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“And the next day?” Simón asked.
“See, as I knew that he wouldn’t let himself be touched or seen by any of you, I said to myself, ‘Surely his wife will have to do it before we arrive so he’s already up by the time we get there,’ so I came earlier, when there was barely any light in the sky, to help in any way I could. Sure enough, when I arrived, she was already getting ready to carry him, and she got a fright when I called out, she wasn’t expecting anyone.”
“What are you doing here at this early hour? The sun’s barely up,” she asked me as soon as he saw me, when she opened the door.
“‘I’ve come to help you,’ I answered.”
“‘You’re an angel,’ she said quietly.”
“‘Please! That’s just because you don’t know me very well, ask my mother and you’ll see. She’s always telling me, ‘Santi, you’re a demon, you’re always messing about.’’”
“‘Well, that’ll be at home, you don’t behave like that here,’ she added, smiling as I entered.”
“I went in following her instructions and I found the man in the new bedroom already prepared because he’d heard me and the boy was asleep beside him.”
“‘And what are we gonna do with this one?’ I asked quietly so as not to wake him up.”
“‘Don’t worry, we can move him anywhere and he won’t even notice,’ his mother told me.”
“I took the man out and put him in the same chair he’d been sitting in the day before. The wife was patiently feeding him breakfast, spoonful by spoonful into his mouth. As I didn’t want to disturb them, I went to leave, but she noticed and asked me:
“‘Where are you going? Stay here, it’s still chilly.’”
“So I stayed there for a good while. Then I took out the mattress, so that it wouldn’t get in our way, and I did a little preparation for everything we needed to start the day’s work, and as soon as you guys arrived, you were surprised to see me there and I had to tell you that I’d been confused with the time and thought I was late and that you hadn’t waited for me, and that’s why I came to the house by myself. I saw that you looked at me with a weird expression, it seems that you didn’t believe me, but you didn’t have time to question me about it. It was just then that the boy came out and started to run after the hen and we all started laughing and you forgot about it. Now you know everything,” Santi told us, “there are no more mysteries. I’ve told you now because everything’s finished, and I don’t think they’d mind now.”
“We did leave everything really nice,” I told the others to change the subject, “and about the furniture you’re all asking me about? When I asked my mother to give me the crib, she nearly collapsed.”
“But son, I’m saving it for when you get married and you give me a little grandchild,” she’d told me very upset.
“What if I become a priest?” I answered.
“Stop that! Don’t mess around with that,” she said very seriously.
“No, I said that to you as a joke, but I’m serious about the crib. Please can you give it to me? It’s not doing anyone any good being kept here when there’s a little boy who could use it,” I said, trying to calm her down a little and get her to cave.
“No, the crib was yours, and it’ll be for my grandchildren when you have them,” she insisted.
“Mom, I know it was mine, well Carmen’s first, and after me, it was for the twins and finally Chelito, but look, that little boy I’m asking for has nowhere to sleep and he needs it now. If I get married and have children, and who knows if I will, I’d have to do very badly in my career and my new job to be unable to afford to buy a crib before I emigrate to America,” I was saying in a bid to convince her.
“Enough son, don’t say that, even in jest. Listen, your uncle left and didn’t want to come back here, and it’s not because of a lack of money, he has plenty as you know. Sometimes he’s even sent some to me, he says he doesn’t know what to give me, that money always comes in handy, and I say, he must have enough to spare.”
“Mom, money is never spare, but that shows that, even though he’s far away, he still remembers his beloved sister. Well, if I’m doing badly here with work, I’m leaving like him,” I said without thinking.
“No!” she said resoundingly.
“Well, I’m not leaving, but please give me the crib,” I begged.
“But you have to promise me that you’ll never emigrate,” she said, becoming very serious.
Also seriously, standing there in front of her, staring at her sitting in her chair, I said:
“Mom, I solemnly promise you that I’ll never emigrate to America.”
“Alright smooth talker, take the crib, but tell them to take good care of it,” she said, smiling.
“I’ll tell them what you’ve said. Ah Mom! Can I go to Germany at least?” I said very seriously.
She got up from the chair, and giving me a light smack on the head, said:
“No, not to Germany either. You stay here with me and give me grandchildren, and I won’t settle for one, that’s very boring.”
“I already know that,” I said, “I’ve envied the neighbors since I was little because there are seven of them, always playing and me here alone and bored. I still don’t know why whenever I asked you to let me go to their house to play with them, you always gave me the same answer, ‘No son, there are enough of them, I don’t want you to bother them,’ as if they would’ve noticed one more.”
“Well,” she said, laughing, “then the twins came along, so don’t complain, all of sudden there was two of them. You looked at them and said, ‘Which of them do I play with?’ They were toys to you. Alright, when are you taking the crib?” she asked me more calmly.
“Well tomorrow, so you won’t change your mind,” and giving her a kiss, I was leaving when I heard her say:
“You see what you’re like? You always get what you want.”
<<<<< >>>>>
Summer was coming to an end, we were only one week away from starting classes again and returning to our routine, just enough time to get some rest and enjoy spending time with our families, but unexpected things can happen in just a few days. Tono came that morning crying:
“Mom! Mom!” he screamed as he climbed the stairs.
“What’s wrong?” I asked when I opened the door, because I’d been the first one to hear him, and I’d rushed to open it, to see what had happened.
“No! Not you! I don’t want to talk to you,” he told me very angrily.
I was surprised, but he ran into the kitchen where my mother was preparing food.
