Open Writing

Diego looked doubtfully at the shirt his mother held out. Then, seeing she was smiling he took the cellophane packet and tore off the wrapping. The cotton felt soft in his hand, and the colour was as red and crisp as the squares on the national flag. The tag in the neck said ‘10’. His mother had finally realised he was growing up. He looked at her slyly.

“Es para ahora. Is it for now?”

There had to be a catch. Besides a sweater at Christmas or a pair of trainers for his birthday, all his clothes, except his school uniform, were handed down.

“Sí mi amorcito. I saw it in the market and I said, ‘there’s a shirt for my Diego.’ Try it on.” And pushing him away, she returned to her ironing.

Diego had been mad with his mother for weeks. She never stopped nagging. “Tienes que ... you have to work harder. You must stop dreaming.” Or, "Por favor, how can you do well at school if you never finish your homework?”

He’d tried to tell her he didn’t like school, that he couldn’t make sense of numbers and letters, that the whole class whispered and fiddled as he did. But he could never explain why, when the bell rang, the other pupils handed in books with neatly filled pages, whilst his were full of smudges and crossings out.

His mother never understood. “No, no more excuses Diego. Tienes que ...”

On and on. And besides her lectures when he arrived home from school, she expected him to sweep the yard, round up the cows and chop wood. By the time he’d finished, the light was fading and the textbook squiggles were jumping about again.

Sometimes he slipped away. There was a place in the woods beyond the far meadow where the boys down the lane waited with their catapults in the afternoon. Even last week, when his mother had set him on digging potatoes, he’d managed to escape a couple of times.

Now, for no reason he could think of, his mother was presenting him a decent shirt and telling him to wear it everyday, not just on Sundays.

A week later he was still wondering. He loved the shirt. The chest pockets were perfect for stones, sweets and matches, and he loved the rip of the press-studs when he took it off. Better still his mother seemed to be yelling less, although twice, she’d turned up to drag him back to work just as he was sliding off for a break.

* * *

Now, through the small, curtain-less window above the kitchen sink, his mother watched him go; a young boy, hoe slung over his shoulder, sauntering across a green meadow and along the brown furrows of the potato field, perfectly silhouetted against the blue sky. She grinned as she reached for the kettle, watching the distant red dot settle at the start of a new row.

It was a perfect shirt.