Believers, By María Fernanda Ampuero
Originally published in: Human Sacrifices (2023)
There was an alleyway out back where the sun never shined and a thick slime, almost a living creature, slippery as a frog’s back, formed on the ground and walls. I discovered it the day the strike began, drunk on freedom because it was a Tuesday and on Tuesdays I had two straight hours of math followed by PE, my two worst enemies.
That morning we arrived at school to find it closed because of the strike. My parents took me to my grandma’s, and on an impulse, the kind that leaves you with one foot in the air and the other on the ground, I decided to help her with the tea roses, which were plump and pink and full of thorns like she was, but I quickly realized she only cut flowers to keep from cutting the head off of some person. She looked like a butcher in her black garden gloves, a cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth.
I went into the shed and rummaged through Grandpa’s tools, organized them by size, stripped several cables to reveal the gleaming copper inside, and made myself a ridiculous bracelet. Grandpa would’ve shown me some magic trick or given me detailed descriptions of
the currency he’d collected from around the world. But Grandpa was dead because, as my dad always said, god takes his favorites first. After a while, bored, I started running around outside the house. My black school shoes made a sound like a bag of marbles being spilled on the sidewalk. I liked it.
There was an alleyway out back where the sun never shined, and that was where I slipped on a sickly sweet, furry slime like a green rat and I fell flat on my back and lay there, my skirt hiked up, me and my white panties looking up at the sky. I felt like crying, not from pain, but from fear. It was the first time I’d ever thought about my own death, and death was exactly that: being alone in an alleyway where the sun never shines and no one, ever, will come looking for you. It was also the first time I realized I’d have to live with myself and my insufferable, irritating, insistent voice for the rest of my life.
After a little while Patafría walked by carrying the dirty clothes basket. She was startled at first, but then she saw it was me. She stood me up and wiped me off and frowned at the stains on my white panties and she said, “You look like an idiot, child, lying there.” We went into the kitchen; she cleaned my legs and face with a damp cloth that smelled like the butcher shop. Don’t cry, she said, your grand
mother doesn’t like crybabies.
What Patafría really meant was that my grandmother didn’t like anything except cards, herself, and nicotine. I wasn’t crying, but when she mentioned it I felt like I should cry: I’m going to die, I saw myself dead, and I missed myself, myself and all the things I planned to do with myself. I’m going to die, Patafría, do you understand? Something frozen like my own death skittered up my body. I stopped when Patafría raised a bony finger, the color of hot chocolate, and wagged it in front of my nose. No crying.
Patafría was the woman who worked for my grandma. Her real name was María, like my grandma, but she’d changed it because it was too horrifying to have the same name. Patafría had a daughter, Marisol, who turned up the day the strike began.
I was shocked that so close to my world there lived a girl my age and I didn’t know her. I didn’t have many friends. Why hadn’t Patafría’s daughter ever come to my birthday, or the other way around: Why hadn’t they ever invited me to Patafría’s daughter’s birthday? Why hadn’t they ever brought her over to swim in the pool? How hadn’t I known about her? Who did Marisol live with if Patafría lived at my grandma’s house? I couldn’t ask my grandmother, and I couldn’t ask Patafría either. So I asked Marisol. She shrugged her shoulders, took me by the hand, and led me to the alley where the sun never shined.
There was something strange about Marisol, although I couldn’t say what it was. She never gave a straight answer, stood with her mouth hanging open for too long; she would scratch her head nonstop and sometimes she would fall silent, as if listening to someone who was giving her very confusing but very important instructions. But she smiled a lot, and it was fun to have another girl at Grandma’s house. It wasn’t a big deal that she always had her tongue hanging out or laughed too loud or couldn’t answer questions or clapped at planes when they flew over. It was impossible to teach her to play cards, so I showed her the sound like marbles when we ran past the alleyway. We ran and ran and finally, exhausted, we decided to become best friends. She spit in her hand and held it out to me. I understood that I should do the same. We shook hands and the spit sealed our friendship.
