Knitting the Fog

by Claudia D. Hernández

  After every one of their fights, I became rowdier, with an unstoppable, energetic personality. Consuelo became emotionally strong and observant. Sindy became a quiet, angry, depressed adolescent. Mamá couldn’t find a lasting solution to get rid of Papá. She suffered. We suffered. Even Papá suffered because he didn’t know how to stay sober. He didn’t know how to love Mamá and us the way we deserved to be loved.

  Consuelo and I always knew what to do when people and things got broken around the house. That afternoon, we decided to run to the backyard and climb on the muddy wooden seesaw that sat balancing on three maroon bricks piled on top of each other. We were not in the mood for another show.

  Even though Consuelo was two years older than me, we were almost the same weight. Somehow, with my tomboyish ways, I managed to weigh down the seesaw by pushing harder. I wanted to send Consuelo soaring into the air to help her forget the commotion inside of the house. But I couldn’t even get her to smile her Mona Lisa smile. I, on the other hand, continued to laugh harder. I wasn’t sure whether I was laughing at the tingling flies I felt inside my stomach while coming down on the seesaw, or at Consuelo’s new hairstyle.

  Consuelo continued to sob as she went up and down. And I couldn’t control my laughter. No one noticed that my underwear was still wet.

  Becoming Papel Picado

  I have no one to mourn on the day of the dead.

  No one close to me has passed, unnoticed—

  All three of my so-called papás walk with screeching

  Bones, lost calacas mourning my mother, while

  She dances alone, wrapped in her traje dorado,

  Transparente. She no longer braids her hair;

  She eats it every night, in the dark. She likes to

  Pretend that no one can hear her aullidos

  When she plucks each strand, one by one.

  I have never erected an altar, not even for

  Tío Edwin, my mother’s brother, Que en Paz

  Descanse. He passed when I was eighteen-

  Years-old; he was only thirty-three. I was far from

  Home. The Family still questions and blames:

  Why him and not me? Why him and not you!

  He had a promising life.

  I have never painted my face on the day of the

  Dead. But every year, I devour el pan de muerto;

  I drown it in my café. I don’t like to dance with

  Calaveras either, I prefer to visit and photograph

  A stranger’s tombstone in South America, where

  I find myself mourning my mother’s duende,

  Even though she continues to cut me like purple

  Papel picado with her backbone-machete.

  Pollita trasquilada

  I remember the day Consuelo returned home from school crying. It was the day after her seventh birthday. She couldn’t hide her face behind her hair; it was too short. She didn’t even bother to say hi to Mamá. She went straight to our bedroom, sank her face in the pillow, and left Tía Soila and me behind.

  Mamá sat on her cot and didn’t bother to ask Consuelo what the problem was. Consuelo kept everything to herself, just like Mamá did. She cried quietly, alone in the corner of her bed. When I entered the bedroom, I sat next to her, and began caressing her choppy new hairdo. Mamá waited patiently for Tía Soila to come. I could hear the grinding of Mamá’s dentures from across the room while Tía Soila avoided Mamá’s wandering eye.

  Earlier that morning when she dropped off Consuelo at school, Tía Soila witnessed how Eufemia and Jaquelyn made fun of her new hairstyle. Tía Soila saw both mother and daughter laugh and point fingers at Consuelo like two preschoolers. Consuelo ignored them like a mature young woman even though she was only a second grader.

  Tía Soila didn’t actually hear when Eufemia called Consuelo a “pollita trasquilada,” a little chick with sheared feathers. She was too far away from Consuelo’s classroom door, but she did notice Eufemia making gestures with her hands, mocking Consuelo’s hair. Most people from Mayuelas are crude and lack common sense. The raw heat melts their brain night and day, that’s what Mamá always said.

  I once overheard Tía Soila say that Eufemia and Mamá had been really good friends when they were young, but their friendship had soured with age. No one really knows what happened between them; some family members believe that Eufemia had a thing for Papá. Mamá never shared her problems with anyone except Tía Soila. And Tía Soila never told Mamá’s secrets, ever.

