Take the cat and punish her, show her she shouldn’t have taken the meat out of the hot pot, punish her because she doesn’t respect us and we end up eating her leftovers, that sick cat, I tell you we should give her away but you don’t want to, you say you love her, now you take her and see what you do with her. So I take Chip, I hold her under the armpits, I feel embarrassed, I don’t answer anything to my mother, I don’t, she’s right, what if a scab fell in the food and we get sick, what if we get your sickness Chip, it will be my fault. My mom has to hear you, where should I take you, I hold your feet, let’s spin, I spin holding your feet, circles, circles, circles and you get scared, you look at me with your blue eyes and I think what else should I do to punish you, maybe touch your ears, so sore, disgusting my mom says, I spin and now I feel lousy, I’ll take you to that room, the one that will be my room when dad has got the money to finish building our house. This will be my room, dad said, and we will put a door here so we can enter directly from the living room, how do you like that Lili? I like it, I think of how this room will look when the bricks have been painted and the rocks on the ground are paved, how pretty my room will be when the wooden ceiling is ready and these wild plants are removed. I will buy a basket for you Chip, you will sleep under my bed and when we have enough money I will take you to the vet, I will ask my mom to find a vet, and your ears will be better, but now I should punish you, mom should hear you, I spin, my red skirt opens like an umbrella and I like that, people could see my underwear, people could see but nobody is passing in the street right now, I spin with you and we get closer to the wall, very close so your body hits the bricks and you cry Chip, yes, scream louder, louder, so my mom hears you and when she puts the soup on the table and we eat it and she makes that face that she makes when you steal the chicken or the meat I can tell her how loud you screamed, I will say mom, do you know what I did to Chip, I hit her very hard, and my mom will not say anything but I will eat, and she will eat.
After dinner I brush my teeth. The lights in the kitchen are lit. There are two bulbs, one for the inside of the room and another for the sidewalk of the house. I step near the border of the sidewalk, grab a cup with one hand and with the other I brush my teeth. I brush them, I sip water and mix it in my mouth with the toothpaste, I spit the white dirty water and think my mother could say that spitting it on the yard is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, evil, evil, devil. The devil is red, wears a white suit and has a red tail escaping the right leg of his pants, a fluffy red tail, so I know that he’s the devil but is trying to hide it. What if the devil was whispering in my left ear that I should throw the toothpaste over the ground. I should spit it, pretend that I’ve washed my teeth but not really do it, so after many years, when my teeth all get holes and hurt, I die and people will know that I died. I rinse my mouth, sipping from the cup, and afterwards I sit on the border of the sidewalk and look to the other side of the yard, to my future room. With my toes I draw circles on the watery mud on the ground. I tell the devil that I have understood his instructions, and make him answer me that god has told him that I cannot go to hell unless i do throw the toothpaste. I feel a tension, the tension of knowing that my soul is at risk, that I may go to a red and yellow place like the painting I saw in the museum they took us in third grade, I may go to hell but I can still go to heaven, and then I stand up and enter the kitchen and think that I should write this, I should write in case I die and nobody knows that the devil has tricked me.
The next day, after dinner, I imagine the devil coming again and I brush my teeth again and sit on the border again, but now I can feel that the devil is a sad thing to have near. I know I’m just imagining him, but then I stand up and think what if the devil really is here making me think that I’m just imagining him, what if I’m actually going to hell. Then I remember that I should write what I’m doing, and go back into the kitchen. But I never write. Instead, I sit on my bed and call Chip. Chipy Chipy Chipy Chipy. I caress Chip, my mouth feels with saliva when I see her ears, Chipy Chipy, you poor thing, you need to behave. Chip closes her eyes, her fur crisps feels crispy as I caress her white back. I curl my body around hers, Chip, I have seen the devil, sometimes I think that I am just imagining him with his long tail but then he comes and tells me, softly, that I am mean, that I have sinned. I hug Chip hard, so hard that she meows in pain, cry Chip, cry. Before my mom opens the door I sit immediately and take Chip on my lap, I hit her on the head with my fist and tell my mom that I was just sending Chip away. My mom asks me why I am crying but at first I don’t want to answer, I don’t want to tell her that I made a pact with the devil and that now I should give him my soul. Don’t cry, you are a child, the devil is not going to take you, says my mom almost laughing and I cry harder, my mom doesn’t know anything, she doesn’t realize that the devil becomes more real each day, that yesterday I lost the gamble, that the tooth paste fell accidentally from my toothbrush and that now the devil has god’s permission to take me. Don’t you cry. But I know I will go to hell, and I don’t really want to die.
