By Marco Felix
The other day, I was listening to some old boleros when I remembered that my father had once asked Raúl “Show” Moreno to dedicate the bolero Osito de Felpa to my mother.
The lyrics of that bolero are almost uncannily accurate—so accurate that they seem like a perfect prophecy of the events that would unfold a few months later:
Teddy bear,
My child’s toy,
My little one’s toy,
Whom one early morning—almost—
The Lord took away.
My mother also told me that during that almost-fateful night of labor, she spent the time humming the bolero. Every so often, she would cuddle the teddy bear, probably humming and squeezing it to distract herself from fear and counterbalance the infernal labor pains that lay ahead.
It was clear that I entered this world under less-than-ideal circumstances, according to the midwife who attended my mother during labor.
She said that when I emerged from my mother’s womb after more than eight hours of intense pain, tremendous contractions, and constant pushing and pushing again, I was breathless, with a pulse that was barely detectable.
I survived thanks to my mother’s sacrifice during childbirth—and through the grace of the Holy Spirit—because if I had been delayed by even a few more seconds, I would not be here telling the story today.
The doctor on duty, seeing me emerge from my mother’s vagina more purple than a bowl of api and more limp and flaccid than a broken bed spring, reportedly cried out to heaven and fainted on the spot.
They say the poor doctor could not even hold me in his arms because I must have looked like a shapeless mass of flesh. Without a doubt, I was uglier than a piece of lung wrapped in a casing of meconium. I looked so alarming that he collapsed without even giving me the customary slap on the backside to make me cry and determine whether I was alive or dead—as was, after all, his duty as a physician.
It turned out that during labor, the umbilical cord had become wrapped around my neck like a contortionist boa constrictor. The more I moved, the tighter it squeezed. Little by little, with an occasional bonus somersault, it was strangling me.
My face began to resemble a small potato more than a baby’s face. That continued until, after a colossal effort by my mother at the moment of delivery, I finally escaped from her womb just in time to fill my little lungs with a miraculous gulp of air.
Once he had recovered from the shock, the doctor declared that if I had not emerged from my mother’s vagina within another three seconds, I would have arrived at my destination deader than a stone.
Unfortunately, that would have meant departing for limbo—or, more properly, purgatory—because without the gift of baptism and the necessary sacraments, I would not have been allowed to enter heaven as I deserved.
Apparently, I had suffered from meconium aspiration syndrome. Meconium is the term used for a newborn’s first stool—the first feces passed shortly after birth, before the baby has begun digesting breast milk.
It seems that even before I was born, I was already scared shitless. I was wrapped like a rag doll in the balm of my own meconium, right in the middle of my mother’s womb.
According to the doctors, meconium is generally released when a baby is under stress because it is not receiving enough blood and oxygen. In my case, the umbilical cord was slowly strangling me, preventing me from breathing and gradually turning my skin a dark shade of purple.
Once meconium passes into the surrounding amniotic fluid, the baby can aspirate it into the lungs. This can happen while the baby is still in the womb or while it is still covered in amniotic fluid after birth. Meconium can also block the baby’s airways immediately after delivery.
My mother told me that during the first months of my life, I did not “drink” breast milk. Instead of sucking the milk from her breasts, I chewed on her nipples with my toothless gums until I left them looking like two reddened, blistered cherries.
I damaged them so badly that not even the silk of her blouses could touch them. She had no choice but to put me on the bottle.
This was despite the fact that breastfeeding me was what my mother wanted most. It was the natural thing to do, and everyone else in the family had been breastfed for at least the first twelve months of life.
She understood perfectly well the nutritional value and benefits of breast milk. She told me that even though her breasts were practically overflowing with milk, she could not nurse me because, as I said, I bit her nipples. According to her, the pain was so intense that she no longer had any tears left to cry.
Nido powdered milk did not agree with me from the very beginning. According to my mother, within a few seconds I would spit the entire bottle back up—or, as my relatives would say, I would vomit it up immediately.
They tried for days and weeks to give me that blessed bottle, but the result was always the same: I drank the milk and vomited it five short seconds later.
Sometimes, she said, they would feed me while I lay flat on my back, with the bottle positioned vertically above me like the sword of Damocles. They held it at the perfect angle so that not even a bubble could escape.
Everyone waited in total silence, biting their fingernails and counting the seconds, praying to God that I would not vomit.
When everything seemed to indicate that, this time, I was actually retaining the white liquid, everyone would begin dancing with joy and thanking the Lord.
Their happiness never lasted long.
Without warning, I would turn redder than an uchuluru and let out a premonitory burp. Then the curdled milk would erupt from my throat like water from a broken dam, soaking the starched clothes of my mother, my aunts, and my grandmother.
