by James Canon
“I think we’ve been a little too greedy,” Ubaldina said to the group, her voice full of regret. “Don’t you agree?”
At that moment lightning struck close to where they stood. The bolt was promptly followed by a deafening thunderclap that made the women believe that nature, in its own furious way, had just answered Ubaldina’s question. In absolute quiet they gathered their things and started down the slippery rise, walking as fast as they could to catch up with the large caravan that was already turning onto the main street.
Cleotilde held the open atlas firmly over her head and walked out in the rain with her characteristic gait, slower than the others, but still staunch and purposeful. She splashed water as she went along the muddy, difficult road that soon would put all ninety-three women and Santiago in an extraordinary place: the thriving community of New Mariquita.
Jacinto Jiménez Jr., 26
Guerrilla soldier
We were scouring the mountains for paramilitary soldiers when we came upon a caravan of displaced Indians. The elders walked in front, dragging their bodies up the trail, some pushing and pulling each other. Then came the children, all naked. They had rolled-up blankets on their shoulders and drove small herds of pigs and goats. The women came next, their babies in their arms, pots, pans and chairs strapped to their backs with hemp cords. Last in the long line were the men, about ten of them. They wore conical woolen hats and colorful robes, and they carried loads on their backs in large blankets tied around their foreheads.
“Where are you all heading for?” Cortéz, our leader, shouted at the men from a distance.
The Indians went on, quietly, as if they hadn’t heard or understood the question.
Cortéz yelled at them to stop. “Where are you fucking going?” he sounded angry.
“Anywhere,” a middle-aged man with a sad face and a vacant look replied in a faint voice, without stopping or even raising his eyes from the ground. He was their chief. His hat was taller and his robe white, and he was the only one who had a mule to carry his load.
“Halt!” our leader yelled again.
The men stopped abruptly.
Cortéz approached the group with his indifferent pace. “Are you running away from paramilitaries or from guerrillas?” he asked, addressing the Indian chief.
The Indian stood still next to his mule, staring at the ground, as though thinking. He knew the wrong answer could get him and his people killed.
“Are you running away from paramilitaries or from guerrillas?” Cortéz repeated, louder this time, and put the tip of his gun on the man’s temple. The other Indians watched, terrified.
The Indian chief swallowed saliva two or three times but couldn’t bring himself to respond. The side of his face I could see was beaded with sweat.
Cortéz snapped back the safety catch of the gun.
“From—from the war, sir,” the man faltered at last. “We’re running away from the war.”
Cortéz snatched up the Indian chief’s hat and put it on the mule’s head. Then he looked at the other Indians and bared a few teeth, as if in a smile.
“Now you can go,” our leader finally said, putting his gun away.
CHAPTER 12
Widows in Love
New Mariquita, Ubaldina 1, Ladder 1998
ELOÍSA VIUDA DE CIFUENTES got out of bed before dawn as usual, and just as usual arranged three large pillows in a line down the middle of her bed and covered them with bedclothes. That way in the semidarkness, from the doorway and with her head slightly tilted toward the right, the bulge gave her the illusion that Rosalba, the magistrate, lay amid her lavender-perfumed sheets.
She stood naked by the door contemplating the silhouette she had fabricated, and imagined that she and the magistrate had just finished making love. It wasn’t unusual for Eloísa to see the bulge’s midsection heave or the entire thing turn onto its side. Later, after giving it some consideration, she would admit to herself that those movements were nothing but an optical illusion. But in the morning, before drinking her first cup of coffee, it was imperative that she lived her fantasy thoroughly, no matter how crazy it seemed.
Eloísa was in love with Rosalba, but nobody knew; not even Rosalba.
The church bell rang in the distance: a single set of five chimes that indicated to the villagers that it was time to rise and start getting ready for work. Inside her kitchen, Eloísa set a few logs on the ashes in the stove and put on the kettle. At that moment she felt something warm and damp running down her legs. She slid her hand along the inner part of her right thigh and confirmed, with great concern, that she had gotten her period a sun early.