Around that time the Believers moved into Grandma’s house. There were two of them, a tall one and a short one, and those were the names we gave them, Tall Believer and Short Believer, because their real names, although they repeated them slowly, breaking up the syllables, were impossible to pronounce. The Believers explained how they went around to different countries talking about how good it was to be a Believer. Poor countries like this one, my grandma said, they come to stuff that religion of theirs down the throats of poor people with the promise of salvation and other idiotic ideas. Grandma didn’t care about faith one way or the other; she was just interested in the money the Believers were willing to pay to sleep in the storage shed she’d fixed up but which still had bats in the rafters and which Dad said no one should ever rent out, even for free.
The Believers were out all day. I imagined them walking around that city in flames, paralyzed by the strike, like they were tourists to the end of days, fascinated by the dark-skinned men killing each other. We couldn’t tell when they were home or not because the door was always closed and they put newspapers over the windows so that no one could look inside. They came into the kitchen every once in a while to ask for cold water. They never accepted anything else. Patafría felt sorry for them; she said it was horrible they had to live in that hellhole without any ventilation or comforts to speak of, despite the fact that her own room was no more than a tiny cave that barely fit her rickety bed and an overturned box where she set her toothbrush and her Bible.
When they came to ask for water she always offered them some food or a pitcher of juice, but they said no, no to everything. She also tried to give them palo santo to keep away the mosquitoes that were eating them alive, but they said no and she would stand there with the tray in her hands looking at them with admiration, maybe even love, as they went back to their rattrap.
What did the Believers eat? No one knew. They refused Patafría’s food and they couldn’t make food in the shed. They once left the door cracked open and I saw them naked, pouring pitchers of ice water on each other. Then they lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling, wet, their tongues out, panting, until I heard Patafría call me to lunch. I didn’t tell anyone what I’d seen.
I was fascinated by them. The Believers were beautiful, blond as Baby Jesus; they surely must be kind. My parents had warned me over and over about strangers on the street, about drifters who stole little children, about beggars, but never about men with eyes that were so blue, so green they were almost transparent. They had to be good.
The Believers gave Patafría some beautiful books and even though they were in another language, they had very entertaining drawings of what looked like aliens, and a party with animals and people and aliens. You could make up incredible stories based on the pictures in the Believers’ books, but Patafría didn’t even open them. She just said thank you and left the books sitting in a corner of the kitchen. It made me sad they hadn’t given me one. What I didn’t understand was how Grandma could have the Believers living in her house if Dad said they were sinners, but I once heard Dad say to Mom that it was better they were there so Grandma could make some money off of them and that, in any case, if you didn’t have to listen to them talk about salvation and the planet where all the chosen ones would go, they were fairly inoffensive. Dad said that given the situation the country was in, with the strike and all that, it was a good thing for Grandma to have two white guys at her house.
That day, the first day of the strike, Marisol and I, already best friends forever, discovered a hole in the wall through which we could see into the Believers’ room. We quickly got bored because there was nothing interesting going on. The Believers had no appliances, no decorations or photographs, not a single thing besides their white shirts, their black pants, and a little suitcase for each of them. Then suddenly Marisol screamed and covered her mouth with her hands.
“What? What did you see?”
“A little boy,” she said.
The Believers couldn’t possibly have a little boy in their room.
I peeked inside and burst out laughing. All I saw was a pile of clothes on the chair. I told Marisol that she was a dummy and she hit me and I hit her back and we were mad at each other for an hour until I realized that if I lost her I’d be all alone. I went over to her and, I don’t know why, I told her about the time my grandma found a cat and a litter of kittens in her yard and she picked up the kittens and put them in a plastic bag, then tied it tight with a triple knot and stomped on it with her orthopedic shoes. Then she mixed a few gray baggies of poison into a can of tuna and fed it to the mother. I got really serious so that Marisol would understand that my grandma was dangerous. “Do you know the sound a kitten skull makes under a grandma’s shoe? No? Well, I do.”
It got hot and we went inside. There were cartoons on at that time of day. I took off my shoes and got on Grandma’s bed. I told Marisol to do the same. When Grandma came in and found the two of us head to head, watching Woody Woodpecker, she got furious and told Patafría to take her daughter back to the kitchen.
Then she ordered her to change the bedspread, the pillowcases, and the sheets.
