Mariquita, date unknown
THE MAGISTRATE HAD BEEN sequestered in her bedroom for several suns now, severely depressed. She had been defeated in her attempt to govern Mariquita. She was a worthless, stupid, arrogant, self-centered middle-aged woman who’d been given the opportunity of a lifetime and miserably failed. The two major events of her so-called administration—the Procreation Campaign and the Next Generation decree—had ended in disaster. The village still had no running water or electricity or a working phone, and all its access roads were now overgrown with thick shrubbery. Mariquita might as well have been erased from the nation’s map.
All this caused Rosalba to have strong feelings of guilt, though her dominant emotion was fear: fear that her tenure as magistrate was at risk. Soon someone would plot to overthrow her, someone younger, more intelligent and better qualified.
During the length of her depression, Rosalba had refused to see her few friends and acquaintances. Only her boarder was allowed to come into her bedroom. Vaca brought Rosalba food three times a sun, gave her periodic reports of the people who had stopped to visit or to inquire about the magistrate’s health, and impatiently listened to Rosalba’s self-abuse. One morning, however, fed up with Rosalba’s whining, Vaca went to see the nurse.
“The magistrate’s stopped loving herself,” Nurse Ramírez said after listening to the long list of symptoms Vaca named. She prescribed a cup of marjoram tea eight times a sun, frequent sponge baths, and wearing clean clothes and makeup, if she could find any in the market. And so Vaca went back home, dragged Rosalba out of bed, to the patio, gave her a cold bath and made her lie naked in the sun, like a washed sheet, to dry. She then helped Rosalba put on a red dress and did her graying hair in a chignon at the back of her head, a good inch and a half higher than usual, so that the back of Rosalba’s neck showed.
THIRTY-TWO CUPS OF marjoram tea later…
Darkness had begun to spread languidly over Mariquita. Feeling a bit more animated, the magistrate went outside and sat on her steps. The street was empty, and only a steady pounding sound was heard in the distance. The Ospinas must be grinding maize, Rosalba thought. She imagined the sturdy Ospina widow beating kernels repeatedly with a heavy flail.
The sound of footsteps interrupted Rosalba’s thought. She leaned forward, squinting her eyes at the approaching shadow, until she recognized the expressionless face of the schoolmistress. Cleotilde hadn’t come once to visit. She hadn’t even asked after the magistrate’s condition. But Rosalba couldn’t blame the old woman for her indifference toward her. If anyone in town could claim to have been ill-treated by the magistrate, it was Cleotilde.
“Good evening to you, Señorita Guarnizo,” Rosalba said in an unusually cordial tone of voice. The teacher merely acknowledged her with a motion of her head and walked past her as fast as her seventy-four years and goutish toes allowed her. “Would you like to join me for a bowl of soup, Señorita Guarnizo?” Rosalba shouted. “Vaca always makes a little extra.”
Cleotilde stopped abruptly. She wanted to say yes, she’d be pleased to, but the request had taken her by surprise—she couldn’t remember the last time the magistrate had invited her into her house—and despite the teacher’s natural eloquence, no words came to her mind.
“Please, Señorita Guarnizo,” Rosalba sounded almost humble. “I need your wise advice on some matters that are tormenting me.”
Wise advice, advice, vice, ice, ce…The words echoed in the teacher’s mind. She turned around, not entirely convinced it was she the magistrate was talking to. But the pitiful scene before her eyes cleared all her doubts: sitting all alone with her eyes fixed on her own feet—chapped and swollen in the shabby sandals she wore—with the dilapidated facade of her house as her only backdrop, the once-arrogant magistrate looked utterly dejected. Cleotilde tilted her head down and lowered her spectacles with her index finger. “It pleases me to hear that my recommendations are appreciated around here,” she remarked.
Rosalba gave a timid laugh, then, addressing the teacher’s knees, said, “Your recommendations aren’t just appreciated, Señorita Guarnizo. They’re treasured.”
Treasured, easured, sured, ed… The flattering sounds resonated in Cleotilde’s ears along the hallway toward Rosalba’s dining room.
Later on, after they’d eaten two bowls of soup apiece, and the magistrate had apologized several times for Vaca’s lack of talent for cooking, the two women sat in tall wicker armchairs in the living room drinking coffee and analyzing the “disastrous effects,” as Cleotilde put it, that the “time dilemma,” as Rosalba put it, would have on Mariquita if it weren’t tackled promptly.
