One Out of Two by Daniel Sada Page B

we don’t have anything that proves that we’re the daughters of two of the cadavers in the pile.”
    “And what if the pit no longer exists? What if other families have already claimed their bodies?”
    “The fact is, we don’t have the paperwork.”
    “Well, I don’t think it’s impossible; just going there and making a claim would be enough, because it wouldn’t seem weird at all for two people to want two bodies that are buried there in a great big pit, though they might wonder why we would want them, what two living people are going to do with two dead bodies … The truth is, sister, I don’t see a downside. In any case, it’s our only salvation, plain and simple. If what we want is to not look alike anymore, I can’t think of a more efficient way to bring that about. And then it’s just a matter of burying them here in hallowed ground and bringing them flowers all the time, and the more often we visit their graves, the more our features will change. We have to believe it because that’s what’s best for us. We can carry their remains in a sack and place them way in the back of the luggage compartment under the bus. First, though, we’d douse them with perfume so the smell of decay doesn’t drift up into the bus where the passengers are sitting, or standing, or whatever. You’ll see, I’m sure it’ll work out. We’ll be different!”
    “I don’t want to. It sounds really ghoulish to me. You should just go by yourself, if you want to.”
    “No, it’d be better to go together; if our goal is to stop looking alike, we have to both go.”
    The conversation continued, and continued to be disparaging, insidious, awful. Gloria resisted by raising objection after objection, but she finally ran out and had to give in. She wanted to convince herself that both of their destinies depended on this act. She wanted to believe in it the same way one believes in God and angels who live so very far away, in heaven, and come to visit only once in a while and then only in spirit. But people don’t live with doubts, on the contrary: they pray to what’s invisible or to some image X; words like salvation , dissimilarity , success sounded merely like faith to Gloria, and faith is either abstract or very simple, and on the strength of contrasts, the simple won out. If it was deceptive, well, it couldn’t be, because then what would remain?
    At this point, Gloria, if only to hear more perfunctory confidences, let slip a question: And then we’ll separate? Well, the answer came later … Actually, right away. Yes, for love, that is: depending on the beau … New bonds … Looking different was not about splitting apart and with one snip of the scissors cutting the old sisterly knot, but rather loosening it, little by little.
    A mixture of horror and hope started to seep into their minds, and that went on for weeks.
    Weeks of tension in which both of them went with Oscar to the walnut grove as usual and received gifts and kisses and caresses without his mentioning a word about marriage or straight out asking—as they say—for one of their hands.
    Unhappy weeks in which they made plans and discussed details, such as: the exact amount of time they would need to go to Múzquiz and get their parents and give them a Christian burial back here. No more than a week so they wouldn’t have to cancel any dates with their boyfriend. “It’s so complicated.” “No, we can arrange everything so that it works out just right.” “It seems impossible to do it in six days.” In any case: preparing for Sunday, though very fearful of hearing the grand proposal.
    But no: everything proceeded peacefully.
    And to top it off: every day for weeks now they’d been finding slipped under their door desperate letters from their aunt repeating the same annoying drivel, creeping toward the cynical: written hastily, with letters that were almost Chinese: worse than a doctor’s, though at the bottom—after the P.S. appeared this