章 76: Chapter 24.5: The same word
Hatred burdens the soul with the weight of bitter wisdom. It is like an avalanche of books that tell personal truths describing personal lies.
Those kinds of lies the mind describes using the stimulus that turns out to be darkness for the imagination.
"Just be still, breathe, give oxygen to your personal meaning of heart and force it to confess.
There are not only three dimensions with which you can describe that confession. There are four dimensions: Width, length, height, and emotion.
When you are an adult this last dimension is lost in memory and becomes a memory. Everything becomes more out of habit. Except this. Faith is the emotion we adults have to hold on to. The emotion that built everything that exists in this world.
No one can lose that emotion. Eventually, it has to become a feeling.
Your faith has to be the greatest measure of all your dimensions."
That day their power went out because Luz threw a baseball at the light bulb that illuminated their room.
Her mother pulled her ears, yelled at her, and slapped her butt. Luz didn't care about any of that anymore. Not as long as he didn't let her sleep alone that night.
But that was just what her mother did.
Luz could not stand it and went to her mother's room. Even though she assured her that there was nothing to be afraid of, Luz heard sounds and sounds. Between high and low notes. Between a state of drunkenness and sobriety. Between sanity and madness. Between reality and fiction.
However, Luz and her mother watched images in the dark.
Although, Luz was afraid of the dark because it reminded her of the moments that were as uncomfortable for her as they were pleasurable for her parents.
Those times when they lived in the hut were a nightmare for her.
When she thought about that, as she watched the darkness, she knew that perhaps in the darkness her feelings were teleported straight to the hut.
That evening they both watched Sunday mass on television. There her mother helped her understand the video the religion teacher let them a review.
Luz was struck by the cross because it looked like four letters L together. A pair at the top and another pair of longer L's at the bottom.
Just her kitchen window also looked like two L's together. One placed in a normal position and the other upside down.
Why would that be?
"Did faith build everything that exists?
So you built me with faith?
Faith in what did you have when you created me?
Faith in what did Dad have?"
This was what the mother feared in letting Luz sleep next to her. She never stopped asking. All the mother intended was for her daughter to have faith that her father was coming back.
The mother believed her daughter was having angry outbursts because she missed her father. Although that didn't save her from a few spankings either.
"I... faith that.... faith in you.
I know you will fulfill your dreams and you will feel tremendous excitement when that happens.
I have faith that you will go far and be so much better than me...I don't want you to be like me."
That way of speaking, especially when the last words were heard so softly; it reminded him very much of the last one he had with his father before he left.
"I have faith that you won't be a bad girl like your mother. Don't be like her.
You can't be like me either. You lack years of bitter experiences like those melancholy songs that make your mother think she's a knew one.
The only one who knows the truth of things is me because I'm on the court. If she tells you something bad about me, leave her alone; it's a woman's thing to invent evil men to give more drama to their lives.
But you shouldn't consider yourself a woman, nor a man. You are both. The best of both.
You must bring out the man in you when you have to think. If you must feel, then bring out that feminine side.
I'm going to be outside, you're the eldest; so you must take care of your mother and brothers in my absence. Try to show the man's mentality that I teach you.
If they listen to you as I do, they will feel protected and you will help with their mental health.
You think there are so many people out of their minds these days. The worst thing is that these people believe they are right. They make their children believe that they are right.
They are just like those crappy priests. They are just pigs who eat off the shit of others. If people didn't have that shit the pigs would starve to death.
The cross wouldn't need sacrifices.
You must be my eyes and ears from now on. I delay bringing good things. But I need to leave someone worthy to take my place in this family.
I've been working with you for years, don't let me down."
Luz's mother confirmed what her father said about her: "Your mother doesn't know anything.
Don't be like her or you will be a nail and not a hammer".
It was difficult for Luz to satisfy both her parents. Although her mother seemed to be possessed by her father's mind.
Perhaps that is a clear indication that she learned her father's lessons well.
More than his wife, Mary had the attitude of the child Luz.
She and her mother were excellent pupils.
The awareness of that resolution made her guts burn. She hated being a woman, Luz wanted to find a way to be fully a man. Or maybe have him tied up, at her mercy.
