Tales from the Town of Widows

by James Canon

  He looked nowhere but into her eyes, his lips trembling with rage. “We own property here. We’re not going anywhere.” He glanced at the other three men for support.

  “We’re peaceful people here, Señor Jiménez, but don’t be mistaken: we’ll do whatever it takes to defend our community and our principles from rude intruders like you.” Rosalba’s voice now had a menacing edge to it.

  He laughed derisively. “I’d like to see that. A bunch of delicate women fighting four merciless warriors like us. You know how many people we’ve slain? Hundreds! Thousands! A handful of you won’t make any difference to our criminal records.”

  “Speak for yourself, Jiménez,” Ángel Tamacá abruptly said. “I’m done with fighting. And I thought you were too.” He moved aside, separating himself from the other three. David Pérez looked at Restrepo first, then at Jiménez, and finally shrugged his shoulders and joined Tamacá.

  “You two are fucking unbelievable!” Jacinto said to Tamacá and Pérez. “After all the shit we went through to escape from the guerrillas, now you’re letting a bunch of women court-martial you like you’re criminals.” He shook his head repeatedly, then, addressing Restrepo, demanded, “Are you turning against me too?”

  Restrepo put his hand on Jiménez’s shoulders. “I’ve got to take my chances here, son,” he said under his breath. “I’m too old to start anywhere else.”

  “Don’t let them fool you,” Jiménez whispered back. “You know how women are. They’re just taking revenge on us for being gone all this time, like we had a choice.”

  But Restrepo had made up his mind. He lowered his head and joined the other two. Jacinto stood there, all alone, staring at his comrades. His eyes filled with tears, and his expression softened. But when everyone thought he was about to give in and join the other three, he shouted at them, “You all can go to hell, you worthless traitors! Stay here, rot in this fucking hole with these barbarian lesbians. This will be your prison!” Tears began streaming down his face, but he kept shouting, his voice now choked with emotion. “Me? I’m going to clean my record. And I’ll become a respectable citizen. And I’ll be far better off than all of you, traitors!” Saying this, he started down the road, backward so that he could see their faces become blurry and smaller and finally disappear, sobbing and shouting, “Traitors!” again and again, his frantic calls blending with the shrieks of a flock of crows that at that moment flew past the village.

  BEYOND THE THREE large communal houses of New Mariquita there are vestiges of the old town: roofless houses, or rather roofless adobe rectangles, because everything that once made them houses—doors, windowpanes and frames, and even the flooring—was removed and put to use in the new dwellings. The insides of these empty rectangles were originally infested with aggressive weeds that grew in grotesque forms of extravagant proportions, like aberrations of nature. But once the industrious women finished the construction of the three main houses, they turned their eyes toward the remains of the old village. Together they decided to knock down all the inside walls of every former house, then transform each carcass into an enclosed farming lot. The resulting lots were plowed and soon turned into productive gardens.

  If on a given sun you have the fortune to sight New Mariquita from the top of a hill, you will feel like you’re standing on top of an immense blanket patched together out of many remnants of fabrics in different shades of green.

  THE SUN WAS already high in the sky when the customary log fires were kindled in the middle of the plaza. Breakfast was cooked and served, and as soon as the villagers finished eating, they were summoned to the church.

  The three men stayed in the plaza, waiting for their fate to be decided. In Tamacá’s ears, the word traitors kept resonating, and that made him remember that it had been Jiménez’s idea to escape from the guerrillas. Jiménez had discussed his plan with Tamacá first, then with Pérez, and finally with Restrepo. All four swore to stay together and be loyal to their plan, and for over a year they talked about it secretly and separately, going over each step of the escape, considering the grave consequences they would face if their plan was discovered. Jiménez made arrangements with a local peasant, and one day, before sunrise, all four met at the man’s shack and changed into noncombatant clothes and ate whatever it was the peasant’s wife cooked and took some food for the road and then started moving along the rocky shore of the large river that eventually led them to their final destination.

