Mauricio clung to the thick wooden leg of the kitchen table. It was the same table that Mama and Papa had served Pastel de choclo – Chilean corn and meat pie – on every Sunday night; it was the same table that held their conversations over dinner. It was the same table where Mama listened to the rock and roll of the latest American icon, Elvis Presley, on Saturday mornings and swallowed her steaming lemon and ginger tea. And it was the same table that Papa sat at when he played his red piano accordion in between Mama’s songs that hummed from the rectangular baby blue radio. Now, Mauricio was sure this table was the only piece of furniture left in his house that was still standing.
The shaking had lasted less than a minute. He had thrown himself out of the chair where he was doing his homework and fell to the ground, taking shelter underneath the table. It was as if the earth had transformed into a torrential raging sea and his body was a dinghy tossed up and over the swells of waves. Mama’s ceramic dishes howled as they crashed to the floor; the intricate hand-painted flowers that once graced the clay were now reduced to shards. The old saucepans that hung loosely on the wall by nails had slapped against the walls of the house until surrendering to the monster and smashing to the ground. The wobbly wooden chairs had danced around him as he clutched the table, eventually collapsing on the kitchen floor, motionless. And when the shaking had ceased, he wasn’t certain if the earth was stationary again –if it had stopped trembling – or if it was just his body that was shuddering so violently.
An eerie silence swallowed the room and not a sound could be heard except for the tinkling of angelic glass falling from the shattered windows of his home. The darkness encircling Mauricio obscured the horrors of his home. And oddly, all felt calm momentarily – the still and silence of the debris dug into his slumped body. He feared even the slightest adjustment of his position, for he would disrupt the balance of life. He imagined the rubble as a house of cards – wooden planks carefully leaning on each other, ready to crumble at any moment. And in the waveless peace, all that he had ever done in his life passed before him.
Mauricio transported about five years back in time; his seven-year-old self was staring at a boy of about the same age. The boy’s body was tanned and his cheeks were flushed as if he had just been playing football. Tight, dark curls relaxed on top of his head. When he was positioned just right in the sun’s rays, his almond-shaped eyes glistened a rich, root beer brown. Mama said his name was Luis and he was the new neighbor. He and Mauricio were to walk to school and back together every day from then on. Mauricio lifted his eyes and looked into Luis’s. The left side of Luis’s lip curled up into a smile and he extended his hand.
Now, Mauricio was back in the present day, but it was earlier – before the earthquake. Mauricio and Luis stopped into Los Caramelos, the eccentric, pink-and- white-striped candy store on their way home from school. It was a Friday afternoon, the best day of the week. Mauricio pulled out the pesos that Mama had given him that morning from the pocket in his cargo shorts. Mauricio picked out his usual strawberry shortcake lollipop while Luis always settled for lime. Sitting on the hard steel bench outside and licking their lollipops, they watched people breeze by them as they talked about the universe.
“So what do you think is up there on Mars?” Mauricio asked.
Luis had been the one to tell Mauricio about the Soviet Union’s latest attempt to launch a spacecraft that would visit Mars. Mauricio loved to let his mind ponder the intricacies of interplanetary space travel. The thought that something bigger than himself existed – some other species that proved man was not alone in this universe– energized him.
“Probably big rocks and stuff,” Luis shrugged his shoulders, clearly distracted by his candy.
“But do you think there are…” Mauricio’s voice trailed off, whispering, “aliens?”
Luis chuckled. “Of course there’s aliens, Mauricio. Their green little bodies are ten times more advanced than we are, and they are running around up there with a thousand eyes, laughing at us because we have no idea that they even exist.”
Mauricio wanted to look into Luis’s eyes to see if he was serious, but Luis had already scooted off of the bench and started walking back home. Mauricio followed him until he had made his way to the front steps of his house and said goodbye to Luis.
