The celebrant

[miyako73]

Okay, I'm back to my longer sentences and normal writing. I hope you'll tell me how it is this time. Maybe I should stop experimenting and just do the vanilla way. Thanks for reading.


The Celebrant

Miyako I.


His room bright in sunny yellow, late afternoon in Oaxaca was always tedious and slow. Sitting on his bed by the glass-paned window occupying the entire wall facing the gulf, Ronaldo watched the clouds sailing away and setting the sky for the vanishing sun. He waited for the dusk and then the moon, if none, the stars. Although unable to walk and go outside, he had not forgotten the chill of spring. He knew it was already cool when the red cockatoos fluttered their wings and disturbed the needles of the pine trees.

"Time to wash up, papa," said Ron, his five-year old son he named after himself.

"You already washed me up yesterday." Ronaldo refused out of nagging shame.

His kid should have been playing with the children in the neighborhood or joining them in the bushy ravine to hunt quails and to pick ripe berries. Since he lost control of his legs and, eventually, half of his body, Ron had been taking care of him. He did everything in the house with help from relatives. Without complaining, he woke up early in the morning and went to the river to grope for eels and to wash his father's clothes soiled with feces and smelling foul from urine. He had given up his childhood too soon.

"Go… play with your friends," the father said. "Hit some pygmy owls." Ronaldo saw a rubber band around his son's neck and a sling concealed under his bedraggled shirt.

Thinking that his father might have misunderstood why he had a sling, as he touched its Y-shaped wooden handle, Ron said, "I'm trying for your dinner. Grilled hawk's liver is good for you… but I have not seen one since the last time you had some."

The wet facecloth Ron was holding continued dripping water onto the waxed cherry wood floor. His cupped callused hand followed the cloth but failed to catch its soapy drippings. He planned to go to the market to replace the old basin he dropped and broke, but he had not yet sold the scrap metals he got from the nearby junkyard. For now, he dipped the cloth in the drum that collected rain outside and ran fast towards his father's bedside. After he finished, he would follow the trail of droplets that looked like a path of crystals and use the same cloth to wipe it dry. It seemed like he was playing.

"Please wash up now, pa," Ron insisted, his voice sounding as if he was begging.

"Your mama washed me up every other day." Ronaldo's wife died mysteriously on the night of Ron's third birthday. Rumor had it that she went to the city and worked in the streets, so she could buy his medicines and a gift for their son. A shocked drug-crazed john shot her many times after undressing her and realizing she only had one breast. Ron's mother survived cancer after she had her left breast removed. Having used up all their savings, she could not think of any other way but leave. She needed to work.

"Put that back on the clothesline," Ronaldo told his son, who would not listen and leave him alone half-tucked under the blanket. "Go and help your uncle in the cornfield."

"The harvesting is over," Ron said, "and Auntie has already made stacks of purple tortillas." His relatives and concerned neighbors started preparing for his sixth birthday the next day, as if they already knew what would happen. He did never want to celebrate. The mere thought of it coming scared him. It was also the same day the previous year his only sister died from infection after she ate all her lips and gnawed most of her tongue.

"Feed the piglet… the one to be butchered tomorrow," Ronaldo said as he looked far away towards the ebbing sun. He stared at the fiery color of the dusk, the usual omen.

Ron held his father's hand and wiped it with the damp cloth starting from his pale nails. He followed his father's distant eyes. "Sorry, pap… I should not have been born."