“Have you thought about any possible solutions?” Cleotilde inquired.
“Oh, several,” Rosalba lied. “I’m just not happy with any of them, and I thought you and I could…perhaps come up with some tonight.”
“I’d like that,” the teacher returned, “but it’s getting late, and I must prepare my ethics class for tomorrow. I’ll come back tomorrow afternoon.”
Visibly disgruntled, Rosalba rose and began walking in circles, glancing at the endless number of lists that hung neatly arranged on every wall of her house: lists of priorities, an updated count of widows and maidens, schedules for the cleaning and disinfecting of the village’s homes, inventories of medications needed in the infirmary, records of her own unpaid and long-overdue salaries, lists of stray dogs and cats with a full description—which was brought up to date periodically as they kept mysteriously disappearing—and lists of lists. She had recorded the entire history of Mariquita since the men were taken away, in a journal made of pointless lists.
Suddenly, it occurred to her that the reason why she’d failed was that she had spent every single day of her magisterial career planning the things that she’d do the day after. She had sacrificed her today to a tomorrow that soon became today, and which was immediately sacrificed once more to another tomorrow, again and again, ceaselessly.
“No, Señorita Cleotilde,” an energetic Rosalba finally said. “Mariquita’s time can’t wait until tomorrow. We must work on it now.”
“But…what about my class?”
“Oh, skip it.”
“But my students will—”
“Tell your students that you were sick, or that you were on a different schedule. It’s only an ethics class, for God’s sake!”
The schoolmistress frowned at this last remark.
MAGISTRATE AND SCHOOLMISTRESS spent the night and several candles thinking and conferring with one another about time. They talked about Santiago Marín’s burning candles and the Villegas widow’s blooming violets, and acknowledged the urgency of establishing a single system that allowed everyone in town to measure, in equal fashion, the duration of events.
“I still think that you should send someone to the city to buy a watch and a calendar,” the schoolmistress observed. “The universal concept of time has been successfully used for hundreds of years.” She supported her recommendation by talking in great detail about the theories of a Mr. Isaac Newton and a Mr. Albert Einstein, and she quoted them with such a degree of familiarity that the magistrate assumed the two men had personally discussed their hypotheses with the old woman.
“What you’re suggesting,” Rosalba said as soon as the teacher gave her the opportunity to speak, “is that we go back to the traditional male concept of time, in which time is all about productivity.”
“In a way, yes, but—”
“I refuse to replicate that concept, Señorita Guarnizo. We live in a male-free world.” She paused briefly, as to organize her thoughts, then added, “You know what I’d like to do? I’d like to create a female concept of time: the Theory of Female Time of Rosalba viuda de Patiño and Cleotilde Guarnizo.” While she spoke her hand flew in the air as if she were printing her words on some invisible surface. Things had begun to look a little more promising for the magistrate. If she pulled through this crisis, she thought, she’d be able to prove to the villagers that she still was competent and resourceful.
IN DISCUSSING THE purported female concept of time, magistrate and teacher declined to make use of cyclical changes in their own environment, like migratory species, the recurrent proliferation of mosquitoes, or the predictable metamorphoses of the red-and-yellow butterflies that populated their region. “What if they become extinct?” Rosalba argued. They recognized the alternation of day and night as a natural and tangible method for keeping time, one that they would like to keep.
“What about climate?” Cleotilde suggested. “We have two pretty consistent periods of rain and drought.”
“I don’t know about that,” Rosalba replied. “The weather has become so unreliable in the last few years that even the trees have grown confused. They don’t know whether to order their flowers to bloom or their leaves to fall.”
And then Cleotilde had a brainstorm.
“How about menstruation?” she said, and almost immediately experienced a great deal of satisfaction. She was confident that menstruation, being an exclusively female condition, would be a suitable idea for the magistrate’s female concept of time. But she also proposed it out of some twisted desire to get even with Rosalba, who, the teacher had no doubt, was currently going through menopause. Some twenty years before, Cleotilde herself had undergone the change of life. She had endured the physical discomforts that came with it, but the emotional symptoms had taken her by surprise and forced her into a severe depression. She felt incomplete, half a woman, half finished. She decided that the magistrate was feeling the same way.