  I never liked Eufemia. She was known in Mayuelas as an arrogant, good-looking whore. Mamá never allowed us to play with her daughter, Jaquelyn, even though she and Consuelo had been classmates since kindergarten. I didn’t like Jaquelyn either because she was a stuck-up girl with her beautiful, long, chocolate curls. I couldn’t help feeling envious of her hair.

  As soon as Tía Soila sat on her cot, Mamá questioned her, but she couldn’t get anything out of her. Consuelo continued sobbing quietly on her bed. I could sense Mamá’s anger. When something wasn’t right, her face would swell up and burn purple. Her cleverness was sharper than her knives. Tía Soila knew Mamá’s rage even better than her own. She knew it was best to stay quiet. She tried.

  While Consuelo lay on her bed, I sat next to her, pretending to caress her hair. I wanted to listen to Mamá and Tía Soila’s conversation. I always pretended not to know anything or understand what the adults were saying.

  “I think she’s not happy with her new hairstyle, that’s all,” said Tía Soila, avoiding Mamá’s glare.

  “Tell me the truth, Tía Soila! Look me in the eye and tell it to me like it is!” Mamá snapped.

  “I’m not sure what happened this morning, but I think la Eufemia and la Jaquelyn made fun of her,” Tía Soila finally admitted. I wanted to pull both their hair. Who were they to make fun of my sister?

  Sure enough, Mamá’s face swelled up and turned purple. She walked out of the room practically expelling flames. I ran after her. I knew she was headed to Eufemia’s restaurant on Mayuelas’s main route, where all the guaguas from la capital or from Zacapa zoomed by.

  I had witnessed Mamá defend herself from Papá like a vicious beast. I wasn’t sure what she was capable of doing to another woman for mocking her young. I felt shivers of anxiety crawl up my spine. I felt like peeing on myself again, but this time I held it in. I wanted to stop Mamá from confronting Eufemia, but I didn’t know how. I thought of fainting the way I always did every time I was spanked or had my feelings hurt by an adult.

  At a young age, maybe when I was two or three, I learned to suffocate myself with my own cries. The lack of air reaching my lungs would cause me to faint momentarily. I had already used that trick too many times to avoid a spanking. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t even fake it.

  “Go back to the house, Claudia!” Mamá yelled at me.

  I continued to follow her from a distance, pretending to be a detective trying to solve a mystery without bloodshed. She was possessed and determined to put Eufemia in her place. I couldn’t throw myself on the floor and pretend to faint. She would have left me there, lying on the road. Mamá knew me too well.

  In the middle of the road, she bumped into cousin Celia, who had the biggest mouth in Mayuelas.

  “Victoria!” she called.

  Mamá ignored her and continued stomping her feet, leaving animal tracks on the dusty path. Celia ran behind her, caught up to her, and said, “I heard that whore Eufemia called Consuelo a pollita trasquilada.”

  Mamá stopped cold in the middle of the road, didn’t say a word to Celia, and simply took a few steps back to grab my hand, yanking me from behind a dry, naked bush. She was aware of her surroundings at all times.

  We began walking together toward Mayuelas’s main road, where all the guaguas and cars passed by at a hundred miles an hour, leaving the village behind. People avoided crossing this route because so many had been run over.

  Mamá held my hand tight as she stopped to look both ways. She knew
my little legs wouldn’t keep up with hers. So she picked me up and galloped across the road like a burnt gazelle. Cousin Celia ran behind us. She was nosy. She knew what Mamá was capable of doing and she didn’t want to miss it. Nothing interesting ever happened in Mayuelas, except when someone got shot, had an affair, left for El Norte, or got run over by a car.

  Eufemia’s restaurant was a little shack with an outside patio facing the road and was, for the most part, always empty. Mamá put me down as we got closer. Eufemia was behind the counter. She only had two customers, who were both sitting on high stools, drinking beers. She placed two cold Gallos before them and stepped outside, wiping her hands on her blue apron.

  There was a ditch adjacent to the restaurant. Mamá left me on the other side of it with cousin Celia. Before crossing the ditch, she got on her knees and said to me, “Don’t move, you understand, sompopo?” Sompopo, a red ant, was one of the many nicknames Mamá had for me. Abispa, a wasp, was my favorite one because, according to Mamá, I stung people with my insatiable energy and charisma.

