All friends in one school shirt.
Maritza Tejera García I hope Marlon didn’t take the shirt! I hope his parents spared him that nostalgia every time he saw it! I hope they never had to replace the absence with his letters on a school shirt…!
Diaspora, Stories (IV) He arrived home flushed, his cheeks flushed and his light hair disheveled. He was happy, holding his report card. He was already in sixth grade, just one year away from entering high school and officially becoming a teenager. As if that earned him the right to do things that until then had been restricted. He was carrying some candy for his little brother.
He dropped the picnic basket and came over to me to tell me the details of the little party. He told me about the photos they took, in which he finally appeared «because he’d stepped up,» unlike other years when we’d tire of looking for him and his hair was only visible at the back of the group; about how he didn’t dance reggaeton because he didn’t like it; and about how everyone signed Marlon’s uniform shirt.
Immediately came the scolding, writing a uniform shirt!, with how scarce they are and also, that in sixth grade they are not allowed to have a new uniform… And quickly came the question: -?And the teacher allowed them to write the shirt for Marlon…?
They wanted him to take home a memento of his classmates of five years. I stood up so he wouldn’t see me cry. I managed to tell him it was a lovely gesture, good for his teachers, and that, who knows, maybe one day Marlon would return to his country to see them wearing that little shirt. I left him thinking.
And to change his sallow expression, I told him that my generation did that too, when we finished high school and pre-university. Days passed, and I had forgotten the incident. A clever trick of the mind that tends to erase sorrows. It was July 24th, and my grandson told me: «Grandma, Marlon is leaving tomorrow.» I looked at him and nodded, thinking he’d forget it later, but early on the 25th, when he woke up, the first thing he said to me was: «Grandma, Marlon is leaving today, we won’t see him again.
Did he take the shirt we signed for him…?» And I didn’t tell him what I thought so as not to hurt him, because he wouldn’t understand. I hope Marlon didn’t take the shirt! I hope his parents spared him that nostalgia every time he saw it! I hope they’d never had to replace the absence with its letters on a school shirt…! Diaspora. The stressed syllable that people are afraid to mention…
Written by Maritza Tejera.
Traductor de Google
