Secrets between My Grandma and Me

By Tony Hernandez

This is the story of a sickly child who came into this world without any right to life, and how he jumped the fences of hell to become a man on his own two feet with pockets full of gratitude, and in his heart love and respect for everything around him, carrying on his shoulder the principles of his father, the advice of his uncle, and the wisdom of his grandmother.
The story is real, and I express it from my point of view, through the eyes of my grandmother, who guides me from her dimension. For those who seek the light, they will find her message and truths that hurt the soul. She will help us to understand this complex interweaving that is the human mind. But she also explains the sadness of a people, for whom, more than sorrow, I feel ashamed to see how far we have come.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tony Hernandez
• Release date: Aug 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005688110

Tony Hernandez

Refuting the teaching that salvation is over and teaching that Jesus speaks plainly when He says that no one knows of the day and hour of His return.

Book preview

Secrets between my Grandma and Me

Smashwords Edition

Tony Hernández

Alexandria Library Publishing House

MIAMI

Secrets between my grandma and me

Copyright © 2022 Tony Hernández

ISBN printed edition: 979- 8843926403

Original title in Spanish: Secretos entre mi abuela y yo

Translated by: Francisco Rodríguez

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022914599

Copyright Registration Number: In Process

Copyright Original Version in Spanish: TXu 2-161-478

Digital edition: Vilma Cebrián.

www.alexlib.com

All rights reserved.

This work may not be reproduced by any means or process, without the written permission of the author.

Dedicated to my grandmother María Antonia Medero, my spiritual guide in this life, so that she may hear me over there in the world of the dead. I cannot estimate in material value what you have done for me through the years.

I am telling you from the present time... from the world of the living that I have always been humble and have followed with great gratitude your personal example all my life.

May I never lack your blessing and I, as a human being, bless you as well....

Contents

Prologue

The place where I was born

The Isle of Pines

My town

Vacations

Naval Academy

With the Mayor of Havana

Finally free

Havana

The trial

About the author

PROLOGUE

The reason I started writing this book was because of a mocking spirit that kept insisting, Write your story, it would always say. I have no story to tell. You’ll be surprised. And so, every day was the same old same old.

—Why do you try so hard? I shouted at him one day.

—To laugh at you, also at those who gave you their last name and never accepted you as family. At those who were always around you but who they saw was me. There are few who have seen in you the spirit and blessing of your grandmother.

—What message are you talking about?

—All you are is action, matter, and life!

—You are truth, you are noble, kind, and good hearted. You are a heart with two legs, and yet everyone hates you, and will always hate you. Two thousand years ago, I cared for another spirit, they called him Jesus of Nazareth. He carried a message for a group of chosen ones, but they had already made a pact with the devil and used God’s message against his Son. They came up with lies and later condemned Him to death with the support of the people.

—I will tell you, Antonia’s grandson, the same thing I told him. Everyone who has the opportunity to meet you, to talk to you, to share you in this life, will hate you. Your spirit will always go above your personality. You will never know who you are. Now, your self-reliance will create in others respect, fear, and hatred. In the human soul, these things are filed in the drawers of envy and from that moment on everyone will do their best to cause you harm all throughout your life.

—We know it was a mistake of ours that infiltrated through the conscience when thousands of years ago I told an imbecile, who governed a nation of men, that he had been made in the likeness of the gods and the asshole believed it. ‘Yeees,’ he answered with vanity, taking my words for a fact. Grandson of Antonia, remember that men only believe in that which strengthens their power and makes their ambitions grow.

—Are you saying they’re going to hurt me?

—What the hell, you’ve been a bag of trouble since you were born. By the time you were fifteen you’d already been beaten up more than Jesus.

—So what? You want me to hang myself?

—You’ll never have that right.

—Are you going to tell me that I can’t do what I want to do?

—I never said that. I just said you’ll never have the right to take your own life.

—Why are you so sure of that?

—For that idea to occur to you, first you have to think about it, then the body needs to create the intention to go through with it but only if the mind gives the order, but the mind does not belong to the body. It is the private property of the spirit, and your grandmother is the owner and executor of all those actions. Like Christ, you will never be like others, but even without owning anything material you will always be envied by everyone. If your people are not able to see in this book the message of your grandmother, they will receive the same curse as the Jewish people, not thirty years, but two thousand years of misery and outrage.

—Was I born with bad luck? I asked.

—Write the book and I will answer you.

THE PLACE WHERE I WAS BORN

Where was I born? In the town of La Coloma, south of Pinar del Río, Cuba, a fishing village. An inlet at the mouth of a small river protects the boats during hurricanes.

According to my grandmother, the first ones to arrive at this inlet were pirates who were fleeing from an English frigate, and one of those famous Caribbean storms made the ship run all along the edge of the bank until it ran aground in front of a Corral Falso. They jumped into small boats and discovered that inlet and found a small beach where they repaired the ship, and in December, taking advantage of the north winds, they left.

Then a couple of Spanish smugglers arrived and, one winter afternoon, the Spaniards and pirates made a deal in those dunes. They cut a trail through the savannah and reached the present—day city of Pinar del Río, for the purposes of the most prosperous business at the time: smuggling.

Spaniards, when they hear talk of gold, they untie the mule and get going. They blazed a trail to the coast but found no one. To defend themselves from horseflies, mosquitoes, and gnats, they set fire to logs from the trees thereby inventing charcoal, which eventually became a profitable business, turning that place into a small town of charcoal producers. However, the Castros were the ones who discovered another treasure of my people and kept it a secret, as a family business. Neither the Cuban people nor the world have had the right to know anything about it. It is the activity that has filled their bank accounts in Switzerland and Spain. In my town alone, between 500 or 700 tons of lobsters are harvested every year.

