#633 War in the Trash Cans- Guadalupe Nettel
A child is lonely and abandoned by his parents. They are “hippy” parents and have been fighting. When they separate, they feel unable to care for the child, so she is left with her aunt, a more proper middle-class family.
She misses her mother, even though she is a disaster, “An incredibly tender disaster to which I was of course deeply attached.”
She is lonely and quiet in her new surroundings. Her school is divided between the English speaking blond-headed children and the lower-class Mexicans. She is with the latter while her cousins are in the better school. Instead if integrating, she makes the decision to stay by herself, eat by herself and wander the kitchen at night.
“I ate alone, like a ghost shoes life unfolds alongside the living but is uninterrupted by them. I liked the silence and the stillness of those moments.”
One night she comes across a cockroach, and is frightened and angered by its presence. She squashes it, and Clemencia, the superstitious maid warns that the cockroaches will now invade. She is right. The house is suddenly overrun by roaches and the family is on high alert trying to rid themselves of the scourge.
“Of one thing I was certain: if we didn’t exile them, they would us.”
Only one thing will scare off the roaches, eating them. So all week they prepare meals with roaches, and eventually they disappear. The roaches could represent the child’s fear, or loneliness or any of her emotions. By trying to aggressively squash them, they will only come back bigger and more invasive. But by embracing them, literally making them a part of her, they will no longer haunt her. And when the roaches disappear she becomes more outgoing and a part of her adopted family.
However, there will always be that roach, or fear or loneliness lurkng around the corner, if only to remind her of what was once there.
No comments:
Post a Comment