What My Grandmother and I Did to Stay Alive

Note: this is a fictional story set amid the exodus of civilians along the coastal road during the Spanish Civil War. The characters are invented; the historical background serves only as setting.

How did we end up here? Remedios thought as she pulled up her panties and smoothed her skirt over her thighs. A bitter numbness ran through her veins. She felt no pain, not even disgust: only the uncomfortable wetness of the militiaman cooling between her legs and the anger of not having a single finger’s worth of clean water to erase that trace. It had been so quick she had not even managed to feel it.

She was forty-four, and the last four days had aged her ten years. She skimmed past the memory of her husband dying in her arms, his head blown open, almost two nights ago now. She moved just as quickly past the threats of that general spitting from the radio through a static that devoured everything. This had not been prostitution, she told herself: it had been a trade. A handful of potatoes in exchange for a little while with a militiaman who could barely see over the floor of adolescence.

She took refuge in memories from less than a year earlier, when all of this still seemed impossible. The Almendros house, the chocolate snacks, the smell of church wax on Sundays. Then neighbors began disappearing one day after another, and no one asked, and no one spoke. Whole houses were seized by the committees and the unions, the same union Eduardo, her Lalo, the foundry chemist who was now rotting in a roadside ditch, belonged to.

Under the weight of the makeshift shelter made of blankets that smelled of damp and fear, Remedios clutched Pilar. The girl was trembling. Don’t think about what they’ll do if they discover a little red and her daughter, she ordered herself. Tomás, the eldest, nineteen years old, had left at midday, hiding among the rocks as he had so many times before, and still hadn’t returned. But he always came back.

Dolores, her mother-in-law, had lived almost all her life in the Almendros, but she dragged around a past that darkened her skin. At gatherings people whispered that she was calé, a gypsy from one of the shantytowns around the city, or at the very least a cast-off mixed-blood. No one knew for sure and no one dared ask her. Remedios only knew one thing: she could count on her even in the worst hell.

The old woman silently prepared the potatoes her daughter-in-law had brought. She had not wept for her son’s death; she had tucked the pain under that brown skin and thrown herself into keeping the rest alive. From time to time she looked at Rafael’s broad back, her other grandson, standing guard in a deep shadow. He’s not a boy anymore, she thought. She guessed where the potatoes had come from, but God would forgive her, because if He did not, the one who deserved condemnation was Him.

Rafael had been named after his dead grandfather, and he looked so much like him that Dolores, at sixty-four, would sometimes stare at him in a daze. He was twenty, taller than Tomás and strong as a fighting bull. He liked to swim; whenever he could he would slip away to the sea, even in the dead of winter. That afternoon he thought of nothing: he only watched the refugee caravan dragging itself eastward, a hundred meters away from him, under the vertical shadow of a carob tree.

Far from there, retracing the caravan’s route, Tomás moved forward. He went fast, crouching among the stones, clumsier than he thought. A group of soldiers passed within a few meters without seeing him, and he laughed inwardly at those beasts. Two hundred paces away he made out familiar uniforms: a dozen men walking in a chaotic formation, laughing and humiliating the refugees they crossed paths with.

—Arriba España! —he shouted when he recognized the Falangist leader’s face—. Aren’t you going to greet a comrade, Ezequiel?

The blue shirts pointed their rifles toward the voice with a slowness that would have made any real soldier laugh. Tomás raised his hands above the rocks before standing up.

—Don’t shoot! —Ezequiel ordered, then smiled—. That son of a bitch is one of ours.

Tomás approached without lowering his hands all the way. They had shared clandestine meetings in the city, but they barely knew anything about each other: it was safer that way, in case torture ever came. Ezequiel knew Tomás came from a good family and had firm ideas; Tomás knew Ezequiel ran the local Falange despite being from a village in the south. Nothing else.

—Good to see you, boss —Tomás said, hugging him, recognizing more familiar faces among the others—. And you too.

—You look like shit, comrade —one of them said.

—War does that —he replied, thinking of his father’s mangled corpse as one remembers collateral damage—. War does that.

The column kept moving and Tomás led them back, now without hiding, intoxicated by that new power. They passed some stragglers, mocking them before Ezequiel finished them off with a shot. Corpses everywhere.

—Look! —said Cosme, a veteran, pointing toward the coast.

So close it was almost possible to read its name, a cruiser advanced noisily, following the same line as they were.

—It’s back to killing reds —Cosme laughed—. Let’s see if it leaves any for us.

***

It was almost evening when, after sharing the stew, they reached the place where Tomás’s family had to remain hidden, protected by that broad-shouldered sentry. He was burning to introduce them to his comrades; that way his mother would end up forgiving what she would consider a betrayal.

But as he approached the shelter, what he saw shattered his mind in a single blow. A mustached mercenary was walking away laughing toward three others, just buttoning his trousers, leaving behind a bundle of clothes on the ground. The clothes moved on their own. Someone was inside.

It was Rafael. Covered in blood, with a deep bayonet wound in his belly. His brother — no, his stronger brother — tried to give him a smile that was only a red grimace. And when Tomás thought he could no longer break any further, a dry shot wiped his mind blank again. Rafael went still at his feet.

—At last I’ve caught a red! —Cosme shouted, and everyone laughed.

Tomás laughed too. It was a reflex that swept over his consciousness, because his mind was elsewhere, scanning the scrub in search of the rest of his own. In a clump of brush he discovered a dark glint. A face. There was no doubt: it was Dolores, his grandmother. He swallowed and held back the shiver.

Suddenly he was back in his childhood, to the stories she used to tell him: his grandfather in the Cuban War, the caravan of wagons, the night escapes, the calé sorceries. That black gaze spoke to him without words, put his mind back together in a strange way. Above ideas, above war, you have to protect your own. Rafael was already dead; they would grieve him later, avenge him later. All of that came to him clearly from his grandmother’s eyes.

The contact lasted only a few seconds. Dolores felt the message had been received, that her grandson would keep quiet, that he would hide them just as, as a child, he had hidden the old beliefs she taught him. “Blood that does not run rots,” her own grandmother used to say. She cast a quick glance at the other grandson, flesh already rotting in the sun, and pushed the thought away.

Remedios and Pilar hid behind her, their faces twisted with panic, out of sight. But the mercenaries were not easy to fool.

—Mnin kayn hna? —the mustached one shouted, alerting the other two.

The three brought their rifles up before any Falangist understood what was happening. Before they pulled the trigger, Dolores came out of hiding with her arms raised, barely above her head. Her gray hair gathered in a loose bun, the filthy clothes hiding her former dignity: she looked like a beggar. She looked like something else.

The Moroccans held back their fingers. Their laughter vanished. They had already run into gypsy women in the mountains and knew what was said in the camps: fortune-tellers, witches, curses that followed you beyond death. That woman was the living portrait of a witch, and with her mere presence she made them take a step back without lowering their aim.

Cosme parted the brush with his bayonet fixed, looking for where the apparition had come from, while the old woman, without shifting her eyes, prayed to the Shadows to protect her own.

—There’s no one else here —he said at last.

The Falangists, her grandson among them, approached, training their guns on her. Before Ezequiel could speak, Tomás did.

—Who are you and what are you doing here? —he said, holding his own grandmother’s gaze.

—Dolores. Dolores Amaya —she answered, and that tone sent a shiver through the dozen men—. I’m heading east. With the others.

—Careful, Tomás! —Ezequiel jumped in—. Those people never travel alone.

—Where’s your people, gypsy? —Tomás asked, and Falangists and mercenaries looked everywhere, nervously aiming at the shadows.

That’s it, boy: confuse them. Dolores stayed silent.

—I asked where your people are! —Ezequiel shouted, stepping closer with his pistol in hand.

She did not even look at the weapon. If she had to die, she would die holding that little boss’s stare. With her hands raised, she began to move her thumbs, placing them slowly between her fingers.