I eat breakfast, a cup of coffee poured over a soup plate so it gets cold sooner, and a piece of bread. The bread I don’t like, I hand a piece to Chip but she doesn’t touch it. That cat is sweet toothed, she’d rather starve and wait until she can steal food from us, my mom says, and she walks out the kitchen, her apron tight around her waist. I can see her walking down the yard, wearing sandals, she is piling a dry eucalyptus trunk, a cylinder, over two bricks, near the wall that divides our yard from my aunt’s. She steps on it holding the gray blocks, only her head is visible above the wall. Aileen, my mom yells, and my aunt’s maid yells back and says that my aunt left to the doctor, that she took the baby with her, that they will be back in the afternoon. I throw what is left of my piece of bread to the floor and Chip comes to it, running, she must have forgotten I am still eating the same bread. I leave the door open and say out loud that I’m leaving for school but my mom doesn’t hear me. I walk down the road alone. My white socks are stripped by brown long marks of dust, the sun is so hot that I feel that my skull is sweating and the tight braids in my head are breaking my skin, all that heat and the tightness of the hair bands make me dizzy, maybe my head is going to explode, I could die. I don’t want to think of the devil. Even if I clean my shoes in the back of my legs they are still dusty and don’t shine, I don’t want to think of the devil. I am going to visit my aunt after school today, I am going to meet my cousin. The baby is blond blond and had her ears pierced already, so she doesn’t have to suffer when she is older, my mom said. The baby is blond but she will lose her yellow hair and will have it dark as we all have, the baby doesn’t have a name yet, and the wind blows brown fine dust over my face and I feel the devil walking behind me, his hands on is back, I hear him laughing. He is following me, he can listen to what I think, I don’t want to think, don’t think, don’t think. Then silence, a silence and then the devil laughing but there is no devil in the road, nobody is in the road, only electricity poles and eucalyptus trees. The devil doesn’t come for the children, my cousin is blond and doesn’t have a name and I will tell my aunt that her baby should have my name, Lili, her baby should have my name in case that I die.
In school, during lunch, I tell my friend Vanessa that I had a dream. She has a boiled egg and orange juice that her mother packed for her, and I got an egg sandwich and sip her juice. I dreamt that the devil follows me, I tell Vanessa, the devil is red but is dressed in white. I don’t tell her that it is not a dream, that I can see him in the day when I’m awake and also when it’s time to brush my teeth. Vanessa says that she has never dreamt of the devil, but that she once dreamt that she was in a room, a purple and orange room that was not a church but that had a pedestal, a tall pedestal were Saint Mary was standing. Vanessa looked at the porcelain Saint through the purple blur, and Saint Mary was still and pretty, with her glassy eyes and her thin lips opened as if she was going to speak. Then the teeth of the virgin started to grow out of her mouth. The teeth were long, like dog’s, and Saint Mary seemed to have flesh eyes instead of the glass ones, and Vanessa didn’t want to look anymore but her dream lasted very long and nothing else happened, only the teeth of the Saint had grown and Vanessa watched, she watched until she woke up.
