10 - la celda/the cell

Me metieron en la celda por la noche, llorando y media paralizada. Uno de los policía susurro algo en el oido de la otra presa en la celda y se fueron. Creo que esta mujer me cuidaba toda la noche, porque cada vez que me desperté la vi mirándome como una mamá mira a su bebe mientras duerme.

They put me in the cell for the night, crying and half-paralyzed. One of the policemen whispered something to the other prisoner in the cell before they left.

I think this woman watched over me all night, because every time I woke from my nightmares she was looking at me with the concerned gaze of a mother checking on her baby.


(heartwings painted by the Mayorga girls on their fence, Acahualinca, Managua)

El día siguiente no quería abrir mis ojos por miedo de ver que mi pesadilla fuera realidad.

Ëstar encerrada te hace loco a uno, dijo mi compañera de celda. Debes bañarte chica.

Todavía andaba la misma camiseta y jeans del accidente, manchados con sangre, sudor, tierra, suero, y lágrimas. Echando copas de agua sobre mi cuerpo morado, cortado y inflamado, con mis pies plantados a cada lado del hueco inodoro, se me pegó la imagen de un ritual de purificación. Con solo este agua cayendo sobre mi piel recuerdo que estoy viva, y es una sensación bella.
Pero las hermanas nunca van a tener esta sensación jamás, ¿Como pueden existir estas dos realidades?


( image by CHUCK, Guatemala)
The next day I didn’t want to open my eyes for fear of seeing that my nightmares were reality.

Being locked up can make one crazy, she said. You should bathe, it will make you feel better, more human. I was still wearing the same t-shirt and jeans I had on when the accident happened, stained with blood, sweat, earth, IV fluid and tears.

The bathroom in the cell was nothing more than a whole in the ground next to an open tank of water. With one foot on either side of the toilet hole I dipped the cup into the tank and poured it over my head.



Spilling cups of lukewarm water over my bruised, cut and inflamed body felt like a purification ritual out of someone else’s religion. With all that had happened I still had a skin, still could feel the life in my body, and appreciate that life as something beautiful. But the Espinoza sisters will never again have this sensation, water on their skin. How can both these realities, my life and their non-lives, exist?