Aline Naomi / Amor e ossos
Mom tells me to have breakfast in the kitchen, which was already on the table, and not go out into the backyard. Instead, I go to the bathroom to wash my face, pee, and go back to my room. I peek through the crack in the window. Lica is on the tiled floor, she doesn’t move. My parents whisper about what to do with “the body,” while Dad holds a big black garbage bag. I only see parts of everything, because the crack doesn’t help.
Tears, tears, I run out to the backyard, Mom tells me to go back inside, I don’t go back, I just want to say goodbye, give her one last gesture of affection. I know Lica won’t come back. They try to calm me down, I go back to the room and throw myself on the bed.
When I was born, Lica was already here, she was already part of the family. We spent half her life together, which is a long time. My parents used to say Lica came as a puppy when they started dating, she moved into the house they bought after the wedding, she slept in their room even before I was born. I came in and threw her world off balance, I think. But then we became friends.
It’s already night and the black bag is still in a corner of the yard. I ask what they’re going to do with Lica, Dad says he’s going to bury her in a nice place, with shade and flowers, on Grandpa’s little farm, and that I can visit her whenever I want, now she’s in heaven, playing with other dogs.
Before going to sleep, I think about a special coffin for dogs, with drawings of little bones, and if my father would throw a flower over this coffin, as they do in the movies, before starting to shovel dirt. I wouldn’t be there to throw a flower, or maybe a bone-shaped cookie that she liked. I feel a pain in my chest.
***
A few days later, mom tells me to get some toys, put them in my backpack, because we’re going to my aunt’s house. I don’t understand anything, but I do what she asks. I’m on vacation and we’re going to the beach with Aunt Maya and Julinha, that’s all. But there was a lot, a lot of stuff inside the car. What about Dad? She doesn’t answer quickly, but then says Dad is at work. It makes me sad to think he’s going to find the house empty when he arrives later.
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