I like my town, it is a small town, but with that I have plenty. My world is here, my family, my neighbors, work, its landscapes. My mother is a very serious person with a huge heart. My father, quite the opposite; a nice, loving, kind man who itches me with his beard at sunset when he comes to the bench in the hall and takes off his dusty boots. Fluttering like a butterfly, I run to greet him.
There, my brothers arrive: Damián, Evaristo and Gabriel. Gabriel is not my brother, but as if he were, since he was the son of my neighbors. They died when the house caught fire. My family welcomed him and he is like one of the family. Gael, as my mother calls him, is tall, thin and eager to work, he never gets angry and nothing is wrong with him. When she comes in with my brothers at sunset, she makes me mad by tugging at my ponytail or removing a clip from my bow. All this with a big smile. My brothers come in and just take off their dirty shoes from the field and go to clean up a bit at the pile in the corral. The food is ready, since my grandmother, my mother and I have prepared it during the day. "When there is no work in the fields, in this town it is a woman's work to stay at home," my grandmother used to repeat in the afternoons when we sewed the trousseau.
We sat at the table, my father first and then methodically each in his place. The clay pot smokes, the lentils give off all their scent when uncovered. They are made over a fire, over a low heat like these days that seem eternal to me until we all sit down together at the table. Between the smoke from the casserole and the murmur of my grandmother asking my brothers, I find myself looking at Gael. Her eyes, her nose, her mouth, her smile …
–Juana! Stop gawking and eat that lentils are for today. –And so suddenly I come down from my cloud, in which I climbed among the steam of the lentils in the center of the table.
–They are burning, they are very hot.
–Well, blow and eat. What burns me is inside me. It's Gabriel's gaze and how he smiles at me.
Yolanda del Agua Burgos