  I nodded. My heart began to beat like a drum being struck by a baseball bat.

  Facing Eufemia, Mamá barked an insult like a Rottweiler, “Hija’la gran puta! What did you call my daughter today?”

  Eufemia shamelessly laughed and responded, “Pollita trasqui—”

  Mamá didn’t allow her to finish her sentence and grabbed her by the hair with both hands. She dragged her to the ditch next to me. They fell in there, right before my eyes. I began to cry. I was used to seeing Papá and Mamá try and poke each other’s eyes out, but I had never seen Mamá rolling in a ditch with another woman. They looked like pigs waddling in the mud—hungry and thirsty for war.

  Cousin Celia held me, shouting, “Dale, Victoria! Teach that whore a lesson.” More people began to gather, watching both women roll on the ground like circus animals, entertaining the crowd.

  Mamá was a wild animal. She was on top of Eufemia, scratching her face, ripping at her clothes. Eufemia protected her face in vain. It was gushing with blood. When I saw the blood, I didn’t know where it was coming from. I wanted to faint, but I didn’t want to leave Mamá alone. She didn’t need my help, but I knew she was in trouble when the police got there.

  Mamá All to Myself

  Three policemen dressed in army fatigues arrived and pulled Mamá off of Eufemia. Eufemia sat on the muddy ground crying, holding her face, and unsuccessfully trying to attach her skin back in place.

  One of the policemen picked Eufemia off the ground. When she saw Mamá being handcuffed, she ran up to Mamá and punched her in the face like a coward. Mamá’s nose began to bleed. No sounds came out of her mouth. I yelled. I wanted to kick Eufemia’s crooked shins, but one of the policemen grabbed her and handcuffed her immediately.

  I ran up to Mamá and latched on to her thigh like a starving tick. I cried hysterically. A policeman tried to detach me from her leg, but Mamá yelled at him, “You better not touch my daughter. You know well who I am!”

  He let me be and allowed me to stay with Mamá. I rode in the back of a beat-up truck with both Mamá and Eufemia. A policeman sat in between them. I sat on Mamá’s lap. The warm wind caressed my face and disheveled my hair. The sun was almost setting. The sky seemed to explode with pinkish-orange dismay. I sensed that something terrible was going to happen.

  The evening tasted like burnt trash. Sitting on Mamá’s lap, I wondered if Tía Soila was incinerating her trash at exactly that moment, the way she did every evening as the sun sunk in the horizon. The truck’s siren was weak. It broke down on the way to the police station in Gualán, another town half an hour away from Mayuelas.

  When we arrived at the station, General Martínez greeted Mamá courteously. No one paid attention to Eufemia even though she was a beautiful woman. I guessed people already knew of her reputation back in Mayuelas. She kept crying as blood continued to flow down her face.

  Eufemia didn’t have a husband to bail her out, and Papá was out of town. I sat there admiring how Mamá argued with the general.

  “If I have to spend a night in jail, Eufemia better stay as well. This is between her and me. The problem has been solved.”

  “You’re both spending the night here,” said one of the guards as he walked Mamá and Eufemia to an empty cell with no windows. I quickly ran to Mamá and clung to her leg, screaming and wailing. I wanted to be with Mamá, especially since she was going to share the same cell with Eufemia. I couldn’t leave her in there alone with that woman.

  “Let Claudia spend the night with me, Anibal!” pleaded Mamá to General Martínez. With his pointer finger, he ordered the guards to let me in. The cell was bare, with only a cold cement floor. There were no beds or chairs to sit on, and no bathroom, only a bacinilla, a plastic bedpan, placed in the corner of the cell.

  “It smells like death in here,” Mamá said.

  “It smells like mud and bish,” I said, recognizing the residue of urine left behind in the bedpan by other inmates. I knew too well bish’s unique odor because it smelled like cooked corn. I had experienced several of those accidents in my five years of life. We sat there for hours. It was too late to have visitors. Tía Soila and my sisters would have to wait until the morning to see us.

  “How long are we going to stay here, Mamá?” I asked.

  “Only tonight, sompopito. Your dad and Tía Soila will be here tomorrow morning.”

  “What about Sindy and Consuelo?” I asked, pretending to be concerned about them.

