Translated by Marvin Najarro
Milvia was just twelve years old when she was handed over to a thirty-six-year-old man who had already lived with three different women and fathered seven children. It was common knowledge that he beat the women he had lived with, and that when he grew tired of them, he would simply leave and never come back, abandoning the mothers and their children. He was a regular at Rojo bar, the only bar in town. His drinking sessions could happen at any time, but this was of no importance to Milvia’s father because his future son-in-law would always buy him the cutos (half a pint of liquor) whenever he saw him at the bar.
Without Milvia and her mother’s knowledge, the future live-in partner had made an arrangement with her father by which he accepted the dote (dowry) of three cows and two mares, ten quintales (hundredweight) of corn and two of maicillo (sorghum). In Milvia’s home her father makes all the decisions; her mother has no say. So, when she found out, she began to cry because the same thing had happened to her. She took Milvia by the arm, sat her down on a chair and explained to her that a man who would be her husband would come and that she would have to go to live with him. She told her that she would suffer that first night but that she had to erase that from her memory because it would not do her any good to hold onto it; after all, that was the fate of women.
Milvia did not understand what her mother meant. Two weeks later, an adult man she had never seen before came and took her away. She cried because she did not want to go with him. She tried to escape several times, but every time she returned home, her father took her back, looking very ashamed and apologizing. Milvia had just experienced her first menstruation. She did not understand why a man climbed on top of her and hurt her so much, as if he hated her. Her parents who live in the caserío (hamlet) El Tempizque, felt proud that their daughter lived in a village. Mardo is from the village of Escuinapa, and her parents inherited him a small and stony plot of land where he built a one-room adobe house. He built a kitchen detached from the house using pieces of sheet metal, and lepa (slab wood).
Nine months later, Milvia gave birth to her first child. By the time she turned eighteen, she had already had five children. She was not exception, she followed the same parenting pattern within the patriarchal system, just like her ancestors, friends and neighbors …. Until eighteen her world is her caserío, she does not know anything beyond Comapa, she has never been to the provincial capital. The farthest she has ever traveled it is to the village of El Guachipilín, which is the last village before reaching the junction of El Amatón on the road to La Capital (Guatemala City). One day her partner did not come home to sleep, and the same happened the next night and the next one after that. A month later, she learned that he was living together with a fifteen-year-old girl in a village in Chiquimula. Mardo’s relatives kicked her out of the house and took her and her children back to her father.
Since then, her father has blamed her for Mardo’s abandonment, repeatedly saying that no man leaves a good woman. He treats her with contempt, and restricts her access to food. He also beats his wife for giving birth to a useless daughter. Milvia has told no one, because she believes is normal that Mardo, much like her father does with her mother, used to beat her as well, and even more so when he came home drunk. Milvia, the eldest and only woman among eleven siblings, began working with clay at an early age, helping her mother make the comales, pots and jugs, which they sell on Thursdays and Sundays under the mango tree that shades La Pilona in the central park of Comapa. She never attended school because the chores at home have always been endless. Her brothers, by contrast, all attended school. Her father was of the opinion that men are the smart ones and that women are good only to give birth to children and doing the domestic chores. But the income from the selling of clay kitchenware is not enough to feed the thirteen people in her parent’s home plus her five children. Her father who works as a laborer at a dairy farm, also does not earn enough.
Her mother who had gone to the health care center, returns with the news that she has a job for Milvia in La Capital; a nurse had gotten a job for her as a domestic aide in a home at Zona 15. This is why Milvia leaves her five children in her mother’s care. She left for La Capital with three changes of clothes in a plastic bag, a pair of shoes, and a purse with only enough money to pay for the bus ticket, as well as a rosary blessed with holly water from the church of El Señor de Esquipulas, which she had bought at a market day. She works from Monday through Saturday with Sundays off. She does not know anything about waxing floors, bedspreads, stoves with oven, kitchens with cabinets, vacuum cleaners, juicers, and of appliances like coffee makers, toasters and washing machines and dryers. She performs three jobs at once: taking care of a newborn, cleaning the house and cooking. And in this way, the years have gone by. It’s been fifteen years since she started visiting her children once a month on one her Sundays off, the other three she works as a waitress at a taquería in La Terminal market.
But this Sunday is a special one because she has her first vacation, she was given a week off. Although is not the Semana Santa holiday, she will spend seven days with her children and do her best to make it their Smana Santa. She will take her children to see La Cueva de Andá Mirá, and the provincial capital. They will also go to eat fried chicken and visit the church of El Señor de Esquipulas, so that the rosaries they buy can be blessed. She will take her mother along with them because she deserves everything, even though it is very little she can give her. Time and their bad economic situation have always been against them, forcing them to live with so many limitations.
The village of El Tempizque lies beyond the town of Comapa, and Milvia has to walk several kilometers along a dirt road lined with barbed wire fences attached to jiote trees. It is the hot season and the stream, as well as the springs are dry. Frequent dust devils on the dusty road cause her to swallow dust and cough, but she enjoys the view of the jocote rojo trees, the izote flower, the matasanos and the manzana rosa. It is the season of the green mangoes and the jocotes of February. But there is something that Milvia misses more than her abuela’s pishtones and her mother’s mantequilla de costal (traditional, aged, and fermented dairy product): It is the ayote en rapadura that she, her grandmother, her aunts and her mother make together, along with the the tamales de viaje, and prepare the pacayas and the pescado seco to latter cook them envueltos en huevo (dipped in a batter of whipped egg whites). It is the time when the family gets together and life smiles upon them.
Covered in dust, Milvia arrives. She passes under the bougainvillea vines that intertwine with the gúisquilar (chayote vine) climbing the branches of the avocado and the matasano trees that her mother planted when she was newly married. A sweet smell wafting from the kitchen envelops, touches, lulls and shelters hers in its bosom. It is the aroma of the rapadura (unrefined whole cane sugar) boiling in one of her mother’s big clay pots. It is the ayote (acorn squash) absorbing the sugarcane syrup, the breast milk that nourished her, the land that longs for her, and welcomes her with joy every time she returns. It is her children running to meet her with a bunch of wild flowers and fresco de masa. It is her aunts preparing the masa for the tamales de viaje. It is her abuela coming out of the kitchen clapping a pishtón, and shouting excitedly: “Ungrateful girl! The fire told me you were coming”.
It is everything, all the things that La Capital does not have.
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Ilka Oliva-Corado.