It is a private business done with a Japanese firm. Few people in Cuba know what a lobster is, not to mention tuna or bonito, which are also unknown to the average person. No Cuban store sells a can of tuna.

The famous El Niño Current picks up the lobster from the Atlantic and throws it against South America. There, the marine current of French Guiana drags them all over the Caribbean Sea towards the Gulf of Mexico, leaving more than 70 percent of that crustacean in the lobster triangle of La Coloma, probably the largest in the world.

Now, when the tide goes out during the day, the breeze brings an unbearable rotten smell that my uncle Antonio loves. He says it is the decomposition of seaweed.

—What’s that, uncle?

—Take a deep breath, nephew, and fill your lungs, enjoy it; it smells like a woman’s ass.

—Decomposing, uncle?

He looks at me and smiles.

—You’re very young but you’ll know about love the day you kiss a mare’s ass.

At night, when the tide rises and the wind subsides, a calmness takes over and with it comes a mosquito swarm so that, sometimes, you can’t even open your mouth. Neither the music nor the noise nor the jumping around of people dancing can shoo them away. They are part of the community. If they were to bring out a leader to represent their rights before the Communist Party, Fidel Castro would give them citizenship, an identity card, and a rationing booklet for each family household. Why not?

They say I was born on November 12th, but nobody remembers the year. There is no hospital record, nor a piece of paper that certifies the day I was born. My sister Adelfa says that she chose my name, Jorge Luis, and she remembers very clearly that it was November 12th. That day she was going to run away with her boyfriend Juan, and I messed it up for her. She had been getting up her courage for days and was getting hot when I became her bucket of cold water. From that day on, Adelfa didn’t want any boyfriend or husband, and, in time, she didn’t care about the children she had. She gave birth to them, and the revolution raised them.

Gossipers say that she only showed her feelings when I was around. When I took my first steps, I became her cross, as a Christian would say: in the house I was the bag where all her problems would end up. She took care of me until I was eight years old, and they say that whenever I cried, they would smack her, and if I didn’t want to eat, they would hit her skin with a shoe. My presence turned her into a slippery and distrustful little animal. Bitterness made itself at home inside her soul. Between sadness and suffering, she never found a way out. She lived there until her death.

I have never been able to find the address or the way to get to that place where memories dwell. I have looked for them in biology, in geography, in social studies, and they do not even appear in the yellow pages. When I look at the pictures that teachers draw of our brains, I always get lost. It really has a lot of twists and turns. Yes, I can assure you that they are there, somewhere in the head.

I close my eyes and I am six years old: I have a little sister younger than me by a year. She is too beautiful for my eyes! She is the perfect copy of those little angels they talk about in children’s storybooks. Something always kept us together and it was very difficult to separate us. When they wanted to put me in nursery school, they say I cried all day long. I was a very sickly child, with constant diarrhea and bronchial asthma and I walked around with a protruding navel. They say it was an umbilical hernia. I also remember that it was very difficult for my sister, Adelfa, the eldest, to get out from between my mother’s legs. My fears were so great that even toys scared me. Joy only visited me when I played with my little sister. When, for some reason, we were separated, I was so strangely short of breath that I would end up in the hospital. There, a plastic mask would be fastened on my face and a beautiful young woman, dressed in white, would stand by an iron cylinder bigger than me! A hose came out of it right up to my face. I don’t understand why she would turn her face towards me with a smile on her face to say:

—You’ll be fine!

That is when I would throw a fit. I would hear someone say.

—He’s not getting enough oxygen, it’s an asthma attack. Hold him steady!

—Don’t worry... That was my sister Adelfa’s voice; and listening to her made me relax a little.

Whenever my mother arrived with my little sister, sis would touch me with her little hands and ask me:

—What’s wrong, little brother?

I would open my eyes and right away I would not feel anything. After a while I would listen to my sister Adelfa say:

—Nurse, my brother is all right now; look at the color on his face.

And they would take off my mask.

We became an attraction in town. I began to realize that every day people came to the house from all over to praise my beauty. When they laid their eyes on me, the opinion was always the same.

—Teresa, I hope your son survives childhood. Everyone would give me up as dead. My mother bathed my little sister. Adelfa always bathed me. They dressed us pretty and took us out for walks. My mother would carry me and would take my little sister by the hand. When we got to the neighbor’s house, I heard him say:

—Teresa, get that boy down, he is way to big; how is it that you are carrying the boy while the little angel has to walk?

Everyone wanted to carry her, and there I was among so many people, I felt like the loneliest child in the neighborhood. When I dared to look someone directly in the eyes, it was only reproach that looked back at me. I would just put my head down and sit in a corner.

My only joy was my little angel of a sister. No matter who carried her, no matter where they took her, no matter how much fuzz they made over her, her eyes always looked for me. Whenever they would put her on the floor she would run to me, but they would never give her time to reach me.

Someone would always snatch her on the way.

One afternoon, when we were playing under the crib, I heard my mother call her. After a while she came and took her out of there by the hand. My little sister took care of me and the three of us went out to the doorway. There were four ugly ladies there. They were talking to my mother about my younger sister. I was terribly afraid and started to cry. My mother shouted to Adelfa, and she came for me. My little sister and I hugged each other and when Adelfa managed to separate us, my little sister for the first time in her life started crying too. I don’t remember ever seeing her cry, not even for food.

