When they’d asked to borrow some, she said she had none. They didn’t believe her. In all that time, she’d never asked anyone for a cent, never complained. What’s more, she had a mill, even though she no longer had a husband. Everyone knew, too, that the father of her littlest daughter sent child support once a month. No one knew how much, but they figured it was a lot because it came from abroad and because, again, she never complained and never asked anyone for a thing. They thought she was better off than the rest of them and that she didn’t share her wealth out of meanness. Not very public-spirited, coming from someone who’d fought in the same war they had and, on top of that, had gotten twice the benefits because, during distribution, she’d also been given the share due to her other three girls’ father. No one seemed to have been informed that, when the time came to distribute the land, she’d been denied her own share for being married to him. They’d said it was one parcel per family, not per person, and that she’d have to make do with what her husband got; that she shouldn’t be ambitious, it wasn’t a good example to set, even if the war was over. Nothing for her dad or brother either. She couldn’t pretend to lay claim to something that wasn’t hers, not even when she said it was for her mom, who she thought deserved something after all they’d fought for.
They explained to her that the land was only for the living. They couldn’t parcel it out among the dead, couldn’t track their families down and make a symbolic handover. Nor could they field claims from everyone who said their family members had perished in combat. Could she imagine how many there must be? Did she think that the land they’d been given was enough for everyone? Could she think of a way of ensuring people weren’t lying, weren’t trying to take advantage of the situation? They couldn’t afford to be cheated. What they were offering was to train her for productive projects. Many ex-combatants were getting far less than she was through her husband. And then there were the soldiers. Had she heard? Many didn’t receive a thing after the conflict ended. Nothing. Not even training. They were told their situation was different: they’d been paid at the barracks or it’d been part of their military service. They weren’t owed a thing. They thanked them and then sent them packing. Those who’d lost limbs were promised pensions that were slow to arrive and, when they did, weren’t what they had originally been offered. She remembered the outcry: they were in the newspapers, they were on TV, they were heard every day on the radio.
Her husband said not to worry, that what he’d gotten was enough for them and their girls, and for the lost daughter when they eventually found her. That it was all part of setting an example for the troop, after all, they might have to regroup, and that deed would be taken into account when they were under review. She still thought it unfair, but she didn’t raise it again. She followed orders in peacetime as she had during the war, though she couldn’t help thinking that maybe it had been a bad idea to get married by the state when they were living in the reintegration camps after coming down from the mountains. She thought this, above all, when her husband, who had insisted she shouldn’t fight for what was rightfully hers, started seeing other women, women who hadn’t even fought with them, or on any other fronts. Women with pretty hands and pampered feet. They said they supported the cause, but all they did was carry papers from a regional office to one in the capital. Which didn’t strike her as particularly helpful. She’d have liked to see them in action. She’d have liked to see if they could survive bombings and dodge bullets the way she had. She wondered if they’d have been able to do his laundry after returning exhausted from an operation. She also wondered if it was just a passing fancy, a fling, or if these women would move into the house they lived in, which was hers too. In which case, she’d go back to the farm named after a horse, where her mother lived, at least for a while. It was the only place she could take her daughters. Then she’d look for a job—any kind of job—and for a place to settle down, somewhere her daughters could go to school without danger. She’d no intention of leaving them with him. He said he didn’t know what she was talking about: there was nothing going on between him and those women she kept mentioning. Even as people gossiped about it and after she’d seen it with her own eyes, he carried on denying it. He told her not to let other people muddle her thoughts and not mistake what she heard or saw. He laughed off her jealousy and said her suspicions were unfounded, that it was weird for a woman who’d survived the war to behave like any old village vieja. But the truth was he was having an affair and, if necessary, would leave her and the girls so that he could start a new life with a woman whose body bore no battle scars. He’d sell the house and move with her to the capital. He’d get a job at a cooperation organization and lead a happy life. He’d see the girls once his real wife’s anger had subsided and would send them whatever money he didn’t spend on the kids he had with his new life partner. With time, his daughters would understand that he, too, had a right to happiness after all he’d risked during the war. If they didn’t, that was their problem. It was all he could do. He wouldn’t sacrifice himself again.
