At sixty-five years old, Idalia had fun playing with dolls. In the morning she was the first to wake up to the shouts of the corn muffin and whey vendors.
He opened the front door holding it with the heavy old sea snail to keep it from closing in the wind. For a moment he stopped in front of the mirror. He would then comb his hair with the palms of his hands, flattening the loose strands. One day, looking at her face, she had the conviction that neither the weather nor the torrential rains would change her serene expression and her diaphanous eyes. Her pink and full lips scrupulously guarded the purity and dignity that she would always boast of throughout her life. He dusted his cheeks, dabbing himself with a little annatto, moistened his fingers with saliva to outline his eyebrows, and took out of his pocket a small metal box with camphor and turpentine oil to rub himself from throat to chest.
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She had three dolls: one with black hair, which reached her breasts, and two the size of a baby. After grooming himself, he would go to the patio with them. He sat in the shade of the banana trees. He talked to them, combed them, bathed them once a week, and made them dresses for every occasion. The afternoon his mother died, he rushed to make little mourning dresses for them. Until then her girls, as she called them, wore colorful dresses, adorned with lace and straw hats with a flower. She rummaged through the trunk for scraps of fabric, chose the most sober colors, and quickly pedaled the sewing machine to make their burial dresses. After her mother’s funeral, she cried with her dolls. He hugged them, stroked their heads, unloading his pain on the shoulders of the largest. Her games exasperated her sisters, who could not understand how an elderly woman played and slept with dolls. On a Sunday morning she dressed the big communion doll. He adorned her head with a headband decorated with flowers, put on a white and flowing dress that dragged on the floor, white stockings and beige shoes. He took the doll in his arms and walked towards the church. People leaned out of the windows and made fun of the disturbed old woman, that’s what they called her. When he reached the town square, hundreds of girls wore their communion dresses with the rosary and the open prayer book. Inside the church, Idalia sat on one of the last seats and placed the doll next to her. At the time of the Eucharist he got up slowly, making the doll walk. People looked at her with disbelief and compassion.
Follow the news of El Espectador on Google NewsWhen he got in line to receive the sacrament, the photographers fired their flashes under the chant “Long live Christ! Long live Christ!” Idalia advanced with her wrist, the priest looked at her absorbed, shook his head and gave her the body of Christ in his hand. The anecdote was forever etched in the black and white portraits. And the girls who received the sacrament that Sunday were marked for life by the doll that made the first communion with them.
One afternoon of suffocating heat, while they swayed in the rocking chairs, Leonor and Cecilia decided to hide their dolls, with the good intention that their sister would assume their age and dedicate herself fully to sewing. Idalia had gone to the train station to wait for the palenqueras with the shipment of fresh fish that they brought from Cartagena de Indias. He entertained himself for a while haggling over the price. He returned with the pot full and fish in his pockets. She put the pot on the table, drank some cold lemonade, and went to find her dolls. He always left them in bed, with their pajamas on and wrapped up. She parted the flower curtain with one hand and stepped into the room. When he got to his bed, he moved the covers and found it empty.
“Where are the girls?” Where have they put my girls? He shouted, trembling.
“Idalia, you are already too big a woman to be playing with dolls,” Leonor said.
“I need my dolls, I’m not hurting anyone,” Idalia begged, crying.
He threw himself on the floor on his back, kicking and with the quilt in his hands. He kept sobbing as he listened to the cooing of the doves. That day he slept on the floor with his clothes on. Her eyes were swollen and small from crying so much. The next day she woke up with dirty hands and tangled hair.
When several weeks of empty mornings and dark sunsets passed, he set about mending everything he could find. She loosed the false ones from the dresses to sew them again, she made colored cushions, she removed the buttons to reattach them, with the blade she ripped the zippers of the older skirts to reuse them. But neither time nor her new distraction filled the absence of her wrists. At night she fell asleep hugging the hundreds of cushions that adorned her bed.
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One afternoon in December he went to the room that was left in the courtyard, where they kept all the junk. I was looking for the Christmas tree and the animals in the manger. He took out the dusty wheels from his father’s truck and put them on the water tank, he also took out the bicycles with the rusted chains and blackened saddles, the pots with holes that they used as flower pots, the black bags with the clothes of the deceased, the pitcher that they filled with water from the cistern, the boards of the beds, the wrought iron heads, the broken rocking chairs, the cans of dried paint, the paint brushes for the bars, the chipped pewter bowls, the fan blades with mouse shit, and broken shoes with worn outsoles. In a green bag tied with a rope was the Christmas tree. He kept looking for the lights and the birth animals, which they had kept in shoeboxes.
He opened a window, which in better years was white, and there he found his wrists, crammed into the bottom.
Her eyes widened and her lips trembled. He took them out carefully. He was shocked to see that their faces were wrinkled, they were bald, and they had lost their eyelashes. At the same time, she was glad because they kept their clear eyes and serene lips, just like hers. She put them in a soapy punch bowl and removed the grime with a scouring pad, dried them with a cloth, and dressed them in the old flowery dresses. That night he slept with them again. She gave herself fully to sewing, made new dresses and colored wigs for them. When he played with the dolls, I could feel his unconditional love for the daughters he never had.