Why even in the Bible do women stay at home?
Why is Jesus a man?
Luz was seeing in the darkness the silhouette of a man with outstretched arms: "The dark being".
He was paralyzed before her mental power.
Luz's mentality of man.
In Luz's thinking, there was no longer room for the idea of being a princess, finding a prince, or letting herself be rescued from that spiritual hole.
This is supposed to be how girls think, but she no longer wanted to be a girl.
"I thought adults only had faith in God. He's an enigma, but I'm not. I don't deserve you to have faith in me."
Luz held back the urge to cry and began to laugh.
To her, each laugh was like a crescent-shaped ax cutting through the soul of the dark being.
"Don't say that, are you crazy, don't say that again.
If you don't trust yourself... I'm not going to live forever and you'll have to take care of yourself and your little brothers alone.
Just trust and you'll see."
Whenever Luz's mother got angry with her; she would either hit her or say "you'll see".
"Trust yourself."
Luz repeated to herself. That was only said by Mary when she was tired and did not have the strength to argue.
Luz looked at her cross in the shape of a man and did not know who her Jesus could be. Such a role required someone brave and kind. She did not know anyone like that. That description was more like a being from a dream of love.
The kind of dreams that don't come true: impossible dreams.
As long as he looked at the dark being he would not be afraid of the dark. I would no longer sleep with the light on. It had to be like that or he would lose sight of his manly toy: The dark being.
But how could she understand the language of darkness?
Could her Jesus and the darkness have effective communication?
Too many questions and no answers. Or at least, not an answer that would be accepted by adults.
That was the curse of children.
Maybe that was the common ground between her and the darkness. Neither was accepted by adults.
Luz was not afraid of the dark. She feared the thousands of thoughts that crossed her father's mind and her mother's mind.
The stability of the whole family depended on it.
She wanted to be prepared for any emotional disaster. Prepared to never lose her smile. That was the only common thing or the only thing Luz wanted her parents to have in common: "Children should be happy. That's what parents are for. To take care of the children and see them smile as long as possible."
Thinking about this, she took her mother by surprise by hugging her very tightly without taking her eyes off the dark being. Her intention was to provoke the dark being. To make him give a sign of life because she would be accepted by an adult, her mother.
Envy like all negative feelings is one of the things people seek to cover up so that no one will see. Darkness is perfect for not seeing. Envy and darkness are secret friends, or so Luz believed.
But in the dark, the results can be very unpredictable.
"Mom!
There's a man in the dark. A man with a dark face."
The mother immediately got up and went to Flavia's room. Warning the two not to follow her or she was going to weigh them down. But Luz, as she does with many teachers, doesn't listen to her mother either.
She and Flavia go after Mary.
The mother enters the room and someone shoots an arrow at her, which she manages to dodge. In addition to the darkness of the room, Mary enters in a state of confusion that threatens to attack her nerves.
You hear someone's laughter and see his dark face through the window. Then he camouflages himself in the secret shadows of the darkness.
Mary turns on the light and thinks there is a thief outside. But the light shows a white, dirty, regular-sized, chubby rabbit. She is frightened, as the rabbit goes after her.
Mary's daughters arrive before her in the room. As soon as Mary entered, she closed the door.
The door vibrates under the pressure of the rabbit as much as their souls tremble to the frantic rhythm of that night.
For Luz, that rabbit was the answer to the darkness. The voice of darkness was like the particular squeak of that rabbit. Of a particularly low pitch so that its voice would be the springboard that would lead her fears directly to the rabbit.
She never lost sight of the dark being. Even when lost in the darkness, Luz knew that the silhouette of that man was the most beautiful thing in the darkness.
For Luz any beauty lay in the intrigue it provoked in her. The mystery of the darkness was based on the strange thoughts it inspired. Almost always the most feared thoughts, the ones that reflect the passion of obsession.
Luz's heart beats slowly as if its beats were the cautious steps of a being that does not want to be defeated. Not yet.
As long as she retained that inspiration in the control zone, Luz would have an equal chance with the dark being.
With the rabbit, it was clear to Luz that her knight in shining armor could not be a man or a woman. It was not humanity itself that inspired her.
