Tickles in the Dark

When I was a little girl living in Colombia, power outages were pretty standard. We would be having dinner, and suddenly poof, the city was in a blackout. It happened so frequently that the family had an established routine: if the house went dark, the children should remain in place until the adults got ahold of candles and matches, then come and get you from where you were keeping still. Then everyone would gather on the parent’s bed. It was now time for scary stories. My dad would blow off the candles and start telling the tale of Maranguña.

The tale is, in its original version, quite gory and disgusting. It is about a woman whose husband wants to have grilled entrails for dinner (I should clarify that cow and pig entrails are considered delicacies in many countries). The woman, whose name is Maranguña, heads to the market to get the guts for grilling but gets distracted by the neighbors, who are gathered and gossiping. The whole day goes by, and now it is too late; the market is closed. Trying to hide her incompetence from her husband, Maranguña stops by another neighbor’s house, where a wake is being held. Thinking the dead man won’t miss a pound of guts, she steals some entrails from the corpse and runs back home to get on with making dinner. That night, when she’s placidly asleep, the dead man comes looking for her, wailing, “Maranguña, Maranguña, give me back my entrails.”

I know, I know. I’m sure you are thinking, “what the f#@k? Who tells that story to a child? But the thing is, in the context of family storytime, it did not sound like a horror story of cannibalism and ambulating corpses. My father had heard the tale from his father, also a tradition for dark nights meant to make kids yelp and cackle. The trick was, he would brush quickly over the part where Maranguña steals the entrails, suggesting she had done it because she was dim, so, at the moment, it seemed to her like a brilliant idea. Then came the fun bit: when recapping the part where the zombie comes looking for its stuffing, dad would make a scary nasal voice while chanting:

“Maranguña, Maranguña, give me back my entrails. I’m at the front door.”

That’s when the giggles and yelps started: the game was that one of us would get tickled by the “zombie.” And you didn’t know when or who would get prodded. Dad could make the anticipation last a very long time by making the zombie slowly “search” the house:

“Maranguña, Maranguña, give me back my entrails. I’m at the foyer.”

“Maranguña, Maranguña, give me back my entrails. I’m in the living room.”

“Maranguña, Maranguña, give me back my entrails. I’m going up the stairs.”

“Maranguña, Maranguña, give me back my entrails. I’m on the second-floor hallway.”

The closest the “zombie” was getting, the louder the screaming got. Sometimes “it” would go back downstairs to grab some soda from the fridge or maybe sit on the couch to check what was on tv. The point was to drag the children to a state of giddy anticipation and uncontrollable nervous chortling. The climatic tickling end caused so much screaming and laughing that is probably why my dad is hard of hearing.

Today, googling the original tale, I got to reflect on how much we enjoy the morbid and bizarre when we are kids. As long as our parents give us a non-threatening context to the stories, they become some of the most enjoyable things. I did it myself with my child. I do not remember telling the story of Maranguña to him, but I did relate the story of Dorian Gray. To this day, it remains one of his absolute favorite tales. The day we saw the gruesome portrait painted by Ivan Albright that hangs at the Art Institute of Chicago was one of our most bonding moments. Standing there, he reminisced on being a little kid, terrified but fascinated, wanting to hear the story over and over again.

Why did we enjoy being scared so much that way? Maybe it is because regardless of the content of the story, as parents what we express in those moments is: “no matter how scary things get, I will always be in your heart.”