From that day onward I ate in the kitchen with Pata fría and Marisol. There was no convincing me to sit with my grandma, even when she threatened to have my father beat me. From that day on I became, in her eyes, a spoiled, ungrateful brat.
Outside, the strike was increasingly violent. Grandma’s friends came over to tell her that so-and-so’s employees had taken over the company and had strung him up above the machinery while they all applauded. Ungrateful beasts, murderers. They told her about a family where the cook had poisoned the soup and how all of a sudden the cook and her children lived in the family’s mansion, swam in their pool, and wore all their name-brand clothes. Other ladies stopped in to say goodbye because they were leaving the country. They cried.
“They’re massacring us, María. Get out while you can.” Patafría cried too. She said that the river was choked with bodies full of bullet holes and that every morning at dawn the mothers of the murdered men would throw crosses into the water.
That river’s not a river; it’s death, death water. The police went into the working-class neighborhoods and raped the dead men’s mothers and daughters and sisters and grandmothers. Then they took everything of value and burned the houses down. They left the women half-naked, bloodied, lying on the ground.
Sometimes the tangy smell of gunpowder and tear gas would reach Grandma’s house and we had to rush to shut the windows. We heard gunshots all day and all night.
Mom and Dad didn’t come back. They were afraid that if they le" the factory the workers would take over, as had happened with their friends’ factories, so they brought in mattresses and a cookstove and camped out in the office so that, as Dad said, they could protect what Grandpa had worked so hard for. One day Grandma went to take them the shotgun and when she came back she looked much older, as if instead of having gone to the factory she’d gone to hell and back. What had she seen along the way? Her clothes were torn and there was mud in her hair.
For the first time she called Patafría by her real name. “María, you’re not going to betray us, are you? We’ve treated you like family, we’ve given you everything you needed, I even let you bring your daughter here when your husband and your sister joined the strike. You love us, don’t you, María?”
Marisol and I became obsessed with the Believers; we thought that they would save the country from the strike and then we’d all be happy. In the movies, men who looked like them always saved the planet.
We named the little boy Marisol said she saw but I thought was a pile of clothes Miguelito, and every day we made up new adventures for him. Miguelito flew to outer space, fought giants, traveled to the future and married us, inherited millions, went on safari. Miguelito did it all, but he always got into trouble. We died laughing as we swooped in to save Miguelito and humanity.
Our friendship was like love, a wonder that grew and grew.
Sometimes we kissed like on the telenovelas. I put my lips on her lips and we breathed. I liked the salty smoke of her breath more than candy and I wanted to stay there, mouth to mouth, forever. I rubbed her curls and she untied my ponytail to make my long hair dance against my face. Wearing a pillowcase and one of Grandpa’s ties, we got married. Sometimes I wore the tie, sometimes she did, but we always ended up with our hands and lips pressed together, so close we looked like conjoined twins.
Every night Marisol waited for Patafría to fall asleep, then snuck into bed with me. Sleepless, fluttering with excitement, we told each other stories we already knew or invented new ones. It was a beautiful thing to be able to amaze someone, to make them laugh, to scare them, to be, for a little while, the same person.
It was a beautiful thing to tell Marisol stories until she fell asleep with her lips parted and her breath that smelled like a swamp, like mangroves, like mine.
One night we heard a wail, like a little kid crying, or maybe a cat in heat. We went downstairs like two shadows and Marisol peeked through the hole in the Believers’ wall. She turned to me and in her face I saw horror, more horror than can be put into words, more horror than one little girl can bear. I wanted to look, but she wouldn’t let me. She hugged me and I heard her heart pounding, an animal about to be gutted.
We ran into the backyard and she told me that the Believers were biting the little boy. I thought she must be confused. I went back by myself and peeked through the hole. Tall Believer was wiping his mouth and Short Believer was tying up a garbage bag.
I laughed at Marisol.
“It was a chicken, dummy; they were eating chicken.” She was crying and shaking like a leaf as she went back to bed with her mom.
The next morning we were woken up by shouting in the street. Someone was calling for María. Her husband had been killed, and her sister too, along with half their neighborhood. Her mother had been badly injured, and all the houses had been burned down.
