Tales from the Town of Widows

by James Canon

  Following Rosalba’s declaration, the four boys were ordered, on pain of banishment, to stay away from women until their fate was decided, which would be on the morning of June 21, 2000, a day after Hochiminh, the youngest of the four, would turn fifteen.

  Although she was responsible for drafting the Next Generation decree, the magistrate thought the entire thing was absurd and uncivilized: How can anybody in her right mind, she asked herself, oblige one of those children to make love to someone like, say, Orquidea Morales, such an ugly thing? But she felt she had to make amends to the women of Mariquita for the “complete” and “ignominious” failure of the Procreation Campaign, in which twenty-nine women had been intimate with el padre Rafael for three months, and none had become pregnant. “I was deceived by el padre Rafael into believing that he could beget boys; or girls, for that matter.” the magistrate admitted before the crowd that swarmed into the plaza to learn about her new decree. “I would’ve never endorsed el padre’s idea had I known he was as sterile as a mule.”

  Everyone in the plaza applauded Rosalba’s harangue; everyone but the priest, of course. He thought the magistrate’s remarks were a declaration of war, and in retaliation, he stopped hearing confessions and giving communion altogether. The embargo of the two sacraments worked wonders for el padre, especially on the older widows, who after two weeks without confessing their peccadilloes felt as though constipated. They begged the priest’s forgiveness again and again until, satisfied, the little man absolved them of all blame and resumed giving the customary array of those invisible graces called sacraments. Still, the magistrate refused to apologize.

  DURING THE ENTIRE year after the Next Generation decree was announced, the villagers debated whether or not it was needed or even wanted. From behind the pulpit el padre Rafael declared time after time that he was against it, that it was a desperate measure from a desperate magistrate. “Forcing our boys to engage in sexual activity with women who are not their wives is wrong. It goes against the principles of Catholicism, but also against the boys’ rights.”

  The older women, too, openly condemned the Next Generation decree in the market, while trading a cheap trinket for a pound of onions or a papaya for a handmade bar of soap. They couldn’t understand why any woman—old or young—could possibly want to beget more men. Had they forgotten how the men had mistreated, ignored and diminished them? Didn’t they remember those creatures with broad-brimmed sombreros that would go drinking rather than stay home nursing a sick son? The same creatures with unkempt mustaches who’d rather pay a whore at La Casa de Emilia than make love to their devoted and decent wives.

  Certain unnamed widows discussed the magistrate’s peculiar decree secretly, in the privacy of their bedrooms, under lavender-scented sheets, after making love and before one of them had to depart in the middle of the night, protected by darkness. They shared the same view as the older women, and maintained that if not having men around meant that Mariquita had to end with the present generation, perhaps an entire generation of harmony, tolerance and love would be preferable to an eternity of misery and despair—not to mention war.

  Old maids also chose to talk about the Next Generation decree at night, only they did it on their doorsteps, while they spun cotton or separated good beans from bad ones for the following day’s soup. They were somewhat ambivalent toward it. Indeed they welcomed the possibility of becoming mothers, even if it involved being intimate with a callow youth. But at the same time they felt that having a child—boy or girl, it didn’t matter—wouldn’t change their despised status as old maids. What they wanted, really wanted, was to be someone’s girlfriend or fiancée, someone’s wife. They wanted to belong to a man, to be claimed as his property. They declared that the first verb their mothers had taught them wasn’t to be but to belong; therefore belonging would always come before being.

  The younger women, on the other hand, didn’t talk so much about the decree. They talked about the boys, and they did it every time they saw the small cluster of them in school taking dictations from the teacher Cleotilde, or bringing water from the river in earthen containers, or working their mothers’ orchards, or playing soccer in teams of two. But they also talked about them every night during their customary after-rosary meeting, when they sat in a big circle in the middle of the plaza playing games, trying new hairstyles, or, as their mothers said, “Feeding the mosquitoes.” Oftentimes they simply rated the boys, making a parody of the anticipated competition ordered by the magistrate. In their version, which they called “Míster Mariquita,” each girl was asked to rank the four boys in trite categories, such as Cutest Face, Most Adorable Smile, Sweetest Personality, etc., and then compare their results amid peals of laughter.

