Categoría: Inglés

Translated by Marvin Najarro She glances at the clock and sees that there are still fifteen minutes until she leaves work. Her feet, ankles and knees ache. After then hours on her feet and due to fluid retention, Catalina’s legs are swollen. She feels as if there are splinters stuck in her back. It is a sharp burning pain that won’t go away. She would describe it like a pin piercing her skin at the velocity of a sewing machine needle. Her wrists are swollen all the time. Mrs. Bartola, who occupies herself as a massage therapist, and also as…

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Translated by Marvin Najarro Rufina takes out some food, puts it in the bird feeder and fills the waterer. Then she hangs both them back up on the tree. Wild ducks, squirrels, and occasionally, hares, whom she calls “wild bunnies”, also feed there, gathering at the foot of the tree to enjoy the food that falls from the feeder hanging from a branch. By the end of spring, she always feels compelled, as if by force of habit, to grow corn, beans and maicillo (sorghum), along with ayote and gúisquil, so they will climb up the tree, like the flores de campana and bougainvilleas on the jocote and matasano trees at her…

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Translated by Marvin Najarro The first time that Balvina saw a salmon was at a supermarket in the United States. She was amazed by the color of its flesh, which resembled the pulp of the melons grown in the fields at the foot of the Sierra de las Minas, in her native Teculután. Excited, she bought a pound of it, and the seafood clerk told her how to cook it. It was the first time she was going to use a stove oven. Thousands of kilometers away was her mother’s clay wood-fired oven. Unlike many migrants she knew who refused…

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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…

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Translated by Marvin Najarro Lena opens the bag and takes out what she thinks is the last piece of champurrada (traditional Guatemalan cooky), but to her surprise, a handful of smaller pieces are mixing in with the pozolero (crumbs). Astonished, she closes her eyes and looks inside the bag again, it looks like a big hollow. Urgently, she closes her eyes again, wishing not to find the big hollow when she opens them again, but it is still there, motionless. By then, Lena has fallen into a state of stupor, like when she first saw the red earth of Salamá.…

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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…

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Translated by Marvin Najarro News about the aproaching winter storm prompted people to rush to the supermarkets to stock up on essentials. Lupita was no exception. She bought the usual staples: vegetables for her salads, rice and two pounds of beef ribs, as soup is a must on stormy days. She also bought bread because she could no drink coffee without it. The other day she made lentil soup with spinach, as well as tortitas de carne (meat patties) with watercress. She does not like the way chard looks, dull and with wilted leaves, and she does not feel like to cook…

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