It’d be an advantage, in the long run: the girls would have two homes instead of one. His new wife would always welcome them, he thought. When they went to university, they could stay with him or he could find them some other accommodation. In any case, he’d see them often and they’d forge a new relationship. The girls would play with their little brothers and sisters and, from time to time, help look after them when he and his new wife had some party or work event to attend. But first, he had to get divorced. Even though his new girlfriend said he needn’t bother, he wanted to. He wanted to close the book on that chapter of his life, but, most of all, he wanted to ensure the next one, because the way his girlfriend kept insisting that he needn’t bother made him think she might leave him at any moment. She was younger and prettier and more educated than any of the other women he’d been with, so he figured it was pretty likely.
In the end he didn’t have to devise a way of telling his wife without her kicking up a fuss because a village man on a bender killed him over some nonsense that no one could explain because no one had been paying attention. Nobody knows if her husband disrespected the other guy’s family or if he mentioned having been at the camp where they killed the man’s nephew with a bullet above the left eye, even though it hadn’t happened on the day or during the year the boy was deployed, fresh from military school, as cannon fodder. Then she had to see to the funeral and the burial and shed tears for him as if things between them had been going just as well as they were when they decided to live together for as long as the war allowed, and then marry till death did them part. She had to nod when his compañeros-in-battle came to tell her he’d been a good man, and thank them for coming to see him off. She also had to listen to his mother accuse her of leading him down the wrong path so that he lost his life even after clinging on to it in other, more difficult situations. She consoled her daughters as best she could and turned her attention to what hadn’t been sold yet. To avoid misunderstandings or the temptation to sell in times of crisis, she asked the lawyers to put the land in her daughters’ names. It would be their inheritance. Of course, this story didn’t fit in the box for her father’s situation on the university’s financial aid application. On their advice, she wrote only that he was an ex-combatant and that he had died.
12
The backpack—the same size as her mother’s at that age—was camo, but instead of brown, black, and olive green, it was pink, fuchsia and pearl white. Her mother thinks it’s a joke. With a backpack like that one, she’d have died within thirty seconds of being in the hills. Or maybe even earlier. She’d have been an easy target. For her daughter, though, it’s a safety measure. They’d said that, to get by in the city, she should do her best to look like she was from there. Otherwise she’d be an easy target for thieves and rapists, who could sniff out fresh arrivals with ease and exploit the fact they didn’t know their way around and had no one to turn to for help. It wasn’t the best backpack in t
he world, but it was a popular model among girls her age. It would help her blend in, so long as she opened her mouth as little as possible so people wouldn’t hear her accent or the fear she felt at being in a place so different from where she used to live. They also advised her to memorize the route home and not look about her too much or ask anyone for directions on the way. Also, she should swap the spaghetti-strap tops she wore in her village for something better suited to the capital’s climate, and wear shoes instead of her usual flip-flops. Only maids went about in flip-flops. If possible, she should cut her hair, except not in the village because that would make it too obvious where she was from. She wouldn’t look like the prettiest of students, but at least she wouldn’t seem so different from everyone else.
When she came home, the people in her community thought her much changed. The older people accused her of being vain like her mom. The younger ones accused her of being more stuck-up than ever. The girls who’d been her friends at school couldn’t understand how she’d let someone do that to her hair. She didn’t look like a woman anymore. The guys picked on her for it. They asked if she wasn’t into men anymore. The young boys tried to sneak a look at her. The mothers whispered when they saw her walking past. They didn’t want their daughters to go and do what she’d done. They wouldn’t let them chop off an inch, even if their ends were split and faded. They couldn’t fathom how her mother had let her do something like that. They’d stop by to grind corn simply to ask her, and to tell her she looked awful, really ugly, like a man.
