Author's note: This story is inspired by an actual event that occured in the spring of 1998 in a South American city. It was originally a class project, but I've since revised the story to make it, I hope, a better read.
Koama Lopez was lonely, so she turned on the television. A fascinating machine, the television. Even when Koama was alone, during those interminable periods between her son's visits, she had companionship with the people on the small, black-and-white screen.
She wondered if her village had a television. Here in the city, everyone owned these machines and others -- like switches that made light, even at night. She had heard that some of the villages lining the Amazon River now had one television that all the people shared. But this one was her own, paid for in full by her late husband. It had been Carlos' last gift to her before he had died.
The city doctors said he had suffered a heart attack, but Koama knew better. The gods were angry with Carlos for leaving the village so many years ago and taking his young wife with him. The gods had killed him, and only Koama knew the truth. Even her son chose to believe the city doctors and not his own mother.
Koama flipped the little dial on the television until the screen showed a news broadcast. She watched the news everyday because it was her only connection to the world outside her living room. She didn't walk the streets of the city anymore, as she did a few years ago with Carlos. Too many people out there wore suits and carried briefcases, reminding her how alien her adopted home really was. Besides, the news broadcasts showed nothing but death and violence on the city streets, and Koama had no intention of becoming the next victim.
The news anchor recounted a cocaine bust. He talked about a woman who helped homeless children, and Koama thought that was a nice story. Then he interrupted his reports to introduce a journalist broadcasting live from an abandoned warehouse. The police had found an unidentified body sprawled at the bottom of a metal staircase, the face smashed beyond recognition. The dead man had no identification cards but carried an old gold watch in his coat pocket.
Dismay flooded through every fiber of Koama's body -- she recognized the gold watch. Before she had left the village, an American anthropologist had given her that watch, and she had thought it the most beautiful, expensive object she'd ever owned. She had given it to her son five years ago, and she never saw him without it.
The dead man on the screen had her son's tall, skinny frame. He carried the anthropologist's gold watch in his pocket. Koama drew the natural conclusion that this dead man on the television was her son. She began to cry and almost drowned in her tears on the living room floor.
The reporter said anyone with information concerning the identity of this dead man should call the police. Koama always did what she was told, so she dialed the phone number posted on the screen. When someone answered, she said simply, "The dead man on the television is my son, Emilio."
The police asked her how she knew, and Koama told them about the gold watch. She described it perfectly. She even remembered to tell them about a small depression on its bottom where she once had banged it against a rock to see if the gold would bend. So, the police sent a car to Koama's house to bring her to the hospital, where the dead man's body had been stored. They wanted her to identify the body. She only wanted to see her son and bring him home.
The car ride was long, and Koama did not talk to the policeman who drove. She tried to figure out why her son would be dead at the bottom of a warehouse staircase, his face bashed beyond recognition. Perhaps some criminal had tried to rob him, but a criminal would have taken the gold watch. What if the police had arrived before the criminal could take the watch? Still, that did not ring true.
Then Koama experienced a flash of insight, and she knew the answer. She trembled at the thought. A criminal didn't kill her son; her husband's spirit had killed him. Carlos had reason to hate his son enough to force Emilio into the spirit world.
When Carlos had died, his son had insisted on burying him instead of following the traditions of his father's village. Emilio was so modern, born and raised in the city. He had not believed Koama when she told him Carlos' spirit could not leave the Earth unless his family obeyed village custom and ate his body. Carlos would not thank his son for a city burial, she had said. He would remain trapped in limbo forever, unable to join his ancestors.
But Emilio refused to understand. He buried his father without eating the body, and his father's spirit now haunted the world of the living. Koama had sometimes felt Carlos' presence in the house, especially when her son visited, and she had feared the spirit would take its revenge. Now it had, and her son was dead for his own foolishness.
Then another thought planted its seed in Koama's mind and shot out its first tiny tendrils. The death of her son would not completely satisfy the spirit because Emilio was not the only family member who had failed to fulfill his duty. Koama also had not performed the proper death rituals. Would the spirit now come after her?
She pushed the thought aside because the car was arriving at the hospital, but its tiny tendrils continued to grow. She didn't feel the thought begin to wind itself through her mind and trigger her darkest fears; however, it secured itself so firmly that Koama would never rid herself of it.
In the hospital morgue, she identified her son by his height, build and hair style -- and, of course, the gold watch, which she stubbornly clutched in one hand. She expected tears to flow uncontrollably when she looked at the corpse, but she didn't shed one drop. The tears were gone, and only emptiness remained.