Suddenly, the ground began to pound again and Mauricio cradled his head in his hands. Dust filled his esophagus, sending him into uncontrollable hacking fits as rubble cracked around him. When the world was still again, there was an excruciating pain in his lower right leg that was unbearable. It was as if someone was standing on top of his leg, placing the sheer force of their weight onto his small, youthful body. Mauricio amassed all of the energy he had remaining and managed to pull himself upward onto his feet. There was one spot of light he saw above his head and he beat on the boards that entrapped him with his fists. Suddenly, he felt his chest bare. His poncho had caught on a wood plank and ripped, sending the horrible noise of cotton fibers tearing into the warm air. He felt the wreckage shift and white light blinded his eyes. Slowly, he crawled out of his destroyed home.
But he never could have prepared himself for what he saw next. Gone was his once cerulean home with its scalloped pink clay top. Pieces of the blue home were scattered around his body. Gone were the laurel and magnolia trees that had lined the front windows of his home. Gone was the gravel walkway to his door that he had too often run on in the summer on his bare feet, causing him to leap in agony.Gone was Los Caramelos, the candy store on the corner of his street where he had just bought lollipops with Luis an hour before. In its place stood a skeleton of a building. One of its brick walls was left standing and the rest was reduced to rubble. Gone was one of his neighbor’s homes, The Espinoza’s Residence, where Mama, Papa, and he visited once a week for a shared meal of fresh Chilean corn humitas. All that remained was a pile of wooden planks, sticking out from the ground like swords piercing the air, and rocks of fragmented concrete scattered around like massive ornaments. Gone were the rolling emerald hills of his Chilean village, Valdivia, and the aquamarine sky that ever so slowly faded to a milky white the closer it grew to the horizon. The pristine beauty of Valdivia was masked by a dense and growing smog of sorrow. And Mauricio could feel the full weight of its presence pressing against his chest.
The portions of the cobblestone road that he could still see had split into thousands of delicate lightning bolt-like patterns, exposing the dirt underneath. Parking meters that once lined his street were now bent into the earth, as if they were as easy to bend as pipe cleaners. The landscape around him was a sickening sea of sirens and horrified screams coming from the mouths of men, women, and children. The few homes that were still standing were sunken into the ground like a giant had sat upon them. A wispy plume of smoke as tall as a volcano curled in the air far in the distance and a repulsive burnt smell entered his nostrils. All around him, Mauricio heard children and parents wailing, desperate to find their loved ones. His Mama. His Papa. They were still working at the bakery – Hope Pastelería – when the earthquake struck. He must find them. He must go to the bakery immediately.
But there was a figure clouding his view. Mauricio’s eyes zoomed into focus and realized he was gazing at Luis’ thin body standing thirty feet away from him on the road. His hands were stuffed inside his pockets and his head was cast downward at the rubble that used to be his house. Gone was Luis’s salmon-colored home and the manicured garden that once spilled over with fuchsia bellflowers and tangerine-colored poppies. As Mauricio propelled his legs toward his friend, he realized that Luis was not alone. A woman was standing beside him. Her hair was sliced against her forehead, encased with sweat, and she was holding her left arm with her bloodied hand. Gray powder from the debris caked the ragged red jacket she was wearing. A deep gash cut into her shin and a stream of blood oozed from the wound. Mauricio recognized her – even in her disheveled state. The woman was Luis’s mother.
And suddenly, Mauricio was pulled back into the past. It was summertime and about a few years earlier. Mauricio and Luis were in Luis’s kitchen, sitting on the wobbly stools, their faces flushed from just playing football outside. Mrs. Romero, Luis’s mother, was baking chocolate chip cookies for the two of them. The sweet aroma steaming off the cookies wafted into Mauricio’s nostrils, instinctively causing his mouth to water. Mrs. Romero pulled the baking sheet out of the oven and placed it on the granite countertop. Unable to wait for them to cool, the boys reached for the cookies.
“Watch it guys!” Mrs. Romero warned as they dropped the burning, gooey cookies onto the counter in pain.
But Luis picked his cookie back up and stuffed it in his mouth, smiling and laughing as he did so. “Mmmmm,” he let out.
“I’m so glad that Luis has a friend like you,” Mrs. Romero said, her eyes sincere and her smile gentle. “I was worried with the move and everything.”
