21. Darkness and diarrhea
Translated by Angela Telles-Vaz
If that God hadn’t been born, nasty stuff would not have happened.
I woke up during the night with a terrible tummy ache. The dream turned into a nightmare. I knew that if I got up I would not find my bed again. I don’t know why I found myself again in the little ones dorm. I tried badly to cope with the cramps, hold the waters that wanted to flow with a pressure of many vapors, there was no other way. I got up and began to bump my head on the walls and beds as a bull with gouged eyes. In desperation, the urge to go diminished and someone took me back to bed. I didn’t understand how they could move themselves in the darkness. I also didn’t understand that there was darkness only in front of my eyes.
Sleep came and left, there was confusion, rumors and muffled footsteps. The cramps disappeared taking me in it. I woke up surrounded by light and voices. There was something wrong with me. I didn’t fully understand what was happening. After smelling the horrible strong stench I understood. I sat on the bed, curled up and shivering and while I sat, I felt something sticky and soft spread all under me. They all talked very loud, it looked like a riot.
Moisés, the nice black man mentioned in one of the previous chapters was bickering with one of the younger ones.
You’ll pay you chicken shit. You’ll have to wash the overall and be punished with the correction paddle. You’re all a bunch of shitters. I had to wake up at dawn because of the stench!
I curled more and more. I wanted to lie down, I wished that the day would turn upside down and night would come so yesterday would come back and I wouldn’t have eaten that sweet, the cause of the stupid revolution inside my unaccustomed body. That sweet was a big punishment, imposed by force to a believer who knew nothing about Christmas or deities.
You shit ones! It’s pure shit!
The tiny one: I didn’t shit the bed…
And you’re also a liar! Turn your ass up! Turn you ass up!”
The poor one twisted and desperately hid himself. The privileged ones who managed to pass the awful ordeal of eating a sweet without shitting all over, the privileged ones approached slowly in a closed circle.
Look at the stink! And there you are saying that you didn’t shit in your pants! What about this smell, what about it!
I began to get scared. I knew that something was about to happen. But the afterwards didn’t interest me. The now was what interested me. The new test summarized in confessing the crime to the victim sniffers. I watched the anger and the taunting of all, around the agonizing unfortunate, crooked, eyes bulging with fear. I needed courage, if I at least spoke to someone, if I told someone that also smelt that stinky smell, everything would be easier. Smell of the sweet of the birth of the god.
The tiny boy kept denying but everybody kept insisting. There was a group further away, all of them naked holding their overalls and the legs filled of dripped filthy and already dried shit. I think the showers were all below.
With a whisper and tearful breath I called for Moisés. He approached my bed and became aware. I think he quickly understood but didn’t say a word.
Throughout my life, I don’t have another memory of being so humble, so afraid to talk. I was profoundly marked by that memory, a clear vulture, no haze, a wounded vulture that flew over a swamp, my voice full of awe and fear:
I also pooped in bed.
I don’t know if he heard me so low I had spoken. The fact is that seconds later, the circle was already surrounding me. The black boy was tall, I suppose maybe thirteen years old, all the others between seven and eight years old. They waited for Moisés reaction to strike the unmerciful mockery to the new shitter. And he was quick:
That’s the way I like! You shit in your pants and warns that you shit, tells that you shit. Why to lie?, damn it! Like this one here, he shitted all over and keeps denying.
He turned to the unfortunate boy and everyone followed him, leaving me to my amazement.
I don’t recall the results of the unpleasant adventure. Many felt the same tummy ache and by being six-seven-eight years old they couldn’t prevent the sweet from the Lord from rotting and dripping like liquid during the rough sleep. The dorm smelled horrible. Someone ordered that everybody went downstairs but the shitters should stay. The next scene that comes into my mind is that we had to go slowly into the showers, naked and holding our overalls, passing along the line of all the students. We should head to the showers and, after that, wash the overalls. I thought of hiding myself behind someone, we all wanted to hide behind one another. However, the line of students was unrelenting, dripping as drop by drop, painfully slowly, it was never over…
I have the impression that they didn’t laugh at us. It’s my present guess. Maybe based on some behavior during a similar situation or perhaps through a haze and odd reminiscence. They should realize that they escaped by sheer chance. The night blindness, the cramps, the control of the sphincters, what did they know about them? No. It was enough that they remembered the night to find out that they had been awarded. There wasn’t one gut that didn’t exorcize that sacred sweet that disturbed the monotony and peace of the usual rice and beans. That delicious Satan’s consecrated bread.
If they didn’t feel the cramps, even so, I believe that they didn’t have the courage to ridicule. We were all dominated by the same fear, us being the target of a possible mochery, and them, the eventual mockers. We all knew that there, with our two supervisors, nobody had a life of their own.
to be continued on next sunday.