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We heard our own voices, screaming at each other, asking for help, not knowing what to do. Faces covered with dust, and sweat, and other things later to be determined. What to do? There was nothing to do but to scream, try anything, flail our hands, scratch at the earth like my chickens when they get confused because their fresh-laid eggs disappear, one by one, and still they lay more. Try
anything and still, it's too little. After the earth rose and split open, yes, I saw angels walking, but there had also been dust, white dust, everywhere, caking all objects and every moving thing. The dust came from the concrete crumbling to pieces as buildings flattened, but there were also other things mixed in, blood and bones. Had I mistaken the walking dead for angels, survivors stumbling through the debris with the same white flakes covering their bodies from head to toe that covered mine?
Eventually, we, the market women, remembered our oil lamps and lit them, one by one, those of us who could. Only part of the market had been crushed, the part against a wall. Still, it was im-possible to tell what belonged to whom, and at that point, no one cared. We worked at freeing those we could, said prayers for the others, promising deliverance to those we could not get to, to give them some solace, some hope in their final moments, because salva-tion would soon be theirs. Then back down the street, darting back and forth. Using the goods from the market to feed those working at rescue. Doing what we could, as we always did, our large bodies moving through the rubble as if we were land whales, made for swimming through dust-laden air, made for parting human waves.
We treated everyone alike. They had become all the same, were always the same. Something we had always known from our low-to-the-ground perches, observing life like budgies, our heads wrapped in colorful scarfs to keep the heat of the sun from roasting our brains, sweat slipping down our necks, draping the half-moon of our chests exposed above the breasts. We fanned ourselves, but it didn't help. Chalè! Heat came with the territory. But not this. Not this. A different kind of heat. Sitting here under the hot sun all day, we ripen.
The saints, the crooks, the foreigners, the white saviors, the bleeding hearts, they all need sustenance, and we give it to them. Close my eyes. Look away. It's all the same. The need to shut everything down, slow my breathing, take in what's there to take in, let all the rest go. If only I could get rid of the images, of the smells still clogging my nostrils. Ha! You would think that after so many years working in the market, nothing would offend this nose. Look what surrounds us every day: the mounds of smoldering garbage, the spoiling fruits with skins speckled with loitering flies, the leavings of dogs, the runoff of dirty water weaving its way through the alleyways, that dense acrid stink of urine.
A marketplace is a world of colliding senses, not all of it pretty or fruitful, much of it decay, especially at the end of the day, when the best of what's available is gone and all that remain are castoffs, the leftovers. This is the part of the day when those of us who work the market blend into the dust and the loam, become one with the elements, the odors of sweat and dung, the sweet sap of fleshy fruits ground underfoot, the nothing that we are, the all. We sweep up what's left of the day, knowing that striving toward perfection is beyond our reach.
A little corner of peace. That's all we want. I found mine after the trip to the waterfalls, but it would take some time to get there. Peace is what others want from me, from us, the market women they imagine sit immobile, rooted to the earth but without extensions, no lives and families of our own, waiting patiently for them to come with their grimy dollars, their smiles full of need, to unload money and stories of desire, a desire to be free of worry, to be freed.
Excerpted from What Storm, What Thunder by Myriam J Chancy . Copyright © 2021 by Myriam J Chancy . Excerpted by permission of Tin House Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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