What she loved was to give the adults a hard time. In the hope that the fire of courage she generated would destroy everything they thought they knew.
Luz had no faith in her, but she had faith in her purpose.
An animal against animal. A sound against another sound. A dream against another dream.
"I have to look for your brother. God, he'll be scared when he sees that.
What if the stranger comes into his room?
Your brother won't know what to do. I have to talk to him. First, calm him down and then plan...I'm going to bring him in."
First inspire then plan, it was perfect.
The rabbit stopped knocking and the mother opened the door. She feared the rabbit had gone to her son's room.
This time Luz did listen and stayed with Flavia in the middle of the night.
She began to search in her mother's huge wooden box for a song that would inspire another song, one that did not yet exist.
He was surprised to find a new playlist. Apparently, her mother had not ignored the earlier conversation they had had in the kitchen.
If that was indeed the case, the new records would be from the 70s and 90s.
He pulled out four discs and would put them on the DVD.
She didn't care if her mother told her she was crazy for listening to music in times of stress.
What her mother didn't know is that Luz has always lived with tension.
She pulled out two records from the 90s, while her 7-year-old sister helped her choose which of the two records to play first. Flavia had no choice but to collaborate with Luz. Otherwise, she might throw her out of the room.
She was surprised by her older sister's coldness. Sometimes, like Luz, she wondered if they were really sisters.
Luz knew more about existence by thinking than by playing with her siblings. But the times she played were unforgettable for them because Luz invented fun games.
"Savage garden catches my attention"
Luz verified that this was the name of the band.
"What song on the album do you like?"
Flavia wasn't sure until she saw a title that piqued her curiosity.
"The moon in back, that title is great."
As Luz placed it on the DVD she asked her, "Why do you think it's cool?"
Flavia hated it when Luz asked her a question. She always sees adults flattering the cleverness of her answers. With Flavia, they never do that. She was afraid Luz would make fun of her.
"Why do you want to know?"
Luz was surprised at her sister's question. She almost never speaks, unless forced to. The one who talks her ear off is always Luz.
"Because I can't read your mind."
Flavia didn't know what to answer, so she just replied to her sister's question, "It's just that.... The moon is the only natural focus of the night... The Moon is the most beautiful thing in the darkest nights and in the not so dark nights."
Luz found her sister's perspective very interesting and wanted to know more.
"Why does it seem that the moon is beautiful?
Why would it be the most beautiful thing in the nights?"
Flavia says instantly, "Because it is beautiful with its light."
Luz sighed something: "So you think it is beautiful because it allows you to see something.
Do you think it's beautiful because it takes the fear away from you?"
Flavia nodded her head in response.
Luz thought of the times she thought The Moon had disappeared. Then she realized it was just in another spot in town. Sometimes in the park and sometimes in front of her window.
The Moon this time was in Flavia and not in the dark.
Luz wasted no time and hit PLAY on the remote control.
Unbelievable!
Luz shouted and Flavia is startled, but a second later she laughs.
The lyrics of that song described her completely. Through those words, the madness of fantasy sounded so beautiful.
Her method to inspire her own soul to go on living seemed like a work of art in that song from 99.
The singer's sublime voice reminded her of the voice of the boy being chased by the bad man.
The voice was beautiful, but there was a certain sadness in it. It was like accepting that there is sadness, but there is a beautiful side: Learning.
Or maybe I could compare sadness as a dough that can be molded. You just have to choose the figure you want to shape.
Luz had already chosen her figure: The dark man.
That song told her: "To find someone to travel to the moon with me".
They both laughed and listened again to the rabbit hitting the door with its weight.
Luz tried to calm her sister down and invited her to choose the next song from another decade of the 20th century.
"But no fear, hey."
She twirled and tickled him to cheer her up.
Flavia wasn't going to refuse anyway. To her music was of no major interest, but anything was good if it distracted her at that moment.
Flavia chose a song from the '80s entitled: "I Don't Know Much" by Linda Rondstand and Aaron Neville.
Luz had already heard that song and was happy to repeat it whenever she had control of the radio or DVD.
"I don't know much, but knowing that I love you may be the only thing I need to know."