  But not everything the girls did during the months before the competition was amusing. Virgelina Saavedra saw in the upcoming event an opportunity for profit. She took bets of different amounts and goods on the results of the competition. She herself bet a romance novel illustrated with photos—which she treasured—that Che López would win the right to choose a wife and form a family. Meanwhile, Magnolia Morales took it upon herself to circulate three different waiting lists (one for each unknown procreator) to determine the order in which each girl would eventually have a naked boy in her bed. She purposely kept the list from old maids and widows, for she decided the former had had every chance to secure a man in their prime (and squandered it), and the latter had already enjoyed their share of men in this life. This, naturally, gave rise to controversies, quarrels, verbal confrontations and even a fistfight. As always the magistrate had to intercede, first drafting and then announcing one more of her brilliant decrees: as long as a woman was menstruating regularly, she had the right to be on any of the three lists and to marry the one eligible boy, should he happen to select her. Period.

  MAGNOLIA MORALES WAS the first woman to arrive in the plaza on that fatal Sunday in June of 2000. She got there a little before daybreak, wearing a shapeless robe of sacking she’d sewed herself. The gusting morning wind made the mango trees tremble, and the many leaves on the ground caused Magnolia to slip, but she didn’t fall. She spread a blanket on the ground, in front of the improvised platform that had been built the day before by order of the magistrate. The eagerly awaited competition wouldn’t begin until eight that morning, but Magnolia had promised her sisters that she’d be the first one to show up and that she’d keep a place for them in the first row.

  Luisa arrived next, about half an hour later, then Cuba Sánchez, then Sandra Villegas and Marcela López, and by the time the first rooster crowed, women had appeared from different corners of Mariquita, as though carried along by the wind. They sat around the platform, dark rings under their eyes from not enough sleep, and alcohol on their breath from drinking too much chicha. The night before they’d celebrated Hochiminh Ospina’s fifteenth birthday with a great fanfare not seen or heard in Mariquita in a long time. It must be said that Hochiminh’s birthday was the last thing on the women’s minds (Hochiminh himself had not been invited to his birthday celebration). It was the event that would take place the morning after the boy’s birthday that they were anxiously awaiting; an unprecedented competition that would make Magnolia, Luisa, Cuba, Sandra, Marcela, Pilar, Virgelina, Orquidea, Patricia, Nubia, Violeta, Amparo, Luz, Elvira, Carmenza, Irma, Mercedes, Gardenia, Dora and many other young girls, widows and old maids of Mariquita immensely happy.

  But while the women sat around the platform in the plaza, chatting merrily and making their last conjectures, Che, Hochiminh, Vietnam and Trotsky had begun to experience, separately, the adverse effects of the tremendous anxiety caused by the contest that would decide their fate. For several months the four boys had been the subject of discussions, speculations, assumptions, controversies, fights, bets and even jokes. Their thoughts and feelings about the magistrate’s decree, however, had never been consulted. Their anxiety had been building for an entire year, and they’d grown awfully apprehensive. On this memorable morning, the p
roximity of the event and the mounting pressure placed on each to win had worked them up to a state of near hysteria where anything was possible.

  THEY SAY THAT Che López woke up at two on that Sunday morning and couldn’t go back to sleep. He didn’t suffer from insomnia—he could sleep soundly for twelve hours. The night before he’d planned to get up at six, earlier than usual, because he had to win the right to marry the girl of his choice, Cuba Sánchez. To achieve his goal, he thought, he needed to trim his hair, clip his nails, and, with a piece of coal and great care, add some density to the faint shadow he had for a mustache. He was fifteen, with black hair and eyes, a small colorless face and a full erection hidden in his white cotton pajamas.