The next day I was awakened by my mother’s screaming. I always slept with her and my little sister in the crib. I jumped out of bed scared and crying. My mom was kneeling in front of the crib crying desperately. Something had hit her very hard. She was moaning and wailing. Her wailing was coming from deep inside her belly! I approached the crib. I grabbed her wrist, pulled on it, but she didn’t respond. Her little hand was cold. I brought my face close to hers. There was calm and peace in her face, but her color was white like those porcelain Chinese dolls. My sister Adelfa carried me out into the patio. She was also crying without consolation. At the wake I heard people say that it must have been witchcraft, because she was a perfect child and suffered from absolutely nothing at all. As we passed by the kitchen another group was saying:

—That had to have been an evil eye. To die just like that, without suffering from anything, cannot be explained.

With her death all my joy was gone. My asthma attacks began. My mother sold the house for fear that I would die there too. She bought one on Third Street, near El Bar market. I lived there for two years. It must have been terrible for me.

One day my father told me that memories are kept in a trunk. Maybe the ones from that house were lost in the move. I am about eight or nine years old, and I am playing with a little black dog that bites me terribly. There are a lot of people and flowers at my mother Teresa’s wake.

Having another daughter had become her obsession! She got pregnant. On the day of delivery, the doctor told her:

—Your clinical situation is complicated. When you enter the delivery room, only one of you will come out alive: you or your daughter.

—Please let it be my daughter, she answered without hesitation.

Her decision left me an orphan and I automatically became a serious problem for all my relatives. Who the hell was going to be responsible for an orphaned, sickly, weak, whiny, crybaby, foolish kid like me? Life has ups, downs, bumps, and curves, but this slump I had fallen into turned out to be something very interesting for me.

The little house was made of wood, with that characteristic color that boards take on after many years of no paint. It had a thatched roof; the floor was made of dirt with some boards embedded in it to avoid a mess in rainy weather. It had two bedrooms, a living room, a dining room, and a kitchen with a wood stove. At dawn I was awakened by the smoke that mixed with the smell of boiling coffee, flooding the house with an irresistible aroma. Over time it became an alarm clock in my subconscious: as it entered through my nose it would lift me out of bed and take me straight to the kitchen.

My grandmother Antonia, with all the patience of the years and all those habits that ignorance creates, used to scare the bugs away from the cupboard. She would take a small unrinsed empty can of baby food, shake it, fill it with milk and add a little coffee and two spoonfuls of sugar. I would sit on a wooden box in the corner to enjoy the concoction. The milk came from a goat, whose name I don’t remember. Its height reached three fingers above my navel. She had gray fur tending to the old yellow of time. Her tits reached almost to the floor, with a thin face and two little horns. Sometimes I played with her and always thanked her for the cans of milk she gave me in the mornings. Eventually I realized that the coffee was roasted peas that my grandmother ground by hand. Innocence is a gift from God.

In that corner, sitting on the wooden box drinking goat milk from a can of baby food I enjoyed watching how the flames in the stove turned the charcoal into pure gold ingots. My grandmother, cardboard at hand, poured air into the fire and stirred all the colors that exist between yellow and red. When the fire felt satisfied, she would throw back in a handful of tapers that would get lost in the smoke and reach almost to the ceiling. She would hook the cardboard to a nail in the wall and go on with her chores. In the corner I felt safe, protected, and unafraid. I don’t know if it was my grandmother’s presence or what she gave me to drink. I felt the strength of another child growing inside me, with hope for life and many dreams to fulfill.

One early morning I was awakened by the noises she was making, and I followed her into the yard. In the kitchen she grabbed an empty can of pears and the little box from the corner. She went out, put it on the floor and sat down. She grabbed a rope and began to pull on it. The goat came over and my grandmother started talking to her. She put the can between her legs and started milking it looking up at the sky as if looking for something. She gave her tits a bunch of tugs. The animal never complained. They looked like two old friends talking about an interesting subject.

When the conversation was over, she spanked her, and the goat left. She got up, put the can on the box, took a few steps and lifted her dress over the bush between her legs and began to pee standing with her legs spread wide. The stream fell about two or three steps away from her. What a stream! She dropped her dress, patted herself down, tucked her hands inside her thighs and lifted her skirt up to her navel to dry her crotch. She grabbed the milk can, and the wooden box and went into kitchen. I came out and wanted to pee like her, but the dribble landed on my bare feet. I looked up at the sky wanting to find what my grandmother was looking for. Curiosity grabbed me by the collar, and I stood there, somewhere between asleep and fascination. I had never noticed the sky before, what a beauty! A huge grid full of holes. I don’t know what they were cooking on the other side of the world, because all the stars were shining with sparkles: someone threw a match, I saw it cross the sky and then go out.

— Yoyiii! —my grandmother called out to me.

I ran inside and sat down in the corner of wonders. As always, she offered me the can with that syrup full of life, dreams and hopes.

I remember the courtyard of the house. Behind the kitchen there was a little wooden room without a roof. The door was a flour sack that hung like a curtain. There we bathed with a bucket and a can. At the end, to the right, was the latrine. It had a wooden floor and a hole in the middle that connected to an almost six—foot hole. The curtain was a jute sack. From the outside you could see nothing and from the inside you could see the whole yard.

In that place you had to use all your senses, or you could lose a shoe. You had to level the gap between your feet, pulled your shorts down to your knees and bent over. I never worried about aiming, I always had diarrhea and had the whole frame well sprayed.

