills of the slopes of the coast are my father’s lands. It’s amusing to me that they should be called that. I never saw the sea from there. My sister, Esther, is familiar with the ocean. She arrives with the news that even the earth smells differently and that from a distance one can feel the noise of the waves. To each one of us she gives a shell and teaches us to listen to the sound of the sea. It is a broken, remote sound, so distant that at times it disappears. I run my tongue over the shell. It is salty and smells somewhat disgusting. But I like it, and want to know the ocean. Around here the landscape is immense. It is like an avalanche, the sky over the hills, waving in the wind with all the shades of gray. It envelops the curve of this land hardly touched by green and always covered with a blanket of dark, dry and dreary dust. In the interior of my home, the air is stilled. Neutral tones on the walls, sepia in the faces of the inhabitants. The clothing and suits are somber in color. Or they become darkened. I am wearing a dress that is totally white. At the end of the day, the color is already dampened and damaged by the dust suspended in the air. I await a day of sunshine. I take my dress to the tidelands and scrub it against the rocks. I hang it up from a branch. I stay there waiting hours trying to arrest that nasty wind that adheres to everything. Transformed into a wasted wad of nothing, I tuck the shell under my skirt and walk back home defiantly, smiling at the relentless wind. Under my bed I keep some storage containers. Behind those is my dress. Waiting, waiting. No longer are there parties. The families live far from each other. And the town is even farther away. Funerals are the most important event, with the exception of when the rains fall and all access is cut off. My mother always goes to bid farewell to those that have died. She removes her apron and she covers her shoulders with a shawl. She walks for hours along the wearisome paths covered with dust. At times, they make me accompany her. Our march is silent. We always carry something in our baskets. She doesn’t know how to extend her hands to see if they are empty. I am bored by wakes. There are never enough chairs and I always have to stand through the service. I hear the litany of words and prayers. I know them by heart, yet I don’t open my mouth. When my mother dies, I don’t speak either. My older sisters already have black clothing because they are older. They want to oblige me to wear a dress that was hers. I cry and scream. Amelia gives in and lends me her skirt and blouse and puts on that black dress that I don’t want. My face is puffy. I’m pallid. I know that my face is more white than ever. And if they were to see the skin of my body, they would know that the blood drags itself in my interior. It’s difficult for me to advance behind the men who carry the coffin. Someone holds me up and I can continue. Some elderly women look at me and comment that it’s a pity what I am experiencing. They don’t know that it isn’t pain what has me beaten down. It is fear. My mother has experienced pain in her stomach for days. She doesn’t rest. The contractions come and go. Each time she is more hunched over her duties. I don’t want to remain alone with her. I never know what to say to her and even less so now. But she has asked me to prepare the dough and I will stay. She speaks without waiting for a response. She recites how I should do things in order to later be a good wife. I don’t respond, because I don’t dare tell her that I have decided to not be a wife. She is going to ask me what I will do instead and I will not have a ready answer. School drags along until sixth grade and I am not good at studying. I am wrapping the dough when I feel the silent thud of her fall. She breaks into a profound and hoarse cry and remains on the bare floor. She is listless. I look at her. I know that I should do something. I try to lift her up but I can’t. My brothers are in the fields sowing. My sisters have gone to take lunch to the men and won’t return for at least an hour. Even that is very improbable. The two of them have boyfriends and they get sidetracked and have fun among the thickets. They took the horses in the morning. If I let Aunt Berta know, surely she will begin to scream at me. And she will maybe run about saying horrible things about me. They are going to blame me and it’s not my fault that she fell to the ground. It’s almost time for me to go to school. I no longer think. Nobody is going to know that I saw her collapse. The others will know better what to do. I grab my notebooks and run to the road. I know that I am screaming, but there isn’t anyone who can hear this outcry without words. Amelia has enormous hands. She is svelte, and moves gracefully while she is helping with the tasks. But she has these immense hands, where the veins surface in an aggressive manner and traverse winding paths. At times she hums songs from a period that cannot be popular, if they are the same ones that our mother knew. Her voice barely achieves the level of the voice of the wind, so fragile that it is, yet it possesses a range of innumerable tones that seem to stroke and caress the shoulder, skin and hair. When Jose began to wrap himself around her, no longer did her voice interrupt. She must think a lot about him, because when she is alone, she blushes in the same way that she does when they are together. The wake commences before the sun has all but lost itself among the hills. The sky turns crimson and the horizon is the color of magenta like the extended wings of a bird. The coffin has not yet arrived, nor has my father or my older brothers, there is no one to greet those who are arriving. I watch them and allow them to enter. They question me, but I don’t know anything. They sit down around the table. When the chairs are occupied, they arrange the furniture to accommodate others. The women bring something to eat. The men remain standing next to the open door. The absent ones arrive carrying my mother. It is a silent, solemn entrance, like that of a bride entering the church. Only in this case, no one is smiling. My father instructs Amelia to attend to those present. He asks nothing of me. She obeys and an aunt helps. They carry in a large tray with drinks, passing, retrieving, washing and passing once again. It is a silent task. Esther also helps to serve. She offers the tray and the women react with suspicion. They pause before receiving what is offered to them. They divert their glances upon taking the glass and drinking avidly. They murmur something among themselves. The murmur increases uniformly when Esther serves the men. They examine her from head to toe with lustful eyes, seeking an invitation with each movement. Soon they forget that my mother is there in the center of the room, withering away among so many flowers. There is a photo of my family on the