My dear Germán:
After the celebrations and the fire, everything went back to normal. There was only one new thing in our lives, and that was that Miss María had taken to beating us. Since we’d both cry no matter whom she was hitting, she decided it didn’t matter who’d committed the infraction, she’d just hit us both.
One day she returned to the house in a very bad mood. The Boy was crying because he needed his bottle, and she decided that was the day to give him a bath. When he was totally naked, she raised him up very high and, staring him in the face, said: “This son of a bitch is starting to look like Eduardo!” Then Helena said it would have been better to keep Eduardo than to go and have a new one made. Helena hadn’t finished her sentence when Miss María started beating her with an open hand. Before she was finished with Helena, I ran to hide in the oven, the only place where she couldn’t get me.
She didn’t go to the shop the next day but stayed locked in her room. Betzabé brought her lunch, but she didn’t want to eat. When it was beginning to get dark, she called for us to come up to her room. Everything was messy, and in the middle were two open trunks; she’d started packing up clothes. We’re going back to Bogotá, she announced, and accused us of being the cause of her sorrows. “Without you, I’d have another life. I never would’ve come to this miserable town. I could be far away and have everything in the world. But with you always underfoot, I’m tied like an animal. That’s it, tied like a cow. But listen: I promise you this situation can’t last much longer. I swear it, and you’ll remember my words—the first chance I get, I’m going to give you to someone. I don’t care who it is. Now get out of here and don’t let me see you again or I’ll beat you with sticks.”
We descended the stairs hand in hand and went straight to the Boy’s room. We sat next to his basket and started to cry. He watched us with big open eyes, and though he made no sound, it was as if he could feel our pain: tears streamed down his cheeks. He scrunched up his mouth and looked out with eyes of a bottomless sadness.
The preparations for the trip took many days. Since Miss María didn’t go to the shop and was always home, she’d scream at us or hit us for any small thing. A yes or a no could be enough. Those were very long, very sad days.
Toribio arrived the night before our trip with the horses and three more Indians. Everyone gathered out on the patio that night, singing and playing the guitar. Toribio loved me a lot, and he brought me a gift, a basket full of plums. All of us slept in the same room, atop reed mats, with the Boy, as always, in his basket. It was still dark when they woke me. Betzabé had already made breakfast, and Miss María was bathing the Boy, something she almost never did, since the only one who washed his face and cleaned off his shit was me. Helena helped me get dressed while Betzabé put away the four frayed outfits that were all the Boy had to wear. While I drank sugarcane water and ate a piece of dark bread, the two of them wrapped the Boy in a large blanket and fastened him with a kind of white sash. Betzabé went downstairs to braid her pigtails and get a kerchief. Miss María, who was very nervous, yelled at her to hurry up, because we were going to be late. Betzabé picked up the Boy and the little basket with his clothes, then took my hand, and we left, nearly running. When we got outside, the horses were braying and I could hear Toribio singing from the patio.
Betzabé told me along the way that we were headed to the river, but it was so dark I couldn’t see the path, and there was as much wind as there had been the day of the fire. When we got to the bridge, which I knew well, instead of going down to the pool where we always washed our clothes, she went straight, and we crossed along a narrow path, covered by large trees, that ran alongside the river. At the end of that trail we saw a large white house, not made of hay but with a thatched roof. Betzabé told me to wait for her next to a tree bent over the river. I followed her with my eyes, saw how she walked on tiptoe, lightly, lightly, as if she wanted to fly. She approached the large door, setting down the basket and then the Boy right up against it. When she covered his little head with a blanket, I realized that we’d gone there to abandon him. I wanted to scream but couldn’t. My legs shook, and like a spring I bounded toward the door. Betzabé managed to grab me by one leg, and I threw myself to the ground and began to bang my head against it. I felt like I was drowning. Betzabé struggled to lift me up, but I clutched the weeds, contorting like a worm. She begged me to get up, telling me urgently, in a near whisper, not to make a sound and to run before anyone woke up. I kept hold of the weeds, my face pressed to the ground; I think I learned then, in that one moment, what injustice is, and that a child of four is already capable of feeling that they no longer want to live, that they should be swallowed by the earth’s bowels. That day remains, without a doubt, the cruelest of my life.
I didn’t cry, because tears wouldn’t have been enough. I didn’t scream, because my sense of outrage was stronger than my voice. Betzabé, kneeling beside me, continued begging me to get up. The Boy started to cry, and I felt his whimpers from the depths of the earth. I looked up and saw that Betzabé’s face was bathed in tears. My resistance crumbled. I let her take my hand, and she lifted me up in her arms. Breathlessly, like crazy, she started to run. I felt she was holding me tight, tight against her, and her tears fell behind my ears and ran down my neck. She stopped only when we reached the bridge. I don’t remember the rest. I recall only that Toribio placed me on the mule that would take us to Bogotá. Helena tells me that I couldn’t speak for three days. Miss María was worried that I’d been left mute. The return trip was just like the outbound trip, except that this time Betzabé came with us, and instead of Burro, the mule we rode walked very fast. I don’t remember details because surely by then I didn’t care about life anymore. The first trip represented the abandonment of Eduardo, and the second the abandonment of the Boy.
Your Highness, I’m sad because this letter didn’t come out the way I would’ve hoped, but I don’t feel able to try again.
Kisses to the whole family, and don’t forget me.
Emma
Paris, October/69