Eloísa was a member of the Time Committee. One of her duties was to report to the magistrate her first discharge of blood every twenty-eight suns, which needed to coincide with that of the other four members of the committee. After drinking a full cup of coffee Eloísa walked out into the patio with a towel on her shoulder. She stopped in front of the large barrel she used to collect rainwater and noticed that it was empty. She remembered seeing it almost full the night before. Her boarder, the selfish Pérez widow, had gotten up before her and used it all to bathe herself.
Eloísa had been burdened with taking in the Pérez widow after a storm destroyed the old woman’s shack several rungs before. She hated sharing her house—especially with the Pérez widow—but didn’t complain because she, Eloísa, had signed that damned Communal Agreement, and she was a woman of her word. According to the document, “nobody owned anything because everybody owned everything,” or at least that’s what Eloísa had gathered from Rosalba’s speech. To Eloísa, signing the piece of paper also meant having to work, with three other women, a plot of land that had been abandoned since the men disappeared. The four women’s hard work kept the community supplied with coffee beans, avocados, papayas and squash, and even produced a little extra to be stored, together with other dry foodstuffs and fibers for blankets, in an adobe granary that the magistrate had had built in the ruins of a deserted house. But the new law wasn’t all bad. For instance, Eloísa no longer had to bid against other women to procure food. She didn’t even have to cook anymore. Every morning three matrons received from the magistrate a large basket full of fresh vegetables, fruits, grains, and eggs and meat when available. They cooked breakfast and dinner. Only raw vegetables were eaten at lunchtime.
AFTER CURSING THE Pérez widow in her head, Eloísa went back to her bedroom. She dampened the towel with the drinking water that she kept on her bedside table and scrubbed her body where it needed to be scrubbed. Then she set forth, naked as she was, to report her early period to the magistrate.
A few rungs before, Eloísa had become the first widow to go stark naked in public. “It took thousands of generations for the female body to reach perfection. Why should we hide it under a costume?” she had alleged.
The magistrate could have penalized her for public nudity, but her own body went numb and her mouth dry with admiration and desire after seeing Eloísa’s breasts. Rosalba thought they were marvelous: their light brown color, their firmness, their size and shape like a ripe grapefruit cut in half. They were so extraordinary that they might well have taken thousands of generations to reach such a level of perfection.
On one occasion, after being pressured by the town’s most pious women, Rosalba had stopped Eloísa on the street and made it clear to her that some parts of the female body must be covered, if only because they were very sensitive. But the magistrate was disarmed by Eloísa’s reply: “I can’t think of any part of the female body that’s less sensitive and more misused than a butt, and yet women have covered it throughout history.”
Being fully clothed soon began to seem strange, unnatural. For some it was simply a fair and practical solution to the growing problem of having to spend energy weaving new clothes, but for others it was just no longer conceivable that women were the only creatures in the world that had to cover the upper and lower part of their bodies. The older women were cautious. The
y believed nudity was just a trend—like miniskirts had once been—and they were not just about to become the laughingstock of the village with their dried-up posteriors and deflated breasts, the nipples of which lined up with their belly buttons. They cut the sleeves of their blouses and shortened the length of their skirts, and that was as far as they would go.
THE CHURCH BELL rang again. Two sets of five chimes each, which indicated that it was time for the villagers to stride toward the communal kitchen to which they had been assigned, to get their first meal. The bell-rings code had been developed by the schoolmistress, who also had volunteered to ring the bell until she had no strength left to pull the long rope tied to the clapper.
Feeling hungry, Eloísa reasoned that reporting her period could wait and instead hurried down the street toward the Morales’s kitchen. She arrived at the same time as the magistrate, who randomly ate in all three communal kitchens to ensure the quality of the food served and the promptness of the service. To Eloísa’s pleasure and surprise, the magistrate showed up completely naked, though covering her crotch with her appointment book. Eloísa had been working on Rosalba for rungs. Every time the magistrate complimented Eloísa on her olive-colored Indian skin and the many beautiful moles on her body, Eloísa replied, coquettishly, that she was certain the magistrate had many far more beautiful moles hidden underneath her clothes. Rosalba’s clothes had gradually begun to shorten a little here and a little there, and eventually she had gone down to her underwear.
