AUNT CHINCA

I never spoke of my Aunt Chinca for fear of her silence. I remember those long waves of smoke coming from the back bedroom, the one facing the patio; the product of her cheap cigars.    She smoked them there in the dark like someone saluting infinity. I don't know what her voice sounded like because she never said a word to me, neither in rage nor in tenderness. I do remember her black dresses though and her slippers worn out by wandering from who knows where. No one told me what my Aunt Chinca did on Sundays or whether she had secret loves, violent passions, fortuitous encounters. What did my Aunt Chinca do, sitting alone in the patio? When she passed by the living room at noon, where the whole family would meet to listen to songs of Pedro Infante, my Aunt Chinca would leave a trail of ashes and rubbish as if she were slowly disintegrating. But no one ever noticed this, or was it only I that could decipher the spots she left in space? They say she died all shrunken up, like a wild pigeon, and that with her, they buried her silence.