The Revolutionaries Try Again

by Mauro Javier Cardenas

  my mother filling up the kitchen sink to the brim donning yellow rubber gloves sticking her hand down the sink as if conducting exploratory surgery

  who wants a kidney for dinner?

  ewww

  and on the night Eva brought up that accursed John Paul II contest her mother read to her the usual bedtime story about Marranito Poco Rabo searching for ravioli and nabo — that’s not how the story goes! — once upon time at the cacao plantations in Los Ríos men in uniforms told your grandmother that from Adam’s other rib the lord had created the rich so that miserable people like her wouldn’t die of hunger — so that miserable people like her would be less miserable and that she was miserable because the lord had ordained it so just as he had ordained for your grandmother’s brother to die of dysentery — for your grandmother’s father to toil morning to evening until his back gave out and he was let go without a handshake or a pension — what’s a pension Mama? — and then one day a different cadre of men in uniforms arrived at the cacao plantations in Los Rios and with an ire unseen in that region they told your grandmother and the other farmers that none of it was true — that the rich weren’t a gift from god — that god hadn’t ordained for anyone to be miserable — that it wasn’t normal for their children to die of hunger and that there was a different cadre of men all over the continent building schools and clinics just like they were going to build schools and clinics in Los Ríos — and then one day a bad man lambasted these cadres of good men and said that what people like your grandmother needed was guidance on how to enter heaven and not guidance on how to seek a better life on earth — and then one day this bad man whom everyone calls John Paul II sent a dark German emissary to sabotage the work of these cadres of good men — shutting down their schools and shuttering their clinics and replacing them with dark bad men in uniforms who went on preaching dark bad things — and where are the good ones now Mother? — all of them dead? — and where are you tonight Mother? — by constellations with names we didn’t know? — festering underfoot? — Pisces Mother — and where is Rolando tonight? — Corona Borealis — and where was Rolando last night? — does he assume that because I’m upset with him I don’t want to see him again? — did she ever tell Rolando about her grandmother in Los Ríos? — tell me about yourself — no you tell me about yourself — no — she never told him about her grandmother in Los Ríos or what happened to her brother Arsenio — for what end I ask you? — for what purpose? — shut up — besides — to her the point of talking isn’t to share asteroids with vague puffs of life — the Flying Dumbos Mama — landing on a coffee sack after her brother pushed her from what they called the balcony — Mama my brother pushed me! — alfalfa face — my mother telling me stories from when Arsenio was little before he was gone — I spent one whole Sunday cutting and arranging my new white curtains and when they were up your brother snuck inside my bedroom and wiped himself on them can you believe it? — to her the point of talking is simply to pass the time until we fester underfoot — to overlook how disemboweled her voice feels from the rest of her body — my voice stems from my stomach that’s why it morphs by meal type — give me your goat soup voice — bahhh — give me your lamb chop voice — Hey — Hey hottie want a ride? — and Eva not acknowledging the voice coming from the blue Trooper that has slowed beside her along Victor Emilio Estrada — We could stop by a liquor store for Boones — Drive to hell first and liquor yourself there — Oh a feisty heretic type — Eva not speeding up or slowing down not turning to look at them the brake lights of the cars ahead of her flickering as the men inside stick their heads out to check if she’s going to get in — right — pulling the hammer from the back pocket of her jeans and holding it with both hands like a crazy person who may or may not feel like swinging it at anything — the leering men inside the car are teenagers — high school boys with braces — their chauffeur seems to be the only one who takes her hammer seriously because he’s driving them away as the boys yell stop the car chofer — We’re taking the maid with us chofer — Chola hijueputa — Revolera conchadetumadre — whatever — she will not cross the street or wait by the shawarma place until they’re out of sight and she will not imagine Rolando swiping the hammer from her hand and stumping their morsels — Rolando Bobbit — good one — neither good nor bad señor — doesn’t matter we’re all going to — quit it with that refrain Evatronica — she doesn’t need to imagine Rolando stumping anything because she can imagine stumping everything herself — it isn’t so hard to imagine Rolando — you’re not the only one who wants everything to end — she has never dreamed of pulling out her hammer from the back pocket of her jeans to destroy the stagecraft — the houses and rivers — ripping the curtains is that enough Rolando? — of course it isn’t — how are we to be Christians in a world of destitution and — hearing Rolando’s stories about Father Villalba in which he never describes what Father Villalba looks like so she has come to imagine Father Villalba looking like Óscar Romero with those clerk glasses like a second set of eyebrows — Father Villalba refused to be anyone’s spiritual counselor Eva — and one Saturday Father Villalba asked me if I could help him load the boxes that he was taking to the children who scavenge at the garbage disposal site in La Libertad and that Saturday and the Saturday after that we rode to La Libertad in silence — thinking that I could sense what Villalba wanted to say to me — what was that? — that’s personal Eva — alfalfa face — boxes filled with lettuce heads and antibiotics — you know what Chagas’ disease does to you? — ewww — not listening — say chinchorro — chinchulín? — churi churín fun flais? — wishing she could be listening to Rolando asking his radio audience the questions they’d come up with together the week before — who assassinated Jaime Roldós Aguilera? — that one’s too serious Rolancho — how come we have all this oil and we can’t even rescue people from mudslides? — didn’t know you had a penchant for mud — good for the skin bobito — who’s your favorite president since our return to democracy in 1979? — none of them señor — and what is Rolando saying tonight? — what is he angry about tonight? — his radio signal doesn’t reach here and the radios here aren’t asking anything except what’s your favorite song