At that moment, everyone would begin crying in unison, powerless to do anything to make that cursed synthetic milk stay in my stomach.
Some even came to believe that I vomited deliberately because, from the time I was born, I supposedly enjoyed tormenting people and found the groans and suffering of my relatives amusing.
As the days and weeks passed, my mother became increasingly worried about my survival. In silence, she cried and blamed herself for being unable to feed me properly.
One day, she took me to Chuquimia Market to see some healers who wandered around the outskirts of the city offering alternative medical services and fantastic cures for every illness that existed—or might someday exist.
The yatiris wrapped me up like a tawatawa pastry in brightly colored aguayos. They sprinkled my abdomen with llijta ash, rubbed my backside with green spit and scraps of their chewed coca leaves, and coated my throat with ointments made from lizard liver.
In their braziers, they burned dead yareta mixed with anise. With the help of what sounded like a celestial choir, they rocked me from side to side over the bluish smoke.
According to them, all these procedures were necessary to drive away my gastrointestinal demons.
They spent the entire day experimenting with thousands of ancient rituals and tricks, accompanied by chants and melodies that sounded more like preparations for my funeral than attempts to cure my ailments.
As usual, the result was always the same. Neither medical science nor folk wisdom could identify the cause of my illness.
After that unsuccessful course of traditional treatment, my mother took me to see my pediatrician, who prescribed a change of milk.
From Sucre, my father had a large shipment of Similac brought in—enough to feed me for several months. Unfortunately, the medicine turned out to be worse than the disease. I no longer merely vomited violently; I also developed diarrhea, or ckechelhera, as my grandmother called it.
Faced with such a distressing situation, they decided to take me to the hospital. The doctors held a consultation to determine the cause of my constant vomiting.
In the meantime, as one might imagine, I was thinner than a toothpick and surviving only through the grace of the Lord—or through the power of my own survival instincts.
During this period, my mother did everything she could to feed me. At one point, she even hired Indigenous women from the countryside—women who had newborn babies of their own—to breastfeed me for a while.
My mother would go out to Ballivián Plaza, in front of our house, looking for neighbors and any nursing woman who happened to walk by. She would beg them, for the love of God, to breastfeed me for a few minutes.
That was how I survived for a couple of months, until the situation became even more unbearable and difficult. By then, instead of inspiring pity, I inspired fear. I must have looked like a miniature sphinx disguised as a ghost.
It had become abundantly clear that the only thing my stomach could retain was breast milk, regardless of who provided it—whether the milk was rented or freely given.
About two months passed, and the situation became so desperate that my mother nearly suffered a nervous breakdown. She no longer knew what else to do.
She had consulted the best specialists and pediatricians, as well as every wandering yatiri she could find, hoping that the ancient medical knowledge of their cultures might somehow cure my bitter affliction.
She had made me nurse from the Indigenous women who came into the city and, as I have said, had gone so far as to pay any woman who would breastfeed me, even if only for a few brief moments.
With no cure in sight and the outlook growing increasingly bleak, one day she took me to Puna, where my grandfather lived.
Perhaps she took me there so that he could see me for at least a little while and hold me in his arms. Everything suggested that I was destined for a coffin.
Thus, when my grandfather Modesto was finally able to hold me in his tired arms for the first time, it was like a ceremony of presentation and farewell at the same time.
After we boarded the express taxi that would take us to the little valley of Puna, my father, as though preparing for the inevitable, hurried to the Santa Cruz funeral home. The Santa Cruz family were our neighbors, and their showroom was just around the corner from our house.
He entered the room where the coffins were stacked, ready to receive those who would die, and said to the owner:
“I want you to prepare a coffin from the finest wood you have. Finish it with the best varnish and polish, and carve cherubs by hand along the sides.”
The funeral director and cabinetmaker asked:
“What size coffin would you like?”
My father replied:
“It is for my infant son. He is very ill.”
“I understand,” the undertaker replied, “but that does not make sense. According to the regulations of the Church and the Vatican, infants must be buried in completely white coffins because white reflects the innocence of their souls.”
Then he added:
“In fact, as part of the catafalque, instead of placing those gloomy candelabras with wax candles, we will surround him with neon lights so that he can leave this world happy and not in darkness. Otherwise, it might look as if you were sending off a departing soul.”
According to my mother, we arrived in the capital of José María Linares Province at around three in the afternoon. My father had hired an express taxi and instructed the driver to bring us immediately back to the city after our formal visit to my grandfather.
She said it was a brilliant, sunny afternoon. In the middle of the main square, very near my grandfather’s house, preparations were underway for the festival of Saint James the Apostle.