I don’t want to tell Vanessa that the devil is here with me, laughing and looking at us eat. I am going to visit my cousin this afternoon, she is going to have my name, Vanessa, she is going to be named Lili because that is how my family is, my aunt likes me so much that she told me her daughter is going to have my name. You are a liar, says Vanessa, and I feel that my face is red, red, but I know that if I tell her that I am not a liar then it is going to be worst. I tell her that I forgive her, Vanessa, you don’t know what you are saying. The devil laughs in my ear, and I laugh too, Vanessa is such a fool. She says that she thinks the devil does take children with him, the children that lie, that sin, Yes, I tell her, I wonder what you have done that the Saint Mary wants to bite you. Vanessa gets so angry and I get angry too. The devil laughs a little and I feel bad, but I am laughing inside, I am laughing inside too.
I lie in my bed before I go see my aunt. Chip jumps over, her ears are bleeding, she should have grazed her scabs on something, the fur in her head is wet with drops of her blood. She passes her little paw over her sore ear and meows each time, it should hurt her. Poor Chip, I press her nose with my finger as if it was a button, her nose is humid and soft, I press softly and now I caress her. My mom is speaking on the phone, this girl is crazy to see your daughter, I’m sending her now, and so I sit immediately, as if the resort that attached me to the bed has just been cut. Lili, calls my mom, come here. Your aunt is back. I run down the yard, pile many orange bricks and on top I put the eucalyptus trunk and then I climb onto the verge of the wall. I close my eyes and jump down, fall over my aunt’s green lawn, and run to the front door. My aunt sees me through her windowpane, and now she lets me in, Aunt, I say, good afternoon, I want to see your baby. My aunt wears a gown and sleepers, she has a little make up left on her face from the morning but now she’s back to bed. The baby just awoke, she tells me, and she points towards a crib covered with white long sheets bordered with lace, I n her room. Have you washed your hands? my aunt asks and I say yes, I am clean, and I feel I little bad but when she’s not seeing me I will lick the dirty spots so she won’t notice. My aunt does not believe me, she hands me a moisturized tissue and we walk out the living room to her bedroom. She needs to bend over the crib to grab the baby, her back hurts, having a baby is a lot of pain. She holds the baby and I stand on my toes because I cannot see her, but then my aunt tells me that I am old enough, that I can carry her daughter, and leans onto me and lets me hold her. This is so important, the baby is so warm and one needs to know how to hold a baby. I put her head on my forearm so it doesn’t hang down or break amd my hand down her legs so if she moves I can grab her faster and not let her fall. Clara, my aunt tells me, we named her Clara. The baby looks like a doll, only that she moves and her body feels so warm and I am so tight, thinking that I may fail to hold her and that Clara may fall from my arms and die.
My aunt asks me to sit, she helps me accommodate the baby on her bed. You want to see these feet, she asks, she is so happy even with that pain in her back that makes her frown when she sits. She pulls off the baby’s pink socks and shows me the tiny toes, her toe nails, isn’t that pretty my aunt says and I smile, she is, the baby is so pretty, and is alive. The baby doesn’t cry. I don’t think she can see me, her eyes are only black, her pupils are all what there is in her eyes. Do you want a glass of milk? my aunt asks, ok I say, and she stands up and leaves me there, in her room, looking at Clara and touching her. I pass my hands over her nose, so little, so little and Clara doesn’t even move away, she only blinks and opens her mouth. I pull the little mitten that covers her hand. Such little fingers, such small nails, I kiss her palm, so warm. If Clara cries it will be all the more natural, all babies cry, nobody will know that I made her. I press my teeth in her palm, I press them harder and I feel so angry, I want to bite Clara, I want her dead, but all of this is so wrong, so wrong, and now Clara cries and cries and I think what else can I do to her that my aunt won’t notice, what else can I do but then I see that my teeth are marked in her skin and she cries more, more, because I’m squeezing her wrist with my fingers. Here comes my aunt, I can hear her, and I put back Clara’s mitten and caress her blond hair. Does your back hurt a lot I ask my aunt when she sits to grab the baby, and she says that just a little, that each day it hurts less.
