The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos

Read Online The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos by Margaret Mascarenhas - Free Book Online

Book: The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos by Margaret Mascarenhas Read Free Book Online
Authors: Margaret Mascarenhas
Tags: FIC000000
Ads: Link
hotel room, whatever.
     The rest of the time, which is most of the time, they hang out at the Children’s Park, playing cards, or arm wrestling, or
     talking about girls. Way to go, carajo, they say, when one of them tells of making it with a girl or fucking a puta. Give
     it to me, they say, jutting their hips and punching each other in the arm. It seems to Efraín that their feeling of accomplishment
     is the same irrespective of whether the act has been consummated with a girlfriend or a puta. Sometimes the Guajiro boys refer
     to women in general, and even to their own girlfriends, as putas, which only compounds Efraín’s confusion. It seems to him
     that according to the Guajiro boys, the only women who are not putas are their own mothers. Mothers are out of bounds; none
     of the Guajiro boys talk about their mothers. Unless they are making a vow. When one of the Guajiro boys wants to convince
     someone that he is telling the truth, he swears on his own mother’s eyes.
    La Vieja Juanita thinks it is good for Efraín to be around other Indian boys; she lets him chew the fat with them while she
     shops. She knows about the tobacco but not about the coca paste. She has warned the older boys that if they give Efraín coca,
     she will make them impotent. Because of La Vieja Juanita’s connection to El Negro Catire, the Guajiro boys do not question
     her ability to fulfill her promise; they never enlist Efraín’s services in the cocaine business. They make him swear upon
     his mother’s eyes that he will never breathe a word about the coca paste.
    The Guajiro boys treat Efraín like a mascot, sending him on errands—to fetch them some soda pop or rolling papers from the
     kiosk on the corner. They are genuinely fond of him. Because they are fond of him, they have never told him the rumor. That
     before El Negro Catire found her and cured her, the hottest puta in Chivacoa used to be his mother; that for a gram of cocaine,
     she would give them a blow job. Besides, people who disappear are presumed dead, and even these boys know it is dishonorable
     to speak ill of the dead, not to mention bad luck.
    Even though he hasn’t been to school, Efraín knows how to read and write because his mother, who had studied through the tenth
     grade, taught him. When one of the older boys needs to write something, he is sure to ask Efraín to help him, even if it is
     only graffiti on the wall of the Mercado Costa. The Guajiro boys repay the favor by giving Efraín tobacco, coca paste, and
     rolling papers. They tousle his hair and tease him, asking what he thinks about women. The only women Efraín knows well are
     his mother and his grandmother, and while he is certain that the Guajiro boys don’t mean
them,
he is not quite certain who they do mean.

    The day before Efraín’s mother disappeared, La Vieja Juanita said she had a plan to guarantee food on the table. Her plan
     was simple: Coromoto, who looked surprisingly like commercial depictions of Maria Lionza, would start having visions of the
     goddess in public and create a commotion. People would pay to talk to her, yes they surely would, the Marialionceros were
     ripe for a miracle.
    Efraín’s mother had scoffed at first, but La Vieja Juanita said, “Isn’t it better than serving drinks to ruffians in a bar,
     Coro? Think of it as acting; pretend you are starring in a telenovela. If not for yourself, then do it for the boy.” And she
     kept on about it until Coromoto had finally agreed, though Efraín thought it was mostly to make his grandmother stop talking.
    The next morning, Efraín and La Vieja Juanita had traveled by minibus from Sorte to Chivacoa to make purchases from the only
     store open on Sundays where they could find the supplies required—feathers, beads, scraps of cloth, and natural dyes that
     La Vieja Juanita would convert into paint. She also selected some material—three meters of handwoven Wayuu cotton—to make
     an appropriate costume for

Similar Books

Fury

Salman Rushdie

Self's punishment

Bernhard Schlink

Burned Hearts

Calista Fox

Cold Ennaline

RJ Astruc

Dangerous Talents

Frankie Robertson