The Girl Who Danced in Red
Pequeña
The powder her papa holds in the Casa-Ley freezer bag is white. The white stuff, she calls it. When she asks him what it is he tells her none of your business. He sometimes calls her pequeña (little one) too, or sometimes estúpida puta (stupid bitch). She doesn’t know what a puta is but she knows his face scrunches up when he’s angry and goes purple like a bruise.
In his study, there are small piles of the white stuff, but she’s not allowed to touch it.
‘Is it because it’s magic?’ she asks.
‘Sí, pequeña,’ he says.
‘Like magic dust?’
‘Sí sí,’ he says, and then in his angry voice: ‘¡Vete!’
He always tells her to go away when he’s talking about the white stuff.
‘Can I tell my friends about it?’ she asks.
‘No,’ her papa and her mama say, and both of their expressions are very straight, like the straight lines in her special writing notebook. They never call her pequeña when they have the straight-line notebook faces. And so she steps out of his study, sighs, and slides down the door like a falling dollop of sour cream.
She hears her mother telling her father to be careful.
‘I’m always careful,’ he says, before shooing her away too.
When her mother opens the door and still sees her sitting there, she tuts, ‘Sofia, Sofia…’ and shakes her head. ‘Why don’t you go and play outside?’
But outside is naked and dirty. The children play in bare, splintered feet flicking old yoyos with frayed strings. Sometimes a tank rolls by. Sometimes there are snapshots of gunfire in the distance. The neighbours’ house has bullet holes through the walls and when the real estate agent had sold the house to the new neighbours she told them it gave their house ‘a real sense of adventure.’
She doesn’t want to play outside. She wants to help Papa.
‘Mama,’ she asks, ‘what is the white stuff?’
Her mama doesn’t look at her when she answers.
‘Money.’
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