A police officer asked for the watch, but she refused to relinquish it. They wanted it for evidence so they could find Emilio's killer. They thought the watch would help them track the culprit, but Koama knew the police could not solve this mystery. She tried to explain their folly. "A spirit killed my son," she said. The police thought she must be crazy with grief, so they smiled indulgently and demanded she return the watch. Still she refused, and they eventually gave up.
Then Koama asked to have her son's body for death rites, but the police wanted to do an autopsy. As Emilio's mother, she demanded that the investigation be dropped. Because the police had no substantial evidence proving Emilio had been murdered and hadn't simply fallen down the stairs, they reluctantly granted her request.
Koama took her son's body home, and it laid on the living room floor for several days as she debated between city and village death rites. The body did not decay at all as Koama wrestled with this important decision, almost waiting for her to choose. Her son was modern, and he would not want his mother to eat him. But if she did not obey her village's traditions, Emilio would become a spirit just like every other buried body in this city.
What Koama did not know, and would never guess, was that her son was not dead, and the body on her floor was a stranger to her house. Emilio watched on television as the police discovered the body at the bottom of the warehouse staircase. From a friend's apartment in the city, he watched with satisfaction as the news anchor identified the body as his own.
The dead man had been Emilio's business associate, a man who simply had experienced some bad luck, or so Emilio repeatedly assured himself. They had met in the abandoned warehouse because of the illegality of their transaction -- the dead man was a cocaine dealer. When the dead man had refused to sell his white powder at a decent price, Emilio had become angry. He had screamed at the man and then pushed him. He never intended for the man to fall down the staircase.
It had been an accident, but Emilio knew the police would not accept that defense. The police might not trace the murder to him, but Emilio imagined that all the man's friends knew he was going to the warehouse and who he was meeting there. So, to escape blame, Emilio had switched identities with the man. No one ever tried to pin a murder on a corpse.
Then he had appealed to a friend for help and had hid in his friend's apartment for several days. Emilio was afraid to walk outside because the TV anchor still showed his picture on the news almost every night.
A few days later, Emilio learned that the dead man's funeral would take place the next afternoon. The TV reports showed his mother, Koama, explaining how she had recognized her son and how he would appreciate a city burial. Emilio thought Koama looked proud of herself for giving her son the funeral she knew he would want. She was so brave for defying the village traditions Emilio knew she valued so highly.
For the first time since the murder, guilt began to take root in Emilio's conscience. He wanted to call his mother and tell her he was OK. He wanted to walk into the police station and say, "I killed a man!" and allow the police drag him away in handcuffs. The urge slowly grew stronger until it became a necessity. He decided that night that he should confess his crime and attend the funeral so Koama could see he was alive.
The next afternoon, he dressed in his friend's best suit, which was too tight across the shoulders, and marched into the street. No one recognized him as the dead man, and he gained more confidence the closer he got to the church. He was doing the right thing, and his guilt would not plague him anymore.
Emilio opened the church doors and saw his mother next to the coffin, chanting village songs to banish evil spirits. His heart broke as he saw how brave she was to stand by her son's coffin without a tear, asking his spirit to fly to the next world. He could not bear to see her like this a moment longer, so he called out.
"Mother, I am alive. It is me, your son, Emilio."
Koama turned and stared at him in horror. She started screaming and crying as she ran to the opposite side of the coffin, putting it between Emilio and herself. She screamed at him to go away and leave her alone.
Her reaction confused Emilio, who walked quickly up the aisle, repeating that he was alive and she did not need to be afraid. He did not understand that Koama thought he was a spirit, come back to punish her for not performing the proper death rites. Koama was certain this apparition moving toward her was going to kill her, like Carlos had killed her son. She could not stop screaming, and her panic reached its climax as Emilio reached out to touch her shoulder.
So there in the church, as she shrunk behind her son's coffin, Koama suffered a nervous breakdown. She collapsed onto the floor and plummeted into blessed unconsciousness as Emilio yelled for help.
The police arrived not long after. Their cars surrounded the church and attracted several bystanders. Those who stood outside watched as the police hauled Emilio out of the building in handcuffs. After him came Koama, guided gently by police officers. She spoke to the air, asking repeatedly for forgiveness and chanting songs to banish evil spirits. Opinions varied among the bystanders, but most thought this barbarian woman needed to return to the forest villages where she belonged.
The police took Koama to a mental hospital in the city where she locked herself in a small room and refused to leave. She convinced herself that the moment she would walk into the hallway, the spirits of her dead kin would take their revenge and kill her.
Twenty years later, Koama Lopez died in her sleep.
The end
Comments are welcome at campbellj83@hotmail.com
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Posted October 13, 1998