La Llorona

Apparition

Just having perished, her death having just occurred, don’t tell me it’s not so, the first person the Llorona appeared before was her nanny Concha. She appeared all in one piece by the kitchen door of the house of the crime; now, this was an urgent need to urinate like a baby on the cradle-chair, to move like a toad with hiccups in the heart-drums, and to tangle around like boiled lice in the hairs’ roots; a normal reaction in any live person with nerves and reason and legs –the nanny told Sister Ursula about the Llorona, making gestures in the darkness of her cell at the Convent of the Conception, where Concha had taken refuge after the Llorona’s death and first apparition. Where she planned to stay until the day she’d die, which would probably occur as soon as she’d narrate the complete story of the Llorona to Sister Ursula; story which only she knew in flesh and body. In any case, that nightmarish morning, as soon as the horror emerged in the kitchen of the house of the crime, Concha’s mind raised a barricade of incomprehension in the act, despite the fact that her body intelligently denounced the ferociousness of the unusual. The one who had just appeared was in front of her tearful eyes, behaving like any physical person. There she was, yes, but… That which the mind didn’t distinguish because of convenience, nanny’s physical body assimilated by means of contractions and fever. A thousand reasons told her “it’s a lie, you’re only seeing things,” but a thousand visceral fingers made evident the concreteness of the fright, the tangible mystery that had surfaced in the kitchen –Concha said, and Sister Ursula placed her frightened look in the frightened look of the nanny, later on the cell’s gate, fearing that suddenly the Llorona would appear screaming “oh my children.” Observing the dead woman in one piece, Concha tried to put the blame on the Llorona’s lover, pronouncing his name with a tone of a punished student: “Don Nuño…” –She first pointed to the cutting board lying on the round legged table and then to the blood stains in the white dress of the girl (Concha called the Llorona girl, tiny, little girl, Luisa and Luisita).–Pig disemboweled-like stains at the main plaza, Ursulita. Humid stains of the starting hours of a meat cutter. Stains that are rather dry and not coming out of a pig, but out of an innocent lamb –the nanny emphasized, as if the stains were in Sister Ursula’s garb. The dead one, gone, rebellious to the certainty of her own existence, didn’t perceive her nanny’s movements, who, laughing foolishly, definitely wanted to hear the high-pitched voices of the sucking infants, the Llorona’s little infants, the small blood stains assassinated by her just yesterday with the cutting knife.–Some silence, Ursulita. The appeared, dead one was breathing within the mortal silence, communicating oxygen to her deceased children.–The small stains and her, the three of them, were breathing, Ursulita… with chills of people sleeping after struggling with insomnia for centuries of penance and tearing off one’s conscience.–The small stains didn’t cry, Miss, because they were dead, dead –may Sister Ursula forgive the outcry. The little stains’ voice, red and quiet, wouldn’t have told the truth about the knife’s work; on the contrary: If the children that were scattered in the dress of the dead and appeared mother were alive, they’d have unsettled the protection barrier against the impossible –Concha said, making a gesture with the movement of her index finger around the temple, symbolizing madness. If the children didn’t make noise, they’d be asleep. If the children didn’t appear, that meant the Llorona had been saved from being hung. The tiny, little girl’s execution had been a dream. The crime was a dream, the vengeance was a dream, the crowds of neighbors picking on the horror-like wasps, swelling it up, was a dream. Fat horror-pain, fat, drunk sorrow; absurd, absolutely unprecedented. The appeared Llorona wasn’t looking at her when Concha moved her head in a dumb salutatory action and, right after that, in a foolish signal of reprehensible negation. The nanny pressed her legs one against the other to pretend she wanted to urinate, so as not to show signs of astonishment in view of the same, less astonishing thanks to the absence of the assassinated infants, even though they were attached to the white dress dirtied by sacrifice. Even though now they were two drips of carnal presence.