Tales from the Town of Widows (24 page)

Señorita Cleotilde thought that the magistrate had finally gone crazy. She was just about to say that when Vaca walked into the room, holding a tray with two bowls and a couple of spoons.

“Breakfast,” she announced.

“Great!” Cleotilde said. “I’m starving. What is it?”

“Hot soup.”

“Again?” she sounded disappointed. “I always eat an egg in the morning. Don’t you have any eggs?”

“If I had an egg, I’d have eaten it myself,” Vaca said. She set down the tray.

“Well, I hope that at least there’s some kind of meat in it,” Cleotilde insisted. “Is there any?”

“Maybe,” Vaca returned, shrugging her right shoulder.

“There’s more meat in a mosquito’s leg than in this soup,” Cleo
tilde complained bitterly as she stirred the clear broth splashed with bits of cilantro. She tried to eat it with the spoon, but there was nothing solid in it. So she lifted the bowl and literally drank the soup in one gulp. When she was finished, the schoolmistress got up and began smoothing down her short hair with the backs of her hands.

“You’re not leaving, Señorita Cleotilde, are you?” If the schoolmistress left, Rosalba thought, she would not be back until the next sun—if at all. By then the project would have lost momentum.

“Yes, Magistrate, I am. You already have a solution to the most urgent problem. That is if you can call a backward calendar a solution to anything. I trust you can figure out the rest on your own.”

“I really think you ought to stay,” Rosalba said, in a tone that sounded more like a warning than a request. “How else are you going to claim that Mariquita’s female time is half your idea if you don’t help me draft a document with the specifics of it?”

This last sentence felt like a slap across the teacher’s face. “
It is
half my idea,” she snarled. “I intend to help you draft the document. I just need to get some sleep before we start working on it.” She removed her glasses and massaged her eyes with the back of her index fingers.

“Take a siesta in my bed,” Rosalba suggested. “It’s quite comfortable.”

Cleotilde hated sleeping in other people’s beds. She had a sharp sense of smell that made it impossible for her to sleep while engulfed in the offensive odors that were likely to emanate from someone else’s bedclothes and mattress. As tired as she was, she decided that she’d rather work on that document now than sleep in the magistrate’s malodorous bed. She locked her hands behind her back and for a while walked back and forth across the room, thinking, until at length she slid a piece of paper and a stub of a pencil across the table toward the magistrate, saying, “Rosalba, I’m going to give you dictation.”

“I beg your pardon?” the magistrate replied. She didn’t know what had startled her the most: being called by her first name, or being asked to take dictation.

“Write this down, dear: To establish a Time Committee of five young, comma—” She paused to allow Rosalba to write the phrase, but the magistrate, still confused, began mumbling something unintelligible. Disregarding the magistrate’s bewilderment, Cleotilde went on with her dictation, “…healthy, comma—”

“Excuse me, Señorita Cleotilde,” Rosalba attempted an objection.

“Dear, please raise your hand if you wish to formulate a question or if you wish to be excused.” The schoolmistress waited a few seconds for Rosalba to raise her hand, but since the magistrate didn’t do so, she proceeded with the next phrase. Eventually Rosalba started taking terms and conditions down, crossing out and rewriting until they had a draft of a bill that satisfied both of them.

I
MPLEMENTING FEMALE TIME
wouldn’t be an easy task, the magistrate thought. Especially now that every woman was keeping her own schedule. Just getting all the villagers together to announce the decree would be difficult. Rosalba knew she’d encounter some resistance among the most stubborn villagers. She’d have to work really hard to persuade them that having a communal time scheme would help improve Mariquita’s productivity, and therefore the living conditions of every family. But she’d have to work the hardest to convince them that keeping a lunar calendar in which time flew backward would eventually help each one of them get a second opportunity on earth.

