CAGE OF WATER

The street looked dusty, gray. Some buses stubbed the sidewalk. Angellette, dirty, unkempt, felt Rosaura’s arm as it almost held her to make her able to walk.

While she walked through the porch, those child games came into her memory, the hopscotch painted on the floor with white chalk, where she used to hop, trying with fear not to soil her socks, when suddenly her mother’s shouts made her return home.

The silence between them could be cut with the edge of a knife the young girl had inside – the weapon with which so many times she wanted to kill, the invisible hook that little by little consumes the wishes, that with internal voices adds itself to the desperation of a truth.

How much pain years were leaving. Angellette had so many and so few. For some she lacked of knowledge, for others she was the girl of the mysterious objects.

The howls of her soul used to wake her up. They were heavy, they had become like slabs, and with the rejection they turned her into the creature of the smile that is emitted almost as a crying.

She listened daily at their voices: “When you laugh it seems as if you were crying. You are so crazy!”

Taunts, places between silence, maledictions.

She wanted to talk again about the indifference that took her to pretend happiness, but as time passed by, it filled her with loneliness.

Indifference that was shown on the stove, in the living room, in the drawers, that merged from clothes and vessels, in the early time of damned hours, when Erika’s look, stuck on her face, bent her will for being born.

Rosaura, immersed in her thoughts, became aware of the constant affliction reflected in the eyes of the one that in order to live used to ask the permission of a hostile world.

Her steps outlined insecurely. For her this was as an affront.

Appointment with destiny, place between spaces that curses times of confused reluctance, where breathing is almost insensitive.

Did they drag her? Or, did they walk for her?

Rosaura stopped, caressed her, took out a handkerchief from her nurse robe and cleaned her face. Took her by the arm walking her to the bench, the one where so many times she dreamed about freedom.

The park was not the same. Her tree, withered, as old as her, with deep roots, had broken parts of the paving.

Instinctively she turned her face from one side to the other: the men selling cotton candy, her bicycle thrown on the floor. She wished she could hear the children’s voices, those children with whom she used to play.

She caressed the worn-out metal of its seat, while she observed her withered veins, the bruises caused by the injections, her stiffed fingers, her nails cut to the tip. She touched her hands as if she wanted to caress herself, but she felt the coldness of impotence.

You could see the silence. Angellette learned to recognize it in between the hospital’s walls, locked up. It was her companion before she was born, phase of a shaded moon without color.

She dreadfully observed her. She wanted to beg her not to be the end, to keep her image, the protective one, when the others did not even want to remember her.

Together, holding each other’s hand, their figures closely merged. Rosaura took out the comb, sleeked down her hair, started by fixing her jacket, talking to her in a low voice, almost whispering to her ear.

You have to cheer up. They should not see you like this.

Do you think it is easy?

I know it is not.

To face her.

And, have not you learnt to?

Yes! But with you, I am afraid to do it alone.

Your Calvary started alone.

How am I going to be able?

With the strength you have struggled.

I am exhausted.

You will rest as you set things straight.

Will I be able?

Are we not here? You have taken a step ahead.

If it was not for you... I smell like shit!

Well, not so different from when I gave you the first electroshock.

If I would not met you....

And if I would not met you... Well, for now you even made me lose my job, my jacket, and not only that, you owe me a dress.

Both smiled again. Rosaura fixed her hair. Carefully she put the mirror on her lap. Angellette looked at herself, and questioning she outlined a smile.

I am not the same.

Of course not! You are different, another, the one that let me know her truth, who knew how to face lies.