“Huh!” Rosalba mumbled after hearing the teacher’s proposal. “I don’t know that our community’s time can rely on menstruation. Everyone’s cycle is different.” But both women knew everyone’s cycles were identical. Soon after time stopped in Mariquita, the women’s periods had synchronized. It occurred unexpectedly, as if nature, anticipating the chaotic situation that would follow the absence of time, had judged it its duty to grant all women an accurate way to keep the same schedule. And although nature hadn’t yet succeeded in its ultimate goal, ever since, every twenty-eight suns, all washing lines in Mariquita displayed the white rectangular pieces of cloth that women wore as undergarments during their periods.
“If there’s one thing that women can rely on in this village, it is menstruation,” Cleotilde said. “Of course, you wouldn’t know anymore.” She paused to give Rosalba a complicitous look before adding, in a comforting whisper, “Rest easy, Magistrate. I won’t tell a soul. We all go through it at some point.”
Rosalba decided to ignore the schoolmistress’s sardonic remark. “Your idea doesn’t offer anything new to the theory we want to create,” Rosalba said. She wouldn’t admit it, but the one thing about the menstruation calendar that really troubled her was to have to depend on other women––younger, fertile women––to tell her whether it was day three or day twenty. If only I were ten years younger, she thought, I would be not only Mariquita’s magistrate, but also its walking calendar.
“Maybe so,” Señorita Cleotilde replied, “but a thirteen-month, twenty-eight-day calendar will make time calculation and recording very simple. Besides, if we keep time synchronized with the phases of the moon, Mariquita’s calendar will remain in use and accurate far into the future.”
Rosalba giggled. “Do you really believe that a bunch of women dying slowly in a far-flung corner of the world have any future?”
“Of course we have a future. Whether it’s good or bad is a different thing.” She pushed her spectacles up her nose.
“The future’s only in…in the reveries in which we indulge ourselves,” Rosalba said ponderously.
“That’s ridiculous!” Cleotilde groaned, shaking her head repeatedly. “If we don’t have a future, we might as well reverse time, go back to the past. That way at least we’d know where we’re heading.”
This last observation, ludicrous though it was, had a great impact on Rosalba. The magistrate looked first serious, then contemplative, then perplexed, then dazzled and then serious again. For a while the only sounds in the room were produced by the drops of rain that had just begun hitting the window steadily. But then, abruptly, Rosalba exclaimed, “You’re brilliant, Señorita Cleotilde! Absolutely brilliant! We’ll go back in time. Yes, we’ll adopt the menstruation calendar you proposed, except we’ll make time flow backward.”
“But, Magistrate, we can’t make time flow backward. It’s just—”
“Our female calendar will begin with the last day of December and end with the first day of January. Better yet, we’ll replace those boring names of the months with thirteen of our own names.” Overly excited, Rosalba rose from the chair.
Overly concerned, Cleotilde rose too. “I was just making a hypothetical argument, Magistrate. I didn’t intend for you to take it literally.”
“How about if we start with the month of Rosalba and continue with the month of Cleotilde? Is that fair? Because if you want, we can start with the month of Cleotilde. It doesn’t matter to me.”
“Magistrate, what I meant to say was that—”
“I know what you meant to say, Señorita Cleotilde. You meant to say that when time moves backward, people have a chance to change the course of their lives. That’s wonderful thinking! We’ll go back in time, fix the many problems there are in our history, and create a prosperous future for all of us.”
Shaking her head, Cleotilde took a deep breath.
“Now, how far in history should we go?” Rosalba went on. “First, I’d like to delete all of our stupid civil wars. Really, there’s no need to fight among ourselves. Same with that silly battle for independence of 1810. We’ll never be anybody’s colony, so such a battle should never take place. And what about the Discovery Day? How horrible that was! I’d really like to efface that whole passage from our history. We should not be discovered for another thousand years or so. Or maybe we should be the ones who discover Europe. What do you think, Señorita Cleotilde?”
Señorita Cleotilde thought that the magistrate had finally gone crazy. She was just about to say that when Vaca walked into the room, holding a tray with two bowls and a couple of spoons.
“Breakfast,” she announced.
“Great!” Cleotilde said. “I’m starving. What is it?”
“Hot soup.”
