excerpt
Later I asked him why we didn’t tell Cindy and Corrine our real
names.
– In case we knock ’em up, he said. Shit, you’re stupid.
Meat trudges along the boardwalk, face blotching under the merciless
American sun, shopping bags bulging with merchandise. Mr.
Cameron is similarly employed. Lenore trails, despondent.
Reggie wants to check out one more store before we head back to
camp. According to the sign in the window, Carter’s Military Memorabilia
sells guns, knives, archery sets and uniforms from various
periods in U.S. history. The wallpaper lining its interior walls
attempts a log cabin motif.
A man dressed in Davy Crockett buckskins slides out from
behind the counter.
– Canadians? Welcome, folks! He’s wearing a coonskin cap. His
sneakers squeak on the linoleum floor.
– Do you have any flags? Mr. Cameron inquires.
The legendary slayer of bruins leads us to a stack wrapped in cellophane.
– Or I’ve got those, he says, pointing to a row of tattered ensigns
hanging limp from a ceiling beam.
– They look, says Mrs. Cameron, used . . .
– Battle of 1812, the man said.
– Are they originals? Mr. Cameron asks.
– Each one comes with a Certificate of Authenticity.
Reggie Cameron buys two.
The first time Mom was hospitalized she refused to eat.
– I’m not crazy, she insisted. Doctors are.
Orderlies held her arms while nurses secured intravenous tubes.
We visited Sundays.
Mom believed there were plots against her. Sometimes enemies
disguised themselves as family members. If you said you agreed
with her, that everybody was nuts but her, you were an ally. Didn’t?
A conspirator.
– You’ll see, she said.
As long as she could contain her illness, my mother remained at
home. But borders divide people as well as nations, and whenever
Libros Libertad 