Consuela
By: white87wolf
Consuela always heard the insects first.
"Mama? Are you up?"
She lay there, staring out the window at the gently blowing trees in the blue-black darkness, allowing for what she thought must have been three repetitions of her daughter's request before she finally responded. "I'm here...what is it?"
"Can you tell me about before again?"
"No."
"Please?"
"No! Get your sleep, we need to gather in the morning."
A long pause. "...why haven't you ever told me what happened on the boat?"
"Because such things are not for little girls to remember. It's actually not even for me to remember, but I don't get to forget. Go to sleep."
"It's dark...I'm scared."
The mother gently resisted an annoyed sigh. Realising her utility in this particular manner, she stood up, the floorboards giving a gentle creak that all but made her jump on their own. She knew better than to jump though, and walked on the edges of her feet-silently this time-to her daughter's hammock. She lifted the woven palms along with the child without so much as a grunt from herself, but at the same time eliciting a small whine from her precious Guillermina. "Shhh..." she hushed as she deftly hopped and slipped herself into the bedding with only the tiniest whine from the supporting overhead beams. "Shhh...I've got you. Please rest now. Remember what I said...darkness is a friend."
The morning started with fruit and fruit was the morning. After fried plantains, there was berry picking in bushes, tree climbing to gather even more wild plantains, and buckets of water brought to storage at the base of the tree. Guillermina was tired but knew that the day was not close to being over. The day started when it did and finished likewise. Just when she thought the jungle couldn't get hotter, it was finally time for lunch. She sat with her mother and spooned out the little bits of fish from the cracked porcelain bowl, not the rarest treat for her, but a good one nonetheless. She loved fish.
"By the end of the day, we should have enough for a pretty good next few days, but that's only if we haven't been beaten to the mangoes by those monkeys again."
"You always say I'm a monkey!" the smiling child said giggling.
"I know. You're terrible at it. You don't like mangoes!" her mother said back, her natural smile toward her daughter being far more of a reward than even five whole fish.
"I didn't mean to make you angry last night"
"No, mija. I wasn't angry with you. I was angry with them."
"Who is 'them'?"
"You can't know, and if there is a God you won't, but that's who I'm angry at." They stared at each other for at least a full minute, Guillermina knowing this was one of the many times a day it was time to be quiet. "We can talk about it tonight if you still want."
"I will."
"I know that, little Guille." There wasn't a trace of a smile attached to this one.
There were more than enough mangoes to suffice, and Guille did her best to choke down the sweet watery curry with the bits of plantains left from the morning's breakfast. The meal was quiet, as they usually were, but this time there was also a tinge of anticipation in the air that could be cut with a machete. There was little hope in Guille's mind that she'd be hearing anything that she hadn't before, but there was precious little to teach a child in this jungle about her personal identity. And with no other children to compare herself against, each and every word her mother had brought from the East was precious beyond measure.
Thus, she'd learned to handle this process very delicately, after the initial interrogative, it might be hours, days, or even weeks to return a response. This often struck Guille as extremely unfair: that her mother should hoard their collective past for over a decade whilst commanding her minion to collect vegetables that just gave them enough strength to collect more vegetables the following day. It was often ridiculous, but time had taught young Guille that her mother was under a constant assault of deep and enigmatic pain. She understood, even from her perspective, that as unfair as it was for her mother to lock up the barest slivers of understanding she could in a chest, it was also unfair to ask her mother to slide a blade across her throat as she opened that chest a mere crack to let her child understand.
But Guillermina also knew that ignorance bore not strength.
Consuela pushed around the little pieces of banana that were left on her plate for about half an hour. She watched the every-so-slight fade of the flickering candlelight dance on her tin plate until the candle finally went out. The corners of her mouth turned up ever so slightly as the gentle shadowy figure of Guille moved past her, replaced the candle, and relit it. She frowned slightly, but spared her child the indignation of feeling at fault for now. She took a deep breath and finally spoke "put it out...I'll hold you while I tell you these things, but I need to do it with our friend."
"He doesn't feel like a friend."
"I know he doesn't feel like to you now. Part of me hopes he never will. Another part hopes you'd trust me, but then I'd feel like I'm just as bad as the thing that could hurt you in the light." Consuela had started saying this with a slight shake, and now she was starting a crescendo of gentle sobs. Guille wrapped her arms around her mother's neck and held gently and let this run its course. After another half an hour, the mother started to speak again, and at this point, Guille knew that she was actually ready to start.
"This time...I think I should try to tell you about..I guess you'd call it 'before the before.'"
"Before the before?"
"Yes."
"What's that mean?"
"It's what my mother remembered and I was born after"
"What was she like?"
"Not now, just listen if you're going to listen."
Guille promptly shut up.
"I've already told you there used to be lots and lots of people around. Not in huts like this either, but in buildings and sturdy houses. I also told you that there was a war that destroyed pretty much all of that and made gross anything that was left. You remember what war is?"
She nodded. The mother continued. "Before I was born, there was another big war, not as big but very big. I never learned all that much about it, but I know it started when some very powerful people got too powerful and wanted more. This war was kind of the first part of the bigger one actually...it's hard to describe. After it ended though, in a place far away from here, there were people that lived far to the north of me and people that lived far to the east of me, and their leaders didn't like each other very much. This is about the time I was born."
"When were you born?"