  déle nomás / con el garrote que le va a gustar

  the radios here are the background songs from the rear of the restaurants along Victor Emilio Estrada — from the hotdog stands on the street corners — from the street children who have abandoned the usual intersections and are now performing their circus tricks amid the traffic — she cannot tell if the people inside the cars have grown used to ignoring them or are worried about the street children cracking their windows as they peek inside their cars as if to check why no one’s giving them any money — hello? — perhaps Rolando’s playacting at being a lovelorn caller who would like to dedicate a song to Eva Calderón from Los Rios — a love song unlike the songs from the radios along Victor Emilio Estrada that Eva hears and doesn’t hear

  (later she will forget that she couldn’t really hear any radios along Victor Emilio Estrada so the radios she’s hearing now are the radios she will imagine later)

  imagining what she will imagine

  for years now inhabiting in the present what she knows she will imagine in the future

  perhaps tonight Rolando’s voice lives inside the portable radio of the old indigenous woman who’s sitting by a lamppost that’s shutting off and switching on at random — how do you know it’s random maybe there’s an omnipresent algorithm behind its flickering? — the radio either set to low or tuned to a station that Eva cannot make sense of

  sit crosslegged by the radio jot down the songs burn the songs pretend you never jotted them down

  and Eva hoping what she always hopes when she sees a destitute woman on the street — please don’t resemble my mother because what would I do then? — please take everything I own Mother — what I have and don’t have — the houses and rivers — do you like magic? — knowing that later she will imagine that the old indigenous woma
n resembled her mother so that she’ll feel ashamed of everything she didn’t do for this poor woman who’s thanking Eva for transferring her change from her pockets to the tomato soup can — May I request you a favor? — Of course — May I borrow a lipstick? — I don’t have any lipstick I’m sorry I — Today’s my Urpi’s nineteenth birthday sends me a letter from El Paso Texas ñuñu I am well haven’t practiced the flute in the apartment everyone works different shifts someone’s always sleeping on the floor and I’m afraid to practice in the park — Do you play as well? — When my Urpi was born I carved him a flute like a centipede so tiny — My brother used to search for centipedes in the gardens outside so he could place them on my forearm when I was sleeping — your brother is dead — the old woman doesn’t say — goodbye Mother — Eva doesn’t say — Please be careful of everything — the old woman does say — holding Eva’s hand and pointing at the alley that leads to another alley that’s ideal for escaping from this accursed place — waving the old woman goodbye wondering if it is not better to cut off these handouts that trick our people into thinking that perhaps things aren’t that bad? — that prevent our people from rising up? — yes you’re right Eva let’s cut them off and wait for them to die of hunger and then at last the dead will rise against the

  shut up

  once upon a time Marranito Poco Rabo wambled to the civil registry to switch his Poco and his Rabo — that’s not how the story goes! — once upon a time El Loco ran for office again — and again — and each time — win or lose — his political party grew as his brothers sisters cousins aunts friends of friends swindled the country in more or less the same way as the sons and daughters of the sons and daughters of our dignitaries who are nightclubbing in this part of town and who just like El Loco have provided no housing for the poor — no health care for the poor — yes we all know that Rolando — we’re not stupid — we’ve never believed that El Loco is our leader or that there’s a chance we will not die in misery like we were born into misery — meanwhile Rolando — while we pass the time before the chinchorros prickle us — we would rather watch El Loco’s show than watch these people here acculturing themselves with the money they continue to swindle from us — you’re lying — about which part? — all of it — yes I am — not telling Rolando about dancing to ABBA with her mother — yes you did — telling Rolando that her mother died of grief without telling him the truth about the source of her grief — socioeconomic grief Rolando — my mother died in a traffic accident I can still imagine her thanking the lord for finally letting her go as the bus crashed against a water truck — not telling him about her brother Arsenio — what for I ask you? — not telling him that while searching for her brother Arsenio her mother neglected an abscess in one of her molars that later paralyzed half her body — once upon a

  and so on

  go away

  (one Sunday evening when she’s eight years old her brother borrows the)

