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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