Translated by Marvin Najarro
The gallina murusha (frizzle hen) appeared in her dreams again. She saw it running with the flock, looking for the cabbage leaves she had just thrown into the yard for them. She had named it Muroshona ever since the chick emerged from an egg. Her grandmother, Tiba, had given her two eggs from her English hen, a miniature bird with curly feathers, which Emelda had placed with the other eggs when one of the domestic hens had gone broody. During the three weeks of incubation, she kept a close eye on them, and it was a real celebration when her two chicks hatched.
But a few days later one of the chicks died, leaving only the murusha one among the flock of chickens that flooded the yard whenever food was thrown on the ground. She never really knew how many chickens they had; the tract of land where they lived was a large. Her parents were in charge of a pigsty on the outskirts of La Capital (Guatemala City), which was owned by wealthy veterinarians with businesses all over Guatemala. On the properties of these wealthy people, Emelda began to notice the cinder block fences with barbed wire on top of the last row, which was also covered with cement and pieces of broken glass bottles for security purposes. It was a far different world from the countryside.
The workers called these people “the children of the sun” because they were albino children of German immigrants. As far as her father knew, they owned vegetables fields in Patzún, Chimaltenango, cattle farms in Jalapa, Tommy mango orchards in Chiquimula and coffee plantations in Alta Verapaz. En tierra fría, bordering Mexico, they bought an unknown number of manzanas of land; she heard her father telling her mother about the landowner’s new acquisitions. They offered her father the job of looking after the coconut plantations they owned in Izabal, but her mother said the climate was hellish and that in her opinion, the devil should go there. Since her mother had the final say at home, the devil surely went there, but they didn’t.
In one of the many conversations they had when she visited Teculután, her abuela told her that when she was a little girl, chickens roamed freely in the undergrowth and laid their eggs in improvised nests in the tall grass. Back then, no one worried about how many chickens they had or whether the eggs might be eaten by an opossum or another animal because there were plenty of them.
Emelda, came into contact with abundance for the first time when she visited her paternal grandparents’ home. Over the years, she came to understand that abundance does not mean having plenty to waste and that it has nothing to do with money either. She was always fascinated by her grandmother’s deft hands and the way she taught her how to make fresh cheese and mantequilla de costal. The most delicious quesadillas (rice cake) she ever enjoyed were those made by her abuela.
She taught her the art of pottery, so that she could make her own comales, pots and jugs. She also taught her how to embroider tortilla warmer clothes and the pillowcases. She learned how to gauge the intensity of the polletón fire to save firewood and prevent the toritllas from burnig. She learned to boil the coffee over embers next to the comal without letting it spill, and roast the majunche bananas in the rescoldo (hot embers), just as she toasted the pishtones.
In La Capital, everything was different, even though they lived on the outskirts, they had to buy everything. The owners used to pay her father three months late, and never compensated him for work the whole family did, because to them, it was an obligation that did not deserve remuneration. When her father asked for a raise, they told him that they were doing him a favor by allowing the whole family to live there rent-free.
A job with no set hours, from Monday to Sunday, with no sick leave, or vacations time. “Vacations,” one of the albinos would reply, “vacations are what we give you by letting you live here.” Emelda began tending pigs at the age of three, and by five she had already learned to castrate them. What she never did was to eat the criadillas (testicles), something she felt so disgusting. Her parents, on the other hand, simply washed the blood off the freshly removed testicles and popped them straight into their mouths.
Emelda sees the Murushona run. She has gone back in time, she is not the sixty-year-old woman she is now, she is just a seven-year-old girl who does not yet know that she will have daughters who will emigrate to the United States as undocumented immigrants, let alone that her granddaughters will be born in that country, speak English, and reject Spanish out of shame. She does not know that they will not want to know anything about Guatemala or the pleasure and honor of enjoying tortillas with loroco and cheese made by their grandmother, as she once did.
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Ilka Oliva-Corado.
