Is my strength the strength of stones, or is my flesh bronze? -Job 6:12, ESV
“It was the Thursday before spring break, and everyone prayed for that three-o'-clock ring. All I had to do was survive the walk home, and I'd be free for ten days. It wasn't that long of a walk, either; I knew the rout, I walked it with my mother for three years. Leave. Turn right. Turn left on the cooperativa. Turn right before the old library. Walk straight ahead, and say hi to your titi when you stopped by. Turn straight to Alcapá, left to the Intermedia, or right to the farmacia if you needed something. Turn right through Doña Irma's house (may she rest in peace), turn left after that blue house. Don't dare cross the pastizal on your right, but turn righth anyway when you cross the intersection. Keep straight to the cancha and the baseball park, and turn right to the elementary school.
“I only had to reverse. And I followed everything, just like I saw. The kids were still savages, more so on vacation D-Day. They were running, hollering, crossing the pastizal and getting their pants dirty, while others waited close to the canchas or the school for someone to pick them up. I was careful as always, and absent-minded as always. (Some things never change.)
“But as my feet cornered between two small barriadas, I remember some prepubescent caricatures behind me. Two girls and a boy. A triguena, a jincha, and a plain forgettable one. Names, I only know one. Other details seem distorted. But I remember the taunts. And the howls and the stones. Someone barked, and I looked back. Someone slurred something, I called one of them a puta. They were behind me, insulting me, teasing me, treating me like a godforsaken mangy dog. Sure, I was used to it, being smart, pudgy and fat all. But it was too much: I was being humiliated.
“My titi's house was nearby, and I didn't even say a word. I could've hollered to the people on the other side of the street (it was a small town, they knew me and I knew them), but I didn't, either. Even silent lambs bleat in danger; I stripped my tongue, and my tongue became a whip. Those pebbles, they were stones; I let them crush me. What did I do to them!? Did I offend, laugh, or annoy them?...In the old days, a few egregious sins were punishable by death; two or three witnesses were more than enough to start polishing some stones...
“I opened the door. I ran to my mother's arms and I cried. She asked what the hell happened to me. I explained the whole thing, gave it a spin or two, wiped my eyes and my boogers. She asked me why didn't I say anything to my titi. I didn't even thought of it, I said. The rest I don't remember, maybe she vowed to get to the bottom of that, I don't know. But for the time being, I suppressed my vacation.
“After spring break, we discover the motive for the lottery: it was a game. A poorly crafted, poorly executed, poorly gracious game. I took that at face value. They apologized; for a naïve eleven-year-old, they seemed genuine. I accepted, and it buried in the furrows of my mind. Eventually, we learned that one of them ran away to someone's house. The other one fell pregnant. And I've talked to he ra couple of times. The other one, I don't remember; perhaps, he became a Milgram experiment.
“That is, until I see the demonic avalanche I created--"
For a moment, the about-to-be sounds of self-deprecation were drowned out by a 2005 repeat of a Yankees-Red Sox match.