(no subject)
Prompt: Vamos. Finally up for reading: life from young Azucena Torralba’s point of view. 602 words.
What’s In a Name?
“What sort of people live here?”
Azucena shook her head, once again unable to give a good answer. The scrawny teenager’s dark eyes drifted to the reeking hill just a stone’s throw away from where she stood at the muddy intersection. ‘What do you say about the gateway to Hell?’ the thought came to her unbidden as she wiggled her bare toes in the murk.
The starveling’s gaze wandered again to that mount known as Trovatore Hill, a place of the forgotten and those better forgotten. In the rain, the place looked even bleaker; at least sunshine gave some life to the hodgepodge of rusty roofs and patched together walls that formed the dwellings in this slum. ‘Why would the men in uniform bother with this place again?’ she wondered. Normally people only came when there was trouble to be had; a few weeks ago, a whole bunch of men in blue had chased some young men into this hill, and dragged them out by their feet. Azucena shivered, remembering the red streaks they’d left on the rocky ground.
“I said, what sort of people live here?” the inspector asked more sharply, his voice now sounding clipped and yet a bit like a trill. He had with him a sleek tablet; its silver casing was temptation in itself to eyes that had seen little money in the past year or so. “Answer me, girl!”
“The hungry.” The words were out of Azucena’s lips before she could stop them with her hand.
The man stared at her for a moment before bursting out into a belly laugh. “That is obvious, just look at you. Let me try again: do the people who live here work, or don’t work?”
“Both.” It was all she could do not to shiver.
“Do they come from the mountains or just here in the city?”
“Everywhere.” Well, that was what she had been told. Trovatore Hill was a magnet for the desperate, and there were always desperate people all over Andefalco. She had seen them all: children with brown skin like her, hungry travelers with fair hair and pallid thin faces, wizened crones with their backs curved into grotesque humps, and of course the young men with their breath reeking of alcohol mixed with juice and thinner, and their callused hands that liked to make their way under girls’ skirts.
The inspector made a ‘hmph’ sound before keying something into his keypad. “And your name?”
Azucena bit her lip. “Alouette Jondrette,” she said. She liked the name ‘Alouette’; she heard from the old ladies that it was the name for a kind of bird. It was far better than her own name, which was supposedly that of a flower, something which never moved or spoke. As for the name ‘Jondrette’, her brother said he’d gotten it from a book. ‘It must be a very odd book then,’ she thought as she scratched her arms and waited for the officer to finish consulting his gadget.
“Sir, may I go now?” she finally asked.
The man sneered at her. “Vamos!”
Azucena nodded before scampering off back to the hill. It was only when she reached the winding trail leading to the first shanties that she dared to laugh out loud at how ridiculous the police officer had sounded. ‘And he believed my name was really Alouette!’ she thought as she clambered over a rusty tricycle blocking the path. It was a dangerous deception, but nevertheless, a fantasy she dearly wished to indulge