Her head held high, her gaze fixed on nothing, Aunt Gisela did not eat a thing or say a word. Then at midnight, right in the midst of all the hubbub, she spoke: “They say we have to love God. I hate him.”
She said it softly, almost mouthing the words. Only Luiza heard her.
Bad Words
Ximena Dahm was very nervous, for that morning she was to begin her life at school. She dashed from one mirror to another, and in one of her comings and goings she tripped over a bag and fell down. She didn’t cry, but she was mad: “What’s this piece of crap doing here?”
Her mother chided her: “Honey, you know we don’t say that word.”
Ximena, from the floor, wanted to know, “What are good words that we don’t say?”
Useful Lessons
Joaquin de Souza is learning to read, and he practices with the signs he sees. He thinks the most important word in the world is no, because everything begins with it.
“No trespassing.”
“No dogs allowed.”
“No littering.”
“No smoking.”
“No spitting.”
“No parking.”
“No loitering.”
“No campfires.”
“No noise.”
“No. .”
Rules
Chema was playing with a ball, the ball was playing with Chema. The ball was a world of colors, and the world was flying free and wild, floating on air, bouncing wherever it wished. It touched down here, leaped over there, bounced and bounced until it reached his mother and came to a halt.
Maya López took the ball and locked it away. She said Chema was a menace to the furniture, to the house, to the neighborhood, and to all of Mexico City, and she made him put on his shoes, sit down properly, and do his homework.
“Rules are rules,” she said.
Chema raised his head: “I have my rules too.” And in his opinion a good mother should obey her son’s rules.
“Let me play all I want, let me go barefoot, don’t ever make me go to school, don’t make me go to bed early, and we’ll move to a new house every day.”
Then, eyes on the ceiling and in a tone of feigned indifference, he added, “And be my girlfriend.”
Good Health
At the busstop a swarm of youngsters crowded on board. Loaded down with books and notebooks and other stuff, they filled the bus with nonstop chatter and laughter. Talking all at once, shouting, pushing, showing off, they laughed at anything and everything.
A man scolded Andres Bralich, one of the loudest: “What’s wrong with you, kid? You got laughing sickness?”
Just one glance was enough to confirm that all the other passengers had been treated in time and were in full remission.
The Teacher
The sixth graders at a school in Montevideo held a novelwriting competition.
Everyone took part.
Three of us were on the jury: Oscar, teacher of the threadbare cuffs and a fakir’s wages, a student representing the authors, and me.
At the awards ceremony, no parents or other adults were allowed in. We the members of the jury read out our decision, which praised the merits of each and every submission. Everyone won, and for every winner there was an ovation, a downpour of streamers, and a little medal donated by a local jeweler.
Afterward Oscar told me, “We feel so connected to each other. I’d like to keep them all back.”
One of the girls, who had moved here from a small town in the country, stayed to chat. She told me she never used to open her mouth, and with a laugh she said now the problem was she couldn’t shut up. She loved her teacher, she said, loved him very very very much, because he’d taught her not to be afraid of being wrong.
The Students
When the teacher asks the girls what they want to be when they grow up, they don’t answer. Then, quietly, they confess: I want to be whiter, sing on TV, sleep in till noon, marry a guy who won’t beat me, marry a guy with a car, go far away where nobody will ever find me.
The boys say: I want to be whiter, be a soccer star, be Spiderman and walk up walls, rob a bank and never have to work, buy a restaurant and get to eat all the time, go far away where nobody will ever find me.
They live quite close to the city of Tucuman, but they’ve never seen it. Arriving by foot or on horseback, they attend school one day then skip the next two, taking turns with their siblings to wear the only pair of shoes. And the question they most often ask the teacher is, When is lunch coming?
Condors
By mule, motorcycle, or on his own two feet, Federico Ocaranza roams the mountains of Salta. He heals mouths in those desolate, destitute places. A visit from the dentist, pain’s nemesis, is good news, and up there good news is as scarce as everything else.
Federico plays soccer with the children, who rarely see the inside of a school. They learned what they know by herding goats and chasing a rag ball in their world amid the clouds.
Between goals they have fun teasing the condors. Lying flat on the rocky ground, arms spread-eagled, they pretend to be dead. Then, when the condors attack, the little corpses jump up and run away.
Manpower
Mohammed Ashraf doesn’t go to school.
From sun-up till moonrise, he measures, cuts, shapes, punctures, and sews soccer balls, which then go rolling out from the Pakistani village of Umar Kot toward the stadiums of the world.
Mohammed is eleven. He has been at this since he was five.
If he knew how to read, and could read English, he would understand the label he sticks on each of his products: “This ball was not made by children.”
Recompense
Homeless and aimless, with neither a where nor a why, José Antonio Gutierrez grew up on the streets of Guatemala City.
To dodge hunger, he stole. To dodge loneliness, he sniffed glue and imagined himself a Hollywood star.
One day he took off north, headed for Paradise. Dodging the police, sneaking on train after train, and hiking a thousand and one nights, he found his way to California. And there he stayed.
Six years later, in Guatemala’s most wretched barrio, a loud knocking woke Engracia Gutierrez. Several men in uniform stood at the door. They’d come to tell her that her brother, José Antonio of the U.S. Marines, had died in Iraq.
The kid from the streets was the first casualty of the invading forces in the year 2003.
The authorities wrapped his coffin in the Stars and Stripes and gave him military honors. And they made him a U.S. citizen, which was the reward they’d promised.
During the live funeral broadcast, they praised the heroism of the valiant soldier fallen in combat against Iraqi troops.
Later it came out that he was killed by “friendly fire,” which is what they call the bullets that get the wrong enemy.
The Horse
Every afternoon, Paulo Freire snuck into the movie theater in Recife’s Casa Forte neighborhood to see Tom Mix. He watched, eyes wide and unblinking, day after day.
The feats of the cowboy in the broad-brimmed hat who rescued damsels in distress were entertaining enough, but what Paulo really liked was the way his horse sailed along. From so much time spent peering at the horse and revering him, the two became friends, and Tom Mix’s horse stayed with Paulo for the rest of his life.