Happy Families_ Stories - Carlos Fuentes [96]
they’re the spotter planes
they see people
they’re the huey helicopters
when they don’t see people they fire at livestock
huey oxen
it’s better to run away
whole families on the roads
it’s better to have a fiery sky fall on you
it’s better to die in despair on the road in the daytime
than to fall into their hands
they tortured my father with a plastic bag filled
with flour on his head
talk
they mutilated my father cutting off his testicles
they hung weights on my father’s balls until they maimed him
forever
but we’re still there in our miserable villages
the women wash boil grind
we kids are couriers
we carry the news
they killed Gerinaldo
Jazmín won’t return to the village
we kids played ambush
Rutilio and Camilo and Selvín
then we grew up however we could
we formed gangs of rancorous orphans:
there is rancor
and nobody hides it
there are the fourteen families’ mansions in San Benito beach
houses cocktails at the country club Hollywood musicals
at the Vi movie theater
there are the mobs of one-eyed lottery-ticket sellers bootblacks
shooshine the lucky little number the blind man
on the streets
and the fourteen only read condensed novels from reader’s digest
and the fourteen listen to music by mantovani even when they take a shit
and they are protected by soldiers nothing but dark-skinned little farts with no
forehead no chin with boots that hurt and belts
that pinch
who follow the orders of strutting whites
who don’t dirty their hands
and the gang was formed there
children and grandchildren of guerrillas of soldiers of widows
of other courier children
the ones who got together night after night to wait for news
about the disappeared
then tell us
who cares about my death?
what’s more fucked up?
being dead?
or being poor?
that’s what we want
everybody poor
and that’s why they’re afraid of us now
since we stood up to the death battalions
the huey helicopters
since we were kids we thought think now you’re dead and your
worries are over
maybe only when you’re dead do you see your papa again and your mama
your little brother
so be initiated into the
gang take the vomiting test
you stick your finger in the back of your mouth
touch your uvula
if you don’t puke we jam a snapdragon to the back
of your palate and a corncob up your sweet ass
be initiated
with a savage beating
to see if you can take it
kicks to the balls
they cut off your father’s son of a bitch kicks to the belly
they kicked your pregnant mother bastard fucker until you
came out
kicks to the knees
they cut off your grandfather’s legs to make him talk
kicks to the shins
your grandfather cut off my grandfather’s
now pull down your pants and take a shit in front of everybody
put on a happy face
imagine you’re not shitting you’re killing
get used to the idea bro that killing is the same as the euphoria
of shitting
you’ll be the sergeant you shit
you’ll be the captain you turd
but don’t stop thinking about all of them
the fourteen families
the mob
the killers and torturers in the battalions of death
just like you
the guerrillas who killed in self-defense just like you
the gringos arming giving classes on death weapons of death
now remember a single soldier from the battalion: forget about him
now remember a single guerrilla at the front: forget about him
life begins with you
in the gang
get used to that idea
nobody cares about your death
try to remember a single ácatl
try to remember a single farabundo
forget about them
erase the words patriotism revolution from your head
there was no history
history begins with the salvatrucha gang
your only identity is your tattooed
skin
swastikas totems tears a little death
knives stones rifles pistols daggers
everything’s good
burn the earth
leave nothing standing
we don’t need allies
we need the jungle to hide rest invent
we learn to walk like shadows
each mara gang member is a walking tree
a shadow that moves toward you
toward you carefree asshole
do you think you saved yourself from us?
do you think you saved yourself