Mama Leone Read Online Free PDF Page A

wasn’t sumptuous and the teacher gave me a D . . . If the teacher says it’s sumptuous, then it’s sumptuous , my mother concluded pedagogically. I opened an encyclopedia called The World Around Us to the page where there was a picture of the circus: trapeze artists on the trapeze, a lion jumping through a flaming hoop, an elephant standing on its hind legs, and a man in a striped suit with a gigantic mustache holding big black weights above his head. I’d had a bellyful of the fall and the first day of school, I wanted to see a circus. Actually, I didn’t want to see a circus, I wanted to join one and perform, as a lion, elephant, or giraffe, and felt so cruelly trapped in my human body. Unfortunately I hadn’t read Sartre yet and didn’t know anything about existential angst. I only found out what that was all about when I actually didn’t have it anymore, because by then I myself had turned into a ball of existential angst, and the fall really was soft, sumptuous, and auburn. Fall for an A plus.
    The television news starts at eight, quarter to eight is the cartoon,then the ads, then a watch hand circles the screen for a full three minutes, then a globe dances in rhythm to a symphony and cosmic rolls of thunder, continents float by, the world begins with giant Africa and little Europe, then come the two Americas, the vast silent ocean and Asia, by the symphony’s end Africa and Europe are back, and then Mufid Memija’s face, his tie in a bulky knot, a piece of paper in hand, the latest from Santiago de Chile, the presidential palace is still holding out, the military junta’s forces are advancing, the truck drivers’ strike continues, Salvador Allende has sent out a dramatic appeal to all Chileans and the international community . . . Are we the international community too? I ask Grandma. On the one hand we are . . . On which hand aren’t we? . . . On the hand you’re waving in front of the screen so I can’t see anything .
    I got an F in math and immediately decided to keep it quiet. Parent-teacher interviews aren’t for another fifteen days. That’s how long Mom won’t know. I already felt like a prisoner on death row with only fifteen days left to live. Luckily I was only seven, and when you’re seven fifteen days seems like fifteen years. A long and slow stretch lay ahead of me; the older I get, the faster the time will go by, it’ll speed up like a big intercontinental, intergalactic truck, until it goes so fast I won’t be able to catch up, so it’ll get way out in front of me and it’ll seem the biggest part of my life was back then, when I was seven years old. A quarter of a century later I’ll have the experience of a seven-year-old who accidentally fell into a machine for premature aging. Having keptquiet about the first F, I’ll keep quiet about all the next ones too, until I get tired and old, until I finish school and Mom ends up getting bored with worrying about my Fs.
    I’d come home from school with a secret. I thought they might be able to read the secret F on my face. Mom couldn’t, she didn’t read what was written on my face, same goes for Dad, he didn’t dare read it because he was only here to visit his son, but Grandma, she definitely could have read it, but she doesn’t care about my Fs. She’s already sitting in front of the television, it’s almost eight, she’s smoking anxiously, waiting for the news to start. Chilean President Salvador Allende has been killed in the presidential palace of La Moneda , says Mufid Memija, bless his poor mother , says Grandma. A man with a mustache and a helmet on his head enters the palace.
    Augusto Pinochet , says Memija, fascist pig , says Grandma, who’s that , I ask, he killed Allende , says Grandma, why didn’t we defend him? . . . How were we supposed to defend him from Sarajevo? . . . Well, didn’t he ask us to?. . .