My dear Germán:
In spite of your very discreet letter, I can tell you’re dying to know who the woman with the long hair was. The truth is the memories are blurry, and if I’ve managed to maintain a certain coherence to them through the years, it’s because of my sister, who is two years older and remembers a bit more.
The long-haired woman was named María. She was very young, tall, and thin; she never spoke to us about her family or her life. Our dealings with her were limited to answering her orders with refusals or questions. She was tough and severe.
The only person who visited us was Mrs. Secundina, who had a store on Santa Barbara. She was much older, and was María’s only friend. As soon as Secundina arrived, they’d send us into the streets to play, with the order not to come back until we’d been called. We never knew what they talked about. We’d buried General Rebollo not long before. I still had the same mud-stained dress. We always slept in our clothes; María only took off her long skirt and undid her hair. One morning she woke very early. It was still black like night. She sent the three of us to empty the bedpan and bring back the buckets and the jar full of water. When we came back she turned on the small gas burner and put the big pot on to boil. While the water warmed, she changed the sheets and cleaned the four pieces of furniture we owned.
“Take off your clothes,” she said. “I’m going to give you a bath.”
It was the first time she bathed us all at the same time. The three nudes stood around the basin, and she soaped us quickly and then rinsed us one by one, using a wooden bowl. The floor of our room was soaked and sudsy; before dressing us, she put us to work drying it. She dressed us in our Sunday best, and we sat on the edge of the bed, under orders not to move. Before long she too had put on her Sunday dress, then brushed her hair very carefully, asking Helena to hold the mirror and Piojo to hold the candle. She’d get furious each time one of the two would move. When she was finished, she sent Piojo to the factory to see what time it was. She didn’t give us any breakfast that day; she was nervous, circling the room like a caged beast. Day had dawned, but she didn’t open the door as she usually did, and we remained in the candlelight. Suddenly, there were three soft knocks on the door, and she crossed herself and hurried to open it. A very tall and slim man appeared, dressed unlike the people in our neighborhood. He was like those men we saw in the newspapers we found in the garbage dump. He wore an overcoat and a hat and carried an umbrella, all dark, perhaps black. He passed his hand over his eyes, as if to acclimate to the candlelight, and entered as if slipping through the door. He gave her a kiss on the cheek, and all three of us laughed at once. It was the first time a gentleman had been in our room.
Mrs. María shut the door, locked it, and took the bottle with the candle and came to the bed, where we still sat, paralyzed. He followed her, wearing a serious expression. She brought the candle close to Piojo’s face and said to the man:
“This is Eduardo. He’s yours.”
The man patted Piojo lightly on the cheek with his palm.
Then she showed him Helena, and then me. Nothing was said; there was a profound silence. The gentleman unbuttoned his overcoat and his jacket, and with the tips of his fingers took some coins from the pocket of his vest. He gave three to Eduardo and one to each of us.
“Say thank you,” Mrs. María said, “and now go play outside, but stay near the door, and if you see a neighbor coming, tell her I’m still asleep.”
We went out and heard the lock turn behind us. The man was there a long time. Finally, the door opened. Mrs. María stuck her head out and made sure no one was watching. She turned and said, “Okay. Now.”
The man left, scurrying out the way he’d come. He passed by without looking at us, as if he’d never seen us before. We watched him leave with large, bounding steps, staying close to the wall, as if he were afraid of being seen.
When we entered the room, Mrs. María was crying. She began to empty the drawers and separate everything that belonged to Eduardo. She took out a cardboard box from beneath the bed and packed away everything she’d set aside.
“Helena and Emma, put on your old dresses. Eduardo, no, because he’s coming with me.”
She was still crying, so we also started to cry. While Helena undressed, we saw a stack of bills on the table, and I was scared. I felt something was about to happen. We had only coins; we’d never seen bills in the house. Mrs. María didn’t say a word. She took a shawl from its box, wrapping it tight around her face. For the first time I saw that she looked like the Virgin from church.
“Don’t move. I’m going to the neighbor’s.”
She came back with the neighbor, Cojo’s mother. She showed her where the plates and candles were kept. She took the cardboard box with Piojo’s clothes in it, stood before us, and told us she was going away for a few days, but that the neighbor would come by to bring us food. Because there was no one to take care of us, she’d leave us locked inside. “Behave,” she repeated twice, then shuffled Piojo to the door, placed a seaman’s beret on his head, and ordered him out. Piojo looked at us, his big, open eyes filling with tears.
We spent many days and nights locked in that room. We lost count of how many. The bedpan filled up with our shit, so we started using the large serving plate. The neighbor came by only once a day and left us a big pot of porridge. “Don’t eat it all at once,” she’d say, “because I’m not coming back until tomorrow. And blow out the candle as soon as you’re done eating.”
We cried and screamed so much that the neighbors came to the door to try to console us. For hours, we’d look through the keyhole and the cracks in the wood to see if she was coming. Finally, she came back one day, and found us asleep on the floor, our backs against the door. It was the first time we both threw ourselves on her neck, hugging her and kissing her with happiness. She started to cry, very sweetly removed our arms from around her neck, and, holding our hands between hers, said: “Piojo isn’t coming back. His father, that man who came here, is an important politician. He may become the president of the republic. That’s why he didn’t want his son to be here. He says he’s afraid and prefers to deal with him himself; I took him far from Bogotá, to Tunja, and left him in a convent where everything had been arranged so they could take him in.”
Without Piojo, I felt lost. I cried and screamed; I called his name. I didn’t understand what “far from Bogotá” meant. I thought that if I shouted loud enough he might hear me. Mrs. María also seemed very sad. She became quieter and tougher. I think this was when a secret pact was born between Helena and me, an unconscious notion that we were alone and belonged only to each other. In that moment I didn’t know that I’d never see Piojo again, and that I’d be left with just the memory of his immense black eyes full of tears, beneath that ridiculous seaman’s beret.