Exactly, that selection couldn't have been better.
Luz always felt bad about falling asleep when it came to memorizing facts about whatever. She had enough to memorize with all the things her father and mother told her in a roundabout way.
Lessons to learn so life wouldn't use her. Luz had to use her life for something.
The question was what for.
What good did it do her drunken neighbor to know about history?
Nothing. Besides, everything adults talk about almost always lies or not entirely true.
The only ones who always tell the truth, when they don't have a shred of adulthood yet, are children.
"Everything written by adults is a lie until I check it out."
That was her life motto.
She loved that 1989 song even if it generated some grief.
How could anyone know they loved another being?
Does anyone know what love is?
Luz, at times, thought that what society was at pains to show was the formula for never finding true love.
How can you teach something that one never discovered?
If her parents knew what love was; then love hurt. That characteristic was so different from what she saw in the pictures.
Who can you believe?
"Create your own world. Find your own land. A land that will never go away from you. Know that when you fall, that land will be waiting for you. That is my dark self.
My dark man is my magical world."
Flavia did not understand her sister. One moment she could be very cheerful and other times she would just be pensive. Sad, very sad.
She was very extreme and messy. The opposite of Flavia.
For Flavia, her sister was an enigma that she was afraid to discover. But, after all, she was her sister. She would just play along.
"And what is the magic of your world?"
Luz answered her immediately, "Magic is an impossible dream here, where we live; as well as love... love is my magic."
Flavia turned off the music and confronted her sister, "Love is not an impossible dream.
Don't our parents love us in their own way?"
Luz did not expect that reaction from her sister. As she never said anything.
However, she could not pay more attention because a crack was already visible on the door.
She and her sister leaned their backs against the white door and tried to support the weight of the rabbit. But it was clearly a hopeless case.
She moved away from the door to pick up the lamp. She signals her sister to open it and tosses the lamp to her.
At the same instant of Luz's throw, her mother hit the rabbit with her father's baseball bat.
The chubby rabbit fainted. But Luz stared at it because it would not be the first time that an animal ended up dead in her presence.
The mother called a friend of hers who was a veterinarian to take the overfed rabbit away.
The three of them and the youngest, Esteban, went into the room.
The mother could not believe how that animal left her door with cracks in it.
"Well, I'll put up a big poster of The New Kids on The Block."
Said the mother trying to calm her nerves. Until she sees Luz wanting to turn on the DVD.
"No, stop it. Are you crazy?
Do you see my door?
You think your father is going to give me money to fix it?"
Her mother's bitterness always made her very tense. Not only her but all three of them. Fear was gaining ground in their little hearts.
But Luz needed the harmonious and meaningful sound.
Luz would fight for her music.
"Am I crazy?
Don't tell me that, please, because I'm dying.
Isn't music life?"
Luz's words were slurred. Her mother was about to give her a nervous slap, but seeing little Esteban's face dissuaded her from doing so.
Esteban repeated Luz's question: "Isn't music life?
But if you say that music is the ultimate..."
The mother was dizzy and would not bear any more words. It was bursting her head.
"Yes!"
She answered almost shouting and Esteban burst into tears.
The mother rubbed her head and sat on the curb of the bed. She was exhausted from the crying, screaming, and laughter weighing terribly.
All for the sake of her children's mental health, but she realized she wasn't doing a very good job.
She wanted to cry too, but Flavia said: "But music is life... then could the rabbit wake up before its time?
Is that why the body comes alive, moves, with music?"
Everyone was silent. They all longed to hear the engine of the veterinarian's car. Although Luz was more interested in Flavia and that "yes!" her mother shouted.
It wasn't the first time her mother yelled at her, but it was the first time she held back the urge to throw a slap at her.
All because of Esteban's tears, Flavia's words, and Luz's questions. She realized that her questions alone provoked her mother's crisis.
The moon had a positive effect when it was in the three of them.
The repentance of what caused that darkness is the most beautiful thing of the night.
"Don't they know that the white rabbit only wakes up to the monotonous sound of the clock?
That they have not seen Alice in Wonderland?"
