The house that he built
Ofelia stepped out of the train carrying the family’s luggage and enduring the tantrums of her three children only to find a bunch of houses covered in dust that dyed her dress red. It was the last station, where the railroad tracks ended in the middle of a plain where the wind flowed freely, dragging dirt into her eyes.
“I married a good for nothing man,” was the only thing she could say in the face of such maddening scene. The bitter memory of having said those words in front of her husband, and the look he gave back to her would stay with her until the end of her life, just like the dirt and drought.
And like that, dusty and sick of the eternal train ride, they walked along the street marked by the steps of so many migrants and the occasional pair of wheels until they arrived at the house that her husband had built, that he talked so much about in his letters while she waited in the city, longing for the beginning of a new life together. According to his letters, it was a white house, but just like the freckled Melisa’s little dress, and Joaquín’s pants that were already short, it had been dyed red by all that dust and all that wind that didn’t stop blowing in the plains.
“Well, what are you waiting for? You haven’t seen the interior yet.”
“You’re not going to do anything?” Ofelia didn’t move, looking at the dirt at the entrance.
“We don’t have the luxury to waste water to clean the house, and even if we had it, it would be useless. Next day it would be colored red again.”
After a few days living there she had to give the reason to her husband. No matter how much effort she put into washing the clothes of her children, the color red didn’t go away from the fabric nor their lives. She didn’t let them play outside with the other kids, because they only brought more dirt into the house that she would need to sweep before her husband arrived, took off the boots and the uniform issued by the mining company and leave more dust in the floor. And every day she had to repeat that over and over again, because unlike her, the wind never got tired. Finally, she decided to dress the kids and herself with the colors black and red, because that was the only way to hide the filth they lived in.
The dust was so fine that it remained suspended in the air and got in every corner of the house. Sometimes Ofelia couldn’t sleep from so much sneezing and feeling all that sand stinging her body. And her husband would tell her that it wasn’t a big deal, that with time one would get used to the dust and be just another part of their lives, but Ofelia couldn’t imagine that day coming. To endure that torment she set aside a room where she stored her best clothes, so that she could remember the marvelous years in the city. She would put on makeup and wear her wedding dress and interpret between those four walls her favorite epics and tragedies, the movies and the operas that she enjoyed so much during her youth. Sometimes she invited her children to form part of the cast of that fantastical world, transforming the room into a stage because there was no theater in that uncultured town forgotten by God.
And because she didn’t want Melisa to miss out on the privileges her mother once enjoyed, she enrolled her in the city’s singing conservatory as soon as she could, so she wouldn’t have a daughter that grew up among the dirt and enormous excavators, but a handsome and cultured young lady. Between sobs she saw her leave in the same train that had brought them there.
Time passed like that, enduring the confinement and longing for the commodities of the urban life until Joaquín became old enough to go to school. Ofelia then said goodbyes to the little one as he left through the door and in the blink of an eye he returned along with cheers, the captain of the expedition, the explorers that had lost fingers due to the cold, and with a heavy metal box the placed on the table. He opened it and from it the freezing air he talked so much about emanated. A chunk of ice he personally took from the north pole and ordered to bring back home. Ofelia didn’t think of anything else other than to bring out the peach syrup and mix it with the polar ice to serve it to the new guests. The little glass cups and metal spoons seemed ridiculously small in the rough hands of those men, specially in Joaquín’s.
“Mother, there’s a lot of water in this planet. And I’m going to bring it to you, so you never complain of the dirty clothes and dust ever again.”
Ofelia hugged him, barely able to embrace the waist of that kid that wanted to be lifted up just a few days ago. He didn’t stop talking with his mates about melting the glaciers and bringing water to the town between laughs and the clinking of spoons.
“Oh son, and how are you going to bring all that ice here?”
That night, when she washed her face before going to bed, she noticed all the white hairs that had appeared.
A few days later she found out that Melisa had left the conservatory because the city that her mother had told marvels about had become insufficient. “My place is among the stars”, she said in one of her letters.
And to the stars she went. She left her planet to sing on others, in the stages of the big cities, and Ofelia listened to each one of her concerts. They talked less and less, because Melisa didn’t have enough time to do all the things she wanted to do. But Ofelia didn’t complain, because unlike Mateo, the smallest of her children who still didn’t know what to do with his life, Melisa wasn’t gathering dust among misery.