“Your body puts the blue morning sky to shame, Magistrate!” Eloísa said enthusiastically. The same line—or a slight variation of it—had been used by Eloísa’s husband in a poem he’d written to her. Rosalba looked up at the blue morning sky. There was nothing in it but a lazy sun and a flock of white birds that kept flying in circles over the village. Then she looked down and laughed nervously, feeling as though her nudity was a rash that had suddenly started expanding all over her body. Eloísa stepped to one side and motioned with her fully extended arm. “After you,” she said. Rosalba walked sidewise through the door holding the book tight against her stomach and sat at the first table she came upon, followed closely by Eloísa.
The long table was partially covered with a piece of white plastic and several black flies that appeared to be glued to it. Orquidea, the oldest daughter of the Morales widow, emerged from the kitchen wearing one of her conservative long-sleeved brown blouses and a matching long skirt and carrying three large baskets filled with arepas. She stopped abruptly in front of the magistrate and shook her head disapprovingly. She distributed the baskets almost symmetrically along the table and quickly disappeared into the kitchen. A moment later, her sisters Gardenia and Magnolia and the widow herself peeped out through the doorway and had a chuckle. Rosalba missed it, for Eloísa had engaged her in a conversation about the history of the heart-shaped birthmark she, Eloísa, had under her right breast.
A chunk of butter dancing on a chipped plate and two bowls of hot egg soup were delivered to the magistrate’s table by Julia, the youngest child of the Morales widow. She wore a tight red dress with a revealing neckline (though there was nothing to reveal), and she had a fresh purple orchid tucked behind her ear. After placing the two bowls on the table Julia tapped Rosalba on her shoulder, and with a few simple gestures and her expressive eyes let her know that she looked wonderful without clothes; that she—Julia—supported the magistrate’s decision wholeheartedly; and that she—Rosalba—shouldn’t pay any attention to her sisters because they were fat, ugly, mean and envious spinsters, or something to that effect.
The dining room filled up soon. Contrary to what Rosalba expected, her nudity didn’t get much attention. The women who didn’t arrive early enough to sit at any of the three tables carried their food outside and looked around for empty buckets and flowerpots, which they soon converted into seats. Their kitchen was not scheduled to get milk that morning, so they all drank their coffee black. Francisca pretended to squeeze her bare dark nipples into her cup. It was an old joke, but it still got good laughs out of the crowd.
Three sets of five bell rings were now heard, instructing the villagers to head for their specific workplaces. The Morales sisters began clearing the tables, while the women got up in orderly fashion, without interrupting their loud conversations and guffaws of laughter. Eloísa and Rosalba agreed to remain seated until the majority of the crowd was gone. Eloísa took the opportunity to tell the magistrate, in a slightly regretful tone, that she had gotten her period that morning. The law ordered that any member of the Time Committee who became irregular should be immediately substituted and never again considered for the task. She dreaded the public humiliation that most certainly would come with being dismissed.
“Don’t worry,” Rosalba whispered in Eloísa’s ear. “I’ll break the law just this one time.”
As Rosalba spoke, one of her aged, freckled hands landed on Eloísa’s bare thigh and swiftly slid down to the woman’s knee, then just as swiftly flew back to the table. She meant it as a caress, but to Eloísa it felt like the magistrate was wiping crumbs off her leg.
INSIDE HER OFFICE the magistrate walked back and forth, fighting her secret feelings for Eloísa. Was it mere physical attraction? Infatuation? Love? Whatever it was, it wasn’t right. Rosalba was of the opinion that sex between two women was unnatural. She was aware that some women in her village occasionally slept with each other, and she’d decided that as long as they were discreet, she wouldn’t meddle in their sexual affairs. That was before she saw Eloísa’s breasts. Those breasts, she thought, should be New Mariquita’s emblems. They should appear on New Mariquita’s flag and on the coat of arms. In fact, they should be the entire coat of arms. Period. Perhaps, Rosalba thought, she shouldn’t worry much about her feelings for Eloísa. After all, appreciating Eloísa’s body, watching the sensual way in which Eloísa wet her lips with her tongue as she spoke, and feeling Eloísa’s skin brush hers during breakfast were nothing but little sources of pleasure, like tying knots in a piece of string before weaving a shawl. Rosalba had never woven a shawl, but she had started dozens of them. It was the knotting phase that gave her pleasure; forming the little knobs along the strings of wool. Actually, weaving itself might ruin her enjoyment. Perhaps that’s how she should manage the situation with Eloísa: keep doing the little things that brought her pleasure, but refrain from weaving.