When my uncle was home, I would always hear him yelling.

—Mom...!!!! Clean the toilet! Yoyi has left his footprints there.

I was the reason why my uncle invented a little wooden box, to give comfort to my tummy ache. Next to it he had made a huge cage and had it lined it up to the ceiling with a metallic mesh. Cardenal, the black dog, was kept there.

One day I asked him about the origin of the dog’s name. He answered me that in a radio soap opera that he and my grandfather listened to at one o’clock in the afternoon every day, Cardenal was the most unscrupulous son of a bitch of all the characters, and when they listened to Cardenal on the radio, my grandfather always made faces and that caught my uncle’s attention.

—I want to get to the dog fights and see on everyone’s face that expression of my father’s, it gives me a pleasant smile!

In the mornings, the boys would throw stones at the dog on their way to school, and when they returned in the afternoon, they would do mean things to the poor thing. My grandmother would come out shouting bad words and the children would run in terror. On the other corner there was a chicken coop with a few hens. In front of the house was Fifth Street, a dirt road. There was a fruit tree, but I don’t remember the type of plant. All the boys in the village liked its fruits, always at any time of the day there was someone throwing stones at the tree and almost all of them would fall on the roof of the house.

My grandfather and uncle never minded that, but my grandma was different; it amused her. She had a sack. No, I think it was a bottomless drawer full of surprises and curiosities. She had under her bed a chamber pot, probably about her age, now almost unglazed. She would put it two feet in front of her. She would lift up her skirt and the jet would fall into it. What an aim. In the afternoons, when the boys came out of school, they would go straight to the fruit tree, and some dared to climb on it.

Among all the creatures on Earth, we are the only ones who fall into the same trap three or even four times. Perhaps the fool is right and with the last stone he knocks down the fruit. At that moment she would come out with the chamber pot in her hand to throw it at him. That rain of urine from two and three days would fall on those who did not have time to run, and suddenly there would be shouting in the neighborhood. All the elderly people at that hour were of the day would be sitting in their rockers pretending to enjoy the breeze, but that was not why they were there. Antonia’s witticisms were the only spectacle they had enjoyed all their lives. And their daughters, who were also housewives, ran to the doorway and laughed at the grimaces, gestures, and curses shouted by the boys.

And what about me. I always had reasons not to get out from under the bed. Whenever I would hear the stones falling on the roof, I would look out the window and there would always be a boy in the group who had taken my snack at school and fear made me run to the same place. My grandmother would pull me out from under the bed, throw me on top of the bed and rub my chest until the burning made me open my eyes. Then she would lay me on my stomach and run her hands up and down my neck and back until the trembling would go away. She would turn me over, look me in the eyes for a moment, then hug me, pressing her toothless mouth to my forehead, giving me kisses, murmuring sentences I didn’t understand and laying me down on the bed. The energy would come back to me drop by drop until it filled my heart, and after a while I would jump out of bed to go play in the street.

One day when she ran her hand over my belly for an hour it gave me tremendous energy and I went for a walk in the neighborhood. In a neighboring yard some children were playing marbles. One of them ran towards me and shoved me to the ground.

—Get out of here, the boy shouted.

—Let him go, he’s Tinito’s brother, said another boy.

—It doesn’t matter, get lost kid, replied the one who had pushed me.

—When Tinito comes, let him introduce him.

I arrived at the house and asked my uncle about my brother Tinito.

—He’s studying at the Isle of Pines, he answered, He’ll be here at vacation time.

He was taller than me, with almond green eyes; his hair was a bird’s nest made of straw from different trees and his color was a dilemma between yellow and dark brown. He was skinny and full of muscles. Within a week of being in the neighborhood he was already the leader of a gang and they nicknamed it Los Palitos. They would go to another neighborhood to play marbles and he would bet everything they had. If they won, they took everything, and if they lost someone in the gang would shout mayhem and those outside the game would run and pick up all the marbles inside the circle. The rest of the players would fight with those who were trying to avoid the robbery; then, at a signal, everyone would run to the neighborhood and Tinito would distribute the marbles among them all. That was a lot of fun.

One afternoon, my brother gave me 20 marbles. In front of the Monduis’ house there was a group of children playing. I asked if I could play.

—Yes, answered one of them.

There were four of them and they bet five marbles each. I won a game.

Then six children and I bet 20 marbles each. The circle was huge; suddenly they shouted mayhem and took all the marbles from me; I ran into the house and sat down on the kitchen bench near my grandmother. After a while I realized that something was changing inside me. It was the first time that fear made me run without me getting under the bed. After a while, my brother arrived.

—What’s the matter with you?

I told him what had happened, and he ran out... and soon he was back with 50 marbles.

The next morning, in the kitchen, he said to me,

—Come on, you’re going out with me for a few days, let’s see if you’ll let go of all those bird feathers.

There were six of us, all carrying slings. My brother was very good at launching stones with those, he had killed six birds by himself. We walked through the savannah for three hours and arrived at a pine forest at the junction to Las Canas Beach. There we peeled the birds and roasted them. After the feast, we left walking towards the village. Half a kilometer before we arrived there was a lagoon. Everyone called it El Júcarar.

They took off their shorts and jumped into the water. My brother came out, approached me, and said:

—Take off your shorts and jump into the water.

I looked at my brother and asked him if he was really my brother.

— Why do you ask, asshole?

—I can hardly pee and look at the cucumber between your legs.