María, Marisol, my grandma, and I, one beside the other, stared at this woman who had crossed the city to bring the news, her brains boiling, her knees weak, and her jaw clenched like a person standing before the firing squad. The woman left and María fell to the floor. Grandma bent down to console her. With María curled into a ball and my grandma covering her with her large body, it wasn’t clear which one of them was releasing that savage, wounded, animal wail. Maybe it was both of them at the same time: the cry of two women devastated by pain.
Marisol and I threw ourselves to the floor as well, one on top of the other, and the four of us lay there like that, two women and two girls screaming and crying, who knows how long.
María got up to go find her mother. Before leaving she asked my grandma to care for Marisol as if she were her own granddaughter, and Grandma promised she would. María said it again and Grandma put her cross necklace against her mouth. She swore to god. Marisol tried to follow Patafría, but Grandma caught the girl in her grave
digger’s arms. I remembered the kittens that Grandma had separated from their mother, the sound of those tiny skulls, the final whimpers.
Days passed and Grandma got out of bed less and less until she stopped getting up at all. She called for Marisol to bring her coffee and cigarettes, to rub her feet and comb her hair. Marisol was always marching up and down the stairs with new orders from Grandma and so it was hard to play with her. I promised her that when my parents came back, we would take them, her and María, to live with us at our house.
As often as they could, my parents sent a trustworthy messenger to let Grandma know they were all right. But one day the messages stopped coming. There were rumors that not a single business owner had been left alive, that they had been rounded up and left to starve, that some had been thrown from the skyscraper windows and their bodies had shattered like glass, that the industrial areas and downtown had been burned to the ground, that the bodies, by the hundreds, were attracting seagulls, rats, cats, and dogs from miles around. I thought about my parents and about animals eating their faces.
One afternoon the Believers came home with two little boys, and the next day with two more. The kids were starving, dirty, and confused. They looked like they’d been wandering alone for days. Grandma heard sounds and asked us about them. We lied and told her it was some beggars wanting bread or coins, and she told us not to let them in for anything in the world, that those starving wretches would kill their own mother over a rotten potato, that they would rape us and then eat us alive.
The Believers spread sheets on the floor of their room and the little boys slept there. Grandma stopped asking about the noises because she stopped talking entirely. Marisol and I cleaned her the best we could and fed her some of the meals we scraped together from the few items left in the pantry, a bit of rice, some tuna, tomato sauce.
Marisol wouldn’t go near the Believers; she was still convinced that they ate people, and every morning she would peek in to make sure the little boys were still whole. After a few days she stopped checking. The Believers, she told me, treated the boys very well; they let them lie in their beds, took pictures of them, hugged them, gave them chocolate, and had them kiss one another on the mouth like we kissed each other. I convinced myself that I didn’t hear them crying at night, that I didn’t hear them shouting no and calling for their mamas. I must’ve made it all up, imagined those cries, that was the only possible explanation. The Believers were the good guys. The Believers were the only good guys left in the world.
María Fernanda Ampuero is a fiction and non-fiction writer from Ecuador. Her chronicles have been published in media such as Gatopardo, Anfibia, Internazionale, Piauí, El Diario, Quimera, or El País and have been part of numerous non-fiction narrative anthologies. She received the Ciespal Chronicle award and the International Organization for Migration award for the best journalistic chronicle of the year. In 2012, she was chosen as one of the most relevant Latin Americans in Madrid, a city where she has lived since 2005. Her first book of short stories, Pelea de gallos (Páginas de Espuma, 2018), has already had fifteen editions and has been translated into many languages. It was chosen by The New York Times in Spanish as one of the ten books of the year and won the Joaquín Gallegos Lara award (Ecuador) for best short story book of the year. Human Sacrifices (Páginas de Espuma, 2021), a finalist for the Tigre Juan award for best book of the year, has been published in independent editions in Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, Mexico, and Colombia. It has been translated into Italian, English, and Portuguese. The rights to adapt several of her stories to audiovisual format are being negotiated. She has just received the residency awarded by the Civitella Ranieri Foundation to outstanding artists from around the world.