“Again?” she sounded disappointed. “I always eat an egg in the morning. Don’t you have any eggs?”
“If I had an egg, I’d have eaten it myself,” Vaca said. She set down the tray.
“Well, I hope that at least there’s some kind of meat in it,” Cleotilde insisted. “Is there any?”
“Maybe,” Vaca returned, shrugging her right shoulder.
“There’s more meat in a mosquito’s leg than in this soup,” Cleotilde complained bitterly as she stirred the clear broth splashed with bits of cilantro. She tried to eat it with the spoon, but there was nothing solid in it. So she lifted the bowl and literally drank the soup in one gulp. When she was finished, the schoolmistress got up and began smoothing down her short hair with the backs of her hands.
“You’re not leaving, Señorita Cleotilde, are you?” If the schoolmistress left, Rosalba thought, she would not be back until the next sun—if at all. By then the project would have lost momentum.
“Yes, Magistrate, I am. You already have a solution to the most urgent problem. That is if you can call a backward calendar a solution to anything. I trust you can figure out the rest on your own.”
“I really think you ought to stay,” Rosalba said, in a tone that sounded more like a warning than a request. “How else are you going to claim that Mariquita’s female time is half your idea if you don’t help me draft a document with the specifics of it?”
This last sentence felt like a slap across the teacher’s face. “It is half my idea,” she snarled. “I intend to help you draft the document. I just need to get some sleep before we start working on it.” She removed her glasses and massaged her eyes with the back of her index fingers.
“Take a siesta in my bed,” Rosalba suggested. “It’s quite comfortable.”
Cleotilde hated sleeping in other people’s beds. She had a sharp sense of smell that made it impossible for her to sleep while engulfed in the offensive odors that were likely to emanate from someone else’s bedclothes and mattress. As tired as she was, she decided that she’d rather work on that document now than sleep in the magistrate’s malodorous bed. She locked her hands behind her back and for a while walked back and forth across the room, thinking, until at length she slid a piece of paper and a stub of a pencil across the table toward the magistrate, saying, “Rosalba, I’m going to give you dictation.”
“I beg your pardon?” the magistrate replied. She didn’t know what had startled her the most: being called by her first name, or being asked to take dictation.
“Write this down, dear: To establish a Time Committee of five young, comma—” She paused to allow Rosalba to write the phrase, but the magistrate, still confused, began mumbling something unintelligible. Disregarding the magistrate’s bewilderment, Cleotilde went on with her dictation, “…healthy, comma—”
“Excuse me, Señorita Cleotilde,” Rosalba attempted an objection.
“Dear, please raise your hand if you wish to formulate a question or if you wish to be excused.” The schoolmistress waited a few seconds for Rosalba to raise her hand, but since the magistrate didn’t do so, she proceeded with the next phrase. Eventually Rosalba started taking terms and conditions down, crossing out and rewriting until they had a draft of a bill that satisfied both of them.
IMPLEMENTING FEMALE TIME wouldn’t be an easy task, the magistrate thought. Especially now that every woman was keeping her own schedule. Just getting all the villagers together to announce the decree would be difficult. Rosalba knew she’d encounter some resistance among the most stubborn villagers. She’d have to work really hard to persuade them that having a communal time scheme would help improve Mariquita’s productivity, and therefore the living conditions of every family. But she’d have to work the hardest to convince them that keeping a lunar calendar in which time flew backward would eventually help each one of them get a second opportunity on earth.
But did she really believe that? Rosalba asked herself. Did she really think that an archaic calendar turned backward would be good for everyone? Maybe not. What significance would it have to someone like Magnolia Morales, who had said that time only existed in one’s mind? Probably none. And would a systematic calendar appeal to the Pérez widow, who had declared that she lived the same day every day? Definitely not. Maybe Magnolia and the Pérez widow were right in their own eccentric ways. Women were idealistic and romantic by nature, and even though men had always seen those characteristics as faults, perhaps it was time for women to dignify them as unique female qualities and make use of them in their daily lives. Female time, Rosalba thought, should allow an infinite number of individual interpretations, so that it could exist simultaneously as the official system for the entire community, and boundless in each woman’s idealistic, romantic and fertile mind.
The magistrate shared her latest thinking with Cleotilde, who was still walking back and forth across the room with her hands clasped behind her back.