He slapped me over the head with his open hand and then threw me into the water. Walking towards town he told me that I was very young and that when I started to develop, I would also grow that much. What a consolation, of all the lies I had been told, that was the one that gave me the most joy.

One afternoon, when I was feeling well, I went out into the street. There was a group of boys playing stickball and seeing my brother gave me confidence and I approached them. Suddenly one of those boys who used to take my snacks at school came up to me and said,

—Give me those marbles.

I pretended not to notice him, but he grabbed my hand and we started to struggle. I stumbled and fell to the floor. My brother came running and another boy his size told him:

—Tinito, don’t get involved, it’s kid stuff.

—That’s my brother, he answered.

—And that’s mine, answered the other boy.

—Fight boy! my brother shouted at me.

And he went at the boy. They threw some punches, but my brother knocked him out fast. He came up to me and shouted again:

—"Fight man!

I stood up and didn’t look at him.

—Hit him! he said to the other boy.

He gave me a shove and I fell to the floor.

—Fight, dammit!

I started to cry. He grabbed me by the hand and dragged me into the house. He took me to the kitchen and told my grandmother.

—Take care of this little shit! Don’t leave him alone in the chicken coop, he’s capable of laying some eggs. And he left.

Grandma turned around and stared at me. Something spun me around: the static of her nearness brushed my skin and made my hair stand on end. Her eyes were empty and there, in the distance, on the border between patience and helplessness, she stood in a white dress, but her jaw was pointed. My slackness and trembling began when I saw on her head a black cap with a high peak. I closed my eyes and when I opened them, there was my granny with an aluminum dish in her hand full of corn polenta sprinkled with brown sugar.

—Go on, feed yourself.

In the afternoon, my Uncle Tony came over....

—Grab that bag, let’s go to the store to run some errands.

I followed him. At my side was Patricio, the yellow dog that went with him everywhere: his best friend. When my grandmother would send for him, she would tell people:

—Wherever you see Patricio lying down, knock on the door, that son of a gun will be inside.

The grocery store was full of people, we ordered last in line and sat in the corner of the doorway. In the house across the street a dog was barking behind a wooden fence. Sitting in armchairs, two men were talking. One got up, went to the fence, and opened the gate. The dog came out like an arrow towards Patricio; they collided, and the fight started. My uncle jumped like another dog to separate them. The two men came running laughing at my uncle.

—Now there are three dogs fighting! an old woman shouted with laughter.

My uncle got up and ran to the fence. He pulled out a stick and wrestled the dog. One of the men got between the dogs and my uncle while the other grabbed his dog and walked home.

—You sons of bitches, my uncle yelled at them.

—It was a dog fight, Tony, don’t make a scene of it, said a guy who was standing in the street.

And the one who was carrying away the dog shouted at him:

—Tony, I apologize, the dog ran away from me. It was just meant as a scare.

A group of people calmed him down. Patricio was on the floor bleeding, and I tried to carry him, but I couldn’t, so my uncle put him on my shoulder, and we went back home. My grandmother brought a can with water and a rag, she rubbed it all over the dog’s body and after a while, the four—legged creature got up as if nothing had happened.

My uncle entered the cage with a chain, put the leash on the dog Cardenal and my grandmother began to shout. Then he came out of the cage; granny and many others followed behind my uncle. It looked like a funeral. When we arrived at the store there were already more than a hundred people behind us.

He stood in front of the house and the two men stood up.

—You screwed up my champ dog. Now you release the dog, the bitch, the pups and you two too, or I’ll release mine right now.

You could hardly hear anything over the shouting of the people. My grandmother had me hanging on to her right hand. We were behind my uncle.

I don’t know who they were more afraid of, the dog or my grandmother. They agreed on the fight: it would take place at dawn the next day at the baseball stadium.

My uncle had him on a short leash and my grandmother held me by the hand. The stadium was full, the brother at first base with a big beautiful German Shepherd dog. At second base, the other brother with another dog just like it. First, they would release the second baseman and a minute later the first baseman. The fight was to the death and no owner could interfere. My uncle would talk to Cardenal bent over the pad at homeplate.

They released the dogs, they collided in the pitcher’s mound and the German Shepherd was biting our dog in the back behind the neck. Cardenal’s right leg was being held close to his chest. When they shook hard, the German Shepherd let go and Cardenal shook him off. My uncle shouted at him and Cardenal let go and the rival dog tried to get up but went down sideways. The other dog had been coming on like a cannonball when they collided. The German Shepherd bit Cardenal in the ribs. Cardenal had him at the end of his belly; when he shook him, he tore off his balls and a piece of belly. The wolfdog turned to the neck and the two bit head—on. Cardenal dug his fangs behind his eye as he shook and turned. In response, Cardenal received a bite from behind. Cardenal let go of the one he was holding, spun and grabbed the biting dog’s leg. Shaking snapped the bone, he let go and grabbed near the neck. The other dog was on the ground curled up. His owner was at his side.

—Tony, my dog can’t stand up. His paws are broken. You won!

The two of them stared at each other for a while and each went out to pick up his dog.

In the house, my uncle tied Cardenal up near the kitchen. My grandmother came out with the can of water and, as she approached, Cardenal wanted to show his teeth. My grandmother yelled at him. The dog lowered his head and curled up. She threw the wet rag over his head and crouched down beside him; she rubbed the rag all over his body. I, sitting in the drawer, watched as that black panther, in my grandmother’s hands, was transformed into a tame kitten.