The sight of the new cut reminds her mother of when she was made to cut her hair as a punishment. Back then, she’d cried. It’d made her feel the way the villagers said her daughter looked. Thinking back on it now, it probably hadn’t been all that bad. The haircut suited her daughter. It made her look like some of the women she’d seen in Paris. She didn’t tell her this so that she wouldn’t grow her hair out again: her daughter was still upset about Paris and about the girl who didn’t want to be her sister. She told her mom she’d written her several times from the university computers with the help of a friend who said she spoke French, even though she didn’t do it very well or write very clearly. The girl took for ever to answer and, when she finally did, said nothing that gave her hope they’d ever meet. Her mother told her not to lose heart, to focus on her studies, that the rest would come naturally with time. And with time the people who’d gawked at her on the streets or buses would also settle down. They’d come to understand or grow used to this new look of hers, which wasn’t the least bit manly. Her university friends had complimented her on it. A couple of them had even asked her where she’d gotten it done. She couldn’t say, to be honest. She didn’t know what the place was called or how she’d arrived there. The señora she was staying with had led her down different streets from the ones she usually took to the university and she’d never asked the parlor’s name, not because she hadn’t wanted to go back, but because she hadn’t thought she could afford it. The haircut being a gift to welcome her, it had seemed rude to ask how much it cost, which meant she didn’t even have that bit of information to share with the girls who were questioning her about it, to help them work out where it was.
They thought it was a ruse to keep anyone else from getting the same haircut. It was clever. They would’ve done the same in her shoes. But they were determined, so they went to places they thought could pull it off and instructed the hairdressers accordingly.
Their cuts were basically the same, with slight differences. The girls wore them proudly. She, on the other hand, couldn’t get used to hers. If she could’ve chosen, she’d have asked for something closer to what she had before, but in a prettier color. Perhaps a lighter shade than all the ones she’d tried herself. She didn’t say anything because the man who cut her hair said he had to fix all the damage done by past dye jobs. That he didn’t even want to know who’d done that to her. He supposed it had been no more than childish mischief. He liked that she was a flirt, but would rather she were gentler to her hair. First, they had to make it healthy again. Then she could try out a new hairstyle. It wasn’t for ever. But he had to admit it looked good. He was good at his job. He wouldn’t dare send her out into the street with a bad hairdo. What would people say about him if he did? Nothing, probably, because she still wouldn’t be able to say who’d cut it. She wouldn’t recognize him the next time she saw him. She had trouble remembering faces, and to her everybody in the capital was as anonymous as a foreigner. He wouldn’t mistake her for anyone, though. He could identify his trademark strokes even months later, and he never forgot a sad story. The señora she was staying with had told him all about hers. He’d like to cut her mother’s hair too, if she ever visited. He wouldn’t charge for his work, just as he hadn’t charged her daughter. He asked the señora who was putting the girl up to let her know.
Her mother wasn’t comfortable accepting gifts, especially from strangers. She told the señora she was grateful, but that she couldn’t right then, she was in and out, just dropping a few things off for her daughter from relatives who’d heard she’d gotten into university and could afford to help. Shirts that had belonged to other girls her size and age, shoes that weren’t the perfect fit but were useful for walking, as well as notebooks and pencils so she wouldn’t have to buy them herself. This was the first time she saw her with short hair. She was surprised her daughter hadn’t mentioned it on the phone or hadn’t consulted her beforehand. She’d have told her then not to get that cut to keep people from picking on her when she went home to their village and to save her from crying like she did when her sister’s husband made fun of her in front of some neighbors, who took that as a license to tell her to her face what they thought about what she’d done. But then she thought it was probably good she hadn’t said anything because, if she had, the girl wouldn’t have snapped back and told them they could mock her all they wanted, seeing as that was the only thing they knew how to do. In a few years, she’d be doing something important and they’d still be standing there, at their front doors, laughing at people who could accomplish all the things they couldn’t themselves.