  Restless, he lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, yawning. The moonlight coming through a hole in the ragged curtain illuminated his swollen crotch. He rubbed it hard with the open palm of his hand, thinking of the warm, mushy, moist flesh of the watermelon he’d bored a hole into—and made love to—the day before. He pulled down his pajama trousers, wrapped his hand firmly around his penis, and began to stroke it zealously. But something wasn’t right; his hand felt a little too big around his penis. Maybe it isn’t fully erect, he thought. He held it between his thumb and index fingers and squeezed to check its hardness. It felt as bone-solid as only a fifteen-year-old penis can be. The boy moved slightly to the right so that the moonlight shone on his penis, and for a moment had no doubt that it looked smaller, by three-quarters of an inch at least. Maybe it’s my hand that’s growing, he supposed, and continued masturbating, imagining big, juicy watermelons lined up on the kitchen table, waiting to be penetrated. After some time, a long, unrestrained moan escaped from his mouth, and his hand stopped moving. He remained motionless for a few seconds, his lungs gasping for air. But something else wasn’t right; he didn’t feel any sticky liquid on his hand, and his penis appeared to be dry. He quickly shifted his body toward the right side of the bed and lit a candle. He looked closely for any evidence of ejaculation. He didn’t see anything on his reduced penis, nor his hands, the bed sheets or his pajamas. Armed with the candle, he checked the naked walls, the shiny floor, under his bed; he even checked the ceiling—nothing.

  Every Friday after class Che and the other three boys of Mariquita went swimming in the river. They often measured, with a ruler, the size of their penises before going into the cold water, and then after. They were always amazed to see how their penises shrunk. A week before, they had decided to do something different. They held a contest to decide who could ejaculate the farthest. They picked an open space on the riverbank and marked a spot. One at a time they stood on the spot, masturbated and shot. Che won with a seven-foot-six reach, followed by Trotsky with five feet, three inches, then Vietnam with five feet, and finally Hochiminh with three feet, eleven inches. Che boasted about it for the entire week; he even called for a second contest because he wanted to break his own record, but the other boys ignored him.

  On that Sunday, however, at two thirty in the morning, Che firmly believed that his penis was shrinking, and that he had no semen.

  DAWN WAS BREAKING, and gusts of wind were capriciously changing the order of objects in patios and backyards: flowerpots, plastic containers, clothes from the washing lines and even washing lines themselves drifted in the air for a little while before hitting a wall or landing in someone else’s yard.

  Meanwhile, they say, Hochiminh Ospina was having a frightening dream. In his dream he was swimming naked in the river with his friends from school, racing to see who was the fastest to get to the bank on the other side. Hochiminh worked his arms and legs vigorously, but his body—as fat in his nightmare as it was in real life—didn’t move forward. He saw his friends disappear in the distance, their arms and legs splashing. He tried harder, with his arms fully stretched and his hands perfectly curved as they thrust firmly into the water, and yet he didn’t advance an inch. Suddenly his body began to whirl around on the surface, faster each time. A powerful eddy had formed, and its circular movement was sucking him into its center. He struggled fiercely against it, moving his arms and legs as fast as he could. He felt a shooting pain in his chest, possibly caused by the strain he was putting on his muscles, but he didn’t stop moving; he couldn’t, or the eddy would swallow him up. The pain became acute, as if someone were pressing heavily on his chest and piercing his nipples at the same time. He continued swimming tenaciously against the whirlpool, enduring the ache, until the rooster in back of his house woke him up with its rowdy crowing.