Someone ran into the house.

—Antonia, please take care of my son, he is dying! shouted a lady.

—Stop the shouting, get everyone out of the house and put him there on the cot, she replied.

The boy could not be left alone, someone was holding him down on the cot. My grandmother changed the water in the can, rinsed the rag and went out there. She put her left hand on the boy’s chest and put pressure on it. She began to run her other hand all over his body.

—The child has something wrong with him. Put him on his stomach and hold him tight.

—Somebody get some oil.

She grabbed his right leg, put it between her knees and started rubbing him from behind the knee to the heel. The boy screamed in pain. While two men grabbed him, my grandmother massaged his little muscles and stretched his skin mercilessly. The boy gradually lost his strength. An hour later, no one was holding him. She put a cloth under his head as a pillow and settled him down. She ran her hands all over his body again.

—He is okay now, everyone leave the room and go home.

She went to the kitchen, made coffee, and offered it to the boy’s mother.

—Make yourself comfortable, when he wakes up you can take him with you. Half an hour later the boy was standing in the dining room. The mother jumped up, hugged him, kissed him, and asked him how he was feeling.

—Fine, he answered, looking around.

—Where are we, mommy?

—At Antonia’s house, my son.

—The old witch, let’s get out of here, mommy, he said, scared.

—That’s enough. Stand him up and go. Get out of here, I have to cook.

The lady began to thank my grandmother.

—May God bless you, and may God repay you.

—If in a few days you still remember the favor, bring me some sweet potatoes.

The lady took the boy by the hand, and they walked away as if nothing had happened.

A few days later, a woman came to talk to my grandmother, and she took me by the hand. We followed her for about three blocks. We arrived at a white house where a group of people were talking in the shade of the doorway. We entered a room where there were a few frightened women talking loudly. On the bed a young woman with very pretty features had a swollen belly. My grandmother pointed to the corner and told me to sit down.

—Bring clean rags and a basin of water. You and you are going to help me; the rest of you go outside.

She approached the girl.

—Try to relax, lie down here and put your ass as close as possible to the edge of the bed.

The woman did as she asked.

—A little more, it’s fine there. Put pillows on her back. You sit down and raise your head, she told the pregnant woman as she spread her legs.

She wiped her with a wet cloth in that private place that the woman cared for so much. She put her left hand on her belly.

—Let the boy get comfortable.

She massaged her a little, she made her comfortable and then she put her right hand between her legs and there began God’s great task.

My granny’s hands filled with a gelatinous liquid.

—Take a deep breath and push.

She put the four fingers of her left hand in there and, conversely, she put the four fingers of her right hand and began to rub. Thus, with her back turned and bent over, she looked like an artist shaping clay to create a masterpiece.

—Here comes a male, push, push!

—Antonia, if you can only see the little head, how do you know it’s a male? asked one of the women.

—Look, look, they are perverse from birth, he hasn’t even come out yet and he is already wanting to kiss your ass, said grandma.

I stood up and looked.... he had his head looking down and his little nose was lying on his mother’s ass. As he pulled his shoulders out, he slipped out. My granny caught him in mid—air, laid him down on his mother, pulled out the umbilical cord, took out a cigar knife and cut it off. As if by magic, she tied a knot close to his belly. With her left hand she grabbed him by both ankles and lifted him up like a chicken. I thought she was going to grab his neck and stretch him out, but she didn’t. She laid him on his back on her right hand and tapped him with her fingers. The boy began to scream.

—Wrap him in a cloth, she said to a lady.

—Don’t move, she said to the mother, putting her hand on her belly.

—Let’s take care of the other one.

—Twins? —shouted a lady who was leaning out the door of the room.

—He’s coming. Push, push, another male.

She handed him to a lady and returned to that place. From the door someone shouted:

—One more!

My grandmother paid no attention.

—Push, push!

I couldn’t see what she took out, but she wrapped him in a cloth.

—You’ll be all right in a few days, she told the woman who had been in labor.

She washed her hands in the basin, grabbed my hand and we left.

—What was all that looking around for! she shouted at me on the way home.

Her gray hair was curled in a bun. Her face was well wrinkled, her toothless mouth was sinking inward, pronouncing her nose. She poured on me great tenderness and love. I won’t say how I perceived her jaw. What I was looking for in her were those angels of God who give life, why I looked at her and looked at her and I tell you, my grandmother was nothing like a stork, but she had left in that house two little live angels.

One afternoon she was eating a plate of flour for lunch when a little boy came running in.

—Antonia, Antonia, Tinito is fighting with a group of boys down by the lagoon.

—Where? —she asked.

—By lagoon behind the corrals.

She had a ribbon tied in her hair, she untied it and threw it on the ground, twisted her hair and tied a couple of knots in it. She took off the apron she always wore, went out to the yard, went to the cage, and put the leash on Cardenal. She reached for the end of the chain and wrapped it around her waist, secured the dog with her right hand, gave me a yell. I came, and she grabbed me with her left hand. We walked past the toilet. Behind it was a big yard where my grandfather wove ropes. Under a tree they had a domino table. At any time of the day there were two couples playing and a couple waiting in the shade of the tree. Every hour they would change the table’s position like a sundial, going around the tree every day.

—Where are you going with that dog? my grandfather shouted at her. She didn’t answer.

—Antonio, that dog is going to kill your old lady, someone said.

The neighbor who lived in the back laughed.

—Don’t worry, gentlemen, that’s Antonia; it’s the dog and the boy who are shitting on themselves.