Mauricio didn’t think much of it. Instead, he just smiled at Mrs. Romero and said, “Of course.”
“Mauricio!” Luis’s mother shouted, waving her hand at him. He decided to walk over toward her. Maybe it was the way her wild eyes were bugging out of her sunken sockets or the syrupy saliva that was spilling down her chin, but Mauricio began to feel uneasy. He had a feeling that this was not the same Mrs. Romero who had kindly invited him into their home as if it were his and had treated Mauricio as if he were her son. In a swift motion, Mrs. Romero grabbed his wrist and squeezed, suffocating his tiny arm.
“Mauricio!” she said again, yanking his wrist and tugging his body closer to hers so that he could now feel her sickly warm breath on his forehead. “You must help me…. You must help me find Jose!” Jose was Luis’s little brother. Mauricio had grown up teaching Jose how to play football with Luis. Mauricio admitted that Jose had promisingly skills; he would most likely grow up to be better than Luis and Mauricio.
Mauricio glanced at Luis standing like a phantom next to his mother. But Luis just stared at Mauricio, his face blank and his eyes vacant, as if he didn’t inhabit his own body. Then, Luis’s eyes pulled away from Mauricio’s and blinked back down at the chaos before him. The world had opened up into an abyss into which he had stumbled and fallen.
“Mrs. Romero…” Mauricio started, but suddenly, his mouth dried up like a shriveled flower. With his esophagus burning, he tried to swallow. “Mrs. Romero, where is Jose?” Mauricio’s eyes darted to the rubble that was the Romero’s home but quickly focused back on Mrs. Romero in front of him.
“He–He didn’t come out with Luis and me.” Mauricio was convinced that Mrs. Romero was becoming unhinged –or already was. Her shoulders were the victims of uncontrollable tremors and her face was twisting in abnormal expressions. One minute she was hungry and desperate, with her eyes protruding and her mouth curled down; the next she was wildly happy, the skin on her cheeks stretched back.
“Was he home?” Mauricio’s voice croaked when he asked the question, afraid to hear her answer.
“Yes!” Mrs. Romero wailed. “He was home with Luis and me. We were in the kitchen. Jose was watching television in the living room. Luis and I escaped. We tried to look for Jose but we couldn’t move the debris. It’s just everywhere…” Her eyes wandered off into the space behind Mauricio. Small convulsions began to wrack her limbs as she repeated, “Everywhere… Everywhere… The debris.” From the corners of her lips, foam began to form.
At the sight of this, Mauricio’s heart quickened. The seal of safety that Mrs. Romero’s presence used to comfort him with had been broken. Instead, standing before him was a woman that had been injured and pulverized by loss. He was afraid of being susceptible to her madness that only appeared to be growing by the minute.
But just then, the wind shifted. And amidst the jumble of agony and anguish, Mauricio swore he detected the faintest whiff of fresh baked bread linger under his nostrils. Mama and Papa. He had to go find them; he had to go now. He would not think about the possibility of their death for he could not fathom the force of such a tragedy bearing down on his body. In this moment, all he could do was go to the bakery.
“Mrs. Romero… I’m so sorry,” Mauricio began to say.
All of a sudden, Mauricio’s legs lost their footing in a blur. Mrs. Romero stretched out her two arms and strained him, forcing him even closer to her. With her eyes close to his boyish face, he could practically see her soul in the white crescents that hugged her iron-colored irises. And inside, he saw a desperate mother in search of her son. With her emotions unraveling like a spool of thread, she fell to the earth on her knees and let out a loud, nauseating sob.
“Please Mauricio! Please… My son…” Mrs. Romero’s voice cracked horribly, plummeting him back into the reality of what he knew he had to do.
“I’m- I’m sorry. I cannot help you find Jose.” And now that those words had rolled off his lips, tears began to tumble down his reddened cheeks. His body ached for Mrs. Romero and the ghost that was now Luis. Mauricio understood; he felt their pain for they were one and the same.
“No. No. No.” Mrs. Romero’s thick eyebrows twirled downward and her head shook back and forth.
“I need to go find my Mama and Papa,” Mauricio croaked, trying his best to explain, but his voice was failing him. There were never words for a catastrophe.
