Giobany Arévalo > Gabriela Torres Olivares >Anuar Jalife - Literal

The Boy in the Red Shoes
The wind seemed to roar like a feline through the radio antennas and I thought I heard her say that in
the seconds prior to a seizure she could see auras.
“Or I remember it that way, at least. It’s been years since I’ve had a seizure.”
We were bordering the cliff. The dry lava, down below, had the same creases and folds as a great
black blanket. Ahead of us and jumping merrily, a boy in red shoes was guiding the way.
“Many epileptics have said the same thing.”
The boy was carrying some walking sticks that he insisted we purchase. He kept his machete well
tucked away in his belt.
“That there are a few seconds of clarity.”
She was interrupted by the scandal of small green parrots. They had fl own out of the branches of
an oak. The boy vainly hurled at them one of the walking sticks, which landed near our feet.
“And in those seconds prior to a seizure one can see auras,” she continued, bending to pick up
the walking stick.
We remained still. White gases were streaming from the crater. The roar of the wind appeared
to increase. Suddenly we heard whispers, as if suffocated by that wind or as if pronounced from the
midst of that wind. Toward us walked four kids.
“Your friends?” she asked the boy in the red shoes, but he only moved closer to her, in silence.
The four were in rags, with their hair all scraggly and their faces covered with a fi ne fl our-colored
dust. None of them was more than six or seven years old.
“Gimme your stick, lady.”
They were sucking orange halves and the opaque juice was dripping off their fi ngers and
forearms.
“I can’t.”
“Gimme it, lady, don’t you be mean.”
“I said no, it’s not mine.”
She handed the walking stick to the boy in the red shoes and the kids eyed him with eyes of
hatred.
“I hope a bus kills ya,” one of them blurted at him.
The rest snickered through their orange halves.
“Did ya hear me?”
The boy in the red shoes was staring at his red shoes.
“I hope a bus kills ya, I said.”
The four of them were still laughing and they started walking uphill on the path. They were
already a little distance away when she took off after them and caught up and said something that I
couldn’t quite hear through the sound of the wind. She walked back shaking the dust from her hands
as if she was also shaking her hands free of the four kids.
“They had given him the evil eye,” she whispered while stroking the boy’s straight black hair. “I gave
it back to them.”
OTOÑO, 2009 LITERAL. VOCES LATINOAMERICANAS 17