Yanet Gomez
Short Story: First Memory
Dulce was my best friend. She had always been there. She had been there since before I was born. I don’t remember when we met, all I know is that I had known her always. In the mornings, I would crawl up on the sofa to look out the window, across the street, into Dulce’s bedroom. I would wait until Julia, her mother, had combed, brushed, and slicked her hair back into pig tails so tight that Dulce’s hazel eyes stretched out like Asian eyes. Then, Dulce would come to the window and wave, and I could see her take off running through the lace curtains, and we would meet each other in the middle of the street.
That is how the day started. From the middle of the road we could go anywhere. One time, we even went down to the river, and brought little plants for our fishes at home. We both got punished though, because it was dangerous. Dulce got punished worse than me; I heard her screaming from the beating she got from her dad. Dulce’s dad was a military man. He was big and bald, and had a mean forehead that always frowned. We knew playtime was over when we saw the green uniform turning the corner after five. It was time to run back. Dulce was always saying how she would be in trouble if she wasn’t home when he got there.
One day I waited until my legs hurt, and Dulce didn’t come to the window, so I called for her.
“Dulce is at school, she will be back at three, come back then.” - Her mom yelled from the corridor.
Dulce’s mom was thin and dark like a thorn. Dulce was not at all like her mom, she was the color of caramel, her hair too, and she smelled like vanilla from her lotion. She told me that once I had tried to lick her face because I thought she was made of sugar. I couldn’t wait for her to come home. I hated school, even though I had never been there. While she was away I had to play with Arianna. Dulce and Arianna weren’t allowed to be friends because Arianna’s dad was a “gusano”, that is what Dulce’s dad called him. I didn’t know exactly what it meant, but it was bad. Dulce didn’t like Arianna, who would want to be friends with a gusano?
A year later it was time for me to go to school too, and Dulce taught me everything. She showed me how I should wear my uniform, and how to hit boys with the heel of my shoe if they bothered me. Dulce had a lot of friends at school and she would come at recess and we would all play together. However, things started to change. We couldn’t play all the time, now that she was older, she had homework to do. Her dad was very strict about homework.
I had just turned nine when it happened. My sister’s fiancé came to pick me up from school on his motorcycle and took me to my grandmother’s house. I could tell that he was crying, but he wouldn’t tell me where my mom and dad were. I stayed at my grandma’s house for three days, and then my mom came and took me home. She told me that my dad had gone on vacation and would be away for a while. I knew it wasn’t true, my dad wouldn’t go on vacation without us, and besides, she wouldn’t do anything but cry, she wouldn’t even cook.
When I went to Dulce’s house her dad asked me to please bring my mom over that he had something to say. When we were all there: Dulce’s mom, my mom, Dulce and I, he said:
“I am very sorry about the situation with your husband. As I am sure you will understand, this puts me in a very difficult position. I don’t want Yanet to come looking for Dulce anymore. I don’t want that kind of influence around my child.”
“What kind of influence is that? ”- My mother asked.
“He is in jail for being a counterrevolutionary, a traitor to the state”.
My dad was in jail for being a counterrevolutionary and Dulce and I couldn’t be friends anymore. My Dulce, who had been sobbing behind her mom all this time, came forward, kissed me on the forehead and ran inside slamming the door behind her.
That was the last time we were together Dulce and I. I moved to another part of town, and started going to a different school. The years passed, and we grew into different people form the girls we used to be. I would see her sometimes, and we would wave at each other across the street. It made me remember how much I missed her. She looked so different now; she was no longer the little girl I adored. She looked like a woman. My dad was released from prison and given asylum in the U.S. The last day I was in my town Dulce came to say good-bye. We didn’t know what to say to each other anymore, we just hugged. She still smelled like vanilla.
There are friends that we grow out of, friends that we grow apart from, friends we move away from, but the friends that are taken from us we carry always in our hearts.
