The sunrays lashed mercilessly on the house’s corrugated zinc roof, while inside, the infrared radiation pierced through us and then went into the earthen floor. The temperature was forty degrees inside the house. Mom had been pressing clothes using coal-heated iron plates. The kitchen’s wood stove, still filled with embers, intensified the heat, making it unbearable. That and the afternoon brightness coming in from outside made us doze off, dulling our senses and distorting our perception of reality. Maybe that’s what happened; perhaps nothing out of the ordinary occurred that day. We probably imagined the whole thing.
Mom was pacing back and forth while holding a baby in her arms, trying to soothe him down. The baby had disturbed her with his screams while she was working in the kitchen. He had been crying for many days. According to mom the baby tried to stand up by holding on to a chair and made such an effort that resulted in a hernia. The doctor said that due to his small size, surgery was not possible. We needed to wait until he was older. In the meantime, the pain subsided briefly before intensifying once more. During my short life I had heard him cry many times, and though his screams were muted by the time they reached my ears, I can say he had never cried in such agony as that day.
Mom moved around the house; from the bedroom to the dining room, then to the living room, and from there to the veranda. The intense sunlight forced her to come back inside. I moved with her, feeling the changes in her body, the shortage of oxygen, the accelerated heartbeat, the blood rushing to her head, the sweat, the trembling, the heat that consumed her more than me, and the anguish she felt at the baby’s desperate cries.
Mom pressed her lips together, trying hard not to scream. That, in some way, made the anguish easier to endure. She knew how to do it very well; she had grown accustomed to it. I suddenly had the feeling that she was going to pass out. I was breathing with difficulty; my heartbeats were slowing down; life was slipping away from me. She bowed her body, and she fell on her knees on the dirt floor, yielding to the weight of so much sorrow and the assault of the heat that was fiercely harassing us. I felt like I was dying alongside her. At the same time, the baby’s crying was getting louder.
Her jaws started to tremble with helplessness, resentment, and defiance as a spasm gripped her face. Tears then began to flow down her cheeks, but she did not cry, moan, weep, or even whisper a word. She had shut herself up in silence in the depths of her thoughts, and not even I could know the dark musings that haunted her in the abyss into which she had descended, where the last light had gone out.
For a brief moment she glanced by turns at the knife hanging on one of the kitchen walls, the scissors on the dining table, the bottle in the cupboards containing the kerosene needed for the lamps used at night, a rope lying on the floor, and the wooden beams supporting the ceiling.
Doom loomed over us on that fateful day. I could sense it in the form of a disturbance in the air molecules. Perhaps my condition allowed me to notice environmental changes that were imperceptible to others. It was one of those days when everything combines and conspires—circumstances, chance, and the dark side of human nature—to bring about disaster; when it seems that the forces of good and evil are engaged in a mortal battle for a person's soul, with no way of knowing which one would prevail.
However, years of hardship had made her proud and unafraid in her struggle against daily events. Mom decided that she would not give up. Summoning the only force left within her, rage, (for all other powers of any kind had deserted her), holding the infant firmly in one arm, she placed her other hand on the table and began to stand up—first one leg, then the other, then her whole body. Staggering, she managed to sit down on a chair near the dining table. She took a deep breath and gradually recovered her strength. While holding the baby in one arm, with her other hand she took a handkerchief out of her dress pocket and wiped off the sweat dripping down her face, at the same time that I felt myself coming back to life. Then she caressed the baby, laid her hand on me, felt my heartbeat, and regained her composure. Still lost in her thoughts, she looked out at the street, her eyes fixed on some point on the pavement that seemed to be boiling, until the noise of a truck passing by suddenly came through the open door and jolted her out of her reverie.
In the midst of the confusion that still controlled her, dazzled by the light coming in from outside, Mom saw a ghost appearing and disappearing, becoming solid or transparent. The premonition of something dreadful overcame her; adrenaline rushed through her bloodstream, her pulse started to race again, and sweat flowed all over her body. The agitation was so intense that I thought neither one of us would survive.
She quickly covered her eyes with one hand and took a deep breath. When she calmed down she removed her hand from her face, apprehensively, as if she were not sure she was safe, and noticed a woman standing on the veranda. Her long, ragged dress stretched down to her bare feet; a filthy fabric bag hung from one of her shoulders; her tangled hair partially covered her wrinkled face. She was staring at us, and as she did so, her eyes shone with a mysterious glow that only I could perceive.
Mom remained hesitant, as though trying to determine whether the woman was an angel or a messenger from hell. Eventually, detecting no signs of hostility, she dropped her guard, got to her feet, and, as one walking in a dream, made her way toward the veranda, still unsure that there was actually someone at the door.
“Why is the baby crying, ma'am?”, gently asked the woman, with a soft voice that brought mom back to a state of lucidity and full consciousness—a voice that dispelled all her fears. Mom then went on to tell about the injury the baby had suffered when he tried to walk too soon. “I have here with me an ointment that relieves many pains; let me apply it to the child,” added the woman. And without waiting for mom's answer, she fumbled with the bundle that hung from her shoulder and took out a bottle, which she immediately opened. Once mom had taken off the baby's diaper, the woman applied the ointment to the baby's tummy and thighs, while performing a strange ritual with her hands and murmuring some words that neither Mom nor I understood. When she was done she closed the bottle, put it back in the bundle, stepped out of the veranda, and walked away without saying a word or looking back.
Mom, thinking that maybe she was hallucinating but not finding anything else unusual about the woman, watched her leave until she was out of sight. I on the contrary, was able to feel some radiation emanating from her body as she walked away, which weakly reached my brain, muffled by the amniotic fluid that protected me in my mother’s womb.
We never heard anything else about the enigmatic visitor, whether she was from this world or from the hereafter. All we know is that as soon as she applied the ointment to the baby, the swelling vanished, and he stopped crying. He did not cry again that day. In fact, he did not cry the following day either, or ever again.
© William Almonte Jiménez, 2024