  Perhaps Pérez and Restrepo, Ángel thought, were also feeling bad for having let Jiménez down. Maybe if they saw together the amazing things the villagers had done for the community (all of which his mother had described to him in detail), then all three would remain secure in their decision. “Let’s take a walk around the village,” he suggested.

  Walking around New Mariquita, Ángel felt like a little boy in an amusement park. He pointed at every blooming garden on either side of the street with growing excitement. “Look, yucca!” he shouted. “Look over there, squash!” He went on and on, as if his only eye had suddenly gained the power of seeing things the other men couldn’t see with theirs. Restrepo was most impressed by the community’s aqueduct: a skillful artificial channel built where La Casa de Emilia used to be, which currently provided running water for all three cooperative houses, the communal bathroom, and the small laundry area. It was so ingenious that even the gray water was used for latrines built on stilts above the running water. The sheltered communal bathroom startled Pérez: ten individual showers and latrines built on a platform where the market used to be. The entire structure was made of fine wood treated with resin. They visited the infirmary, the granary, and the community’s animal farm, then walked through plots of maize, rice and coffee on the hillsides that rose behind the village.

  When they finished their tour, they went back to the plaza and lay in the shade of a mango tree. They were tired, and the sun made them somnolent, but their anxiety kept them from falling asleep.

  INSIDE THE CHURCH, sitting in a big circle, the villagers were struggling to reach consensus on the first consideration. “We can’t discuss any man individually,” Cleotilde, the moderator, said, “until we all agree to having male members in our community.” In the past, all the community’s decisions had been voted on, which made the process quick but always left a group of people unsatisfied. Cleotilde had recently introduced the idea of consensus. “Our objective shouldn’t be to count votes, but to come to a unanimous decision that all of us can live with, through civil discussion,” she’d said in the philosophical tone she had adopted with age. Cleotilde’s recommendation was ironically put to the vote, but a large majority quickly approved it.

  At the moment, a large majority was in favor of having male members, but two women still opposed the idea: Ubaldina and Orquidea Morales.

  “This might be our last opportunity to have descendants and keep our community alive,” Rosalba said to the dissenters. She reminded Ubaldina that long ago she had rejected Rosalba’s idea of having Don Míster Esmís impregnate a few women on account of his being white. “These men are your own color, Ubaldina. Think about it. It doesn’t have to be Campo Elías.”

  Cecilia pleaded with Orquidea Morales to agree. “Please, Orquidea, don’t deny me the chance to be with my son,” she sobbed. Francisca, Cecilia’s partner, adopted a more aggressive strategy with the stubborn woman. “Just bear in mind that you might need our approval if your sister Julia ever wants to be admitted back.”

  Ubaldina eventually agreed. Orquidea, on the other hand, said she would never ever agree to any man living in their community, and demanded that the villagers quit trying to convince her to agree and that the meeting be stopped or the subject changed. Orquidea was one of the community’s oldest spinsters and arguably the most unattractive.

  But when it seemed as if a decision against men living in Mariquita was imminent, the Other Widow, once again, came up with a solution that after some further consideration pleased the entire group: “Why don’t we
help the men establish a new community nearby, where those who want to live with them can do so? We can make the offer conditional on their accepting our terms.” The idea was met with a profound, ambiguous silence that could have been either pure astonishment or dry skepticism.

  “And what would be our terms?” Ubaldina wanted to know.

  “We’d have to define them,” said the Other Widow.

  “Who would want to live with them, anyway?” Orquidea Morales said.

  “Well, let’s find out,” the Other Widow replied. “Would anyone here consider living and working in an integrated female-male community with the same characteristics as ours?”