They all laughed. When we turned into an alley there was a group of boys playing marbles. When they saw the dog, they ran off in all directions; two boys didn’t see the peerless fence, bouncing off it. We came to a red dirt road and the people, seeing Cardenal, went into their houses, closing doors and windows.

We were walking through a garbage dump when the canine heard the shouting of the boys fighting. It lunged forward and snatched the chain from my grandmother’s hand. She grabbed the part still hanging by her waist, stood up and spread her legs. She squeezed my wrist hard. The tightening of the chain lifted her in the air, and I felt myself fly. We both fell belly-first into the garbage, and it dragged us for half a block. On a high hill of garbage, my grandmother was able to stand up and with one pull I fell to my knees, with another I landed on my feet. She caught her breath and shouted:

—Cardenal!

The dog slowed down. About a block away, a boy on a dirt road shouted:

—Here comes Antonia with the dog! and a stampede ensued. When we got to the slope, my brother was sitting down, with his face smashed and gushing blood. There was a boy on the top of a tree; the others were at the end of the lagoon, floating and holding on to pond weeds. My brother grabbed the sling, aimed, and let go; a stone hit one of them in the shoulder. He began to scream, and the others sank under the pond weed.

—That’s enough, stop it, go home! my grandmother shouted, and my brother hightailed it home. When she arrived, she patched us up. I had wounds on my belly, on my knees, and on my left hand.

My brother was all screwed up. He had lost the four front teeth under the nose. His right eye looked like the gizzard of an upside-down chicken. His lips looked like the lips of a horse and the right side of his face looked like a marinated steak. His body was worse off than Patricio’s, no doubt about it. Grandma pulled up a stool next to the cot where we were sitting. She went to the kitchen and brought the can with water and the usual rag. She scrubbed him for an hour, just like she had done with the black dog.

Tinito never complained about the scrubbing they gave him. I saw my grandmother’s face relax, cheerful and happy, her eyes sparkled like coal when it is on the stove, and they pour air into it with a cardboard. Of all her children and grandchildren, he was her favorite.

—You don’t have a broken bone. In a week you’ll be hunting again, she told Tinito.

She got up to leave and I saw that she had no skin on her right elbow, bone and flesh showing. That gave me a pain in the chest, and I went to the room to cry. This foolish old woman had opened a furrow of earth all over the garbage yard like a plow behind a yoke of oxen, but she never let go of me or the dog either. I saw her go into the room, she stuck her fingers between the cracks of two boards and pulled out a small rusty tin can, uncovered it, and smeared some ointment on her elbow bones without grimacing.

A week later I was sitting in the dining room drinking fish broth with boiled sweet potato. On the other side of the table my brother told me to get ready.

—This afternoon we are going to Tino’s house.

—Who is Tino? —I asked.

—Your father, stupid; our father, he answered.

He lived at number 40 Calle Real, in a hut made of wood and palm fronds.

—Papi, my brother called.

A giant mulatto, a little more than six feet tall, came out shirtless. He looked like the model on those bronze statues you find in the parks on horseback with a machete in his hand.

—Papi, this is my brother, your youngest son.

He bent down and grabbed me by the arms close to my shoulders. He lifted me effortlessly off the floor and stopped me at his height. His magnetic flashlight eyes penetrated me with that look the gods give you when they deign to look down and there, on the shore, they find a crab. They don’t care what kind of critter you are; they just scrutinize you to see if you are male or female. He deposited me on the ground, jumped off the stoop and crouched down to my eye level. He brought his face close to mine. They were not flashlights. Truly his eyes were the color of those three stripes that my flag bears: blue, like the sky of my land. His lips were thin, his nose was not riveted like those of the other neighborhood blacks and his jaw was one of those that tough guys have. I was impressed. It was the first time I had ever encountered a fine black man such as this. He noticed I was studying him and smiled showing one of those teeth you only see in Colgate ads.

He invited us in, we went through his little house where at the end of the backyard, under a tree, he was frying fish. He took one, removed the backbone and put it on a plate.

—You’re going to like this little fish. Be careful with the bones in the belly, he said as he handed it to me.

He and Tinito started talking about fishing. He was wearing knee—length shorts and, like me, he was barefoot.

One afternoon in May it was pouring rain and the children were playing in the street. I couldn’t resist and ran out of the kitchen. I ran across the living room and grandma started screaming.

—Don’t get wet, you’ll catch a cold. I stopped at the doorway. There was grandpa sitting on a stool and we stared at each other. He lifted his shoulders.

—What on earth does the ass have to do with the drizzle? he asked.

I walked on. It was fun to run in the rain. When grandma reached the doorway, she gave me a shout. She was something else. I shot past her like an arrow. She tried to slap me, but I dodged and didn’t stop until I got to the kitchen. I saw her enter the room and I got scared. When I came out, she didn’t have her belt on her hand anymore.

A rag is what she was holding. She dried me and moved the box closer to the stove.

—She said, Act crazy and run away again. I’m going to show you the banana siju bird, you’re going to see it through the mouth of a gourd, like the country people say. You sit there.

She gave me an aluminum plate with some polenta and a fried egg.