“Mom! Mom!” the child kept calling very upset.
“Angel, what’s wrong with you?” she asked in alarm.
He closed the kitchen door behind him so that I wouldn’t go in after him, because I was following him down the hallway, although as he had been closing the door to the house, he was running and he reached where Mom was before I did. I went to open the kitchen door, but he told me from inside:
“Go away! You’re to blame, I don’t want to see you ever again, it’s all your fault.”
I stopped in my tracks. “What had I done? I don’t think I’ve done anything,” I thought, “plus, if he was out on the street playing with his friends and I was at home; surely it would have been a fight with one of them and he was taking it out on me.”
I didn’t really hear what he was talking about, but I immediately heard my mother say:
“Of course, I knew this was going to create problems for us.”
Opening the door, she glared at me and angrily said:
“You see!”
I didn’t understand any of this and I asked:
“Wait, what’s going on? I didn’t do anything to him.”
“How have you not? Look at what’s happened to your brother, he hasn’t done anything and look,” my mother told me, and I still had no clue what she was talking about.
I looked at her, then I looked at him, and I still wasn’t getting it. “What a mess!” I said to myself. I couldn’t figure any of it out, so I asked:
“Okay, well, can either one of you please tell me what’s going on? What have I done that’s so serious? Because I don’t think I’ve done anything, and I can’t work out what’s happened to him. He was out playing on the street!”
Barging angrily past me, Tono said:
“I’m never talking to you ever again in my whole life,” and with that he left for his room, where I heard him locking the door with the key from the inside.
“Mom, please, tell me what’s wrong, what has he told you?” While I asked, I looked at her and I could see her getting angrier.
“Look, do you see what happens by being the way you are?” she said to me very seriously and then she fell silent.
“Me? And what is the way I am? Let’s see, now what on Earth do I have to do with whatever might have happened to the kid on the street?” I was asking her slowly, because I did not want her to get any more upset.
“Listen!” said my mother, when she had calmed down a little. “He told me that the children he was playing with told him he was going to hell.”
“And, what about it?” I asked. “What does that have to do with me?”
“What does it have to do with you? Well, I don’t know how they would have heard about your little thing,” she told me.
“But what is my little thing? Please explain it to me, I still have no idea what you’re talking about, it’ll just be kid stuff,” I said a little irritated, because she insisted on focusing the blame on me for something I didn’t understand.
“Look Manu, this has to change already, I can’t deal with this situation any longer either. Look, my Spiritual Advisor…”
“Who?” I asked a little confused. “Your whaaat?”
“My Spiritual Advisor,” she repeated.
“Wait, what’s that?” I asked again.
“Well, Don Ignacio, the priest, have you forgotten already?” she asked me. “You have to see how you’ve changed son.”
“Yes, the priest, but what you said before, I don’t know what an advisor is. And I haven’t changed at all, I’m still your son, the same as always.”
“Well, the Advisor is another matter, you don’t understand that.”
“Okay, what did that good gentleman tell you?” I said a little irked.
“Don’t call him that! It’s disrespectful,” she said angrily.
“But Mom…, I’m imagining that with him being a priest, that’s proper, is it not? So what should I call him then?” I asked a little more calmly, to see if she finally realized what I had said.
“Look, let’s get on with what we were talking about,” she said getting more and more angry.
“Yes, so he said something, but can you explain it to me just once? What did he say? What do I have to do with all of this? And what does it have to do with what happened to Tono?”
“Well son, you’re coming off like a fool, it’s very clear, it’s all the same thing.”
“But what is it?” I said impatiently, because the issue was becoming increasingly complicated.
“Be quiet and let me finish, and don’t interrupt me every two seconds. Your brother has been told by his friends that he’s going to hell, because he has a brother who’s an atheist.”
Opening my eyes wide, I said:
“Whaaat? Is that what this is all about? I don’t believe it.”
“Of course, I’ve talked about it several times with my Spiritual Advisor, and he has always advised patience, but I’ve had enough. Either you change, or I don’t know what I’m going to have to do with you!” she said staring firmly at me.
“But Mom… It’s not like it’s a dirty shirt that I can take off and put on a clean one.”
“Enough nonsense. I’m having a serious discussion with you, and you, as far as I know, have other shirts. I’d like to be able to take a hold of you and wash you like I do with dirty clothes, and rinse those ideas out of your head. We’d all be better off for it.”
“But Mom… Let’s see, what harm am I doing to anyone by thinking what I want to think? Everyone has their own life to live, the way I see it,” I told her trying to calm her down.
“But don’t you realize? Don’t you see what just happened to Tono?” she told me, her anger not abating and there was no way to change it.
Suddenly we heard Dad at the front door saying:
“Honey, I’m home now.”
Wiping her eyes, my mother said:
“When he finds out…!”
“But Mom…, I haven’t done anything wrong. Calm down!” At that moment, my father came into the kitchen and when he heard me say that he immediately asked:
“Honey, has something happened to you?”
“No,” she replied, approaching him to give him a kiss.
“So, why is Manu telling you to calm down?” he asked again.
She lowered her head and said:
“Go on, tell him! The sooner this is cleared up, the better.”
“Well, what’s all this about? Let’s here it Manu, tell me what’s going on,” my father asked impatiently.
I told him everything that had happened. Then, going out into the hall, he called Tono. From his room with the door closed, he asked:
“Is Manu there? Tell him to leave, I don’t want to talk to him.”
With an authoritative voice, my father said:
