Edgar

I was probably pouring dry chowmein into boiling water when Edgar drank poison.

It is late afternoon in August. I am sitting on the front steps to the school, eating chowmein. Amilcar, my next door neighbor: he´s standing outside his carpentry shop- finished with work for the day. He and his wife had seven children. In February she died.

Amilcar walks over and starts a conversation. The weather. His kids. Eli sees us from his corner store 50 feet down the street and comes to join us. Amilcar and Eli start talking about something, but locals speak so quickly to eachother I can´t pick up too much of what they´re saying. But I do hear the words "se murrio", he died.

"Como?", what? I ask. And Eli tells me that someone died down on Main Street. Just another funeral procession, I figure. I´ve seen it before: 50 or 100 people walking together down the street carrying a coffin, mother wailing, church bells ringing.

I am perhaps the person you hate: the one who slows way down driving past the car accident. The road infront of me is not important- I need to see what happened. Part of me even yearns to see bodies strewn about the gory scene. It´s a fascination with the morbid: an enchantment with mortality. And so I finish my dinner, put my bowl down, lock the school´s door and head down to watch.

Outside Eli´s corner store I run into Obdulio, one of the school´s teachers.
"Who died?" I ask. Obdulio just sits there and stares at me.
"Who died?" he responds...."A dead person!" he says and then smiles and laughs, proud of the joke he´s made. Then he yells to Polo, another teacher, who´s sitting outside his house further down the street,
"Hey Polo! Guess who died?....A dead person!" And Polo thinks it´s pretty funny too. Yells it outloud to himself a couple times.

I walk down towards Main Street and turn the corner. Two hundred people are gathered there. But they aren´t moving...there is no coffin...the people are just standing...staring at something...oh my god...this isn´t a funeral procession...someone just died...

Nohelia is a sister of the host family I lived with back in March. She sells french fries from a street stall on the corner where I stand. And there she is- selling french fries- profitting from the hungry crowd. People pay and carry their food back to family and friends. And all of us are watching the other side of the street, 20 feet from me, where a circle of people are standing over something: staring down.

More are joining the crowd, and the line infront of Nohelia´s is growing- each person paying a quetzal, asking for ketchup or mayonaise, momentarily glancing back into the crowd, making sure they don´t miss anything.

"Juan!", I hear my name and turn to see Bosbeli, the ex-husband of one of the school´s teachers and a friend of mine standing next to me.
"Que Haces? Solo Relejando?" he asks: What are you up to? Just relaxing? I stare at him, not knowing how to answer. Bosbeli fills the silence:
"His names Edgar. He got drunk and drank poison and five minutes later he was dead. Doña Elena saw it from her window...It´s Edgar´s wife, that´s why he did it. She was a drunk and slept with other men. She was an older woman."
"How old was Edgar?" I asked.
"Twenty four" and as he answers I hear her- an almost inhuman pitch- distant and getting louder. I guess someone went to tell her, and here she is: Edgar´s mother, making her way through the crowd.

I am thinking: is the sadness she is feeling right now equal to the happiness she felt the day he was born? Was it worth it?

I am standing here, wondering, as the mother reaches her son´s dead body. Her sobs turn from cries into melodic wailing.

More are joining the crowd.