Fruit of the Drunken Tree

by Ingrid Rojas Contreras

“Let’s use the plates I brought,”

As a gift? Or to use like a picnic. - which would be insulting the other way.

Cassandra, Aurora, and I sat on small rocks, the adults sat on cement blocks, and Petrona sat in a plastic chair.

Tío Mauricio.

you know how city people are, always with their stomachs on their forehead;

Question metaphor simile

I was sure he was a witch.

the corpse-shaped necklace

there was the shell of a snail on my palm.

“That’s why you need me.

Haha

I narrowed my eyes, suddenly remembering Mamá had bought Cassandra’s and my Communion dresses from a store. I beheld Petrona with a twinge of envy as she twirled, then I was embarrassed. Didn’t Petrona deserve a dress made just for her?

encapotados,

Cloaked ones

Zbastards

they took my husband and my two eldest and we had to flee.

I did the math in my head:

Petrona’s uncle mimed at lifting an imaginary hat from his head, and Mamá mimed at bowing down holding the imaginary ends of a skirt.

If I blocked the invasión with my hand and looked straight ahead, the landscape was Bogotá as I knew it: a sprawling, modern place with paved streets and high buildings and decorated balconies knitted with fog.

Suddenly, I wanted to stay.

Extraordinary insight into the mind of a 9-year-old girl.

I felt like a princess,

Simile

There was a brightness I had never felt before. I held my hands, feeling so light on my feet, so full.

The priest said inner light and peace came from living your life for others.

how he would have liked to tell me, See, Petro, how honest work pays off.

I knew that if Papi was here, I would lie to him too.

About her life with Gorrión? Question

My days were filled with cleaning and cooking and pretending to go to sleep.

I fell asleep the moment I closed my eyes, this body of mine so good at pretending to be innocent.

a true mentirosa.

Lisr

It was my turn to get in line and swallow the wafer.

Lunch!

shards of glass rolled down the blanket and piled at the dip of my thighs.

Faulknerian

Where were the cows?

Question

This shitty country!

Mamá was screaming, “This is your father’s fault, how could he let this happen?”

Question Wonderful rendition of the inscrutable actions and motivations of. Grownups from the p.o.v. of a 9-year-old girl.

I remembered the snail shell cutting into my flesh. I remembered the glass shards sticking out of my palm.

Simile

She didn’t have to say that the shell was to blame for me getting hurt—it was clear she thought this because she knelt in her bathroom and broke the shell with a hammer and then doused it with alcohol and set it on fire.

Haha

“Cassandra, did you see what happened to the cows?”

“Nothing happened to them?” I was ecstatic. Cows were amazing. I got in bed next to Cassandra. “Did you know cows have eight stomachs? They’re superhuman.” Cassandra laughed. “They’re actually not human.”

Haha

“We forgot all about our emergency backpacks,”

This, and the frail safety of the prosperous neighborhood, straight from Octavia Butler’s Earthseed novels, AND from Bogotá’s reality.

Haha

the neighborhood gate three blocks away.

“Farmacia Aguilar,

Petrona sounded worried. I smiled.

What if all of this happened because of the Oligarch?”

Cassanda

Isa and Lala

“Because she’s a witch,” I said.

Haha

Isa said, “We have to take something of the Oligarch’s that’s of equal value to Chula’s scar.”

I looked on at this new side of Cassandra—her detached concentration, cold and clinical.

What is the point of that? The uncaring nature of privilege? Question

Electric light poured out of every one of her windows and even spilled out onto her lawn.

Cassandra said it was an electric generator. Only people like magistrates and ambassadors had them.

I grinned in the dark.