A terrible fall
…..
Chapter IX: The girl and the mango tree
Historical Center, Cuernavaca, Morelos
“They say that the house was built by a general. That may or may not be so, for as you know, people love to waggle their tongues. The thing is that the foreman in charge of the construction had a daughter. Apparently, she was around eight years old. God only knows what her name must have been for I certainly don´t. Rumors have it that she was a very restless little girl, frightfully full of energy.” At this point she stopped the narrative, staring at me as if I had been that girl.
Grandmother laughed good-naturedly, very pleased with herself when she saw me start as she began to stare.
She went on with her story, “One morning the workers were busy cleaning up the site. The construction was finished, and they were working on the last details. All the workers were especially occupied with picking up all the trash they littered all over the place.”
“Now, that morning, the little girl had been playing in this patio, right where we are standing now. By the time they realized it, she had already climbed the mango tree and was all the up on the top, as high as she could go. That same tree you see here in the center of the patio,” she said as she pointed to the tree. “You see those branches all the way up there in the highest part of the tree?” Grandmother asked pointing to the top of the tree. From my point of view, it looked higher than Managua’s tallest building, but at that age, everything used to seem so big.
“When her father, who was also the foreman saw her up there, he began to shout to her: Girl! Now you get down from that tree, now. Right away!! He was terrified because that tree was so old and many of the branches were weak and could easily break. And that’s what actually happened; the branch she was standing on broke, and the poor little girl fell, plummeting down from high above.”
In the land of volcanoes’ Chapters Purchase the book