LIFE IS A GAME FOR THE BOLD

 

Life was a merry-go-round. Magdalene was fond of carousels. All children enjoy them. But the island was too small and the misery enormous. A daughter among sons, she would like to know more about the world around her. There, on that piece of land, the sea surrounded all the horizons, clouding them. And the tourists, the well-dressed strangers only increased his desire to get to know the beyond her home. 

Her mother had lived between shifts to bring food home. Cleaning here, cleaning there, offices and doctors' homes, and she accompanied her whenever she could. She loved being around her. As for her father, things were not the same way. He had taken refuge from the hardships of life in alcohol, by numbing the arteries that were in some way opposed to the accumulated frustrations. He knew he had failed his wife because he was a weakling. And he had never been able to get over that. He had collected the problems because he had not found a way to eliminate them. Thus, the parent was found in the bars or crouched in some corner, or even fallen into a ditch. She was terrified to see any drunkards, switching legs and wobbling in the air, before sprawling on the ground.She felt dread, shame, pity, such a cocktail of emotions that, several nights in a row, while listening to his mother crying softly in the bedroom, he had the urge to kill him. She came outside to wait for him, sneakily, with a stone in her hand, looking from the courtyard, the slope from which he would emerge to continue to harass his poor mother. The mother, who mothers have a finger that guesses, sensed something wrong and found her, waiting for the father with the stone in his hand. He scolded her. And he told her that she didn't understand her father. And she scraped herself to her room, not knowing who she hated the most at that moment, whether her father, irresponsible and alcoholic, If it was from the mother who protected him, without her being able to understand the adults. And he wasn't aggressive, just frail and sick. Every night, when he arrived, he would go into the children's room and, even though they were all pretending to be asleep, they were all forced to wake up, and the father would ask: son, do you like dad? And the brothers always repeated the same thing, that yes, that they loved him and the alcoholism, the pointlessness, the sadness and the pity they had for him. Except for her. Her father was exasperated and she maintained the same: What hatred she felt for that creature! And her mother would always scold her and ask her to tell her father that she loved her father very much! 

She remembered the misery and today she understood it very well. That it was this misery that had caused her mother, several times to tell the doctors and whoever had more possessions than herself, that if they wanted to take her to the little one and give her a better life than she could give her, she would be very grateful. Things that were said with lip service, when misery and lack of financial provision went up their throats and out of their mouths. But she didn't see it that way. I didn't feel that way. She remembered a lot of things from her childhood and now she understood that all those episodes made her what she was now. 

When she was alone, and because she had always liked animals, she remembered to give funerals to the ants in matchboxes, or if the animals were bigger, she would bury them in the same dirt, which she would go to the graves in the cemetery to steal some flowers to put in other graves that had none. She remembered visiting the hospitals, because there were old people and children who did not receive visitors and she visited them, to bring them a smile, as a way of telling them that she did not they were alone, they had her. And he also remembered that, when he was already older, he had been helping his mother to wash the yards of the doctors, removing the pots so that they could be cleaned underneath, that he had decided, in order to earn some money and help his mother with the expenses of the house and his siblings, to join groups that cleared the woods. The master who hired them waited for them and for them to have strength, they entered the bars and drank the ponchas and brandies that took away their cold and gave them the necessary energy and then, in a pack, cleared the forests, until they had no more strength. She had still worked as a cashier at a supermarket, but her older sister was embarrassed to see her like a poor and miserable girl, since she was the eldest and had pursuit another form of living, and did not wanted to see the misery on her brothers and sisters.

Everything grew in size as it grew. The pains and problems seemed to know that she could take more because she was older, so, after a series of experiences that put her in check with her mother, she decided to move to Switzerland, as a childcare worker and restaurant waitress. She was surprised that she didn't know anything about anyone, that she had never written home, that she had never given a damn to the troops, but that guilt or perception had come later, because at that time when she shook her, she felt that this was exactly what she had to do and that they would not dare to get in his way and decision. 

As time progressed, he began to miss the smell of the sea, the smell of her mother, her house, her siblings, and even her father. And two years later, he returned home. He understood, therefore, that all litanies and beliefs produced a kind of fabric, a sarapillery net, limiting dreams and amplifying paradoxes. If one day she had dreamed of being a different person, better, she had to go through and obey the popular sayings that her mother knew by heart and had repeated to her growing up: My daughter, to be a doctor, you are born a doctor and to have money, you have to work a lot, a lot, you see your mother, cleaning offices, walking on your knees on the stairs is not enough. You need to push yourself to work and if you don't have kids, all the better. Because with children, your life can be pretty miserable. And misery was everywhere on that island. It was just a matter of looking and noticing. She understood this well, she had grown up seeing him in hospitals, on the streets, at home, in her neighbors. It was a kind of gratuitous venom that clung to people, that stuck to the walls, that dictated the present and continued, if they were allowed, into the future, until we were buried in those holes in the cemetery, where some were having flowers, but if we were really miserable, we wouldn't even have flowers in the grave. 

She met someone from outside, displaced on the island and who would leave there. There was no misery in his bearing, nor in his heart, nor in the way he treated her. On the contrary, there was passion, interest, sympathy, intelligence, care. And in his speech, not a single word inspired misery. Madalena clung to that passion, to that promise of beyond the island, of continuity in another timeline, far from everything she knew, from the cleared bush, the poncha and the brandy, the brooms and the boxes of supermarket, and left. Building the future on more fertile soil. To build your family unit, to have your children, your home, your dreams see the light of day. Even today, she misses her family, although she maintains a close relationship with the help of telephones and every now and then travels to the island as a tourist, visiting her family, and has a doctorate and life has taught her that misery does not conquer dreams, nor condemn the future. Even today, what he misses most is the smell of the sea, the steep dives in the ocean, among its rocks, without sand, the smell of childhood through the sea.