There is something about Juan Vandendorp’s writing – a spareness, an understated plainness – that, rather than diminishing his subjects, serve only to imbue them with a richly emotional quality.  However plain the words, we sense a deep current of feeling running under their surface, creating a beautiful tension which is both unsettling and compelling.  I am reminded of nothing so much as the clean, direct, emotionally weighted prose of Hemingway.  A Word with You Press is honored to post this entry into our Defying Moments contest, and we hope that Juan – whose short story recently won top honors in our Coffee Shop Chronicles contest – will continue to let what is in his heart and mind onto the page, and into our hearts and minds.

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Topic: The Day I Left

The Day I Left

I woke up and jumped out of bed. It was a big day for me. I put on my shorts, brown rubber shoes and rushed outside. My brother, Negro, would soon be home. I waited for him by the soccer stadium where the San Telmo soccer team used to play. The air was filled with the aroma of crude oil, coming from the river, where all fish had died years ago.

He was bringing facturas, Danish pastries; he always brought them for me; he loved seeing me smile.

When he emerged by the corner, where two young prostitutes waited for customers, I felt a rush in my stomach and ran to greet him. I was a bit like a little dog; I went for his hands first.  And there it was: the glossy beige bag that contained the treasure. Three facturas, two of them filled with dulce de leche and the other one was a churro.

I ate the facturas with matecocido, which is a herbal drink. My mother looked sad. She was moving around slowly and did not say much. I was excited. I finished the facturas and went outside to play with my cousins. “It’s a huge car. It’s made by the Americans and it’s called Impala.  I saw a picture in a magazine,” said Moncho, his chubby cheeks all flushed with the attenion I was giving him. Nobody ever listened to him. “I’m going to go to Buenos Aires. I’m going to go to a nice school and the woman has a daughter,” I said, covering my eyes from the sun with my left hand; we were in our hideaway, in the dark green marsh.

They must have painted my future life as a fairy tale, because for a few hours, all I could think about was the big black car. My little body of five sat looking at the end of the dirt road, expectant. The baking sun had been drying up the earth for weeks and it was dusty. Some people were carrying buckets of water from the only faucet that we had – the shanty town was about a quarter of a mile in diameter; the girls carried the buckets like the Chinese people, balancing them on their shoulders at the ends of a wooden pole.

My mother had prepared a little bag for me, and she had included her tattered dress that I liked to sleep in, the one that made me feel safe. Her eyes were swollen. She grabbed me hard and held me for a long time in her arms. She turned away suddenly and rushed away. I went outside and peered into the distance. A cloud of dust appeared and behind it, a menacing black car bobbed its way toward me. I ran inside and got my mom and my stepfather.

The Impala pulled right in front of me. A blonde woman, who wore a brown suit with a pink-ruffled blouse, got out of the car. I started touching the car and going around it completely in awe. My head reached only the door handle so I had to jump to see inside. The inside was glossy, burgundy leather. After one lap around the black car, I bumped into a man that towered over me, wearing a dark suit and smoking a dark cigarette. He was with the blonde woman but was much younger.

He squatted to talk to me; he had green eyes. “I hear you like to sing, is that right?” he asked me. I nodded but I had eyes only for the car. He must have noticed, for he took me by the hand and led me to the interior.

I stretched on the back seat, that was big enough to fit three like me. Outside, the blonde woman, whose name was Lily, talked to my mom and her boyfriend.

I sat in the back seat of the car; Lily shook hands with my mom. She then came toward us and got in the passenger seat. Blas, the man, had already started the car. The engine made a loud rumble. I was busy exploring every inch of the car. My mom gave me the bag and an apple covered in burnt sugar that I loved. When the car turned around, I leaned with my belly into the seat to look through the rear window. The cloud of dust was unforgiving and I only caught a glimpse of my mother and her boyfriend, becoming little shadows. I would not see my mother again for seven years.

That was the day that I left home. My mom was giving me a chance in life. She was letting go of the one thing that gave meaning to her life. Me, her precious little five year-old boy that she loved to hold against her chest when she came home after hours of rubbing some rich man’s floors. She sacrified herself so that I would not end up in prison like Negro. If only my mom had known that in the world there are much worse things than prison. Unknowingly, she was sending me to a witch that terrorized me for seven years.

With one swing of her mighty sword, life made my world vanish. My world, with all those smiling faces, with the children carrying water, and the marsh, where me and my cousins played war. My wooden toys and my beloved rubber soccer ball stayed with Moncho. My brother Negro never brought me facturas again. To the world this was a shanty town, something to be ashamed of; a slum, that the politicians were not proud to show off to the presidents of other countries. For me, it was my world. Just like the hyenas have their world, this was where I felt safe. I did not see it as the gown-ups saw it; I saw it as a land of adventures. This was my home. Here, I was free.

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Thank you, Juan.  Please keep writing.