The Spirits' errata







Since I was a little girl, my mother instructed me in lying and deceiving. At the age of 7 I knew how to cut the necks of pigeons and remove the eyes from their heads to use them in rituals. By the time I was 12 I was under the table preparing the special effects that Mommy told me to do. Everyone came to visit her, the name of Doña Tomé was famous in the neighborhood and in the whole town. Even people from other villages came to seek healing through the spirits, to see their future in the cards and to exorcise their worst fears. The house was full, and Mommy Tomé had everything ready, she always charged before we started and she let some coins fall to the floor to let me know it was time to light the cannabis along with the incense. Sometimes, when she dropped coins, they went through a hole on the floor and then, when there was no one left, I could go down and get under the piles of the house to look for the coins.  Sometimes I went down before to look for the coins, when the atmosphere was misty I snuck under the tablecloth, put my small legs in the hole and let me fall under the house. When Mommy Tomé felt the spirits very calm, she lifted the tablecloth very slowly and looked under the table. When she saw me looking for the coins she sent me a fulminating look and made me climb with more force than a spell. I saw Mommy Tomé do all kinds of healing, I learned the trade, but I never looked at the people who went except once. When she entered the room Mommy Tomé had put me under the table, but I lifted the tablecloth a little and saw how Mommy Tomé approached her with a pair of weeds in her hands. She was a tall woman, dressed in elegant grey attire, with a red scarf adorning her neck and high heels that made her rise above Mommy Tomé's broken slippers. The woman sat down, Mommy Tomé grabbed her hands, grabbed her money and dropped a bill. It was a bill with an immense number, 50... fifty bills of one gathered under one face. I had never seen anything like it before. I began to light the magic incense, as I watched the bill slip through the floor hole. I had intended to go look for it, but Mommy Tomé suspected it and kicked me before the idea passed through my mind. I listened to what was going on over the table, that woman wanted to know if one day she was going to have children. Mommy Tomé told her she would never have children, and she gave me a signal to create a smell that would make her cry. The woman's eyes watered, but she left quietly.  From the moment she left I knew I wanted to be like her, but Mommy Tomé said that this woman was dangerous and when she said it, all my body hair stood up and her too. Mommy Tomé didn't want me to be like that, but at the right time, after insisting, she sent me to school. Since then, her clients arrived at the house in the afternoon, when I could get under the table to do my tricks.  Months later, when I was already learning to be just like that woman, she returned. She came back and this time with a huge belly. When she entered the room I was already under the table.  I lit the magic incense and Mommy Tomé adjusted her skirt to face her. They had a fight, the woman pushed Mommy Tomé. I heard her say that Mommy Tomé was a phony liar. Before the accusation I placed on the table two pigeon eyes. The woman did not notice my presence, but Mommy Tomé noticed and tried to use witchcraft and dove's eyes in her benefit. The woman declared that in view of the prediction of Mommy Tomé, who claimed that she was a sterile woman, she stopped taking the medication to prevent the children, after that, she discovered that she was not sterile. Her ignorance cost Mommy Tomé a lot, because that same afternoon, that same woman, in front of the eyes of a dove that had been chipped, shot Mommy Tomé. The woman left and Mommy Tomé fell to the floor like a coin. I trapped her in my arms and wept at her with the broken tears of my broken soul. After suffering the bitter torment, I lit the incense to let myself be carried away by the spirits, her spirit now fluttering all over the room along with the others she invoked. Slowly I took off her handkerchief, I thought I was going to tie it to my neck, but I tied it to my head. I took her skirt and pointed it at my size. I picked up the weeds she had in her hands and smelled them, tasted a crop of rum she put in her mouth, accommodated her and slowly let her body slide like a fallen angel through the hole in the floor. With the eyes of a dove on the table, a couple of snails and a hand of cards, I sat down to wait for the next client. 
F. JaBieR

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