The mother watched Luz with a tenderness that almost made her cry. Though it was marred by unwavering bitterness and sadness.
Happiness was only for moments. Happiness runs out as fast as money after spending it on toy cars. Or so it happened to his father very often lately.
Luz kept looking at those toy cars on the window sill, while she turned on the DVD again.
Flavia passed her the song of the soft rock band Savage Garden and Luz played it at full volume. The mother turned on the switch and the room was illuminated by the white light.
The four of them embraced, while the singer's voice sweetly transported them to a familiar sorrow.
Luz felt that her mother's kiss on the forehead of each of her children was like a hole where a part of her was buried.
What part of her did each of her children have?
Luz now thought for sure it was the best part divided in three. But it would be of such a small size that the eye of small human children could not see it.
What if none of the three found their part?
Luz had long since lost the figure of the dark being, but she no longer cared. Nor did he care to envy it any longer.
Now she just wanted to enjoy her mother's arms. To imagine that in that little trio of toy cars were the five of them together. The five of them were genuinely happy.
What if in one of those toy cars was eternal happiness?
Maybe it could be possible if some of the cartoon magic existed in real life.
Suddenly, they heard the call of an engine just roaring.
The mother didn't dare open the door again; so she went out the window. As always she wanted to get to the yard quickly to punish her children for any dangerous mischief.
A few seconds later the rabbit squealed and the three children got goosebumps.
Luz picked up the baseball bat from the floor and prepared her mind for the contest. But this time Luz did not seek to look at the dark being. She wanted to feel it. She needed to feel it inside her to have the strength of a man and the strength of the woman she is.
Unlike men, women's strength lay in their children and not in their muscles.
Women's strength was in the beings she loved.
Women's strength lay in the spirit of love.
Women and their loved ones were like the moon and the stars. So must have been the spirit of love that was made of black magic.
The black magic of the dark being that brought the four together in an embrace.
The embrace that brought them together in a circle and circular is the silhouette of The Moon.
Could it be a coincidence?
Luz thought that just like in a car, they should escape through the window and let the rabbit live.
They knew how to defend themselves and the rabbit did not know what it meant to attack.
He was an eternal wild child.
Then the door gave way, but the chubby rabbit collapsed fainting against the white door.
Watching him dream, she felt very sorry. More than seeing his head bleeding, Luz noticed all the dirt on him. What it made her feel.
However, the worst thing was to see how the rabbit saw his reflection in the recessed mirror on the wall. How he saw the black line running down her cheek. With the horror that only consciousness could express.
Not even the crying of Flavia and Esteban could break Luz's curiosity.
What was that black line?
When Luz touched the black line she detected the same roughness as when she can't find a way to find any other word in her head than some derivative of "feel".
To feel so much in a space as small as her heart. But it did not want to feel small. That's why it feels, to beat more than any other heart. So that his own heartbeat would give his heart the perception of wide space to be free.
Perhaps Luz did not want to find any other word than feel.
That black line was a tear tarnished by dirt or better known as black magic.
Did he want to feel the dark being and its darkness?
Now she was sorry because the darkness used an innocent to answer her.
Darkness was good at reacting; but, until darkness fulfilled its function of teaching a lesson, the innocent would fall until then.
And all for not changing their word.
Feeling is a word that should be spread across all stages of life. All at once, it can cause emotional amnesia.
Maybe that's what happened to humanity.
Does anyone remember what true love is like?
What would happen if we found that true love?
Could the direction of that feeling be changed?
Emotional amnesia must have affected all animals.
Now it was coming for her.
The great symptom was that Luz was not affected by her siblings crying because she did not mind invading the rabbits' space. Everything to satisfy her curiosity.
Maybe her curse was her curiosity and she had to sacrifice it.
She would have to start forgetting that "yes".
Forget about accepting everything from everyone.
When Luz opposed her mother in a controlled way, she knew that a part of herself was buried in the dark being.
She should have turned the page and searched for other words, but she did not.
She let herself be consumed by the intensity of one of the so many chapters in her life. So many chapters to tell the same story. What happens by giving in to the childhood of the real world.
Accepting its symbol: A smile that weighs.
And all for answering "yes" to everything that always made her suffer.
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