It had not until then crossed my mind that my baby might have some cognitive defect. I was worried only about a physical defect, like a sixth finger on one hand or something like that, so all my mama’s comment did was put ideas into my already confused head. But it wasn’t there, or then, that I asked her to explain this business of my alleged mental incapacity. I would do that later, when I was certain and had the peace of mind of knowing that my son’s body had nothing missing and nothing that wasn’t meant to be there, and that he reacted in the way the doctor had told me that any normal newborn should.
My mama was also told by Dr. Cantú that her son was normal. That despite her having a premature baby late in life, he was not backward. That while it was precocious and inconvenient—for his caregivers—that a ten-month-old boy should run all over the place, it was common for a child his age to neither perceive nor understand dangers or warnings, and that, consequently, he would constantly encounter problems and live with bumps on his forehead. Later on, when some ability to communicate was expected of me at the age of two or three, the doctor assured her that it was not unexpected that I did not talk because, as everyone knows, boys take longer to learn.
“But, Doctor, it’s not that he doesn’t want to speak—the boy’s a chatterbox—it’s just that nobody understands a word he says!”
In fact, my mama used to say that they couldn’t shut me up. That I was so argumentative and so verbose that my papa swore that I’d be a lawyer when I grew up—which she doubted, because if she and the nanas couldn’t understand anything I said, a judge certainly wouldn’t.
What was happening was that I spoke my fraternal language, which no one but Simonopio and I knew. Simonopio had been silent for so long that everyone had forgotten that he wasn’t mute. And he wasn’t. He never was: all those years before I was born, he had kept himself company with his stories and his songs, telling them and singing them to himself in the privacy of the hills. They were the same stories and the same songs that had been sung and told to him in Spanish, but from his incomplete mouth, they came out in his own way, a way I learned at the same time as my maternal language, from the crib.
Because he was never silent with me.
Why did my fraternal language carry more weight than my maternal one at the beginning? I don’t know, but I suspect it might’ve been because what Simonopio said to me, in my ear and in private, was always more exciting than what my mama or my nanas said to me. It’s always more appealing to hear about big adventures than it is to be constantly reminded that it’s time to take a bath, to go to sleep, to brush your teeth, or to wash your ears: stupid things for an active boy like I was.
All of this is pure speculation on my part. I don’t remember deciding one day that I’d speak “Simonopio” and not Spanish. What I do remember is that I couldn’t comprehend why no one knew what I was trying to say, even though I understood everything they said to me.
I was just a little kid, you see.
When I reached the age of three and beyond, still refusing to utter a single word that wasn’t what my mama called “chatter,” even my papa began to worry. It wasn’t until someone found me deep in conversation with Simonopio that they realized or remembered that he had tried to speak when he was younger but had simply not been understood, and that now, under his influence, I was imitating his defect.
My mama admitted to me, once I was a father, that they had asked Simonopio to keep away from me until I learned to speak properly. And he had tried to comply, but I wouldn’t let him. I followed him everywhere and demanded his attention. This I do remember: the empty feeling in the days—or was it months or hours?—when I believed, without comprehending, that Simonopio was mad at me, because he wasn’t waiting for me when I got up in the mornings like he always did, and didn’t pick me up right away when I approached expectantly with my arms outstretched.
As I said before, since I was very restless even as a baby, and wouldn’t let anyone finish their chores, I was passed from person to person until I ended up with Simonopio, who was by then waiting impatiently to rock me to sleep—and later on, when I was a little older, to carry me out into the country while he sang his stories.
He was the interesting part of my life.
With him, I learned to climb trees and to distinguish animal and insect tracks; to throw stones into streams while I dangled my feet into the cool water from the bank; to cling to his back like a monkey while we crossed a stream on foot or swam across a river; to hide, without making any noise or moving, under a bush or behind a rock, the moment he told me to do so; to watch very carefully where I placed my feet on the hill paths near the house so as not to make noise or trip; to avoid the poison ivy, though I didn’t always succeed; to aim the slingshot that he made for me, though I didn’t yet have the strength to pull back the rubber band; to not use this on birds or rabbits, though I asked him what, in that case, it was for; to help transport some bees on my body without frightening them off with waving hands; to enjoy their honey and royal jelly even if sometimes it was for medicinal purposes, while we spent an afternoon at Nana Reja’s feet. With him, I learned to appreciate the music of the tambora bands, hidden from the eyes that made him feel so uncomfortable, sitting motionless in a corner of the third-class marquee at the Villaseca Fair, or—more carefully and stealthily because, according to Simonopio, in the second- or first-class marquees, the looks were darker—to listen to the marvelous Marilú Treviño sing “La enredadera,” which was his favorite, or “La tísica,” which became mine the first time I heard it, seduced by the image it evoked in me of the girl dying of consumption while a dog howled under her bed.
He taught me to keep quiet while he told me his stories, without asking anything or demanding to know the ending before it was time, because, Francisco, the ending only comes when it’s meant to come and not before, so sit quietly, or I’ll never be able to take you to listen to Soledad Betancourt’s stories when she comes to Villaseca. With this threat, I obeyed immediately. He also taught me to fall asleep while we looked up at the stars above the roof of his shed, when they allowed me, on warm days, to stay outside with him at nightfall; to tell the morning greeting of a bird apart from its call to a mate or its danger warning sent up into the air; to follow the bees with my eyes and to know whether they had just left or were now returning; to discern which tree would bear fruit first; to know, just by looking, whether the oranges were ready to be tasted, and to never pick them green to use wastefully as projectiles.
From one moment to the next, I lost all of this. We both lost it: Simonopio was left with his arms empty, and I at the mercy of the regimented activities they imposed on me at home. Perhaps he was prepared to make the sacrifice, convinced that it was for my own good, but, ignorant of the situation, which I would never at any rate have agreed to or cooperated in, I didn’t allow Simonopio to vanish from my life easily.
One day, when I was supposed to be napping, I went to look for him and found him under the pecan tree that marked the boundary between the grounds of the house and its gardens, in the company, as ever, of some bees perched lazily upon him. I remember throwing myself onto him with no warning or care, in an attempt, perhaps, to become just another bee that he transported on his body.