Tales from the Town of Widows by James Canon

young women carrying large baskets of dirty laundry on their heads, singing and laughing as they strode by. They looked curiously at Cleotilde. The only travelers who stopped in Mariquita these days were fortune-tellers, doctors without degrees, fugitives, displaced families and those who had lost their way. On occasion a caravan of merchants arrived, their mules loaded with goods the villagers couldn’t afford or no longer had use for—perfume, Coca-Cola, razors—but also others that were indispensable—coal, candles, kerosene, bleach for the magistrate and supplies of hosts and wine for the priest.
    “Good morning, señora,” one of the women called.
    “Señorita,” Cleotilde corrected her, but she spoke too softly, and the woman didn’t hear her. Nonetheless, Cleotilde decided that the women of Mariquita were diligent and friendly. She turned left at the next corner and in the distance made out a boy and a girl holding a howling dog. She decided to greet them, her prospective students. Being from a small village, they would be shy and insecure; therefore, she decided, she’d be gentle with them. When she was close enough, she lowered her spectacles and noticed that they were barefoot and wore ragged clothes. She also noticed, to her horror, that the girl was holding the dog’s mouth shut while the boy forced a stick into its bottom.
    “What are you doing?” Cleotilde cried out. She slapped the boy on his back. The boy released the dog and kicked Cleotilde in the leg. “You crazy old woman!” he yelled. Then he ran away with the girl, laughing heartily. The dog ran away also, the stick still hanging from its bottom. Cleotilde was furious. She sat on the sidewalk to check her leg. Just a little red spot. Hopefully it wouldn’t turn blue. She didn’t bruise easily; not for an old lady anyway.
    She picked up her leather case and limped two blocks down, shooing away the many stray cats and dogs that surrounded her, begging for food. At the next corner she turned right and was met by a group of half-naked children gathered beside a mango tree, chatting. Cleotilde thought they looked more civilized than the others. She would talk to them. “Good morning, boys and girls!” she chirped. “How are you all doing today?”
    The children began laughing and whispering to each other.
    “Isn’t this a beautiful morning?” Cleotilde looked up at the sky, smiling with pleasure. The morning was indeed beautiful. “What’s your name, son?” she said, pointing at a gangling boy who was scratching his armpit.
    The boy quickly looked at his friends, as though for approval, and then, grinning, said, “My name is Vietnam Calderón, but they call me El Diablo.” Making a monstrous face at Cleotilde, he said, “Boooooo!” All his friends laughed.
    “Now, that’s not polite, son,” Cleotilde said calmly. In different circumstances she would have grabbed the boy by his ear, smacked him in the face, made him kneel down and apologize to her. Then she would have made him write, one hundred times, “I must respect my elders.” But she had just arrived in Mariquita and didn’t know the boys or their mothers. She stared at him long enough to remember his freckled face if she ever saw him again.
    “I am Señorita Cleotilde Guarnizo,” she said sternly, “and I might be your next teacher!”
    “We don’t want no teacher!” a little girl yelled from the back.
    “Go away,” a boy echoed. Soon they were all shouting in unison, “Go away! Go away!”
    Ah! If only I had a ruler, Cleotilde thought.
    “Go away! Go away!”
    She threw them a disapproving look, then turned around and began walking in the direction of the plaza. She hadn’t gone more than a few steps when a pebble hit the back of her neck. Her right hand clenched, and she turned to the children sharply, a flush of anger brightening her cheeks. The children stood defiantly, each holding a slingshot with the elastic strip drawn all the way back, ready to