MY parents and I sat in a hot room in Cali, Colombia. The brick home had photos of my relatives placed everywhere. Black, white, and yellow stained photos of people who looked like different versions of people I already knew back in Toronto. A candle with an etching of Santo Pedro Claver, the patron saint of Colombia and slaves, flickered on the bedside table. The light from outside filtered in through a tiny window, illuminating small dust particles travelling through the room. On the narrow bed laid an old woman to whom I had just been introduced as she slept. Her name was Clara and she was my great grandmother. I was seven years old.
My parents had placed me in front of them next to the bed, like a human shield. I couldn’t figure out if I was a shield against Clara’s old age, her illness, or Clara herself. Maybe they had been focusing on the back of my head instead of looking at her directly. I know that’s probably what I would do. In my position, I had no choice but to look at her or distract myself with the dust in the room. I made a little game of transforming the specks into miniature stars. Like a slowly moving solar system. Dust stars fell into Clara’s open mouth as she snored. They went in and didn’t come back out.
I looked back to read my mom’s face and then shifted a little to make room for my dad to see his grandmother. I glanced up and saw him grimace. Clara’s eyelids parted slightly. My mom bent over Clara to try to get her attention.
“Dona Clara, it’s me Tania,” she said, “Antonio’s wife. Antonio is here too.”
I glanced down at Clara and was met with a cloudy stare. She had turned and was staring at me. I froze feeling a giant spiky pit sink into my stomach. It was a “monster about to come out of my closet” crossed with “being found out in a lie” feeling all over. My mom nudged me to say something.
“Nombre de dios Abuelita Clara,” I blurted out.
The stars languidly fell into the side of Clara’s face and into her open eyes. She stared through me or right into me, I wasn’t sure where, but I sensed her gaze, travelling around my face and to my nose. Her lips slowly closed the cave that I had been concentrating on and she took what seemed like a great effort to purse her lips, closing off the universe she must have swallowed up inside her.
“What time…” the words slowly tumbled out of her partially opened mouth into a tone that sounded like she was both telling and asking.
I imagined Clara celebrated birthdays, had parents she looked up to, or disliked. She had firsts, sat by fires, swam in rivers, laughed with friends, had met boys, dressed up to go out, cooked huge family meals, and maybe she even stood over withered old relatives as a child, and said the first thing that came to her mind.
“Nombre de dios,” I said again.
I was suddenly excited at the prospect of her talking to me. I wondered if an old person remembered being a kid like me. Clara made an attempt at a smile, but stopped, and left her eyebrows cocked in a ghastly contortion of what looked like horror and amusement.
My dad moved in closer. His face had softened as he adjusted the shoulders of his crisp white linen shirt. His posture looked like he had taken a bullet to the gut, and it revealed hurt, but also a childlike expectancy. He looked like a kid waiting for a brand new toy to arrive at his doorstep.
“Abuela, it’s me, Antonio. We came from Canada to see you.”
Still on me, her eyes were a bit animated, and the clouds revealed someone familiar, someone we could talk to inside.
“Tania! Tania?”
She was talking to me, but I wasn’t Tania.
“No, Abuela. That’s my daughter, Meleny, in front of you. Tania is here,” my dad pointed to my mother who was beside him. Clara continued to fix her gaze on me. She lifted her hands slightly and her fingers brushed my arm. Her touch was smooth and cold.
I thought of the things she might have seen when she was my age. In our short time in Cali, I had seen an odd horned beetle crawling on the grass, colourful salamanders in the shower, and a furry tarantula by the side of the road. Had she seen these things like me? Did she care? Was she disobedient and did she always get in trouble for saying the wrong things like I did? Did she keep her hair neat in ponytails? Did she know she would one day meet me in a room surrounded by photos of her life, a life she might not remember?
“Tania…” her voice faded into the misty haze of the sunlight, as her lips parted all the way back again forming a cave for falling stars. Her eyes drooped and she suddenly looked like a marionette put aside by its master after a grand performance.
I felt paralyzed. The silence in the room made me want to run away. I didn’t care where I went. In seconds, I had formed a plan to run to the markets that smelled of ripening fruits and cinnamon in downtown Cali. Maybe I’d run back to my Aunt Aida’s house, the one with the patio and the outdoor shower. I’d smell like fresh handmade soaps, get scrubbed clean with the loofah, and sent to play with her puppy as she laundered nearby. I could end up at my cousin’s farm, across from the Galeras volcano, and chase black chickens, or heard guinea pigs to their tiny troughs. Better yet, I could run up the hills along the valley to find the mythical creatures my cousins had told me about; the creatures that stole children in the night and brought them back home with weird braids in their hair. I’d run to stop thinking. I wanted to save my parents from the awkward room. I wanted to go back and not be aware of Clara, not be aware of illnesses, and what happens to people when they get old.
There were planets, constellations, a dying sun in that bed, and buried inside Clara. She started snoring softly again. My mom attempted to close Clara’s mouth, but it opened back up even wider than before. One day you go to bed and decide to die, I thought. The loop had started to slowly spin in my ears, my eyes, my head, and my stomach in knots, saying, “One day I’ll go to bed and decide to die.”
The light streamed in stronger with the noon sun, tinting the room red. The galaxies that had been drifting around before were shooting right at me then, like Clara’s eyes had earlier. I felt my mom’s hands on my head. She curled my hair in her fingers, turned me towards her, and bent down to hug me.
“Mi hija, are you ok?” she asked as she cupped my face in her hand.
“Abuelita needs to sleep so we should go. We need to get Meleny some lunch. We’ll see each other again, Abuelita,” my dad said. He gave the sleeping woman a soft kiss on the cheek. I saw tears filling up in my dad’s eyes.
We left the room and breathed in the fresh air outside. We silently climbed into the yellow Volkswagen Beetle cab that awaited us. My dad sat in the front and I lost sight of his face. My stomach growled and I sank into my mom’s side in the back seat as we sped off into the winding streets.
One day you go to bed and decide to die, I thought, but not yet. My tummy grumbled.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jacqueline Valencia is a poet and illustrator. Her work has appeared in Dead Gender Magazine, Amelia's Magazine, Feministing, and in our own Listerature compilation. She has published two chapbooks, is shopping around her first poetry manuscript, and is working on her first graphic novel, Dos. Jacqueline is a graduate of the University of Toronto and is currently continuing her creative writing studies at the Humber School for Writers.
LF #023 © Jacqueline Valencia. Published by Little Fiction | Big Truths, September 2012.