Breaking free from her rigid grip, Mauricio took one last look at Luis. He wouldn’t even raise his eyes to Mauricio’s. A vacuum opened up inside of his stomach, spiraling out of control. But he peeled his eyes away from Luis’s and sprinted off in the other direction.
He could feel the adrenaline pumping through his constricted blood vessels as the sudden urgency to locate his parents overcame him. The bakery was three blocks away. He could run there in less than a minute. But the landscape that lay in front of his eyes was a minefield of personal belongings and confusion. Couches and chairs were hidden under crumpled walls. Uprooted trees were expelled from the soil, exposing their spider web-like systems. He could hardly make out what buildings used to stand in their now-empty and crushed plots of land. Lunging over monoliths, he turned the corner of his street and made his way to the where the bakery was supposedto be. Whether it was still intact was another question he did not want to consider.
But his feet dragged on the earth and he thudded to a halt when his eyes locked onto the bakery. There was no bakery – not even the frame of the building was detectable. Instead, the land had been completely flattened, as if nothing had stood there in his lifetime. The only evidence was the stripped wood and crumpled brick walls that were scattered on the plot of land. Slowly, he inched toward the wreckage, but not a sound could be heard coming from inside of the bakery. The ghostly silence crept from the ruins and embraced his body. A lump formed deep within his throat, tightening his airways and leaving him gasping for air. The world had opened up into an abyss which he had hopelessly and inevitably plunged into.
The morning the earth opened up, Mama packed Mauricio’s rocket ship lunchbox with his usual ham and cheese sandwich as he sat at the kitchen table slurping down his cereal. She placed the bag in his small hands and knelt down in front of him before he escaped out the door to school. Mauricio turned his cheek away from her moist lips; he was too old for kisses. But her pink lipstick planted a kiss on his face anyway.
And when the wind howled again, he swore he could feel Mama’s lipstick residue on his right cheek from this morning. Through the misery and the confusion – the ruins and the disarray – Mauricio lifted his trembling fingers to his face. But there was nothing there; his imagination had planted this idea within his mind. The only hints of his parents’ love that lingered on his cheek were the remains of a memory. His heart was a ship that had capsized in the storm.
All at once, Mauricio shrunk down to the earth and collapsed to his knees. Rapidly, he began to desperately peel away the wreckage with his puny arms.
One last time, Mauricio was in the past. It was a year ago and he was sitting on the steps in his home – in the shadows and hiding from his arguing parents. They were sitting at the kitchen table across from one another.
“Maria, this has been our dream for years. We’ve talked about this. We both agreed that when we got enough money we would purchase the bakery and take it over,” Papa urged, his hands folded in front of him. “I don’t understand what changed.”
“What if we don’t have enough money to run it? What if it fails miserably? We have Mauricio to think about, Juan. We can’t just go jumping into this.”
“We are not jumping into this!” he thundered. “Do you realize just how tirelessly I have worked to make this dream come true?” Papa stood up and paced behind his chair. “I have worked three jobs, Maria! Three jobs! So that one day, we could own our own business. So that one day, we could run everything for a change.”
Mama exhaled a gust of air from her mouth. “I am just cautious, Juan.” She raised her eyes to his and he came over to her and embraced her.
“We will be okay, trust me. We have each other. Sometimes, we have to take risks. Otherwise, we will always be living in the shadows.” Papa kissed her on the cheek and Mama nodded. It had been decided; they were going to purchase the bakery.
Despite the absence of the bakery, the aromas lingered. Mauricio could smell the fresh cachitos – ham-filled, crescent-shaped rolls – that Mama and Papa baked daily. He could smell the empanadas – stuffed bread that was filled with gooey, steamy cheese. And best of all, he could smell the chilenitos – the sweet floury pastries stuffed with rich caramel that caused his mouth to water. The smells of the bakery were all that remained. Mauricio didn’t want to accept what he knew, but it was eating away at his stomach. The inescapable truth was that his parents’ dream – the dream that they had worked so hard for their whole life – had buried them alive.