  “Don’t worry, they’ll be fine with Tía Soila,” she assured me. Mamá and I embraced each other in one corner while Eufemia sat in the other, weeping alone.

  When it finally got dark, General Martínez gave us pieces of cardboard to place on the cement. I lay in the dark next to Mamá. She didn’t talk much, but instead snuggled me and caressed my head. I had Mamá all to myself. I fell asleep. It seemed like Eufemia had a fever and kept having nightmares throughout the night. Her whimpers woke me up several times.

  “Go back to sleep,” Mamá whispered in my ear.

  Time went by fast when Mamá held me close. Her sharp nails massaged my scalp until it became numb. Mamá’s embrace felt like paradise.

  The next day, Tía Soila and Papá came to pick us up. There was no one there for Eufemia. The guards let her go and she walked home alone.

  I was only five years old when I spent my first night in jail. On that night, Mamá was mine, only mine.

  Northbound

  Mamá didn’t have the courage to wake me up at five in the morning the day she left illegally for the United States. Tía Soila saw her sitting in the dark, caressing my face and whispering in my ear how much she loved me. Even though I was asleep, trapped in a dream, I remember hearing her distant voice: “I adore you, my sompopito!” Why didn’t I force my eyes open? When I woke up, Mamá was gone.

  “Why didn’t you wake me, Tía Soila?” I cried.

  “Claudita, your mother told me not to; she thought it would be best. She was afraid that if you saw her leave, she wouldn’t find the strength to look you in the eye and still go.”

  I couldn’t believe Mamá was gone, just like that. I was seven and I felt an emptiness gnawing at my insides. The house didn’t look the same. It was missing her lavender smell.

  Both my older sisters were still crying even though they got to say goodbye to her. At least they got to walk her to the bus station and hug her one last time.

  Why didn’t they wake me up? I could have smelled her face again.

  “She’ll be back for us, Claudita,” Consuelo said, trying to comfort me. But even she couldn’t hold her tears back. Consuelo was only nine years old, but sometimes she acted like she was older than Sindy.

  Sindy was fifteen when Mamá left pa’ El Norte. I didn’t get to see much of Sindy’s face after she came back from the bus station. She hid on the corner bed in the room we all shared, and skipped her meals.

  “I hope she doesn’t get sick,” Tía Soila
said, looking at Consuelo and me.

  “She’ll get hungry, eventually,” Consuelo responded.

  I was already hungry. My hunger grew more every day after Mamá left.

  Tía Soila’s eyes were red and swollen, but she didn’t cry in front of us. She loved Mamá like a daughter. Tía Soila had taken care of Mamá since she was six years old.

  Mamá had asked Tía Soila to care for us while she was gone. I heard her pleading the night before, “Please, don’t leave my girls alone, ever. I beg you, Tía Soila!”

  She also asked Mamatoya, her mother, to help out whenever possible. They knew that Mamá would never leave her daughters behind unless it was a “life-threatening emergency,” like I once heard Tía Soila say. I knew what the words life, threat, and emergency meant, but I had no idea about the whole phrase. Mamá promised Tía Soila that she’d send money home every month as soon as she settled down and found a job.

  Later that day, once the family and neighbors heard the news that Mamá had left for the US, about fifteen people, ranging from five-year-olds to eighty-year-olds, gathered at Tía Soila’s house demanding more details about Mamá’s trip, as if it was any of their business. The whole trip had been a secret. No one knew about it except Tía Soila and Mamatoya.

  Sindy didn’t even bother to come out of the bedroom to greet everyone when they arrived. She stayed in the dark and Consuelo kept her company. I was on the patio, in the middle of all the conversations. They sat around asking questions and saying things that didn’t make sense to me at all. They always quieted down whenever Consuelo showed her face in the corridor. As soon as she would go back inside the room, they continued with the chisme, gossiping about Papá like there was nothing better to talk about.

  I listened quietly, pretending I didn’t understand. There were some things I did understand, but I continued to play with my sticks and rocks, a naive look on my face. This was the only way I could find out more about the drama between Mamá and Papá.

  Sure, I had seen the physical pain they inflicted on each other, but I wanted to understand why. What happened between them? Between us? Why did we fall apart?