My mama took her old furniture to replace the pieces in Monterrey, which were of inferior quality and of much less sentimental value. She took a chest of winter clothes and another one of summer clothes. She took her Singer and all her fabric and threads. She packed the few family photographs we had. They were few, perhaps, because it was a very expensive service back then, but it might also have been because they had thought there would be time to take more. From the kitchen they took my grandmother’s copper pot and her big wooden spoons. Nothing else.
They packed very little for me: some clothes and a few toys. I didn’t have much, and in the little chest that they assigned to me, there was still some space: space enough for my .22 rifle, the only reminder of my papa that was mine, very much mine. But it was a space that was impossible to fill, so, leaving it empty, we closed the chest.
We said goodbye to all of La Amistad’s workers, and there were some tears. Most of all I would miss Leonor and Mati, who until then I had thought of as part of the Morales Cortés family, such that it was inconceivable to me that they wouldn’t want to come with us. Nana Pola, on the other hand, cried with sadness because she was leaving, because she would leave behind everything she knew, but I suppose it would’ve hurt more had we left her, and that drove her to follow us.
She would live with us for the rest of her life. She would know my children and, entirely by touch, my grandchildren, because, Francisco, she would say to me when she was old, these eyes of mine can’t see anymore.
She had worn them out seeing me grow up.
Two years after we moved, when I was nine years old, the nostalgic adventurer that Nana Pola was, she discovered that, among the performances in the pavilions of Monterrey, Marilú Treviño and Soledad Betancourt would appear on the same day.
“Want to come with me, Francisco?”
I gladly accepted. I had grown up with their stories and their songs, with their voices in my ears, and it had been a long time since I had seen them last in Linares.
My mama gave us money, and we went on the bus. When we arrived, we bought tickets valid for the whole show, though Nana Pola warned me that we would have to return home by eight.
“Why?”
“Because it’s when the good-for-nothings come out.”
Those good-for-nothings sounded interesting to me, but I’d learned not to insist when it was obvious the battle was lost before it had begun. Nana Pola had declared, with an authority that seemed to emanate from the Ten Commandments, that we wouldn’t see the good-for-nothings, and that was that. Intelligent boy that I was, I recognized that all I would achieve by being foolish was Nana Pola saying to me, Well, in that case, we’ll just go now, without seeing anything.
Thinking that the time would go too quickly, but resigned to the limit imposed, I followed her to our seats on a bench.
First Marilú Treviño would appear in the marquee, and then, after the jugglers and the magician, Soledad. I only managed to see Marilú. We even had to leave before she finished her evening repertoire, compelled by the people around us.
“Señora, take that screaming boy away—we can’t hear a thing.”
Compelled or not, I was relieved to go, to escape the notes of those songs, the depth and lightness of that familiar, gifted voice. I refused to explain or to wait for Soledad Betancourt to take her turn.
“I want to go home now, Nana.”
Now I realize how disappointed my nana Pola must’ve felt to miss the rest of the show and how much she must’ve regretted not inviting the neighbors’ nana, the only friend she had made so far in Monterrey.
“The jugglers are next, Francisco. Then there’s the magician,” she persisted, trying to persuade me, with those vaudeville acts, to stop crying.
But I, who hadn’t even cried when I woke from my concussion with a broken rib, did not want to stop. And not only that, but the more she asked me not to cry, the more I clung to my sobbing and even enjoyed it. I was convinced that I had every right to throw my tantrum. I, who when I woke from my coma, still concussed, confused by my state and by the abruptness of my papa’s departure to heaven—an innocent who didn’t understand that to go to heaven, one first had to die—barely reacted, barely cried when my mama told me.
“Francisco, your papa’s gone to heaven, and he’ll watch over you from there.”
“Why?”
I realized it was a question that was hard to answer.
“Because God called him.”
“But he didn’t say goodbye to me, and I lost the .22 he gave me.”
“He did say goodbye. You don’t remember because of the bump, but he did say goodbye, because he loves you very much. And don’t worry about the rifle anymore.”
And that was that. The explanation had been given, and I devoted myself to getting better so I could go back to being the restless boy I was before.
Hence my nana’s confusion: Why was I crying, then? What had made me cry? I didn’t answer any of her questions or any that my mama asked me when we arrived home. I went to bed and didn’t come out for dinner.
Do you know what? Two years before, on the Saturday when we moved, I had gotten up with more energy than ever, ready to live near my sisters and nieces and nephews, excited to find a good school in Monterrey, but even more excited to go there with Simonopio for the first time.
For days I had been talking to him about what we would do in Monterrey: we’d go to the Monterrey Pool to swim, for starters. It was summer, so it would be tolerable to dip our bodies in that water that came from the Santa Lucía Spring and that they dammed for the delight of the city’s inhabitants before letting it continue its natural course toward the Santa Catarina River. It was very close to our house, so we could walk there whenever we wanted. We would take my nieces and nephews, who were afraid of going in because they imagined that, because of the spring, a great underground viper would appear from the water to devour them. For years I had been assuring them that Simonopio would protect us from a thousand and one vipers, no matter how big they were, and this was my chance to prove it.
“You’ll take care of us, won’t you, Simonopio?”
I never waited for an answer, because, believing that I knew it, I considered it said—and I was also in too much of a rush to continue planning our new life to stop and wait. And it was from talking so much that I didn’t notice that Simonopio wasn’t contributing so much as a yes or a no to the conversation.
That it was a monologue and not a dialogue.
Then the Saturday morning of our departure arrived. We had to get in the car that would take us to the railway station. And Simonopio didn’t show up. And my mama said to me, Come on, Francisco. And I said to her, No, not without Simonopio. And Simonopio was nowhere to be seen. And neither was Nana Reja. And the rocking chair had disappeared with them. And in Simonopio’s shed, there was nothing left of him or his bees. And even the little mountain of crystallized honey that had formed in one corner over the years had disappeared.
Then I realized. And then I accepted it: Simonopio had gone and taken everything. Everything, except me.
I went back to the car, and we left that place forever. I would’ve liked to have told you that I left calmly and obediently, that I didn’t say anything during the entire journey, because boys are brave and they don’t cry. The truth, because I’m too old to hide things now, is that Martín had to run after me. I didn’t get very far down Reja’s road, because I was blinded by tears and short of breath due to the continuous scream that could not manage to transmute into the two words that whirled around in my head.