  Soon every woman in the room found herself fantasizing about their sister community. Amparo Marín imagined herself living there, happily married to Ángel Tamacá, pregnant with his child. Pilar Villegas went a little further: she fancied herself and David Pérez surrounded by seven children of their own. The thought put a smile on her face. Cecilia pictured herself and Francisca, each with a basket of flowers, walking hand in hand over to the adjoining community to visit her son Ángel and his wife. Rosalba envisioned herself as a store caretaker, trading her granary’s surplus of barley with her peer from “the other New Mariquita.” Virgelina Saavedra tried, as a harmless exercise, to visualize herself living there and sharing her bed with a naked man instead of Magnolia, but the only image that came to her mind was of el padre Rafael mounted on top of her. She quickly put that thought out of her mind and, feeling guilty, grabbed Magnolia’s hand and brought it to her lips, making a smacking sound. Even Orquidea Morales gave free rein to her imagination. She fancied herself living in the new community, blocking a consensus decision that would allow men to go naked.

  “I would,” Amparo Marín abruptly announced in her low-pitched voice.

  “I would too,” Pilar Villegas said, her index finger high in the air.

  “Me too,” Cuba Sánchez called from the other side of the room.

  Santiago’s idea reached consensus on the first round, and so did every other proposal related to it, all of which were enthusiastically discussed in the afternoon. Before the end of the sun, the three men were invited into the church to hear the villagers’ decision.

  ÁNGEL TAMACÁ SMILED, obviously pleased, David Pérez shrugged his shoulders resignedly, and Campo Elías Restrepo frowned distrustfully at Santiago as the latter delivered the consensus declaration. The conditions, Santiago said, were specified in a contract that each man must sign by the end of their meeting.

  “What are the conditions?” Restrepo asked.

  “Well,” Rosalba hastened to answer. “Equality between individuals and between the sexes is number one.”

  “What else?”

  “The new community must follow the same administrative system we have. No individual can own anything, the livelihood of every—”

  “But what about my properties? I should at least have some sort of compensation. I worked hard all my life, and now that I’m old—”

  “Your livelihood will be guaranteed until the day you die, Señor Restrepo. That will be your compensation.”

  “Hmmm…”

  Santiago explained the project in detail, answered whatever questions the men had, and gave them a tentative schedule (which they didn’t fully understand, for it was in female time). Restrepo’s brow relaxed a little, and Pérez even wore a smile. Men and villagers agreed to sort out their differences and go to work on the new village as soon as possible.

  The next morning, the three men paired up with a partner and went on different scouting expeditions to seek a location for the new community: Ángel Tamacá offered Amparo Marín his arm, and together they went north. Pilar Villegas took David Pérez by the hand and headed west. Campo Elías Restrepo asked Sandra Villegas—after Ubaldina said no three times—and they walked east. Finding the most appropriate site—a cooler grassland area close to the river, with scattered trees, grading into woodland—took twelve expeditions. Once discovered, the site was approved within a sun, and the next morning the villagers, together with the men, walked over with machetes and knives and cut weeds and cleared gardens, but didn’t hack down a single tree.

  Two suns later, a building team of twelve strong women and three men began the construction of the new village: the community of Newer Mariquita.

  THE COMMUNITY OF Newer Mariquita is a work of art that took a ladder and a half to build. It’s comprised of two cooperative houses; a community dining room where two meals are available every sun; a small plaza with small araucaria trees and four benches carved out of large trunks; a self-sufficient aqueduct; a large communal bathroom; a granary; a communal farm; and a small animal farm with six chickens, two turkeys, eight rabbits, and a young, rebellious rooster that crows indiscriminately throughout the day.

  The twin houses face one another and from the outside look like rectangular temples with tall ceilings. The compartmented one is called Casa del Sol, the uncompartmented one is called Casa de la Luna. Each is over 130 feet long by 30 feet wide. The framework is made of lacquered wooden poles and bamboo lashed together with wire and string. The walls are covered with tree bark, and the steep-pitched roofs are made of palm thatch. On the inside, each roof is a suspended garden: purple orchids, yellow daisies, white lilies and violets hang from the top in clay pots. Each building has two doors. The one in front leads out to the plaza, and the one in back gives access to the trails extending to the river, the woodland and the sister community of New Mariquita, which is barely over a mile away.

