The Dark Bride by Laura Restrepo

adds Olga, “except those of your memories.”
    I have convinced Todos los Santos to get up and take a walk, and as we stroll, with me supporting her arm, the river turns red and the herons fly just above its surface, brushing the burning water with their wings. The momentary freshness of a breeze off the mountain abruptly ceases and the heat seizes the opportunity to fall upon us and crush us.
    â€œThe river blushed, didn’t it?” asks Todos los Santos. “That’s why it got hot, because the river turned red.”
    â€œAnd out of pleasure?” I continue. “Has anyone joined the profession because she liked it?”
    Todos los Santos laughs in that peculiar manner of las mujeres when they are really amused, throwing their heads back and striking their thighs with the palms of their hands.
    â€œIt is a profession that has its compensations,” she says, “that cannot be denied. Sometimes you sing and sometimes you cry, as with everything, but I will tell you one thing, a girl in this life has more opportunities for happiness than, let’s say, a dentist. Or a locksmith, for example.”
    â€œOh God, yes,” assures Olguita, laughing, as she walks behind us.

seven
    Any worthwhile life is woven with white ceremonies and black ceremonies, in an inevitable chain where some justify the others. Although the easy encounter with señor Manrique floated by, inoffensive, among Sayonara’s days, the following Tuesday Todos los Santos was forced to introduce her disciple to the murky ceremonies of a shameful routine. Every Tuesday by law, week after week, the prostitutes of La Catunga had to appear at dawn in the center of town, on Calle del Comercio, and stand in line in front of the antivenereal dispensary to have their health cards renewed.
    â€œOnly on that day,” Todos los Santos tells me, “were they disrespectful and treated us like putas .”
    â€œWhy do we need a card, madrina ?” asked Sayonara, running behind the older woman, unable to match her steps.
    â€œSo the government will let us work. They require it of anyone in La Catunga who wears a skirt, even the nuns. They don’t cure the sick women, they just charge them double to say they’re healthy.”
    â€œBut why, madrina ?”
    â€œThe government officials pocket the fifty centavos that each of us pays for the validation.”
    â€œWell, if they’re going to steal from us, why do we go?”
    â€œSo they’ll let us live in peace.”
    â€œWhat happens if we don’t have a card?”
    â€œThey kick our asses right into jail.”
    They found the others waiting in line beneath the rising sun, messy and gray, as if they had swallowed ashes. The collective disgust cut off any attempt at conversation and Sayonara knew instinctively that it was better not to continue asking questions, because putting words to grave matters only makes them graver. There was Yvonne, perched on a pair of red spiked heels; Claire, mortally beautiful; Analía, stealing sips of vodka from a poorly camouflaged bottle; the pipatonas suckling their babies; Olga with her legs in the armor plating of her orthopedic devices. Leaning against a wall, all identical in the eyes of the corrupt officials, with no preferred lightbulb status or nationality or fee differential, no color of skin better than any other. On Tuesdays the dignity of any of them was worth fifty centavos, not one more or one less.
    â€œThe infected women’s cards were marked with crosses, one or several depending on the severity, and some women’s had so many they looked like cemeteries,” said Todos los Santos. “One cross meant thin blood; two, rotten blood; three, swollen flesh; four, irremediable situation.”
    â€œOff with the underwear!”
    Men with white lab coats were giving orders and Sayonara was seized with a sudden anxiety attack and a growing foreboding of frozen forceps in her