good people, un relato

Hace un mes, el primero de noviembre del 2016, el Brooklyn Rail publicó uno de mis pocos cuentos, Good People. Acá les dejo el link y el inicio del relato.

--

Good people

by Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón

Maritere walked into the Caguas branch of The Creamery where ice cream meets heaven with the baby in her arms and María C., her cousin, to her side, and there she was once again talking the latter’s ear off with the same indiscriminate ardor that she put into anything, whether it was that beautiful purple dress she wore for prom two years ago, or that bendita grocery list that she always forgot when she actually went shopping, but which, even if she had taken with her, she wouldn’t have been able to purchase in its entirety because, like she repeated over and over, las cosas están bien malas. That said, perhaps that one Wednesday the tone was right. It just so happened that, as she was in the process of revealing, she hadn’t gotten her period that week, nor the previous one, and let’s not even mention the one before that. This could only mean one thing, and that one thing, you can imagine, would’ve definitely thrown a wrench into any well-oiled machine, and hers was far from well-oiled and already pretty wrenched out.

She whispered that last part, and nudged her head to the tender bag of skin and bones held warmly against her chest, hoping to not wake it up. If awake, it would start asking to be fed and she couldn’t bear it anymore. She didn’t say it out loud. She’d done so two days ago and her mother, with whom she lived, had overheard and slapped her across the face and gave her a sermon and that was the first time that had happened in a long, long time. But the truth was that her nipples were so sore and whenever the baby was sucking on her it made her feel like a huge, silver, scrunched up Capri-sun. That image actually came up in her nightmares and it scared her senseless. She knew it wasn’t logical, but she was afraid she would run dry and the baby would continue sucking and sucking and she’d be emptied out. And being emptied out and sola was the worst thing she could imagine in the whole world...

 [continúa acá].