“Stop sending them money, Mariana, because your husband is not as dead as they made you believe.” ”
Doña Cuca dropped that in the neighborhood yard, just after I had just gone up five floors without an elevator to deliver, like every month, 4 thousand pesos to my in-laws.
They lived in an old building of the Guerrero colony, those who smell of moisture, drainage and overheated food every hour. I parked my red Tsuru on the corner of the always, took a deep breath and put my hand in my bag to touch the envelope. There went the money I had so hard to earn: it could have been for Matthew’s tennis, for his English classes, or to pay for his late tuition.
Five years ago, when Diego decided to go to work at the oil platforms of Ciudad del Carmen, his parents took out all their savings: 240 thousand pesos. When I was told that I had died in an accident, my mother-in-law pointed her finger at me, crying, and told me that because of me her son had left the house, and that now they were left without a child and without money. They forced me to promise that I would pay their debt in monthly payments. I accepted because of love, because of guilt and for not breaking Matthew’s bond with his grandparents.
Got to apartment 504 and tapped three times. Took them almost a minute to open. My mother-in-law, Ofelia, barely left the chain on and opened long enough to get the hand out.
—Do you bring the money?
No “stop by”, no “how are you?” “, not even a “how’s the kid doing?” ”. I handed her the envelope and she kept it without telling.
—Matthew asks a lot about you — I told him —. If you want, I’ll bring them to you on Sunday for a while.
His face stiffened up as usual.
-No. Your father-in-law has a bad leg and I have a migraine. That kid makes a lot of noise.
Five years and the story never changed. My son could count on his fingers on one hand the times he walked into that house, and they always ran to us before fifteen minutes.
The door slammed on my face with the same dry blow every month. I stayed there for a second in front of the blue unpainted iron, listening. Nothing. No TV, no plates, no cough, no steps. Strange silence, as if the apartment was empty.. or hide something.
I went down with my chest tight. As soon as I walked across the yard, Mrs. Cuca, the fourth-floor neighbor, pulled my arm and sat next to her on a concrete bench.
-Mija, you don’t carry them even one more weight.
– Why does he say that?
He looked around at me, lowered his voice and dropped the sentence that broke my soul:
– Because here, among us, they say that the dead sometimes return… and I saw one go up to the fifth floor.
I felt my body freezing.
He told me that several nights, between one and two in the morning, he saw a man go up with a hat and mouth covers He was walking dragging his left leg a bit, just like Diego since he broke his ankle in that motorcycle accident. And he didn’t knock the door. I’d take out a key and come in like I lived there.
I wanted to tell her that I was confused, that Diego had been cremated, that I had loaded his urn myself. But my voice became small.
That same night I called my cousin Sergio who works in systems. I asked him to get videos of the new camera installed between the 4th and 5th floor.
The next day, in a hidden café in the Center, Sergio opened his laptop and played the recording. It was 1:47 in the morning The empty staircase looked empty… until a shadow appeared. Cap. mouth covers Down shoulder. Left leg barely dragging.
I stopped breathing when that shadow slipped a key and opened the door to 504 like he never left.
I couldn’t believe what was about to happen.
I asked Sergio to put up the videos of the previous three months. The same thing was repeated to everyone: I was delivering the money on the 5th, and that same night or the next, the same man walked into my in-laws’ apartment with confidence. I didn’t need to see his face to recognize him. There are ways to walk that a woman never forgets. I didn’t sleep that night. I spent time going over every humiliation, every time I tightened my belt not to fail them, every gift “for the medicines”, every excuse not to let Matthew live with them. The suspicion no longer hurts. My temper was starting to burn. Two days later I walked into the building at 8pm with a huge box in my hands. I had bought my father-in-law an electric massager “for arthritis”. I wanted in yes or yes. Before I knocked, I slammed my ear on the door. “Pour it more, son, it’s still hot,” said my mother-in-law. “With what Mariana brought this week, it’s enough” answered in a snoring, masculine, too familiar voice. My knees are almost bent Touched. A brutal silence was made. My father-in-law, Rogelio, opened through the entrance so I wouldn’t let me see anything. —What are you doing at this hour? — I brought you this. And I wanted to stop by and light a candle for Diego. It turned out pale. Back, from a bedroom, I heard a man cough. My father-in-law snatched the box and slammed the door in my face. She was no longer a suspect. Diego was alive. Sergio did some more research. Found out that my in-laws’ pensions came in full every month and they almost didn’t touch them. They had money stashed away. They weren’t surviving thanks to my 4 thousand pesos. So why they got me pressed like that? I called the supposed representative of the oil company who, five years earlier, had handed me the ballot box and the “death” papers. He got nervous when I asked him for a copy of the props and the original act. He stuttered, made excuses, and hung me. Then I understood that death smelled rotten from the beginning. That weekend I took Mateo to the Pantheon of Actopan, Hidalgo, where “his dad” rested. I waited until no one was around, opened the niche with the key I had been given years ago and forced the urn lid with a disarmer. There were no ashes inside. There were stones. Building stones, dust and nothing else. I sat on the floor of the pantheon with the urn open between my legs, shaking as if my skin was ripped off. My son and I had cried five years in front of a pile of trash. We had prayed a lie. I recorded everything with a small camera and closed the ballot box again so as not to raise suspicions. That same night, already back in town, I began to check the social networks of Diego’s old friends. In the profile of Beto “El Guero”, his best friend, I saw a photo on a terrace of a chellery. On his wrist he was carrying the blue Seiko watch that I gave Diego on our anniversary, with a scratch next to the brooch that I knew perfectly. Sergio pulled the thread and found something worse: Beto went into an abandoned cellar in the industrial zone of Vallejo almost every night. —If Diego is still alive — he told me —, he’s there. I looked at the screen, then the recording of the empty urn and then the video of the stairs. It was no longer necessary to prove that my husband had faked his death. You had to hear it from your own mouth. And that, even if it destroyed me, was going to happen the next night.
