|
Miss Lulu and I |
“There is a very distinct sound a bullet makes when it ricochets off stone.”
A quick, metallic sharp slap
Preceded by a whistling “whoosh”
Cutting through the suffocating, wet air
Thick with the smells of
Papayas, aguacates, tamales, frigoles
And mi gente.
You hear the first “pop” while walking down the Mercado aisles
Filling your empty stomach with the sweet smell of ripe papayas
You hear the ping as you hit the floor so fast you don’t care
that the damp, grimy, smelly floor is going to ruin your only good skirt.
Your eyes are closed before you even touch the ground
Time slows down and a few seconds turn into a lifetime
as the air is cut with the shower of accompanying bullets.
More bullets bring more screams
As your arms pointlessly attempt to drown them.
Your senses absorb the chaos around you
Your brain expands to take in all that it unravels.
Chickens panic and become free
Too stupid to know that it’s safer to lay low
Rather than jump around
You wish you could bury your face against someone’s breast
As you hear the muffled cries of children clinging to their Mothers
Instead, you taste the dirty floor mixed with your tears and snot.
Your mind’s eye becomes a movie projector
Translating all the sounds into perfect images.
You wish your mind weren’t so inquisitive
Because you’d rather not know.
You’d rather not know, or see, or hear
the shared terror and awareness
that soon you will take your last breath
with your face plastered on this filthy floor full of chicken shit.
And time stops…
And you see Tete’s smiling face closing in to kiss your forehead for the last time
before disappearing into the plane
And your dog, Miss Lulu, happily sharing a piece of your last tortilla yesterday morning
And you wish you hadn’t told Cecilia she was dirty for having lice
And not teased Esperanza because she’s a Jehova’s Witness
And wished you’d let Jorge put his hand higher up under your skirt
“for just a little touch” before he was disappeared
And you remember your first kiss
Even as you wish it had been from Jaime and not his brother Adan
And you wonder if your Mother will know that you’re dead
because she won’t be home long enough to notice that you’re gone before she leaves again
And you try to remember if you told your Abuelo you loved him when you saw him last
And you wish you had the memory stick you made together now
But you can’t remember where you put it.
And you try to send your Father a telepathic message
Like he taught you to do before you broke your promise
To tell him “perdoneme”
But you can’t because there is no bright star inside the Mercado
And you won’t dare look up anyway.
Slowly, time resumes...
You become aware that your crotch feels wet
And you wonder if you messed yourself
And as you wait for the coldness to come.
You feel someone’s warm breath against your arm
And his weight over you
And you don’t care that he smells bad
because you feel protected
And everything feels calm now
And you wonder if you’re dead
But you know you’re not because you smell your own piss
And rough hands lift you off the ground
And pry your arms from around your head
And the ringing in your ears vaguely lets you hear, “ya pue’ ya esta bien, ya paso.”
And you dare open your eyes now
And as he gives you a cracked papaya from the floor, you whisper, “Gracias Maestro”
And you remember that you’re hungry so you don’t tell him it’s not yours and you take it
As you start to get control of your legs you notice that your skirt is stained with blood
but you don’t want to know who it belongs to
so you start to make your way out
As children are sent to try to salvage their Mother’s produce off the filthy floor.
You don’t look back as the women wash off the blood
left behind by the bodies being dragged ahead of you.
Your trembling legs carry you to the main gate of the Mercado
while you pretend that you don’t see the uniformed men and their rifles
or hear them telling you how much they’d like to bite your budding breasts
as they lick their lips while they rub the cocks over their pants
Once outside, you put one foot in front of the other
And walk to Cecilia’s to trade half your papaya for a tortilla so you can feed Miss Lulu.