9 · fruit of the drunke n tre e
(reserved as it was for use by the Great Chief in the afterworld). Many people used it in Bogotá—criminals, prostitutes, rapists. Most victims who reported being drugged with burundanga woke up with no memory of assisting in the looting of their apartments and bank accounts, opening their wallets and handing over everything, but that’s exactly what they’d done. Mamá, however, showed up at the Neighborhood Administration with a stack of research papers, a horticulturist, and a lawyer and because the fruit of the Drunken Tree was something the experts had little interest in, and because the small amount of research there was didn’t agree on defining the seeds as poisonous or even a drug, the Administration decided to leave it alone. There were many attempts to damage our Drunken Tree. Every few months we woke up to see out of our front windows that the branches hanging on the side of the gate over the sidewalk had once again been sawed off and left on the grass around the tree’s trunk like dead limbs. Our Drunken Tree flourished nonetheless, persistently, with its provocative white flowers hanging about it like bells and the wind forever teasing out its intoxicating fragrance into the air. Mamá was convinced la Soltera was behind the attempts. We called her that because she was forty years old and single and still lived with her old mother. La Soltera lived to our right and I often saw her wandering around in circles in her garden, wearing too much purple eye shadow and enveloped in a day-old-coffee-andfresh-cigarette smell. I often put my ear to the wall we shared with la Soltera to hear what she did all day, but mostly what I heard was bickering and the television left on. Mamá said la Soltera was the only kind of woman with enough time on her hands to go attacking someone’s tree. So in retaliation, when Mamá swept our front redtile patio, she swept the dirt through the sides of the tall ceramic planters and the pines, toward the patio of la Soltera. Back in the garden, Cassandra said, “Quick, Chula, before they see you!” Cassandra shuffled her feet and slid her hands clockwise around
– Fruit of the Drunken Tree: A Novel by Ingrid Rojas Contreras –
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