Like This Afternoon Forever. Jaime Manrique
bled. Their father bought her a wig, which he forced her to wear all the time. But the more their father lashed her with his belt for tearing her hair out, the more she did it. Sometimes she went through the house with blood on her face and streaming down her neck. After one severe beating, Lercy finally stopped pulling her hair. But one evening Lucas entered the girls’ bedroom while Lercy was changing her clothes and saw her chest and stomach covered with hundreds of brown scabs. He pretended not to have seen them, but his anxiety grew worse as he worried that Lercy might leave the farm too. Instead, Lercy quit going to school.
“Suit yourself,” Gumersindo said at dinnertime the night she announced her decision. “You’re the one who’s going to regret it later on in life.” He even sounded somewhat happy that he’d have her help on the farm around the clock.
When his father went into town Lucas would wander as far as the eucalyptus grove that bordered a neighbor’s property, climb a tree as high as he could go, sit on a limb, and cry until his chest began to hurt, hoping his mother would hear him and return home. After he exhausted himself from crying, Lucas would remain up in the tree, daydreaming about reuniting with his mother at the farm or far away from Güicán.
When he was alone in the house, his favorite activity was running around the dining table, picking up speed as he turned the corners. Lucas would stop when he was so dizzy he couldn’t stand up. On one occasion he slipped and smashed against the glass front of the cupboard. One long shard of glass lodged under his armpit; as he pulled it out, a rivulet of blood flowed down the side of his torso. Lucas fainted.
Later, Lucas was told that Adela had come into the house with the laundry and found him unconscious in a puddle of blood. Gumersindo was off in town, so Lucas’s sisters loaded him in a wheelbarrow, pushed it down to the main road, and managed to stop a bus going in the direction of Güicán, where the closest medical center was located.
The shard of glass had damaged several blood vessels and severed a tendon. Lucas had lost so much blood that, despite the transfusions, he was too weak to get out of bed for several days. The intern who worked at the medical center disinfected and dressed his wounds once a day and gave him medication for the pain.
“You need to go to Bogotá for surgery,” he told Lucas. “We cannot do much more for you here.”
Lucas was fed clear broth and a slice of bread twice a day, so he was happy when his sisters came to visit and brought boiled eggs, tangerines, and homemade blackberry jam. But what made him really happy was that his sisters had not forgotten him. Before they left, Adela said, “Father told us he’ll come to see you soon.” Lucas didn’t dare ask if they’d had any news of their mother.
His father didn’t scold him when he came to visit, but he looked at Lucas as if he were a weakling he wanted nothing to do with. Sister Yvonne, the older nun who ran the infirmary, told Gumersindo that Lucas needed surgery or he was going to lose the use of his arm.
“We’re too poor to send him to a hospital in Bogotá,” his father replied. “Maybe this will teach him a lesson.”
Though Lucas was horrified to think that he was going to go through the rest of his life with a crippled arm, he did not complain. He had heard of miracles and began to pray for one.
One afternoon when Lucas was staring out the window at the azure sky, Sister Yvonne came into the room. She pulled a chair close to his bed. Her presence helped to relieve his acute loneliness.
“You know, Lucas,” Sister Yvonne began, “despite all you’ve gone through, it’s admirable that you have such a sweet disposition. That’s a gift from God, my child. I hope you never change. When we have joy in our hearts, we can give joy to those who suffer more than we do.”
Lucas was grateful that there was someone in the world who paid attention to him. As his wound became infected and his arm turned red and dark blue, her kindness helped sustain him.
When his father came to visit again, he told Sister Yvonne in Lucas’s presence, “Do whatever you can for him, Sister. I’ll come to get him as soon as he’s ready to go back home. Even with a lame arm there are many things he can do on the farm.” Then he turned to Lucas and added, “That’s what happens to boys who live in the clouds.”
Lucas’s only consolation was the care of Sister Yvonne, who treated him with a gentleness he had only known from his mother. His arm became thinner, turned a purplish black, and Lucas could no longer lift it.
One morning while she was cleaning the wound, Sister Yvonne asked him, “Lucas, what’s your favorite thing in the world?”
He didn’t have to think about it. “I love animals and climbing trees, Sister.”
She smiled and took his hand. Her palms were leathery but warm. “If you love animals, Lucas, you must pray to San Martín de Porres for a miracle. Do you believe in him?”
“My mother had images of him in the shrine she kept in her bedroom. He always carries a broom.”
Sister Yvonne nodded. “He’s always shown surrounded by a mouse, a cat, and a dog—all drinking milk from the same saucer on the floor. This scene represents his ability to communicate with animals and to create harmony among all living things.”
Lucas had heard in religion class about the miracle of the mice.
“The rodents in the monastery of Santa Rosa de Lima, where San Martín lived, spoiled the grain in storage with their droppings,” Sister Yvonne explained. “Traps were set to control the infestation. San Martín found a mouse caught in a trap by the tail. Instead of killing it with a broom, as he was supposed to do, San Martín told him, ‘Little mouse, I’ll let you go on one condition: you must talk to the other mice and make them promise that they will not come inside the monastery again to eat our grain. If you keep your end of the bargain, I’ll bring food to the orchard every day so not one of you will go hungry.’ San Martín kept his promise, and the mice never entered the convent again.”
Lucas smiled for the first time since Clemancia had disappeared. “They say that San Martín de Porres was famous for making plants grow in times of drought,” he added. “That’s why farmers love him.”
“He was so holy, Lucas, that he walked through locked doors and the walls of the monastery,” Sister Yvonne said. “When he was asked how he did it, he replied it was God who did it, that he was just God’s vessel.”
Lucas asked eagerly, “What can I do, Sister, so San Martín will hear me?”
“I’ll teach you the Prayer to San Martín, which you must say first thing in the morning and again right before you go to sleep at night.”
Lucas began to pray with fervor to San Martín to intercede with God on his behalf. He repeated the prayer many times the first day until he fell into a hypnotic reverie. Lucas began to feel so peaceful, weightless, warmed all over, that he wondered whether he was dying.
On the third day, the sun came out earlier than usual and filled Lucas’s room with brilliant light. He closed his eyes and imagined he was in God’s presence. Lucas heard a door open and a lovely aroma filled the room. He pretended to be asleep. Then he thought he heard someone sobbing softly. He opened his eyes and let out a small scream of joy: his mother was there. Lucas wondered if that meant he was dead and in heaven with her. But when she rushed toward his bed and kissed his forehead and cheeks, Lucas knew she was real. It was like a miracle had happened to her: she looked strong, had put on weight, her arms were not covered with purple bruises, and her eyes were not swollen.
“I came as soon as I heard, my son. An acquaintance in Güicán wrote me at my cousin’s house in Bogotá,” she told him.
Lucas began to sob.
“Now, now, my angel,” Clemencia said. “We must get you dressed without delay. There’s a taxi waiting outside. We’ve got to leave Güicán before your father finds out I’m here.”
As soon as the taxi left Güicán behind, Clemencia explained to Lucas that she had found a job as a live-in maid for an American couple