—Keep your hands still or I’ll cut them off! —He put the pistol to her temple, without managing to extinguish her gaze.

—Easy —Tomás said, fear in his voice that was not feigned, looking at the scrubland that nearly surrounded them—. Do you want to die here today?

—This people are shit! —Ezequiel spat.

—Yes, they are… but even shit can kill you —he contradicted himself, backing away—. We have to get out of here, we’re exposed. We take her with us, she might be useful.

***

No one lowered their weapon until Dolores had been bound, and the nerves did not ease until they believed they had left the trap behind. But the trap went with them. When the men’s noise had almost faded away, Remedios and Pilar crawled out of their hiding place, knelt beside Rafael’s body, and prayed for him through tears. And then something broke inside Remedios. Rage devoured her whole. She did not resist: she let that feeling rule her, let it calm the pain. If we have to die, we’ll die. And if we have to go down to hell, we’ll go down laughing, after a savage revenge.

Falangists and mercenaries walked until dusk. They had to camp; they seemed to have been cut off. They did not even light a fire: the gypsies might spot them, or worse, the cruiser might mistake them for reds. They dragged the prisoner along, useful only as a shield, on that much the one and the other agreed.

Ezequiel was in a difficult position with his men and with his superiors. He had ordered that advance without permission, so his comrades would feel brave; coming back with a prisoner did not guarantee him medals. His Falangists were on the verge of collapse, exhausted, burdened with a woman who gave them unnecessary unease. The mercenaries were not exactly confident either.

—I’ve got to end this —Ezequiel murmured, only for Tomás, sitting beside him.

Tomás guessed his intentions at once: in the weak light of the waning moon, he saw him draw his pistol. That cut his thoughts about his brother’s agony off at the root.

Dolores saw the boss’s shadow rise and knew she had minutes left if no one did something extreme. She had let her face, almost erased by the night, soften into a sadness no one would see.

—Wait… —Tomás said, buying time—. No… not before I have a little fun with her.

Ezequiel stopped, thinking he had not heard right.

—How…? —the confusion in his voice nearly drew a smile from Tomás.

—You heard the general, didn’t you? —he said, faking a sadistic grimace the other could barely make out in the dark—. They all end up grateful when someone lays a firm hand on them.

A hundred and fifty meters away, Remedios hid her daughter on the leeward side. Her father, a sergeant in Cuba, had told her how the mambises detected the enemy by any strange smell; Pilar’s clothes, soaked with fear, would be a beacon to the mercenaries. When she leaned on the ground she felt the black, damp mud among the brush. That could work. She took off her worn coat and began to undress: though torn and filthy, her blouse was still white, too white. She had to get much closer. She had to become invisible.

Dolores mastered the shiver her grandson’s words caused in her and put her mask back together. She knew the boy was trying to buy time, but she was going to be raped for real or in pretend, and pretend did not stop it from being a trauma. And there were a thousand ways for it all to go wrong: that she might accidentally hurt the boy, that he might not manage to get what he needed for that. She returned to her grandmother’s lessons, to that animal attraction any woman could awaken in any man just by willing it.

Remedios was already close, on some rocks a dozen meters away, half-naked, her body smeared with mud. Pilar, as if hypnotized, had rubbed that filth over her back and then hidden herself without looking. Remedios saw her eldest son among the Falangists. Kill him, her mind screamed, though she knew it was not the time.

—No… I don’t know… —Ezequiel took a while to get over his astonishment—. How can you like a woman like that?

—Shhh —Tomás hissed—. The troops, boss! This will lift their morale.

And Ezequiel understood: this would be the catalyst. His men would stop being prey to an nonexistent spell, they would subdue the witch, the grandmother, and they would be the brave men he was used to again.

—Hey, soldiers! —Ezequiel called, forgetting all caution, desperate to recover his men—. Looks like someone wants to have some fun!

A rough little laugh escaped Dolores’s throat, just enough not to sound offensive.

—What’s wrong, payo? —she said, mastering her fear, going back to her calé roots—. Am I too much woman for you?

—No, gypsy —Ezequiel answered—. It’s just that my comrade took a liking to you.

Tomás forgot his doubts and pulled her to her feet by the hair.

—Easy, kid —she said with the murkiest smile she could manage, holding the hand that gripped her—. No need to get violent. Nothing puts me off a sweet thing… like you.

Those last two words thundered through Tomás, joining body and mind in one yank. He felt a stab in his groin. His grandmother was egging him on, and he did not understand how. She’s going to be the first. His virginity was going to be left in the hands of his elderly grandmother, and he was going to like it. If this kept up, they had a remote chance of getting out alive.

—Take your clothes off —he ordered, bringing his mouth to her ear—. Put on a show for us.

As Dolores began to remove her clothes, Ezequiel’s men moved closer, bent low. When she had only her underwear left, the old woman made out two points of light in the near-total darkness, behind the mercenaries. Eyes. Too close to the men to belong to an animal. She asked the Shadows to tell her whose they were, and she knew at once: her daughter-in-law’s.

Remedios allowed herself one glance at her mother-in-law’s nearly invisible nakedness. The movement of the soldiers, three meters away, forced her to focus on what mattered: two of them were getting up to move closer to the spectacle and only one was taking his rifle. To her left, mounted in stacks, there were a dozen weapons. They’re almost unarmed, she told herself. The youngest mercenary was still half-lying beside her, his rifle at his side.

Tomás could not contain his excitement. He did not understand how that worn-out body, now naked a few centimeters from him, had given him such an obvious erection. The same question ran through the other Falangists, all in the same state, including Ezequiel, though power aroused him more than lust.

Now completely naked, Dolores was soon past her shame. She had to keep going.

—Let’s see what I’m going to eat… —she said, crouching with her legs wide apart, at the same time pulling down his trousers and underwear.

When she made out her grandson’s sex in the darkness, she gripped it firmly. It was so thick she could not wrap her thumb and middle finger around it. A sigh rose in her throat and drew laughs from around them. She let her mind split in two: the conscious part, which sought survival, and the animal part, which told her that this could be paradise for a woman her age. She decided to make them work together.

—What a piece of work —she muttered before taking him into her mouth.

Remedios did not waste time. The young mercenary was on guard, but with his back to her. She picked up a stone she had to lift with both hands and dropped it with all the force of her hatred on that skull. She hardly looked at him. She gathered the two weapons within reach and slipped away, leaving him stretched out in his final bed with the stone still on his legs.

Dolores straightened, stroking the back of her neck and her grandson’s huge cock, and searched the night for the gleam of Remedios’s eyes. She found them a little farther ahead than where the two men had been, moving quickly and silently.

—You’re going to put it in me here, boy… —she whispered, audible to everyone, pushing her hips forward.

—I’ll fuck you later, bitch! —Cosme snapped, rubbing himself furiously.

The old woman noticed something odd in the body language of the two mercenaries left. She called it a premonition.

—You? —she said, showing them her ass and parting it in the gloom—. You’re more into something else…

Everyone laughed except the Moroccans, who narrowed their eyes trying to see in the dark at that offer, drooling like rutting animals, forgetting the doubts that had gnawed at them a moment before.

Remedios had already brought the only loaded weapons over to Pilar. Now, three by three, she was removing the weapons mounted in stacks. She stopped crouched beside the penultimate one, exhausted. That’s it, señora Dolores, that’s it, show those beasts your ass. Silently she gathered those weapons and carried them away where they could not find them.

Tomás, dragged along by his animal side, pushed Dolores against a slanted rock, moving her away from the stacks exactly as his rational side advised. He lay on top of her, his forehead against her shoulder, guiding his member toward the old woman’s sex. She sighed at the feel of the friction and, gripping him with one hand, showed him the way.

—Fuck! —the gypsy gasped—. What a monster you’ve got, my love! Hard, payo, hard!

Her grandson thrust a couple of times, tense, with both minds equally in command of his body. Then he handed control over to that animal demanding power, after first placing the pistol to one side, within reach of the old woman.

