Read Online Thursday Night Widows by Claudia Piñeiro - Free Book Online Page A

very high quality – the Señora had bought it in Miami. And with two stitches the little hole wouldn’t show.
    On Friday Antonia went to the jumble sale, during the siesta, after she had finished mopping the kitchen floor.
There were two or three girls there that she knew from taking the bus on Saturday lunchtimes. She said hello, but didn’t want to chat to them. The pretty blonde woman – the owner of the garage where the clothes were all laid out – was there with three other women she recognized, having seen them at her employer’s house. They were chatting, laughing and drinking coffee. Every now and then, one or other of them came over to give the price of an article of clothing. One of the girls from the bus chose a coral-red silk dress. It was pretty, but it had two small stains on the hem, probably caused by bleach. If it had been blue, Antonia could have fixed that; once she had accidentally stained Romina’s blue gym bottoms with bleach then used a biro to colour in the mark and Mariana had never noticed. Romina herself had suggested this, when the girl found her worrying about the mark. Romina was always helping her; the girl was a bit gruff, but intelligent – not like her, she thought. That red was going to be difficult, though. They charged the girl from the bus five pesos. If that was the going rate, Antonia reckoned that she was going to be able to buy the shirt. But she couldn’t see her employer’s sparkly top anywhere. She checked all the piles, without finding it. She wanted it so much, she plucked up the courage to ask one of the ladies.
    â€œA black T-shirt… I don’t think there is one.” The lady asked one of the others: “Have you seen a black T-shirt that would be right for her, Nane?”
    â€œNo, there’s nothing in black,” put in Teresa. “But why do you want black? That colour won’t suit you – it’s going to drain you. Wear something that picks you up a bit, that makes your face glow. Try looking in that pile.”

    â€œIt’s not for me, it’s for my daughter,” said Antonia, but once more they were chatting among themselves and did not hear her.
    Antonia continued to look through the piles, but without hoping to find anything. It was the Señora’s black top or nothing. That was what she wanted, to give to Paulita for her birthday. “Thank you,” she said at last and left empty-handed. Over the following days, Antonia thought more than once about the shirt that was not hers. She wondered who must have taken it. At the weekend, she asked the girls on the bus, but nobody had seen it. Finally she put it out of her mind. “At the end of the day, a shirt isn’t going to change anyone’s life,” she thought.
    And then Halloween came round. Mariana had bought sweets to give to the children who came to their door that evening. She had bought Romina a witch’s outfit, so that she could go trick-or-treating round the neighbours’ houses. But since coming home from school, the girl had been shut up in her room and Mariana didn’t feel like coaxing her down. Pedro was still too little to go out, and burst into tears when he saw people dressed up. Lots of people knocked on the Andrades’ door that night. The children of friends, Romina’s classmates, “Children who like good, clean fun,” said Mariana to her daughter, by way of a reproach. She had bought the sweets in the supermarket a few days before and hidden them in the desk in the sitting room, which was where Mariana hid everything she did not want to be eaten. By nine o’clock, three groups of children had already come by. At a quarter past nine, the doorbell rang again. Antonia went to answer the door with an instruction to share out the remaining
sweets and send the children away. Mariana didn’t like interruptions at dinner time. Outside was a gaggle of girls who had emerged