Saint James is an equestrian saint, mounted on a white horse and dressed like a knight in white robes and cloaks, marked with the cross of the order. He wields a sword, and his head is covered by a winged, plumed hat.
Like a human swarm dressed in multicolored garments, the Indigenous celebrants had descended from the apachetas of Ckotupujio and the surrounding hills. Trotting together in a fantastic tumult, they entered irresistibly through all four corners of the town like a turbulent flood and settled in the very heart of the main square of the Villa of Talavera.
The women spun like whirlwinds in the wind, circling concentrically around the central gazebo. They disturbed the calm air as they waved white handkerchiefs and tambourines in one hand, while with the other they threaded llijllas onto iridescent spindles filled with ancient mysteries.
The children ran ahead, making the bells sewn to the tips of their multicolored shoes jingle. They opened paths between the silhouettes of the weeping willow trees and scattered chamomile flowers along the way.
The men danced with a goose-step rhythm, like a synchronized military marching band. Goat-skin drums were strapped around their waists. With the staffs of the jilacatas in their calloused hands, they made the talina bells ring, while through their greenish mouths they blew pinkillos and panpipes, filling the air with wild melodies and mournful laments.
Together, they danced like souls without burdens in an endless circle with no beginning and no end.
The crowd spread across the main square like water poured from an earthen jar, all the way to the church entrance, where they went to pay homage to the patron saint of the region.
My mother approached my grandfather’s house and saw him sitting there, as always—impassive and distant from the noise and celebration unfolding in the main square.
Before she even had a chance to say his name, my mother burst into tears like Mary Magdalene. Her crying was so deep and desolate that the commotion in the street seemed to fade away. An enormous silence covered the blue afternoon sky.
To my grandfather, my mother had always been the apple of his eye. He adored her beyond measure, and the mutual love they shared spread throughout our entire family. In our home, that love became a religion.
My grandfather saw her there: wilted and motionless, gaunt and terrified by worry, looking like a lost soul. She had no tears left—not even that.
He said:
“Hand me the gentleman.”
He looked at me, lifted me into his arms, and allowed my fragile little body to rest against his chest, close to his heart.
It was at that exact moment that he understood the cause of my illness—and what the cure would be.
I suddenly fixed my pleading eyes on his blue eyes and, naturally, vomited onto the lapel of his leather vest as a gesture of gratitude and an introductory gift.
“Chabelita,” he said, “sit down and don’t worry. We’ll have the boy fixed up before a rooster has time to crow.”
And that is exactly what he did.
He called an Indigenous man who worked for him and gave him an order in a commanding tone:
“Tatay: Uskkayta apamuy waltaku sara churana wasi.”
The Quechua sentence roughly meant:
“Sir, quickly go and bring dry white corn from the pantry.”
The man flew off and returned with a large earthenware jar full of white corn.
My grandfather then ordered him to grind the corn in the great river-stone mortar. To prepare thiji, the corn had to be ground so finely that it could easily be mistaken for beach sand.
While the mixture cooked, my grandfather said loudly to my mother:
“What medicine? What nonsense! You’ll see how the boy perks up with some thiji.”
And so they gave me the thiji to drink from a cactus gourd.
Thiji is similar to a porridge made from white corn cooked slowly over low heat and mixed with a little cinnamon. It is also very similar to tojori.
Once I had swallowed the viscous liquid, my mother—sweating with cold shivers of fear—crossed herself, looked hopefully toward the sky, and waited through five terrifying seconds to see whether I would vomit.
The prescribed seconds passed so slowly that, for my mother, they seemed to last a century.
Then, by a miracle of God, I did not vomit.
My mother told the driver, who was still waiting in the sitting room, to return to the city. She had decided that we would remain in Puna for a while.
To celebrate, my mother ran to the center of the square and joined the young girls of the festival, dancing in their circles.
And so we remained in Puna for about six months, enjoying my grandfather’s warm generosity and delighting, from time to time, in the flowers, fruits, and conversations about my ancestors.
That is why, if I am alive today, I owe it to my grandfather Modesto.
Perhaps because of this magical epic in which I was the protagonist during my childhood, whenever I made my aunt and grandmother angry or gave them a fit of rage, they would say:
“This one has that personality because he is a siete leches.”
My grandmother said I was like a little matchstick because I caught fire quickly and went out just as quickly.
My aunt, more accurately, branded me with the nickname Moco Catalán—“Catalan Snot.” I was small like a fighting rooster, and “Catalan” because some of our ancestors had come from the region of Catalonia in old Spain.
I have five blood brothers, but I must have hundreds of milk brothers.
That is the absolute truth.