But did she really believe that? Rosalba asked herself. Did she really think that an archaic calendar turned backward would be good for everyone? Maybe not. What significance would it have to someone like Magnolia Morales, who had said that time only existed in one’s mind? Probably none. And would a systematic calendar appeal to the Pérez widow, who had declared that she lived the same day every day? Definitely not. Maybe Magnolia and the Pérez widow were right in their own eccentric ways. Women were idealistic and romantic by nature, and even though men had always seen those characteristics as faults, perhaps it was time for women to dignify them as unique female quali
ties and make use of them in their daily lives. Female time, Rosalba thought, should allow an infinite number of individual interpretations, so that it could exist simultaneously as the official system for the entire community, and boundless in each woman’s idealistic, romantic and fertile mind.

The magistrate shared her latest thinking with Cleotilde, who was still walking back and forth across the room with her hands clasped behind her back.

“I like that idea,” the old woman said, “but I think the villagers should have at least one parameter, or else we’re going to end up with ten Magnolias running around naked, claiming that time is a…bare nipple or something like that. I suggest we ask that every month each woman chooses a virtue she wants to master or a defect she wants to eliminate, and that she apply her mind to it.” She now sank into a chair, convinced she had said something important and definite.

Soon afterward, the two women engaged in a long conversation about morality, justice, faith, dignity, rectitude, generosity, tolerance, devotion, determination, patience, strength, hope, responsibility, trust, optimism, wisdom, prudence, understanding, tact, intuition, sense and many other things they considered virtues. Next, they spoke about vice, sinfulness, evil, virulence, mordancy, corruption, depravity, abuse, wickedness, iniquity, cruelty, abomination, conceitedness, degradation, lechery, rancor, bitterness, mediocrity, egotism and many more things they considered faults. And after so much talk about virtues and faults, Rosalba and Cleotilde resolved that instead of “months” and “years”—which they considered meaningless words—female time would be introduced as “rungs” and “ladders
”
to self-improvement. But unlike the intimidating ladders to success or fame established by men, these ladders would go down and down only, because, Cleotilde declared, “Except for God, no one has ever found glory on high.” The women of Mariquita would never feel coerced into stepping up. Instead they’d be encouraged to go all the way to the bottom, where one’s mind, character and soul would meet perfection, and most importantly, where
perfection would have as many definitions as there were women.

S
UDDENLY
,
SOUNDS FROM
the outside intruded: there was a commotion in the streets. Rosalba and Cleotilde could hear, in the distance, the raucous voices of the women of Mariquita repeating the same phrase over and over.

“What are they saying?” Rosalba asked

“I’m not sure,” the teacher replied, her hand cupped around her ear, “but they’re enraged.”

Rosalba sighed. “There’s always something.”

“Shouldn’t we find out what they’re up to out there?”

“Let them kill one another. We can’t leave this house until we have an acceptable drawing of the calendar.” She handed Cleotilde a piece of paper and began sharpening a pencil with a knife that needed sharpening itself. “Can you draw freehand, Señorita Cleotilde?”

Before the schoolmistress could reply that “of course” she could, there came a thunderous tapping on the door, and presently Vaca stormed into the room.

“Magistrate, you need to go outside immediately,” Vaca began, catching her breath. She explained that a group of villagers, taking advantage of Rosalba’s absence, had gone to Cecilia and demanded that a vote be taken for a new magistrate. Cecilia had tried to dissuade them, but they complained that Rosalba hadn’t done a darn thing for Mariquita, that what they farmed wasn’t nearly enough to feed everyone in town, and that most people had already forgotten what milk tasted like. Furthermore, the younger women accused the magistrate of having allowed el padre Rafael to execute a scheme to deceive them, while the older ones charged her with letting the priest get away after murdering their innocent boys. They’d so pressured Cecilia that she’d called a quick election in which Police Sergeant Ubaldina had been elected the new magistrate of Mariquita. “Cecilia just announced it,” Vaca said.
“They’re still striding around the plaza with Ubaldina on their shoulders, giving cheers for her.”

And just like that, without warning, Rosalba was forced to confront her greatest fear. Fortunately, things were much more different now. For the first time in several suns Rosalba felt in control. Not only had she regained her self-confidence, but once again she was near achieving something exceptional for Mariquita. This time she wouldn’t allow anyone or anything to ruin it for her. She would go out there and reason with them. The women, she was certain, would reelect her by acclamation.

