The Dark Bride by Laura Restrepo Read Free Book Online Page B

God, who is merciful, finally, at the end of all this dancing, a beautiful peach was born.
    â€œGod’s baby or the bee’s?” asked the girl.
    â€œThe bee and the flower’s baby. Something like that is happening to you. Now do you understand? That’s why you shouldn’t feel ashamed about your blood or hide it in a basket as you have done, even though they tell you it stains and poisons. What you have to do is collect it every month in some little cloths that I will give you and show you how to wash with warm water so they won’t smell bad, and you shouldn’t worry because it’s something natural that happens to all women. Do you understand?”
    â€œYes, madrina, ” said the girl, starting to cry again, but this time with more momentum.
    â€œThen why are you crying?”
    â€œIt hurts, madrina, every time the blood comes out. My insides burn. Do you think I’m injured inside? Do you think the bee you were talking about got inside me and stung me there, inside? That’s what it feels like, madrina, like a wasp sting.”
    â€œIt’s a wound that opens in all women once a month and that never heals because it’s a wound of love. But you’ll see, when you start going with men, how much happiness the red roses inside you will bring you every time they appear, because it will be the signal that you aren’t pregnant. I can already see you, like the others, counting the days that your blood is late in staining your clothes.”
    â€œDoes it happen to men too?”
    â€œNo. It is God’s will that it only happens to women. That’s why we love more, too, because our insides hurt.”
    â€œLike Jesus’ heart?”
    â€œYes. Just like that.”
    Then the girl stopped crying, wiped her nose on her sleeve, and went back out to the patio to resume playing brother and sister, who were now facing the problem of not having any blankets for the tremendously cold nights they would encounter on their long journey, and from that day forward the sister adventurer could look for fame and fortune without panicking at the onset of her menstrual cycle, which was no longer a sin that had to be hidden on the top shelf, and she learned how to use white cloths that she washed later in warm water, scrubbed with a pumice stone and hung to dry in the sun, knowing that if she ever had a daughter, she would calm her by patiently explaining the mystery of how the blood that appears in her underwear, which is the bee’s blood, makes it possible for fruit to be born from a flower.
    â€œDo you remember the treasure chest?” Todos los Santos asks Sacramento.
    Frequently the two children would entertain themselves with a cookie box that they called the treasure chest. It contained a delightful collection of items such as broken necklaces, buttons, loose stones, old brooches, and fairy-tale earrings, and it made the children’s eyes shine with sparkles of emerald green, ruby red, French pink, depending on the color of the beads they were looking at.
    â€œHow wonderful!” exclaimed the girl, completely absorbed, and she would begin to tell Sacramento lies, as big as a house, that he would pretend to believe.
    â€œShe made up that the box contained the jewels that Santa Catalina had been given by her father the king, and she made me promise that I would defend them with my life, property, and honor against anyone who tried to steal them.”
    Sacramento swore on his knees, she tapped him on the shoulder a couple times with a sword that was really a stick and named him Knight of the Order of the Holy Diamond. He was ashamed that the older kids would see him playing like that and he wouldn’t let her name him a knight unless there were no witnesses; after all, he was already a man who worked and supported himself and he found that game—like so many things of hers—shamefully simple. Poor Sacramento, he never suspected that that