by María Ospina
Mirla noticed a big red heart on the tarp covering the back of an eighteen-wheeler in front of them. A sign underneath proclaimed, in capital letters: I LOVE SOCORRO. She’d gone to Socorro decades earlier, on her way to the coast with her ex-husband and Nora. In the steeply inclined plaza presided over by the town’s imposing stone church, they’d gotten stuck in the middle of a procession of buses, cars, and motorcycles that the priest had just blessed with holy water. As each car received the immaculate liquid, it honked its horn in electric excitement. Leading the cacophony was a bus full of children who shouted out its windows, delighted by the liquid grace that had just fallen over the vehicle. I LOVE SOCORRO. She was surprised by the sign’s enthusiasm, which far surpassed her memory of the place. The bus passed another big rig with the same heart and slogan, on the verge of dissolving into the green darkness of the forest. The heart underneath the letters was plump, swollen. It was afflicted by a suspicious symmetry. Mirla took the liberty of ignoring that Socorro was a place and thought of what else the word named: help or aid. She imagined pot-bellied truck drivers, their faces and bodies hardened by the highways of the Andes and their manly big rigs, unabashedly proclaiming their need to be saved.
She’d planned to call Pedro in New York when she reached Cartagena, to invite him to swim in the soft seas of the islands like they had in 1995, when she brought him on a surprise trip to celebrate his eighteenth birthday and show him where his grandmother had disembarked from Curaçao at the beginning of the century. She examined her hands. She already had a few hangnails, which always happened when she traveled. She dug around in her bag for the scissors and tried to trim them. But the blades were too thick to grasp such delicate remains. Then she began to exercise her hand, which hurt the same way her heart did the day she collapsed; cutting the air around her, she told herself she’d feel better when she reached sea level, when she walked along the beach in Cartagena. Closing, opening.
“Hi, Martica. It’s me. I’m sorry I didn’t let you know, but I had to leave in a hurry yesterday. I’m calling to say don’t worry about me. Everything’s fine. I’m going to be out of town for a while, in Cartagena. Do me a favor, sweetheart. Nora’s going to call you if she hasn’t already, I imagine she’ll be beside herself. Tell her that I told you I was going on a long trip but that I wouldn’t say where. Try to calm her down. We don’t need her making a fuss right now. Martica, I’m sorry I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to get caught up in good-byes. I’ll call you every few days to let you know what I’m up to, so you don’t worry so much. And I’m going to convince you to come visit me here. Okay. Take care of yourself, sweetheart. Bye. Bye.”
Mirla ended the call. Then redialed.
“Hi, Martica. It’s me again. I forgot something. Would you mind stopping by in a couple of days and leaving some scraps for the little black doggie who lives across the street from me? It’s just … she’s a friend of mine. Her name is Perki. She loves bones. Tell her they’re from me, I wouldn’t want her up and dying of sorrow on us. I’d really appreciate it, hon. Thanks. All right, I won’t bother you anymore. I’ll call you in a few days. Bye, now.”
Mirla slipped the scissors back into her purse. She turned off her cell phone and paused to wonder how much she could get for it at a pawn shop. She would figure out soon enough how and when she’d have her cuticles trimmed, her groin pruned, and her nails, which were chipped from the hustle and bustle of this leg of the journey, painted again. And by whom.
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MARÍA OSPINA was born in Bogotá, Colombia, and teaches Latin American culture at Wesleyan University. She has written about memory, violence, and culture in contemporary Colombia. Her stories have appeared in several Colombian anthologies, and Azares del cuerpo, her first book of fiction, has been published in Colombia, Chile, Spain, and Italy. It is now available in English as Variations on the Body.
HEATHER CLEARY’s translations include Betina González’s American Delirium, Roque Larraquy’s Comemadre (nominee, National Book Award for Translated Literature 2018) and Sergio Chejfec’s The Planets (finalist, Best Translated Book Award 2013) and The Dark (nominee, National Translation Award 2014). A member of the Cedilla & Co. translation collective and a founding editor of the digital, bilingual Buenos Aires Review, she teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.
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