One day she got news that her daughter had become so famous, that they decided to film a movie depicting her life, and that they would come to their town because a very demanding and perfectionist director was in charge of the production. To give a good impression, Ofelia ordered to clean the dust in every room and hallway, task that had become increasingly difficult with the years thanks to the renovations that her husband did and because she didn’t have the energy to go from one place to another as if it were nothing.
The production team traveled through space to arrive to the most remote town of the most remote planet. Ofelia greeted everyone and served polar ice with peach syrup because Joaquín never forgot her mother even if he were on the other side of the world. He brought her a small piece of the arctic whenever he could.
Among the crowd she looked for Melisa, and only could find an actress that made up her freckles and that didn’t sing as good as her daughter. The director inspected the house and was astounded by its cleanliness.
“Where’s all the dust?”
“We cleaned everything because we thought it was going to bother everyone.”
“Well, we need to bring it back. People want to see what the desert is like. I don’t want clean houses nor dresses.”
Ofelia couldn’t believe that there was people willing to travel so far to see so much dirt.
After the production lasted for three years because without knowing they had arrived during an unusual windy season that ended up caking whoever dared leave their home and brought so much dust that their legs sank to the knees, Ofelia thought that finally she would have peace. Providing accommodation to all those demanding actors that walked around the house as if it were theirs ended up tiring her more than expected.
Her husband had already retired and only dedicated his free time to take care of each one of the details of the house that he had to expand because the actors, in the confinement that the bad weather required, didn’t have anything else to do other than rehearse their lines and have children. Ofelia thought that the years of washing the uniform and sweeping the house each time her husband returned were behind. Until one day Mateo, after a life immersed in his study he decided to become the only child to follow his father’s footsteps and join the mining company. His ambitions to unravel from the earth the most precious metals forced him to take even more drastic measures as the squad of voracious excavators in his charge peeled the layers of soil.
Explosions began to be heard day and night that raised thick columns of black smoke that the wind dragged to the town houses, darkening the sky and poisoning anyone who didn’t cover their face. Her husband didn’t die while he worked in the mine, like Ofelia had dreamed many times, but when falling off a ladder while repairing one of the windows of the fourth floor. Even though no one had set foot beyond the second floor in years, he wanted to have the most beautiful house in town. One of the many explosions that stunned Ofelia’s hearing and shook the dishes caused that man to lose balance.
Without her husband and Mateo away from home, digging deeper and deeper without giving signs of his existence, without the visits of Melisa’s admirers that wanted to see the house where the famous movie was filmed and without Joaquín’s meetings where they discussed increasingly radical methods to heat up the planet, Ofelia experimented a deep loneliness, but also a sense of peace she hadn’t felt in a long time.
She allowed herself to lock herself up to never see the dust again, and once more, watch her favorite movies and reinterpret the plays that she remembered so much from her past life in the city with the old dresses that didn’t fit anymore and were starting to fall apart with time. She thought that now that didn’t have to open the doors to receive insufferable visits, she could finally keep her a clean face and a clean house, but the mine’s explosions didn’t stop; they made cracks in the walls and the windows shattered whenever the rockets took off to take to who knows where all those metals that Mateo pulled from the ground as if they were theirs. The house was in decay, the dust was getting everywhere and the noise and smoke from the mine was taking away her sleep. But Ofelia couldn’t leave, because abandoning the town meant admitting that the house that her husband built with so much effort was going to be forgotten forever.
When her eyesight was ruined from rubbing her eyes so much due to the dust and allergies, and no eye drops nor pair of glasses could cure it, she settled for listening to the radio, Melisa’s angelic voice that reverberated through the house’s corridors, now larger and emptier than ever. The dust was everywhere but Ofelia didn’t care anymore, because once she lost her eyesight she could make peace with that fine sand that stained everything red. She only had left the memories of the white dresses and the life in elegance, the cries and hugs of the children that she missed more than ever, the opera evenings with her friends, her husband’s efforts to make her happy, even though he built the house in the middle of nowhere.
Ofelia’s last day was the day it rained in the town for the first time. A pouring that turned the red dust into a viscous liquid with the unmistakable smell of blood. And then she believed she was witnessing the end of times and that she was going to finally be judged for her ingratitude the day she stepped out of the train with her family. It rained for ten straight days, although Ofelia only witnessed one of them because her heart had stopped. When the storm ended, the house had the same white color as the dress she was wearing on her wedding day.