  With his eyes fixed on the ceiling, relieved that it only had been a bad dream, Hochiminh thanked God for the roosters. However, as the rest of his body began to rouse, he felt an intense pain in his nipples. He brought his hands to his chest instinctively and became horrified. His hands didn’t land flat on the skin of his chest, as they generally did; this time, he thought, they arched over two large mounds that had appeared overnight, like boils. Hochiminh jumped out of his bed and quickly lit the candle that was on the night table. He lowered his head until his double chin touched his cleavage, tilting it slightly from left to right and vice versa with his eyes wide open. The proximity of the view caused him to imagine that his breasts looked larger than they were, and he wept quietly. How was he going to explain these to his mother and sisters? And what about the contest? Up on the platform he’d be nothing but an object of ridicule. This couldn’t be happening to him. He, who had been an altar boy. He, who recited a Hail Mary and a Lord’s Prayer every night before going to bed. He, who was a good student, an obedient son, a good brother to his two sisters, and a good grandson to—well, on a few occasions he’d stolen silver coins from his grandmother’s purse, right in front of her exhausted, half-blind eyes, while she said rosary after rosary. This had to be a divine punishment. After saying a few prayers with fervent devotion, Hochiminh put on his late father’s bathrobe and threw a large towel behind his neck, making sure the ends covered his breasts. He grabbed the candle, opened the door of his bedroom slightly, just enough to see that there was no one in the corridor, and hurried to the outhouse.

  Outside, the boy undressed in front of a full-length mirror and gave free rein to his imagination. He saw two fleshy protuberances, each with a large nipple at the end, stare back at him. He cupped his hands under them, feeling their weight. They were as heavy as oranges. He squeezed them hard, trying to deflate them, but the excessive pressure made them hurt and the sharp new pain seemed to insist that they were a part of his body; two self-contained organs that, quite possibly, were there to perform some specific functions. Perhaps, a more pragmatic Hochiminh reckoned, they’d shrink if he soaked them in cold water, like his penis did. He ran across the patio, naked, to the large barrel they used to collect rainwater, and went into the water, immersing his pudgy body from the neck down. A few minutes later he came out, shivering. His nipples had become stiff, and the pain in his chest had stopped, numbed by the cold water. But his breasts remained large and firm—or so he believed.

  THAT SAME MORNING, they say, Vietnam Calderón didn’t get up until his mother tickled his heels. The boy was redundant with laziness, slackness, tardiness and other words ending in ess that amounted to nothing good for his character. In the outhouse he found, as usual, the washing basin and towel his mother left for him every morning. He scrubbed his armpits and between his legs, cursing at her for making him wash daily; then went to his room and put on clean clothes his mother had chosen for him. A few minutes later he sat at the dining table in front of a stale piece of corn bread and a cup of hot chocolate. His mother sat beside him, holding a cup of coffee and repeating, one last time, her “useful tips” on how to win the competition.

  “Listen to me, Vietnam,” she began, a hint of irritation in her voice. “When you’re up on the platform, don’t pick your nose or rub your crotch, like you always do.” The boy nodded his head mechanically. He looked rather tense, but his mother decided he was just not keen on the contest or her tips. After all, he wasn’t
too keen on anything in particular. Everything he did was marked with such indifference that the teacher Cleotilde had said he’d make a good politician.

  “…And please, Vietnam, for once in your life wear a smile on your face. Are you listening to me?”

  “Yes, Mamá,” he finally replied in the falsetto voice of a little girl. He cleared his throat and said it again, “Yes, Mamá.” It sounded just as delicate.

  The widow took a sip of coffee before asking, “What’s the matter with your voice?”

  “I don’t know. It was—” He stopped, cleared his throat again and tried one more time. “It was normal last night.”

  “You sound like a girl, for Christ’s sake!”

  “Leave him alone,” said Liboria, Vietnam’s grandmother. “Boys’ voices start breaking when they turn fifteen.” Old Liboria lay stretched in a hammock slung from beams across the dining area. She was always in the hammock, aging slowly while suspended in the air, like a good sausage in a butcher’s shop.

  Vietnam drank his hot chocolate in sips, letting every mouthful burn his throat. “It was normal yesterday,” he repeated, soprano-like.