Dona Sol

Black hair like raven’s wing, jellyfish tentacles sweeping the salty planks of the Santa Esmeralda deck, electric, alive like a flash of torpedo. Your hand, Pedro, touches them, then goes down to my bloodless elbow. I drop the colander, the peas roll on the deck, the seagulls go down to peck them.

My heart melts for happiness, I intertwine my fingers with yours. — It is Dona Sol that I want — you say — it is Dona Sol that I like, not Diego Fuentes’ daughter.

I no longer hear the seagulls and I get suspicious. I look down, I see the floor of my house. No boards, no green, hard rolling peas. I get out of bed.

In the mirror there is the usual flaky mass of brown meat, the daily torment of wrinkles, not one of the hairs of the dream, but a fluff that becomes encrusted with the flakes of sweat.

I dig my yellow nails into the folds of my face, and cry with my bleary eyes, because I am sixty-four, Pedro, and you are twenty-three.

Your mother kicked you on the shore, from the jetty to her house, your black belly swollen with hunger, your lumpy navel, your bruised thighs. I left you in the stable with three pies and the currie, and you remained there, until two years ago, when I saw you wash yourself at the trough, naked as your mother gave birth to you, with your belly smoothed by my cakes and, among the legs, a flaccid but promising, cheerful stick.

More cheerful than your dark eyes, than the dog’s gaze with which you follow your half-sister Ursula, born from your mother’s marriage to Diego Fuentes, and who grew up early under this sun, barefoot and swaddled, that even her father looks at her, when she bends over to take the water without panties under the skirt.

In the stable I saw you two, between straw and shade, her pale kidneys, your black buttocks, the tidal wave that overwhelmed you, the incestuous rhythm of ungainly samba, the chaos of musky smells on breasts, bones and young flesh. I was there too, perched on the jamb.

I was reminded of domestic hugs, in the twilight of the siesta, when the Captain, having gone up the river with the Santa Esmeralda, stopped on Sunday. We smoked on the brass bed — the fan freezing our wet backs, the smell of DDT, the dead flies in the glass on the bedside table — then he went down to pull the neck of a hen for dinner.

Even the oldest of my chickens still has her rooster.

This morning I would like to lift my stiff legs and straddle you, give you the same pleasure your sister gives you. My eyes discolored by the sun, rinsed by the river, see you as they would have seen you twenty years ago, and the heart desires, the body gets wet.

I wear the red dress from when I was waiting for the Captain, and I tarnish the mirror with my rancid breath, so I can no longer see myself, but, as in a dream, imagine myself with slender hips, tender bird’s feet, hands sweet with lye.

Here, I also open the sun umbrella. The lace crumbles like moth dust between my fingers, the sticks are moldy, but I hold it up, high, erect on my head as it was then, for you Pedro.

I close my eyes and, like tonight, there is the moon, the boards creak salty under the soles of my bare feet.

Now you can’t say no to me, Pedro.