wall. Except that I am missing. I would be born some six years later, when my brother, Jaime, dies and nobody cares anymore about photographs. They seem so serious, as if intimidated by the camera. Except Esther. She is a young, beautiful girl, who seems to be leaning on the margin of the photo, with her arms crossed and her gaze fixed upon the lens that is focused upon her. Her hair is light in color and her mouth is wide. She stops running down the slopes of the pastures when she becomes a young lady and then is no longer a young lady when she becomes a woman. That is what they tell me when she goes after the gentleman that deceived her. I regret that she takes off, makes light of the matter and only my father laughs with her. Now she comes whenever she feels like it. She knows the city very well and even the capital. She has seen the sun set over the sea and how it appears on the other side of the mountain range. She has worked in houses with floors that glisten like crystal. She has combed the hair of women with soft, blonde hair. She has slept between luxurious silk sheets. She has read the letter of the founder of Santiago in an enormous stone at the base of the hill. She has experienced tremors without the fear of the walls collapsing. She has wandered down streets filled with pedestrians, where no one knows her. She has met many men in the city that have taught her the secret to not having children. The women speak ill of her. When Esther isn’t here, the words hang suspended in the air. But when she arrives and walks among the fields defying the wind, and the trees bow to her presence, no one speaks of Esther. Each day I must cross the pasture to arrive home. I run the entire way. Once I imagined that the devil was pursuing me and I couldn’t let go of that impression. As I keep running through the wind, it grasps me and envelops all of my body in a frightful way. As I approach the gate, I begin to slow down the frenetic pace. He is always there. I know that he will never not appear. It would be futile to try to evade him. So I pass by his door walking with an air of distraction. Don Victor smiles from the threshold. I feign surprise upon finding him in his habitual place. And I smile with an uncontrollable grin. —Come—he tells me. But he could remain silent and I would follow him regardless of the interior of that cold and colorless house. Before he would ask me things while his hands explored my legs. Not anymore. As soon as I enter, he embraces me and his urgent hands advance along all the routes of my body. The wind howls in the distance. The sun, upon setting, brings a new dazzling radiance that expires upon appearing. A dense, grey twilight enshrouds the closed windows. The dust has already lifted when I leave. —Don’t say anything to anyone—are his parting words. I walk away with my notebooks in hand and no longer run. I am counting the coins that he has given me. I will bury them later in the hiding place along with the others. It can’t be all that long. So many temptations at this age. And I still am not yet twelve years old. I tell him that I am going to grow up. He tells me that he hopes that it isn’t so. His desires are much stronger than the forces of nature, because my body isn’t changing. The dawns are sluggish. The sun slips wearily behind the hills. At its highest point, it begins to set. At that time, Amelia is finishing her work and leaves everything prepared for the arrival of the men. Sometimes she manages to meet up with Jose, running towards the thicket of hawthorns. And there are some days when my brothers and my father arrive before she has the opportunity to get away. Amelia tends to their needs in silence, while the density of the sunset blends with the heaviness of the evening. I approach the hawthorns. Jose has his head lowered and at times looks up with an expectant gaze. Winter is approaching. They are thinning the thickets and Jose no longer comes. One morning I awake covered in blood. I squeeze my thighs, but I am not able to contain that sticky substance that is emanating from my body. Amelia tells me that I am now going to grow and that I will have the body of woman. Her large hands wash me gently. Then she cuts some cloth and shows me how to hide my shame. Before the afternoon falls, I walk to his house. I haven’t gone to school or run through the pastures. He is seated in front of his desk. Books and numbered papers in impeccable order. He removes his eyeglasses and looks at me more with curiosity than with surprise. I tell him that there is something that I shouldn’t show him. I raise my skirt while he removes the precautions taken by Amelia. He introduces his fingers and they become drenched in the sticky liquid. On my belly he draws red and serpentine roads. Then it is my hand that becomes lost in that humid and profound tunnel. But the traces of my fingers on his skin disappear too swiftly. The Cemetery is a hollow in which stones and crosses become confused. The wind devours and deflects them. Above the hole in which we buried our mother, my brothers have carved a wooden headstone with the face of the Virgin. Around the burial niche, Amelia has made a pathway of flowers. They are so few and so withered, that we placed white stones among them. My father carries a jug of water so that we can keep them growing. Each week we make the long, arduous journey carrying the water. The withered, lifeless flowers end up dying. The stones loose their color and are thinned among the dry branches. The rain soon begins and we end up leaving. The following spring, Amelia gathers an immense bundle of branches of myrrh. I don’t want to go, but her subdued gaze from behind the tiny yellow flowers convince me. Jose no longer comes and they say that he is after one of the daughters of don Licho. His parcels of land are much larger than ours and his animals are so numerous that they bump into one another. I lift the vessel with water and we begin the march. There still is mud, compounded by the dry dust that complicates the air. We encounter other visitors. Amelia greets them briefly and amiably. I simply remain silent, tethered to her shadow. The Cemetery is a quagmire. No longer is there a pathway of flowers and stones. The rain and the wind have aged the face of the Virgin. Someone broke the earthenware jar. We tried to put it back together, but it no longer held water. Amelia examines with desolation the branches of myrrh. No longer does anyone bring flowers nor does she have anyone to whom to offer them. Amelia confesses to our father her fears. She knows that her hands are large enough to cradle children and that her voice would be melodious to the ears of a child soothed by a lullaby. She doesn’t speak of the desires that torment her sleep. —A woman is needed in the house—he responds. They don’t even look at me. My scrawny and silent silhouette is sufficient enough argument for uselessness.