Everyone got mad, but no one ever bothered her again. They told the mother to do something about her daughter: the girl thought she could go disrespecting the men and talking back at people any way she liked. She wouldn’t get far, not with that attitude. And it’d be very hard to find her a husband. Why wasn’t she more like her sister? Why didn’t she just forget about university and start a family? There were some excellent men thereabouts, sons of compañeros-in-arms she could lead a good life with, or even widowed ex-combatants ready to start a family. She wouldn’t be rich, but she’d be fulfilled as a woman.
Her daughter wasn’t particularly interested. What she wanted was to study public health and go to a continent she couldn’t picture but liked the sound of, especially since she’d heard they were terribly in need. She dreamed that—as had been the case with her sister—an aid organization would swoop in a year before she graduated to offer her a scholarship in some other country so she could specialize in public health, that they’d hand her a form and tell her she didn’t have to worry about anything else, that her future was safe and they’d make sure she had everything she needed throughout her education. She’d accept their offer, move to the other country, study like she’d never studied before and then travel to that continent in need. There, she’d write her mother letters or send her money so she could fix up her house or, better yet, build a new one. But the offer never arrived. The organization that had contacted her sister no longer provided this service: everyone they’d offered free schooling to in that region had declined. The aid had been redirected to keep it from going to waste. There was nothing they could do for her: the profile of the beneficiaries they were interested in was different now. What’s more, the war had ended a long time ago. She could write to ask, but they couldn’t guarantee a positive response. Maybe if her sister hadn’t turned down their offer at the last minute, after
they’d completed all that paperwork, it would’ve been a different story. There was no guarantee she wouldn’t do likewise, that she wouldn’t get them involved only to then come out with a story about having fallen in love with one of the guys working in their community development program and wanting to marry him, which wouldn’t have been reason enough to pass up that opportunity, except that her husband-to-be had asked her not to leave, saying that even though he loved her, he wouldn’t hang around waiting if she went away. He also couldn’t tolerate the prospect of getting married and only ever seeing her when she flew home for the holidays on a prepaid flight, as per the arrangement. He feared their love wouldn’t last. And he believed a woman’s place was in the home. He couldn’t go with her even if they arranged paperwork for him as her partner, because his government job wouldn’t be waiting for him on his return. Nor did he have any intention of continuing his studies: he felt he’d done what needed doing and no longer wanted to take any classes. It wasn’t his thing. Staying home and living off her stipend while she was away studying wasn’t his thing either. If in that time she got pregnant, he’d be the one to stay home and look after the baby. He couldn’t bear the thought. He convinced her to withdraw from the process. In any case, there was no guarantee she’d graduate. She’d never been good at school. Neither had her sister, but she had every desire to try. She was determined to push through, regardless of the time and effort involved. She didn’t think it’d be that hard, even though the teachers at school told her she didn’t stand a chance and her friend from recess said she’d never get a spot, she hadn’t even been able to answer that question about Paris all those years ago. The eldest sister also thought she should choose the life of a housewife. She knew of a guy working at the health unit who had his eye on her. He’d already asked for her name and interests. It wasn’t exactly like being a doctor, but at least she’d be involved with healthcare in some way. She ought to consider his offer. Students on placement had limited time. After their year was up, they didn’t come back. They opened private practices in their hometowns or, if they could, went to some place other than the one they’d just been working in. She’d travel and leave the village all the same, which is what she wanted. She wouldn’t have to try so hard. In her shoes, she wouldn’t think twice. He wasn’t all that ugly. She’d get used to his quirks soon enough. Or would she prefer somebody from there? Was she still in love with her high-school boyfriend? A little bit. But she’d no intention of getting back together with him, not after she found out he had another girlfriend at the other school. He wouldn’t want to get back together with her either, even though he’d broken up with the other girl: he couldn’t be seen with a woman with hair as short as a man’s.
Slash and Burn Page 8