I remember when we said Special Period in the house; Mari put a pretty weird face, opened her big eyes and remained pensive for a while. What a thoughtful little girl we have, Jorge told me. But that seemed to me very strange and one day I asked Mari, who was about five or six at that moment, why do you stay there looking rarely with that face every time someone says Special Period? She opened her big eyes, I remember, as if I were again conjuring the unnamable, and noted: Doesn’t that is the same that you have in your knickers when you get your period, Mommy? Then it was me who opened widely my eyes and kept myself thinking without saying anything, of course, it was clear that it was not the same, the same issue of loss and natural cycle of a process and pain and sequelae.
Jorge was an electrical technician in the hospital and I worked as an auditor. People always give you away presents for you, in return, not to tell things that were not really serious but that could fuck anyone’s salary. Sometimes they gave me bread with ham or sausage for lunch and I kept it until the afternoon to give it with rice to Mari and Yunior for them to have dinner. It was nice to see them willingly eating those bits of fabric and then hear them say they were satisfied. Because if not, they had to eat mincemeat, and they could no longer eat that crap, or egg, of course.
Anyway, one day I was given a steak of chicken breast and I was so happy that I can not explain it. When I arrived in the evening at the house I put it again on oil, added it a little more salt and cut it in two pieces . I remember I was mouth watering and while I was frying the halves again, Jorge arrived, he threw the backpack on the dining table and went over to me with a face that was half joy but half sorrow too. He told me, I will never forget that, that he smelled the scent since he was on the second floor and I thought, wow, this shit of Special Period has really developed the smell. You will find later in exchange for what.
Well, as I said previously, I cut the steak in two halves, I served them on two plates with some rice on each and some potatoes that I had put on to boil, poured two glasses of water and took them to the couch to the children, they were watching the TV. The two of them began to pinch the edge of the meat and Yunior asked what that was. Chicken breast, I said. They had not given two bites and Yunior returned to say that they did not like that, that they wanted egg. Is there an egg, Mommy? I remember as if now that question of Mari.
Jorge and I looked each other. We wanted to scream. I wanted, and I know he also wanted, giving two good slaps to those kids, but instead of that we snatch them the dishes and took them to the kitchen. It seemed as if we had planned it for months: I took Mari’s and he took Yunior´s. Over the countertop, we bit that steak pieces with such a great fury and such a pleasure and so great guilt, that everything was mixed and became mistook with the taste of chicken. We did not look each other, did not want to, but did not leave a grain of rice in those dishes. We cleaned the mouth with our hands, and he took two eggs from the refrigerator and began to heat the oil to fry them.
And that is, I can assure you, the weirdest thing happened to me in life. It left me a remorse that still lives in my memory today. Jorge and I have never talked about that but I know, I’ve noticed every time I’ve seen him chewing a piece of chicken breast in these years, that he can not remove that feeling from his mind either.
