Fruit of the Drunken Tree

by Ingrid Rojas Contreras

we went to Petrona’s room to look for the small television.

Mamá’s hair was wet from a shower and it stained dark colors into the back of her blouse.

I wouldn’t dare ask why Mamá’s hair was wet, or maybe I should ask why.

Haha Ah, the burning significance of the mundane.

It had been night in her dream,

“To their eyes, really, like monsters,” Mamá said. “I’m not exaggerating.”

finally Mamá said the dream was a warning. “That girl Petrona is running around with God knows who doing God knows what

la Soltera

Vieja amargada!”

Bitter old lady

When I took my shoe away, the grass around the burnt cigarette tip wore a halo like a dark saint.

Aurora,

Pulga

Don’t worry your little head!

Already he was an old man. Papi never tired. He bent over the earth, he whistled a tune.

were rich in eggs and meat then,

We were rich in our...

The black staircase of our farmhouse climbed into the sky.

I imagined the paras had taken his life.

Don’t you worry your little head,

I was determined to protect Petrona,

Haha

I thought of all the stories I had heard about how dangerous Bogotá was.

people said ours was a city of crime.

My heart ticked up and up and up thinking it was up to me to help Petrona. There was nobody else.

Also a visiting Assistant Professor at SFSU, silver medal winner in first fiction from the California Book Awards, and a New York Times editor's choice. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The Cut, The Believer, and elsewhere. Her memoir, The Man Who Could Move Clouds (Doubleday, 2022) is a story about her grandfather, a curandero from Colombia who it was said had the power to move clouds. It was named a TIME best book of summer.