"...I don't remember exactly. By the time I was old enough to think about it, everything had started to go very bad and I'd gotten pregnant." she stroked her daughter's hair and let a long sigh "And I'm sorry but I don't remember your father at all...I was still very young, little more than a girl like you really." Guille drove her face into her mother's shoulder. She'd never bothered to ask, but here the answer was all the same. "Those two leaders broke a truce, and started a new war. They threw big bombs at each other that poisoned everyone. Before that part was over you couldn't really tell who was one what side anymore. It might have been that was the whole idea. I don't know."
Consuela looked down...even though it was dark, there was still a bright glimmer in Guille's little eyes. She thought about her mother and how she always got mad when she'd determined that Consuela wasn't listening. Some things don't get passed on.
"We lived in a place called San Jose. Not too far to the South of us was an important place called a canal. I don't really know what it was for other than to lets ships pass through, but it was very important to the ones to the North to get there before anyone else did. Soon there were people starting to come to San Jose. They weren't stopping though. They just kept going. They looked worse and worse the later they came. One day my father told us it was time to join them. I was scared and I didn't understand. I just knew we all had to go. We left at night. Papa didn't want the neighbours to know he'd decided to go then. It didn't matter though, they caught up with us the next day. I still remember them running past us and I saw the grey trails of smoke they were running away from. I remember how quiet it was. No animals, no music, just running and then quiet rests. Nobody had anything to say to each other, even the animals. Even through all of this, I never wanted to disturb papa with the news that I was carrying you as well as my little bag. I just wanted to help it be quiet like everyone else."
Consuela stood up, took two tin mugs and poured some of the rainwater in for both of them. She also pulled out a simple burlap-sack bag decorated with some beads and looked at it before tossing it to Guillermina, watching as the girl turned it around and around in wonder. She sat back down and gesturing her daughter to reattach to her.
"The next day, I started hearing the guns. They were constant and not like anything I'd heard before. I remember my mama waking up and messing herself as she heard the booms and saw the people running. I'd never seen her so scared. Then Papa came in and told us we had to run to the beach. I didn't understand, and I tried to ask him why the beach , and he just said there were boats there that could take us away. I asked him whether we were still going to tio's house further South. He didn't answer and just told me to move. So I did. I ran with everyone. Two more days of quiet while they got closer and closer. Abuela fell along the way, and I cried because Papa and Mama wouldn't go back. I still remember screaming and hitting Papa over and over again."
"Are you still mad?" Guille asked, her eyes glittering all the brighter.
"Yes, but...they were right anyway. We couldn't go back. Everything was getting closer. We didn't even take any of the cases we'd carried or our tent. We were just running."
"You told me you had me on the boat."
"That's true, I did. Those were the only other people who ever even knew you existed." The tears welled up again. Consuela shook, and her daughter held. The pattern continued for another half an hour before the mother settled again. "That night we came to the shore, and there was only the one boat left. I saw the second to last one pulling out. People clinging to it. Everybody was crying and screaming. It didn't take long at all for Mama and Papa to get lost in the crowd. I screamed for them. I couldn't find them. I was being swept away in a huge sweeping mob. People grabbed at me...pushed at me. There was shooting, yelling, people dying. It was the worst thing I'd ever seen. It was like when you kick an anthill and they just go everywhere. Nothing that was happening made any sense. I still don't remember how I ended up on that boat. Nobody was there who I knew and nobody came forward to take credit if they'd saved me." The tears flowed freely down her cheeks and neck, but she didn't stop. "I don't remember the woman who helped deliver you. I don't remember the woman who taught me to feed you. I remember holding you in a small room as the boat went west." Consuela went quiet again. Moonlight poured in through the tree house window, casting them in a deep hue of blue. No loud crying this time, but Guillermina let her compose herself again.
"You've never told me about this part. You've only told me about the village, growing up, goat stew, that kind of thing".
"I wasn't ready. You were, but I wasn't"
"I know that now...what happened next?"
"Something attacked the ship one night. I'm not sure what because I never saw it, but it happened quickly. A man picked me and you up, and threw me into a lifeboat."
"What's that? A lifeboat?"
"A boat you get into when the boat you're using goes bad." Guille couldn't help it. She giggled slightly at something so seemingly absurd. Consuela let it go, remind herself that laughter is one of the few joys her child should be afforded.
"Did everyone get a boat?"
"No. I don't know who else did, but no. A man climbed in and rowed me to a shore and dropped me with you and a few sacks of food, then he ran. I don't know where."
"He dropped you here?"
"Yes."
"Why didn't he stay with you?"
Consuela shrugged, "I don't know."
"And you don't know where 'here' is, right?"
"No, I don't mija. I just know that's where we've been since. I tried to keep track of it on a tree, but I forgot to notch and I've lost track of it all now. I tracked pretty far inland to this part of the jungle, we walked at night, and slept in the shade during the daytime."
"And now we're here?"
"And now we're here."
It was Guillermina's turn to be quiet for awhile. Finally with a yawn, she asked "will it find us here?"
"It's not looking for us. It doesn't find anybody, it just tries to scoop up everybody"
"Oh. Will it scoop us?"
Consuela tried to wait it out.
"Mama...will it scoop us?"
"Focus on the present. It's not scooping right now"
Guillermina finally gave out the longer more drumming yawn she gave when she was finally about to drift off to a safe and dark sleep. Consuela tried, but she was uneasy and couldn't put it down to the memories.
That's when she realised that the insects weren't sounding off.