  not listening

  two days before Halloween her brother

  if you change your mind / I’m the first in line

  borrowing the neighbor’s pickup truck to

  (in recent declarations President León Martín Cordero has stated that his administration will annihilate terrorism as a system and terrorists as scum of the earth — I’ll borrow the neighbor’s pickup truck and buy us flour for our costumes Evarista — don’t call me Evarista Arsoso — tonight on Channel Two we investigate death squads during the presidency of León Martín Cordero — what do you want to be for Halloween Evarista? — we interrupt this program to inform you that terrorist group Alfaro Vive Carajo has kidnapped well known banker Nahim Isaías — the tailpipe of the neighbor’s car scraping against the cratered speed bumps by our house — in recent developments President León Martín Cordero appears to have taken over the military operation to rescue Nahim Isaías — it has been said that our Organization wants to sow chaos and anarchy this is another hallucination of our accusers — either you let me come with you or I’ll tell on you Arsenico — what did you call me? — chaos and anarchy have already been sown by those who have benefited for generations from the subjugation of our people — no you’re too little to be out at night Evasiva — don’t be an Arsno — the principal subversion that exists in our country is poverty and injustice — I asked you where is your brother Eva? — is the misery in which our people live — her brother locking the doors of the neighbor’s pickup truck so she couldn’t come with him taunting her by caressing the head of the door lock as if shining the helmet of a toy soldier — the Organization believes neoliberal policies are contrary to the objectives of bread roof and employment specified by this administration — Mama my sister’s wearing my Han Solo boxers again — we will annihilate these terrorists by all means necessary — Eva climbing on the flatbed of the neighbor’s pickup truck jumping on it saying you can’t take off without me now — our maximum aspiration is to put an end to this chaos and anarchy — I don’t play with dolls Evatronica — not knowing whether to tell on her brother because he might still come back no? — the flatbed like a bungee — good afternoon in today’s news Efraín Torres a former agent of the SIC 10 is scheduled to publish a testimony detailing the crimes committed by the administration of León Martín Cordero — listen I know León he will not negotiate with your Organization — her brother climbing on the flatbed — we’re all already dead — catching her on her way up or down — we are not terrorists because we are not responsible for the terror that our country has lived — chuzos / here the beef chuzos — her brother jumping on the flatbed carrying her on his shoulders like a cave person — we are not responsible for the assassination of Jaime Roldós Aguilera — dropping Eva inside their house running back to the pickup truck driving off — for the assassination of workers and union leaders — I want to be the ghost of a sugar bun — for the daily persecution of our people who are struggling to obtain a better life — a sugar what? — bun — chanfle — where is your brother Eva? — let go Arsodrita — up or down — Nahim Isaías and his captors have been killed during an assault in La Chala — you did play with dolls Arsenio — shut up — we played house and astronauts and sat outside our house guessing the color of the omnibuses remember? — the meteors are coming — goat brown look — an antiterrorist operation like that you understand like the Ecuadorian people understand engenders grave risks for the hostage — buseta blue — it was our only alternative to not liquidate our sovereignty — what the hell was León talking about? — to not allow the trampling of the conscience of the Ecuadorian people — say moon landing — her mother searching for her brother in the corner stores nearby — say goat brown — her mother saying to her you stay in the house and Eva not arguing with her mother not talking back not saying I’m coming with you because she knew her mother was — what? — terrified that Arsenio had been kidnapped? — hearing her mother rushing around the block and knocking on everyone’s door — the dogs barking — the gates opening — the street children juggling beer bottles along Victor Emilio Estrada — hurrying to buy Efraín Torres’s testimony after school on the day it was published — ten years after my brother disappeared Rolando — when I was already a junior in high school — reading the testimony on a bench in the Parque de las Iguanas while someone preached something about the lord our savior — when I was already too tall to be carried on anyone’s shoulders — you have school tomorrow Eva — sleep please go back to sleep — hammering her fingers on purpose along Victor Emilio Estrada why not? — hearing her mother saying to the neighbors or whomever was in the living room on the night her brother disappeared that she had asked everyone — had gone everywhere — reporting his disappearance at the police headquarters where they asked her if her son had been drinking — if her son was still out with his shady friends — if her son drove off a cliff after finding out that his sweetheart had scampered with his — listen conchadesumadres — watch your mouth lady — that Sunday evening our neighbors in their pajamas brought us carrot soup and po