She was lost in reverie when Cecilia walked into her office. “The Solórzano widow just stopped by,” Cecilia said. “She came to report that one of the she-goats gave birth to a healthy kid this morning.”
“Ceci, my friend, there’s something I want to ask you,” Rosalba said, ignoring the news. “Let’s pretend that you have feelings for someone, anyone, but those feelings are of an unnatural kind. What would you do?”
“You’ve feelings for Eloísa, don’t you?”
There was no use in denying it to her perceptive secretary. “Yes. I think…I think I do.” Rosalba’s voice was full of guilt, as though confessing to a felony.
“Eloísa seems like a very passionate and romantic woman,” Cecilia stated; then she instructed Rosalba to, first, “Give her a bunch of flowers.” Second, “Send her a poem written on a perfumed sheet.” And third, and most importantly, “Don’t tell anyone.”
MEANWHILE, IN THE fields, carrying broad baskets tied around their waists Eloísa and Francisca had started picking coffee. Eloísa was a skilled coffee picker who collected a little over seventy pounds of cherries sunly, twice as much as the other coffee pickers.
“You’re not asking me, but I think the magistrate is in love with you,” Francisca said in a low voice. The two women were working on parallel rows. Because the trees stood between them, they could barely see each other’s faces.
“You’re right,” Eloísa replied. “I’m not asking you.”
Francisca ignored this harsh reply. “I wonder what’s like to be in love with another woman,” she said. “Do you think it’s wrong?”
&nb
sp; “No. Love is a beautiful thing that can never be wrong, just like hate can never be right.”
Francisca fell silent. She stood quiet for a while but then, abruptly, as if her mouth could no longer contain the words, said, “Cecilia and I are madly in love.” Hearing herself say it out loud, Francisca felt liberated. “Cecilia and I are madly in love, Cecilia and I are madly in love,” she repeated again and again until she saw Eloísa standing in front of her, laughing hysterically. They laid their baskets on the ground, and Francisca began telling Eloísa about her long-term romance with the magistrate’s secretary. “We’ve been together for a ladder, six rungs and thirteen suns now.” It had all started, Francisca said, before the New Mariquita, when she still did housework for Cecilia in exchange for room and board. “One sun, I was untangling Ceci’s hair when the comb broke and a piece of it fell into her bosom. I started laughing, and we made some silly jokes about it, but then Ceci dared me to retrieve the piece of brush. I said to her, sure, but only if you let me do it with my teeth. We’ve been together since.” And when the Communal Agreement had come into effect, Francisca said, she and Cecilia had requested to be allowed to stay together under the same roof, arguing that they got along very well and could share the house and its duties on even terms. “But there’s a problem,” Francisca added. “As much as I want to shout in the middle of the plaza that we’re in love, Cecilia wants to keep it a secret. She thinks that what we’re doing is a sin.”
When Francisca finished her telling, Eloísa admitted to having deep feelings for Rosalba. “But there’s no story to tell,” she said. They promised each other to keep it all a secret until the circumstances were favorable for all four.
THE MAGISTRATE DECIDED to do what her secretary had suggested, except she inverted the order of the steps. A poem, she thought, would be the perfect way to start courting Eloísa. She spent the entire afternoon shut away in her house, writing and rewriting love verses. Before going to bed, she read them and decided that they were nothing but a rhyming list of the things she liked about Eloísa. She tried writing them again, and again she came up with a list, different from the first, even melodious, but a list nonetheless. She sat on the edge of her bed and tried to call to mind any poems she might have learned or heard during the course of her life. She remembered but two: patriotic, repetitious pieces she had recited in school.