“I like that idea,” the old woman said, “but I think the villagers should have at least one parameter, or else we’re going to end up with ten Magnolias running around naked, claiming that time is a…bare nipple or something like that. I suggest we ask that every month each woman chooses a virtue she wants to master or a defect she wants to eliminate, and that she apply her mind to it.” She now sank into a chair, convinced she had said something important and definite.
Soon afterward, the two women engaged in a long conversation about morality, justice, faith, dignity, rectitude, generosity, tolerance, devotion, determination, patience, strength, hope, responsibility, trust, optimism, wisdom, prudence, understanding, tact, intuition, sense and many other things they considered virtues. Next, they spoke about vice, sinfulness, evil, virulence, mordancy, corruption, depravity, abuse, wickedness, iniquity, cruelty, abomination, conceitedness, degradation, lechery, rancor, bitterness, mediocrity, egotism and many more things they considered faults. And after so much talk about virtues and faults, Rosalba and Cleotilde resolved that instead of “months” and “years”—which they considered meaningless words—female time would be introduced as “rungs” and “ladders” to self-improvement. But unlike the intimidating ladders to success or fame established by men, these ladders would go down and down only, because, Cleotilde declared, “Except for God, no one has ever found glory on high.” The women of Mariquita would never feel coerced into stepping up. Instead they’d be encouraged to go all the way to the bottom, where one’s mind, character and soul would meet perfection, and most importantly, where perfection would have as many definitions as there were women.
SUDDENLY, SOUNDS FROM the outside intruded: there was a commotion in the streets. Rosalba and Cleotilde could hear, in the distance, the raucous voices of the women of Mariquita repeating the same phrase over and over.
“What are they saying?” Rosalba asked
“I’m not sure,” the teacher replied, her hand cupped around her ear, “but they’re enraged.”
Rosalba sighed. “There’s always something.”
“Shouldn’t we find out what they’re up to out there?”
“Let them kill one another. We can’t leave this house until we have an acceptable drawing of the calendar.” She handed Cleotilde a piece of paper and began sharpening a pencil with a knife that needed sharpening itself. “Can you draw freehand, Señorita Cleotilde?”
Before the schoolmistress could reply that “of course” she could, there came a thunderous tapping on the door, and presently Vaca stormed into the room.
“Magistrate, you need to go outside immediately,” Vaca began, catching her breath. She explained that a group of villagers, taking advantage of Rosalba’s absence, had gone to Cecilia and demanded that a vote be taken for a new magistrate. Cecilia had tried to dissuade them, but they complained that Rosalba hadn’t done a darn thing for Mariquita, that what they farmed wasn’t nearly enough to feed everyone in town, and that most people had already forgotten what milk tasted like. Furthermore, the younger women accused the magistrate of having allowed el padre Rafael to execute a scheme to deceive them, while the older ones charged her with letting the priest get away after murdering their innocent boys. They’d so pressured Cecilia that she’d called a quick election in which Police Sergeant Ubaldina had been elected the new magistrate of Mariquita. “Cecilia just announced it,” Vaca said. “They’re still striding around the plaza with Ubaldina on their shoulders, giving cheers for her.”
And just like that, without warning, Rosalba was forced to confront her greatest fear. Fortunately, things were much more different now. For the first time in several suns Rosalba felt in control. Not only had she regained her self-confidence, but once again she was near achieving something exceptional for Mariquita. This time she wouldn’t allow anyone or anything to ruin it for her. She would go out there and reason with them. The women, she was certain, would reelect her by acclamation.
OUTSIDE, THE HEAT was stifling. The light rain that had fallen earlier had made the air heavy and sticky. The windows of most houses were wide open, not so much to allow the slight breeze to circulate as to let the heat out. Walking down the street with Vaca and Cleotilde, Rosalba encountered nothing but two dogs curled up in the shadow of a tree, sleeping, and a long line of hardworking ants. Except for them, there was nothing alive on the streets.
When the three women reached the plaza, however, they heard singing and saw revelry around Ubaldina. The villagers had skipped over their individual schedules and gathered to celebrate, with a rowdy party, the election of the new magistrate. Rosalba tried to speak to a few of them, but they barely acknowledged her. She wasn’t being overthrown: she was fading away. Rosalba quickly abandoned the idea of reasoning with them and went to plan B. She drew her pistol from its holster, aimed it at the sky and fired one of the two bullets she had left. As if there were magic in the resounding detonation, the women stopped celebrating and scurried into the church, the only place where they felt safe—especially since there was no priest. Only Cecilia Guaraya remained motionless in the middle of the plaza. She held a scrap of paper with the results of the voting.
