la boda

Yesterday she was just outside picking guava berries and wishing the sun would never stop shining on the dark smooth skin of her neck. But that was yesterday. Today she found herself lacing up her older sister’s hand-me-down corset and preparing to begin the end of the rest of her life. Of course no one ever told her to expect fairy-tales, but she had still hoped they might come true for her.
His name was inconsequential. In fact, she hated every syllable of it. Marius. She could hear herself whispering it like a broken record over and over again – mar-ee-oos. It sounded so foreign on her tongue, she wanted to roll the r and soften the final o, but it was not her tongue, it was not her language, and he was not her man.
She knew she had no choice but to aquiesce, but that did not stop the dreams at night. Her slumber was her ally. In her dreams she could run far far away from this twisted, tangled story and she could laugh and sing and whisper secrets – secrets he would never understand. Sometimes she would awaken in the night with a start, for fear there was someone in her room or nearby witnessing the terrible beauty of her night-time escape. Of course there was nothing, but the happy, hopeful rhythm of her heart beating wildly in her chest. And then a terrible, haunting sickness would settle in the depths of her stomach. Those dreams were her ally by night, but they taunted her by day.
Never would she know the smell of his hair or the gleam of his eye. Never would she know her own strength or the love that welled within her. She would never look at her children with joy, she would never gaze expectantly into the future.
Father had told her that this choice was bettering their family, that the love of her home and her church would sustain her. He was always saying things he knew nothing about. It infuriated her because she still knew he was right. She turned another loop of lace around her finger. She saw her mother lifting piles and piles of snowy whiteness over her head as tia Mari’s handiwork spilled over her small thin frame. Mother was always telling her to eat more because the boys would never like a woman who did not know how to be hermosa, but she had never wanted to eat so much as she had wanted to spend her afternoons walking. Walking, walking, walking. The powdery dust of the dirt roads would softly collect on the open toes of her sandals as she trodded from stone to stone. She liked to count the rocks as she passed them. Some were large and beautiful, others were small and hardly noticeable. But she saw them all. Every single one. She knew them and she would anxiously await the discovery of new stones that would be turned up after a barreling tobacco truck or the occasional taxi passed along the still streets of their small farming town.
Before she left, she carefully retraced the steps of her favorite path, pacing up and down, combing every inch of the road hoping to etch the memories of each stone she had met, eternally, on her broken, hardened heart. She requested a few of her favorite stones from the road who was always happy to oblige a troubled traveler. She needn’t explain to him the depths of her troubles for he already knew. Wise, gentle, generous roads had seen travelers from every edge of the world they knew perfectly the bounce in the step of a smitten lovesick little girl just as much as the tired, heavy plod of heartache.
‘Andale mi amor!’ shouted tia Mari, it was time. She gazed at herself in the bathroom mirror. In the corner was written a note or name written in characters her eyes did not understand and her heart despised. It was scrawled in dark ink and she moved to see its reflection cover her aching, sobbing chest. Where were her stones? Where were her words? Her voice? Her language? No one could enter this cold dark silence where she stood, not even the wise road could have taken away the ache. She smiled courageously at her incredulous face and dabbed at the reddened corners of her eyes. ‘it is time.’ She whispered. And then she walked. One step at a time, gazing down at the the swishing hem of tia Mari’s handiwork. She was done. She was complete. And so she walked. And she kept walking, walking walking.