  ON THE MORNING of Mariacé 7 of the ladder 1992, Ángel Tamacá sent word that his partner, Amparo Marín, had gone into labor. Eloísa set the bell ringing, and a cry of joy was heard around the community and over the small valley. The villagers stopped what they were doing and crowded into the plaza, singing and dancing and congratulating one another.

  Rosalba and Cecilia rushed to the store and filled two baskets with the largest oranges, the best-looking papayas, the reddest mangoes and the best slices of cured meat. They took their baskets and, together with all the villagers, set out for Newer Mariquita.

  AMPARO MARÍN AND Ángel Tamacá lived in Casa del Sol. Until that morning, Amparo had been the community’s meal caretaker for two consecutive rungs. Ángel was the community’s animal farm caretaker. They shared the house with two other couples—Pilar Villegas and David Pérez, who only recently had agreed to move in together after a ten-rung courtship, and Magnolia Morales and Virgelina Saavedra, who, wanting a change, had moved from New Mariquita two rungs before, after Virgelina’s grandmother died.

  Across from them, in Casa de la Luna, lived six people: Campo Elías Restrepo, the maintenance caretaker, who saw his wife Ubaldina once a rung, and who had yet to hear anything nice from her but was hopeful he might one day win her over; Cuba and Violeta Sánchez, who had helped build the new village and now were in charge of its cleaning; and Sandra Villegas and Marcela López, who were best friends, and who together with Pilar, David, Magnolia and Virgelina took care of the communal farm, the vegetable garden and the orchard. The sixth resident was David’s grandmother, the Pérez widow. She spent her days sitting outside in a rocking chair, saying her prayers mechanically. She had long forgotten what she prayed for and to whom.

  WALKING DOWN THE footpath, through a small stretch of woods, the women began considering names for the new baby. They would suggest them to Amparo and Ángel.

  “If it’s a girl, she should be named after her two grandmothers: Cecilia Aracelly,” said the aged, almost senile señorita, Cleotilde.

  “No,” Cecilia replied. “If it’s a girl, her name ought to be Mariquita. After all she’d be New and Newer Mariquita’s first baby ever.”

  “I agree,” said Aracelly.

  Rosalba was silent. Until now she hadn’t even considered the possibility that the baby might be a girl. Ever since she’d learned that Amparo Marín was pregnant, Rosalba had decided it would be a boy. It had to be a boy for their community to hav
e a chance to survive. She couldn’t understand how the villagers could be so irrational. The new baby would be named after his grandfathers or his father or his uncle or cousin or any other man. It didn’t matter as long as it was a male name, because the baby would be a boy. At a bend in the road, just before the descent that led to the new village, Rosalba finally said, “What if it’s a boy?”

  “Ángel!” Cecilia replied at once. “His name should be Ángel like his father and his grandfather.”

  “How about Gordon?” Rosalba said. “Like Míster Esmís.”

  “Gordon Tamacá?” Francisca said aloud. “It sounds awfully funny.” The women laughed hysterically and soon began shouting their suggestions, which were the names of their departed sons, husbands, fathers and other men whose lives they wanted to immortalize.

  “How about Pablo?” said the Other Widow. This was the first time Santiago had mentioned, in public, his lover’s name since his death. The women stopped and grew quiet, as if Pablo’s memory had called for a moment of silence. Rosalba, however, was so absorbed in thinking of male names that she didn’t even hear Pablo’s name being pronounced. She kept walking with the basket hanging from her arm and didn’t stop until she reached the part of the trail where the village of Newer Mariquita came into view. There she stood, feeling increasingly anxious in the face of the looming news of the baby’s gender, gazing fondly at the beautiful landscape of high mountains and seemingly endless reaches of trees and vegetation, inaccessible mountainsides and valleys, large pastures covered with tall grass and wild flowers, plowed fields, gardens, and a tiny village that lay slumbering in the heat. Then she saw Ángel in the distance. He was jumping up and down with excitement, waving his hands in the air. The baby had been born. Rosalba pressed the basket firmly against her body with both hands and held her breath for a short while until she heard Ángel’s cries, “It’s a boy! It’s a boy!” he shouted, his words echoing all over the valley.