“What did I do to you that you have betrayed me?” Rosalba asked Cecilia. The hot pistol was shaking in her hand.
“Please, Rosalba, don’t be angry with me,” Cecilia pleaded, addressing the magistrate’s gun. “The women of this village are dead set on rebellion. I agreed to call an election only if your name was included on the ballot.” She held the piece of paper out to Rosalba. “You came in second,” she said.
Rosalba snatched the paper out of Cecilia’s hand and glanced over it. “Oh, great!” she said contemptuously. “I came second, with two worthless votes.” She scrunched the piece of paper into a ball and threw it back at Cecilia’s feet. Then she put her gun away and went to the church, escorted by Vaca and Cleotilde.
Inside the house of God, Rosalba advanced up the aisle with a stately gait. Her authoritarian aspect elicited the women’s fear, not their affection. There was no sound or movement except the blinking of the many eyes that followed Rosalba all the way to the pulpit, where she stood behind the naked, half-rotten desk from which el padre Rafael used to conduct the service. Cleotilde stood by her side.
“I’m here to take full responsibility for my mistakes and oversights,” she began humbly. “Ever since I was appointed magistrate, I’ve struggled to have full control over our village, to overcome all sorts of obstacles and make a new life for ourselves without our men. I have gone astray in my beliefs and have done some things wrong. There are other things I should’ve done that I didn’t. But now I’m finally able to see that my job in Mariquita, though unpaid, is to organize our community, to make sure that the Moraleses don’t have leftovers while the poor Pérez widow eats what she finds when she finds it. To see to it that Perestroika stays healthy enough to yield sufficient milk for each of us to have at least a full glass every week. To ensure that every family has a house and that every house has a roof and that every roof keeps out the rain. I’ve learned many things that now will make me a much better magistrate for our village. All I ask is to have an opportunity to fix the mistakes that are fixable, and to make amends for the ones that are beyond reparation. If you agree that I deserve an opportunity, please step forward.” She gazed sincerely at the crowd.
There was a long silence as the villagers considered the magistrate’s words. Some women were skeptical. Rosalba’s tone brought back to them unpleasant memories of courteous politicians, broken promises and denied privileges. But a few others believed in Rosalba’s candidness and full intentions, especially now that the schoolmistress—whose credibility was intact—seemed to be endorsing her.
“You deserve a second opportunity,” said Vaca from the first row. She walked toward Rosalba and stopped in front of the desk.
“I’m with you, Magistrate.” The voice came from the very back. “To me, you are and will always be the only magistrate.” It was Cecilia, who had followed Rosalba into the church and now walked up the aisle. She, too, stopped before the desk. Rosalba met her with a sympathetic look.
After a short wait, Doña Victoria viuda de Morales came into view. “We also think that you deserve a second chance,” she shouted. She pushed her two oldest daughters—Orquidea and Gardenia—forward. “And you have our unconditional support.” She now began struggling with the two youngest—Magnolia and Julia—who were notorious for their stubbornness. Doña Victoria whispered all kinds of threats in the girls’ ears, but they resisted fiercely until at length the widow gave up.
Nurse Ramírez and Eloísa viuda de Cifuentes came forward next, followed by Lucrecia and Virgelina Saavedra. One by one more women began to join the group, their heads lowered in shame as they stated their support for Rosalba.
Magnolia and Julia Morales, Ubaldina and the mothers of the four dead boys had gathered on the right side of the church. They stood still and defiant, their heads held high. Rosalba realized that she had to shift her strategy if she wanted to win over the dissenters.
“How very sad,” she said in a low voice, speaking to herself rather than to those before her. “If the spirits of our beloved Vietnam, Trotsky, Che and Hochiminh were to appear among us, they’d be very disappointed. They wanted us to live in perfect harmony.” She stopped her discourse briefly to feel her throat with her hand, as if she were having trouble swallowing. Then she continued, “Their youth didn’t stop them from teaching me, through their noble actions, that loyalty, respect and cooperation are the answer to success. It’s very sad that they gave their innocent lives for nothing. May they forgive you.”