With the night and silence as allies, Remedios went for the last stack. He’s fucking her, she thought, amazed, distinguishing the silhouette of the pair in the shadows. My son is fucking señora Dolores. She felt heat rise to her face and an unexpected wetness between her legs. She felt envy of her mother-in-law and denied it to herself… for the moment.

—Harder, darling… —Dolores asked in his ear—. Split me in two.

Ezequiel was enjoying the moment, watching his men fall into that pit of lust. They were no longer thinking about the gypsies, or the lack of reinforcements; courage had returned. Even the Moroccans were absorbed. Wait… weren’t there three of them? He could only see two silhouettes. He turned to his left, toward where the youngest was still lying down, watching them. Something was wrong.

Tomás was almost fully surrendered to his animal now, seeing in his grandmother’s eyes the fire of a goddess as old as time, a face both younger and older than the night could show him. He felt his own release slowly rising, burning him from within. He let out a muffled groan and spilled himself inside her, who was no longer his grandmother, nor señora Dolores, nor an old woman: she was the whole earth.

Dolores, turned into something larger than herself, felt that burning discharge like lava forging in her insides a savage, forgotten sensation: a terrible orgasm. She let out a long howl into the night, grateful for that old feeling of fullness, unloading years of pain, giving her mind back to herself, clean. The howl made both Moroccans’ skin crawl.

Ezequiel understood his mistake when he felt the cold of steel sinking into his guts. He saw that half-naked woman, smeared with mud, wielding the rifle whose bayonet she had just driven into him above the belly. He felt life ripped from him by eyes reflecting all the hatred in the world, while that wolf’s howl carried his soul away.

Remedios had not felt like this in months. The general on the radio, the murderer of her Eduardo and of Rafael, all those Falangists, all of them were that man staring at her wide-eyed with his arms hanging like a puppet’s. It’s not an orgasm, but it’s everything I want right now. She savored the sensation for only a few seconds, yanked the weapon free, and ran toward the shadows. Ezequiel staggered, clutching his belly, and fell.

The body hitting the ground sounded like thunder. First the mercenaries shouted in their language, then the Falangists reacted. Everything turned into a tumult: the men running toward the two corpses.

Tomás, still half undressed, rolled over the rock. Dolores did not remain where he had left her for even a second: she slid away, picked up the pistol as she passed, and vanished into her Shadows. Her grandson followed her with his eyes, with an absurd smile and immense joy. Run, Grandma, run.

—The weapons! —Cosme shouted—. Where are our weapons!?

—Mí have mine —said the only one still armed.

—But who…? —the youngest began, and then almost shrieked—. Gypsies!!

They all crouched, trying to hide from an invisible enemy that was nothing more than a woman loaded with hatred from hell. It would take them a couple of minutes to notice Dolores was missing, and almost half an hour to realize Tomás was missing too.

***

Tomás stopped less than a hundred meters away, held back by a hand that seemed to spring from nowhere. He was not afraid: that firm, rough hand could only be his grandmother’s. By gestures, she led him to a small ledge where Remedios, almost as naked as they were and smeared with mud, with Pilar beside her, was fine-tuning the rifle’s aim over the confused silhouettes of those desperate men.

A hand held down the barrel. Remedios, frightened, only saw her mother-in-law’s dark-fire gaze. Dolores shook her head slowly. If you shoot, they’ll see us. The mother jerked the weapon in rage, but the old woman did not let go and shook her head again. Then Remedios looked at her son, alive, and something changed: she had a family. Thinned, broken, but hers.

She lowered the weapon. The weight of steel was replaced by the dead weight of her own exhaustion. Dolores nodded once and, with an almost imperceptible gesture, pointed inland, toward the deepest part of the mountains. Behind them lay horror, empty rifles, and blood. Ahead, only the cold of the mountain and the silent promise of staying alive.

—The gypsies are close —the old woman whispered, just as so many years before—. We’re always close.

She would find her people. She would give refuge to her own. Revenge would wait, but not forever.