As evening fell, she grabbed my hand and went out into the courtyard; with the other hand she lifted up her skirt, spread her legs and began to pee. She looked up at the sky full of black clouds. I leaned forward to see where the stream was coming from. What a surprise! My grandmother had more beard there than the comandante. I looked at her face and her eyes were fixed on the horizon. She was talking to the clouds. I looked where she was looking and saw a tail coming out of the clouds which had touched the ground, something ugly that I had never seen before. My grandmother let go of me and raised her hand to the sky. She made the sign of the cross. I looked back at that horrible thing and saw it split down the middle. The one at the bottom fell apart and the one at the top went gathering up into the clouds. When I saw what it had done, I felt a punch in my stomach and fear came over me.

Something was glistening behind her old clothes. She noticed me and pulled me towards her. My forehead bumped against her flat belly a little above the crotch. She squeezed me with both her hands. For an instant my pain and all my fears magically disappeared; she turned, and we entered the house straight into the kitchen.

I stood in the doorway and decided to go to my room. I threw myself on my cot and my knees started shaking. I jumped up and ran to the kitchen. Sitting there on the stool I was fiercer than the dog Cardenal. Yes, my little sister was the aspirin for all my ills.

What would grandma be? An aspirin too?

In her kingdom time did not exist and everything was in its place. When the water was boiling in the pot and half of the coals were going out, she would simply blow on them with a cardboard. If the cat jumped into the sink and got a fish, she would throw a can at it. If the rice got burned, my grandfather said it was the best burnt rice in town. If we spent three days eating lunch and polenta, my grandfather would just say, Autumn will come.

The mice that ran around the roof beams at all hours did not bother her at all. A big mouse looking at me from the corner shouted: Hey asshole, don’t even think about it, I don’t care about that cat. How obnoxious of him. I looked at the cat lying on the floor beside the door, he winked at me and said, —When your grandmother turns off the lantern, I’ll deal with him.

The spiders had created a large walled city in a corner of the roof above the walls looking down on me. The ants had their own roads. The mosquitoes watched from outside and dared not enter. The flies crossed between the sink window and the dining room door in a hurry. Patricio came in and peeked through the door, circled a couple of times, and laid down; he was the keeper of the place.

Suddenly, sitting on that bench, I felt guilty even though nobody had accused me of anything.

—Don’t be afraid, someone said from under the little table. It was Conscience leaning on a bag of sugar.

—I am not afraid, what I feel is pity, replied Shame.

—Are they talking about me? I said, entering the conversation.

—Yes, it’s about you, but not with you.

—Relax, I’ll take care of this, said my Spirit.

—What is it you guys are gossiping about; Fear? Grief? speak up. If you came looking for trouble, I’ll give you plenty.

The two little ghosts burst out laughing.

—There on the wall there is an aluminum pot, it shines quite brightly. Stand in front of it and tell us what you see, said Consciousness.

—Get to the point, answered my Spirit, stepping forward.

—You are decisive and have a good attitude, something to admire, but realize something: you are a mist in the wind, but you are not part of it, therefore, you do not exist. You are the breath of a body and right now you are outside of it. So, if you don’t want to look at your reflection in the pot, with the same courage stand in front of that rickety child in front of you and look at him, Consciousness told me.

Looking at all this I began to tremble. My Spirit did not answer, it entered and embraced my soul. I felt inside me a little warmth and some peace. At that moment Consciousness shouted again.

—I come from there, from the paradise where God dwells and I tell you, it is the same as this Communist system! It is all a long waiting list; there, there are long queues and when it is your turn they give you whatever they have on hand and they tell you in your face: this is what is available for you. So, go on, get out of here.

—Hey, hey, said Shame, did you hear what Conscience just said? Without hesitation I tell you, do what you can with that scrawny child. That’s what you are dealing with.

A dish from the sink looked at me seriously.

—Child, don’t be afraid, in your grandmother’s kitchen justice dwells, everyone there has told you the truth, it said.

The agony I felt from the pressure of my grandmother’s hands on my chest brought me out of that nightmare.

—I don’t know what will become of you so weak and with these attacks, she told me between tears, which ran horizontally from her eyes to her ears, between the furrows that time sows on the skin of those people who only believe in good, who offer their good deeds and never had the chance to know the vanities of this world.

In the afternoon my brother showed up with a bag of guavas.

—My little brother, I hope they’ll do you good: if they could plug your ass for a few days, we’d go hunting; you’d help me pick up some beef shanks; we’d swim in the river. Maybe the sun and the country air would do you good.

—A man named Villaverde, when he got out of the hospital, said that when your stomach alies, no amount of guavas can help, my grandpa said.

—"Then, tell grandmother to come up with a remedy for my little brother. I have seen her revive pigeons that I have brought back dead. All those animals that are brought to her in a wheelbarrow walk away. Every time someone is dying here in town, grandma passes her hand over them, then she prepares a remedy and the next day the person is running around the streets.

—He was born like that, take him to a doctor, said my grandfather.

—He’s been to one many times and he always comes back worse, Tinito reminded him.

—Your grandmother and I lived on Cape San Antonio. We married young. In 1944 she came to live in this town. I made this thatch-roofed hut. She has maintained it all these years. We never learned to read or write. At the end of the 1960s I went to the mountains to make charcoal. With that money I bought this radio. With it I listen to the Nighttime show and some novels. Your grandmother never liked that noisemaking machine. I’ve heard that there are electrical devices where you can see people inside. I hope that you, who go to school and can understand books, when you grow up and start working, you’ll buy one.

—TV, grandfather, said Tinito. —Two blocks from here there’s a neighbor who has one.

—"Boy, the world is changing… I’ve heard it said that with a shot in the ass they can take away the infection in your throat; can you believe that? your grandparents’ world is coming to an end and yours is just beginning. So, squeeze those books