und cake and early the next morning I was unsure as to whether to slice the immaculate pound cake into tiny squares that could fit into a sandwich bag or devour it there with my hands — let go Arsgrodita — and the lord said not a single leaf will fall without my consent — scanning Efraín Torres’s testimony for her brother’s name — her mother pleading with Don Carlos at the house where she worked as a domestic to please make a quick call somewhere — to someone — my son has gone missing Don Carlos — my son can’t just have gone missing — he was a good boy — a decent boy Don Carlos — and since Don Carlos had gone to school with the governor he did make some calls — and we did wait for months for the possibility that Don Carlos would use his clout to unearth something — scanning paragraph after paragraph of Efraín’s testimony — my brother doesn’t have any shady friends you swines — no one knows anything Señora Estela — my index finger like a ruler scanning the pages of Efraín’s testimony — my contact at police headquarters told me they told him to stop asking so many questions or else — ambulatory squadrons trained by Israeli experts — in the news today two adolescents of fourteen and seventeen years of age Pedro Andres and Carlos Santiago Restrepo have disappeared without a trace — scanning for a description of her brother — for years everyone talking about the brothers Restrepo instead of her brother because their Colombian parents had enough money to organize a press conference — because they had lobbied the Ecuadorian government to allow Colombian police experts to investigate what had happened to their sons and what they discovered was that their sons had indeed been detained by the police — because the Restrepos’ father had asked President Rodrigo Borja to form a commission to investigate what had happened to his sons during the administration of León Martín Cordero — because every Wednesday the Restrepos gathered at the Plaza Mayor in Quito to demand justice — because a special agent called Efraín Torres came forth and confessed that on the night the brothers Restrepo had been brought in by the police he had been on duty — that Sergeant Llerena had asked him to hand over the taller Restrepo brother — that approximately forty five minutes later Llerena returned with the prisoner who was unconscious and in such bad condition that Sergeant Llerena and Agent Chocolate had to carry him on each side — that I told the sergeant that I couldn’t receive the boy in those conditions because if he died in his cell I would be stuck with a legal proceeding — scanning Efraín Torres’s testimony a second time — riding the bus home on the day the testimony was published and thinking she probably did miss a paragraph or a page — President Rodrigo Borja has issued a decree eliminating the SIC 10 created during the administration of León Martín Cordero because of an institutional culture of torture — line after line — of arbitrary detentions — irrationally imagining while riding the bus home that later she would be able to gossip about Efraín’s testimony with her school friends — of cruel and inhuman treatments — did you read Efraín’s dedication on the first page for her noble and pure gestures Rosa Porteros wherever you are ha ha — rereading his testimony and berating Efraín Torres for spending so much time talking about his volunteer work at Garcia Moreno Prison where he’d been imprisoned instead of mentioning the names of the other people he claims he didn’t disappear — I’ve never claimed to be a saint — no one’s saying you’re a saint you imbecile just tell me what happened to my brother Arsenio — Agent Chocolate ha ha — on our first assignment they hauled us in a van without windows and drove us to what we later found out was Cuenca — lambasting Efraín for his unbearably innocent tone — among the targeted were syndicate leader Fausto Dutan who was wrongly included as a subversive and for whom a direct order was issued by Mayor Paco Urrutia chief of the SIC 10 in Cuenca to assassinate him along with his wife and daughters — look here dear reader and judge for yourself — my mother lost more than thirty pounds Rolando — on the day I was to be freed from Garcia Moreno Prison my older sister my dear sister who had suffered with me this period of injustice called the penal administration and asked to talk to me — my mother didn’t even recover ten measly pounds Rolando — and in the poorer neighborhoods that had been designated as dangerous zones our ambulatory squadrons would detain innocent young men just because they were standing outside their houses — sometimes my mother would turn on the radio in the living room and listen to love songs from the kitchen — my sister said a few words that as I write these lines tears come down my cheeks again — as if that distance between the living room and the kitchen allowed my mother to imagine those songs were floating toward her — at last your release is a reality at last this nightmare is over my sister said — the Israelis trained us on basic tactics of extermination — you don’t know how happy I am my sister said — for instance the triple asphyxia — it was the first time in three years and six months that my sister felt happy — for instance the submarine in which a plastic bag filled with tear gas is tied around the head of the prisoner and then it is submerged inside a tank of water — and on the fourth year of Arsenio’s disappearance my mother and I rode a bus to Quito and joined the parents of the brothers Restrepo at the Plaza Mayor — riding the bus home on the day Efraín’s testimony was published and finding her mother already home with her own copy of Efraín’s testimony on the kitchen table — ten years Rolando — please turn around Mama — Eva didn’t say — I can’t keep standing here in the kitchen forever — Eva didn’t say — her mother was crying — her mother did turn around and was crying — as if she didn’t want to wake up anybody anymore — why wasn’t she screaming Rolando? — why wasn’t she tearing everything down? — and Eva pulling her own copy of Efraín’s useless testimony from her backpack and offering it to her mother just as her mother was raising her frail arms and offering to Eva what was visible — this is what’s left of me Eva — her mother didn’t say — Hey —) Hey sweetheart