"Forgive Me": Short Story Submitted to the 47th Annual Literary Contest

Song- Forgive Me / By. Maher Zain (Take a Look)


Forgive Me

            One day when my mother Yolanda was twelve years old she was spied on her father when he was doing secret activities. My grandfather Eloy had a woman in a room who was lying in a sofa and covered with a white sheet. He passed over the woman’s body with a white candle while conducting a rite, saying: “you have a devil work”. When my mother saw this woman’s face, she recognized that it was her Aunt Ramonita.

Ramonita was very sick but the doctors could not find any diseases in her body. They could not identify a clinical reason why Ramonita lost about 50 pounds and felt very weak. They said that: “she was healthy”.

            My grandfather Eloy told her that this “work” was made with a cow’s tongue that was left in a cemetery. When the tongue disappeared she would die. He said that she needed to find the tongue and break the spell. Working as medium, my grandfather explained where Ramonita could find the cow’s tongue. When she went to look for the tongue at Municipal Trujillo Alto’s Cemetery. She followed the exact the instructions that the spirit indicated and found the tongue buried near a tree closed to a dirty and unknown grave.

            She brought it to Eloy so that he could do a “velada” which is a special rite conducted through Madamma, who is the Eloy’s spiritual guide. He asks for Madamma’s help as a light spirit guide to communicate with the “sick spirit” that was harming Ramonita. A “sick spirit” is used to do “devil work”. When a “velada” ceremony begins Madamma and Eloy must be connected. You might wonder how a relationship between a medium and a spirit helping mode. Eloy did not select Madamma she instead selected him. A person never can select a spirit because it is the choice of to select and in this way is a gift. In the beginning of the ritual you never know when it will start, because the medium talks to the participants a natural way. Unexpectedly my mom saw, my grandfather close his eyes and he said; “God is here, God is here, Madammita is going through the castle”, suddenly Madamma was present. My grandfather’s voice changed, and sound like a woman. When the ceremony is over, the person who wants the favor has to pay the “derecho”, the fee for the spirit favor. In this case it was made with candle, because the Madamma “derecho” are candles and dimes. 

During the ceremony the bad spirit expressed through the medium Eloy that, he wanted Ramonita to forgive him but she said no. She had two choices: she can forgive the spirit and with this choice, she helped the spirit to go into the light or she cannot forgive the spirit, but with this choice she drowns the spirit into the darkness.  Ramonita asked the medium who made the spell. The medium told her that was Minerva the new wife of her ex-husband, Isidoro. Ramonita was bitter about the divorce because she and Isidoro were married for twenty years when he left her. He fell in love with Minerva who was a woman who worked in a brothel and was twenty years younger than him.

When the “devil work” was broken, Ramonita quickly recovered her health. Six years later Isidoro killed Minerva and her lover Rosa when he discovered their relationship. Then he killed himself. After when my mother told Ramonita that Isidoro had killed Minerva, she said;  “I am happy about that because they paid for the danger and pain that they caused me”. After, Ramonita did not learn anything about how to live a good life. She became irresponsible and acted crazy by having multiple sex partners. Nine years later, she got HIV and died. She did not learn that the necessary lesson; that forgiveness is the key that opens the door to purify the soul.