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Patas Cenizas (A Bookmark Contest Entrant) |
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by Susan Niz
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1:26 |
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Hundreds of blooms from the high pink rosebush framed mamá. A yellow canary took to the heavens. On the edge of the grey sidewalk, I scratched lines with a piece of gravel.
She came clomping down the path, carrying her basket of brown hen eggs. Long, black hair swung behind her. Patas cenizas, we called her for her dry, ashy skin, paled by the dust of the road that led to the market.
I heard the fall, the crushing of papery brown-orange shells. The basket tumbled in my direction. The egg slimed the white dress she wore, covered it with yellow, broken yolk, like broken morning sky. The girl’s barrel chest heaved. Her eyelashes clumped like spider legs. She was trying to put the eggs back in the basket.
Mamá knelt, ensuciando her dress, lifted the girl by a bony arm, wiped the girl’s front with a bare hand.
Her arm looked like the raw sticks that fenced in her lamina house that roared like a steel drum in the rains, the sticks we tore from the soil in the montañas and crossed, and tied into kites with tissue paper, like membranes, like the clara of an egg.
Mamá placed pink blossoms in the basket. Traiga estas flores a su mamá de mi parte. A honeybee suspended over the flowers and I hoped it wouldn’t sting. Her knees were ashy now, too. Why mamá chose to dirty herself with the egg and the dust, I’ll never understand.
Susan Niz is currently writing a series of stories set in Guatemala, inspired by her husband’s experiences growing up. She lives in Minnesota.
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