The woman who didn't return

Español👩

In a world like this in which we live news like this are not considered news. They are tragedy and it should be more, it should be unacceptable, indigenous, repulsive. Every day, women go out into the street and they don't know if they're going to come back well. Sometimes they don't come back. Crime affects us all, it consumes us. Even so, in this country where I live, while we sleep, the worm eats the heart of the apple. The news doesn't stop, women who don't come back here or there. But the reasons for not returning are not always the same. Maybe, but in another order, because in real life, factors added in different order do give different results.  Miserenia Quiles left home on August 3, 1977, at the age of 17 and a half. In front of the gate of her house she swore the flag and spat out, saying: "Let it be clear to you that you will never see me again in your life, I will not come to see you nor the happy day when the worms eat you". That was the news that covered Tongue Radio that month. The whole neighborhood knew about that spittle that broke the floor with its weight.  Miserenia lived on the steep slope from the ravine to my house. My house was at the crossroads, in front of the chapel, in front of which everyone crossed themselves when passes, perhaps through inheritance, perhaps custom, in any case mania. Miserenia and I went together to the school next to my house, and to enter you had to immerse yourself in the hole of a broken fence. Every day we pushed each other like fetuses through the narrow hole in the fence, in order to avoid turning around and use the entrance that gave to the beauty parlor of Doña Socorro. When the three o'clock bell rang we went out the main entrance, the one that gave on to the beauty. There my mother was waiting for me, with two 15-cent limber that painted our tongue of pink. Other times, she bought me a panky, or a sugar mama palette. She always bought two, one for me and one for Miserenia. And every day, before we reached the crossroads, Miserenia had already eaten the candy or whatever. If she didn't have time, she put everything in her mouth and gobbled it up at the speed of choking, in front of the chapel she paused to crossed herself and then continued downhill, chewing her mouth down.

          Lower down the hill was Don Gullermino Quiles, sitting in the entrance of the house waiting for his children to arrive. They just saw him and were already in the entrance. David and Miserenia entered that house and did not leave until the next day.  That was until they were old enough to escape.  One night Miserenia appeared through my window and a tremendous scandal formed in my house. I was the only boy, so I slept in the back room. When Miserenia put her head out through the window, she gave me a tremendous fright. I helped her enter through the window and in the process I stumbled and she fell on me. My parents woke up with the noise. My mother stuck her head out the door and when she saw me in my underwear with Miserenia on top, she put her hands on her head. She did one of those mute screams she used to do when Daddy was home. "Look boy" I could read her lips. I gestured for her to calm down and she understood. Miserenia apologized to her, but she couldn't keep quiet about everything she carried inside, all those mops she carried dirty and wrapped in her soul.  And there was cloth to cut. Guillermino, her father, was beating Luisa, her mother. Comay Luisa? - exclaimed my mother. Miserena stayed in my room, she couldn't stop crying. When daddy found out what was going on, the scandal formed. He screamed for everything, because he had slipped through the window, because he was in the room, because Guillermino was beating his wife.... When the tide calmed down, Daddy decided to leave her at home for a while.  He sent her to sleep with my sisters. Guillermino found out what had happened the next day, after waking up from the drunkenness he had caught the day before.  That was another scandal, but he didn't dare come by the house, he was afraid of Daddy who was a man of respect.

          Miserenia stayed at home a little more than a month.  Basically my father had to throw her out. She spent almost an hour in the shower, ate as if she were carrying a tapeworm and did not like to sleep early. She had to go home. We were old enough, some 15 years old. I waited for her on the hill, at the corner of the crossroads, while she crossed herself, I shook her hand and then we went to school. When we returned it was the same, she would let go of my hand before arriving at the church, she crossed herself and go down the hill.  But that afternoon was different. In the middle of the street, the screams could be heard, echoed in the neighborhood, slipped through the sewers and were distributed in the tremor of the water in the glasses.  I went down with her to her house, along with half of the barium that found out by Radio Tongue.

There was doña Luisa, being pecked by the balls Don Guillemino was shooting with a rifle. "Poor woman," everyone said. Nobody did anything. I got involved, but that old man had strength, he pushed me and continued with his pettiness. Doña Luisa was going to get bruises, all over her body, from every corner that was reached by one of the little lead balls.  But it was enough to tune Radio Tongue at home. All my father did was go down the hill and Guillermino ran away like a chicken that goes to broth. Comay Luisa, as my mother used to say, always lived a condemnation with that old man. And those times were not like those of today who divorced, before the man thought he owned the woman. Well, his case had, maybe we haven't evolved as much as we think, some people still live in the caves and understand each other with clubs.

          Time did not pass in vain, but the old man continued to pester, being petty with those fruits of his own blood, fruits that were probably forcibly begotten. David the brother of Miserenia fell into drugs, rumor has it in the neighborhood that he drank battery acid and went out of his mind. Miserenia came with me to high school. She was the first of the class and that which she studied with her feet pushing the door of her room so that her old father would not come in and knock on her.  When Gullermino arrived drunk she jumped home. When morning came, she jumpeid out the window and returned as a fugitive, as a thief, as a criminal.   Miserenia spent too many miseries in that house. But none surpassed that of the day she left. That day was her birthday, I had invited her to eat pizza at the first pizzeria they opened in town.  We went to eat the piece of pizza with the glass of soda. She laughed so much that afternoon. I still remember her wild hair, that melancholy song she enjoyed singing, and in the midst of so much suffering there was something that made her unique, a spark of sunshine in her smile.   On the way back Guillermino was at the entrance. He only saw her and started running with a knife to kill her. He would have killed her if he had taken her. I still remember the steps that were marked on the wooden floor. The sound that rumbled from side to side. Miserenia locked herself in the room. Guillermino knocked and knocked at the door. He wanted to break it, crush it, grind it with that knife. Miserenía shouted. The scandal spread. And the more she screamed, the louder he knocked on the door. I entered the house, heard the door begin to give way, as the hinges loosened. With the first thing I found I gave Guillermino by the head. He fell to the ground, round as a guanábana. The stab wounds were marked on the door. Slashes and slashes embossed against the wood. Before the end of summer Miserenia went to live with her aunt.  Then I went to fulfill my duties as an army recruit. 

          It was a short time, two years, that I was away from home. However, it seemed to me that it was very slow.  I always loved her very much, I loved her with sorrow.  I lost all contact with Miserenia. It was by radio that I learned that on August 3, 1977, Miserenia planted herself well, and at her mother's funeral, she slapped the old man in the face and made him bend his knee. The day his mother died, his family died.  Miserenia went to college, so I didn't see her when I came back in a free time they gave me. She studied, she rebelled against everything that tied her to the earth. Her person became great, she became a determined woman. Years later destiny brought us together. For years she went to visit my family. She went to my mother's funeral when she died. She still visits my father from time to time, but never, never, never stops at what was her home. Guillermino became a minister after his wife's death, but time more than charged him for everything he did. He became small, gave him a paralysis that took all his right side, his mouth was twisted and the hand with which he hit was twisted so inward. She never had to hear from her father again, she passes in front of the house, but she never enters. The last time I saw her she had many stories to share, such as when an old woman ran her with a machete. That was before she was who she is. She no longer lacks anything. The great professional was born in 1977, the day that Miserenia decided not to return.

F. JaBieR