O
UTSIDE
,
THE HEAT
was stifling. The light rain that had fallen earlier had made the air heavy and sticky. The windows of most houses were wide open, not so much to allow the slight breeze to circulate as to let the heat out. Walking down the street with Vaca and Cleotilde, Rosalba encountered nothing but two dogs curled up in the shadow of a tree, sleeping, and a long line of hardworking ants. Except for them, there was nothing alive on the streets.

When the three women reached the plaza, however, they heard singing and saw revelry around Ubaldina. The villagers had skipped over their individual schedules and gathered to celebrate, with a rowdy party, the election of the new magistrate. Rosalba tried to speak to a few of them, but they barely acknowledged her. She wasn’t being overthrown: she was fading away. Rosalba quickly abandoned the idea of reasoning with them and went to plan B. She drew her pistol from its holster, aimed it at the sky and fired one of the two bullets she had left. As if there were magic in the resounding detonation, the women stopped celebrating and scurried into the church, the only place where they felt safe—especially since there was no priest. Only Cecilia Guaraya remained motionless in the middle of the plaza. She held a scrap of paper with the results of the voting.

“What did I do to you that you have betrayed me?” Rosalba asked Cecilia. The hot pistol was shaking in her hand.

“Please, Rosalba, don’t be angry with me,” Cecilia pleaded, addressing the magistrate’s gun. “The women of this village are dead set on rebellion. I agreed to call an election only if your name was included on the ballot.” She held the piece of paper out to Rosalba. “You came in second,” she said.

Rosalba snatched the paper out of Cecilia’s hand and glanced over it. “Oh, great!” she said contemptuously. “I came second, with two worthless votes.” She scrunched the piece of paper into a ball and threw it back at Cecilia’s feet. Then she put her gun away and went to the church, escorted by Vaca and Cleotilde.

Inside the house of God, Rosalba advanced up the aisle with a stately gait. Her authoritarian aspect elicited the women’s fear, not their affection. There was no sound or movement except the blinking of the many eyes that followed Rosalba all the way to the pulpit, where she stood behind the naked, half-rotten desk from which el padre Rafael used to conduct the service. Cleotilde stood by her side.

“I’m here to take full responsibility for my mistakes and oversights,” she began humbly. “Ever since I was appointed magistrate, I’ve struggled to have full control over our village, to overcome all sorts of obstacles and make a new life for ourselves without our men. I have gone astray in my beliefs and have done some things wrong. There are other things I should’ve done that I didn’t. But now I’m finally able to see that my job in Mariquita, though unpaid, is to organize our community, to make sure that the Moraleses don’t have leftovers while the poor Pérez widow eats what she finds when she finds it. To see to it that Perestroika stays healthy enough to yield sufficient milk for each of us to have at least a full glass every week. To ensure that every family has a house and that every house has a roof and that every roof keeps out the rain. I’ve learned many things that now will make me a much better magistrate for our village. All I ask is to have an opportunity to fix the mistakes that are fixable, and to make amends for the ones that are
beyond reparation. If you agree that I deserve an opportunity, please step forward.” She gazed sincerely at the crowd.

There was a long silence as the villagers considered the magistrate’s words. Some women were skeptical. Rosalba’s tone brought back to them unpleasant memories of courteous politicians, broken promises and denied privileges. But a few others believed in Rosalba’s candidness and full intentions, especially now that the schoolmistress—whose credibility was intact—seemed to be endorsing her.

“You deserve a second opportunity,” said Vaca from the first row. She walked toward Rosalba and stopped in front of the desk.

“I’m with you, Magistrate.” The voice came from the very back. “To me, you are and will always be the only magistrate.” It was Cecilia, who had followed Rosalba into the church and now walked up the aisle. She, too, stopped before the desk. Rosalba met her with a sympathetic look.

After a short wait, Doña Victoria viuda de Morales came into view. “We also think that you deserve a second chance,” she shouted. She pushed her two oldest daughters—Orquidea and Gardenia—forward. “And you have our unconditional support.” She now began struggling with the two youngest—Magnolia and Julia—who were notorious for their stubbornness. Doña Victoria whispered all kinds of threats in the girls’ ears, but they resisted fiercely until at length the widow gave up.