The mothers of the boys, united by their tragedy, joined their hands and wept together. Eventually, they too moved to stand with the crowd of women who supported Rosalba’s authority, leaving Ubaldina with no choice but to forget her magisterial aspirations and join the rest. Disappointed in Ubaldina, Magnolia and Julia left the church.
Rosalba was satisfied with how she’d handled the critical situation. This time, however, she didn’t allow pride to stop her from seeing the truth: the revolt hadn’t been an isolated incident but rather a serious warning of the extent to which the villagers were prepared to fight for food and shelter, the most basic human rights. She approached the women and personally thanked them for ratifying her as the ultimate authority in town. Then, taking advantage of the improvised gathering, she and Cleotilde explained to the villagers what they had been working on. They promised that the female calendar would be ready the next morning, and that it would mark the beginning of a new and splendorous era for Mariquita.
BACK IN ROSALBA’S house, after having eaten a meal of stewed lentils and white rice, Rosalba and Cleotilde began making the sketch of Mariquita’s female calendar on a yellowed piece of paper.
First, Rosalba drew a ladder with thirteen rungs and gave each rung a female name, which she wrote in her neat and beautiful cursive handwriting. The top one she called Rosalba, of course—this time she didn’t bother to ask the schoolmistress’s opinion. The next one down she called Cleotilde, and then, in order, Ubaldina, Cecilia, Eloísa, Victoria, Francisca, Elvia, Erlinda, Rubiela, Leonor, Mariacé and Flor.
Then, on each rung, she drew four vertical rows of circled numbers (six on each), starting with number twenty-four and ending with number one. They represented the many suns of every rung. A fifth row with four empty circles symbolized the length of an average menstruation cycle. This last row, they agreed, would be called Transition, and it would be the most important period of every rung.
A faint ray of moonlight filtered through the grimy glass, reminding the two women that night had fallen.
“Can I tell you a secret, Magistrate?” Cleotilde said abruptly, removing her spectacles. Rosalba lifted her eyes from the sketch and nodded. “I remember feeling dirty and ashamed every time I had my period,” Cleotilde said. “There were times when I felt so ashamed that I wished I were a man.”
Rosalba also confessed to one of her secrets: “My husband slept in a separate room while I had my period, as if I had a contagious disease. To me, menstruation was a curse.”
“Well, it won’t be a curse anymore,” Cleotilde said cheerfully. “From now on menstruation will be a time to celebrate femaleness.”
The two women rose and stood across from each other, their bodies upright, their feet slightly apart and their hands by their sides. Scattered on the large table that separated them were the pieces of paper embodying the fundamental principles upon which female time was to be conducted thenceforth, and the final illustration of the first female time calendar ever, which would be set in backward motion at dawn. Standing there, Rosalba and Cleotilde looked like two statues of national heroines. The air of confidence that blazed from their eyes seemed to confirm that they, too, were women of admirable exploits; female versions of Simón Bolivar—Colombia’s glorious liberator and first president.
“Is there anything else we need to discuss?” Cleotilde asked out of courtesy.
The magistrate shook her head. She used her lips to point at the pieces of paper on the table and said, “I think it’s time to put all of that into practice.” She offered to walk Cleotilde halfway. They hurried down the empty street until they reached the church building, which looked immaculate by the light of the moon. There they stood still, facing each other in the same way they always had: with their backs straight, their brows furrowed and a defiant look in their eyes. Only on this particular occasion nothing but a few inches and the invisible air kept them apart.
“Thank you much, Señorita Cleotilde,” Rosalba said sincerely, even though the rigid expression of her face showed no appreciation. “I simply couldn’t have done it without you.”
“I am pleased to have been of help to you and to Mariquita,” Cleotilde replied. She, too, was sincere. She, too, didn’t show it.
The two women said good night and began to walk slowly in opposite directions along the desolate road. Their bodies, although shaped differently, cast two identical silhouettes that grew closer and closer as Rosalba and Cleotilde moved apart; climbed up the white facade of the shabby house of God; reached the tower, where a forgotten clock stood motionless; and finally, as the two women disappeared in the dusk, became one gigantic shadow that spread over the sky of Mariquita, covering equally everyone and everything beneath it.
