07

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07

We were embroidering a yellow cloth to the painting.
It was a rainy day of May. She had cooked tortas fritas (fried cakes) for her
grandson and brought one for me, I was not hungry so I saved it as a souvenir.
The two of us kept stitching and that song played in the background.
I asked her how she met her husband; I cannot remember if it was a gesture or
a word, which allowed me to see that this man had never been a great love
to her, or anything like it.
And that his death had brought her more liberation than sadness.
We kept on sewing and then she told me of another man, her first love.
A mix-up between the coast and the mountain had made him finally marry
a cousin of hers and her a man her parents had chosen.
She accepted it in silence, resigned. I asked her whether she had
suffered much. Every day I wept, she said. The last time she saw him,
she had just become a mother. He was hospitalized for a disease
that attacked his skin.
When she entered the room she said nothing. Still holding her daughter,
she pulled out one breast from her dress and spread her (breast) milk
over his wounded body. Some time later he died. That was her great love.