Memoir

MEMORIAS OF MY CHILDHOOD IN THE CITY OF HUARAZ
“Put your coat on! Put your coat on,” my sister, Gloria, screamed. I didn’t understand. It was not time to leave. I was eating popcorn at the theater waiting for “One Rock in the Road” to begin. So I grabbed my coat and tried to put it on, my eyes could not believe what was happening. The screen of the theater suddenly moved and fell apart. The whole theater trembled. Gloria and I stood up like petrified wood. We could not moved. My white coat was now black because the dust had landed on me. I heard people crying, screaming, and yelling. Unlike us they were running in terror. Most of them ran to the main door (That’s where the roof collapsed first). Few minutes past, but I felt like that moment lasted forever. Gloria asked me “What should we do?,” I could not even give her an answer. We walked to the main door as fast as we could, we walked over the remains of the bricks. There were dead bodies and bodies that were half buried touching us and crying for help. As the police man who guarded the entrance of the theater was calling us “Ayudame! Ayudame!,” he pleaded. We could not do anything his legs were separated from his body. I trembled. I thought it was the end of the world. We stopped for a moment, I heard my sister Gloria saying “Wait! Wait! The angels will come and take us to heaven.” She remembered that from my grandpa, Jose, who said “The angels will come when it’s the end of the world.” We waited for a minute or two, but no angels came. We ran as fast as we could, our city was destroyed. The street signs were all gone, and we had no clue how to get home. We ran two blocks when we saw the jewelry store that was close to my house. We walked over those gold bracelets, gold earrings, and silver necklaces. The jewelry store at least gave us a clue of how to get to our house. It was late afternoon, by the time we found my brothers Juan and Edmundo. Mamacita was all covered by the collapsing building in the main street of Huaraz. My brother, Juan, was half covered with the remains of the building. He cried for help “Mamacita is buried under there!,” my brother Edmundo panicked. Luckily some of my cousins were around and helped my brothers to unbury mamacita. She was cradling my youngest brother, Lucho, He was five years old, but she held him like a baby. “Gracias a Dios,” mamacita gasped “ I could not breathe” Lucho was too young to realized what was happening, what he did know was that he had lost his new shoes. He cried. He wanted his new shoes back. My tia, Justa, tried to calm him down. Mamacita, (my brothers) Juan, Edmundo, Lucho and (my sister) Gloria went to the plaza. My older sister, Julia, joined us later. We waited for my other brother Ignacio. He did not come. Never came. He was dead. We did not know anything about my dad. He was away on business. Somehow my brother found a radio. The broadcaster said “Another bad news the city of Yungay has been destroyed.” It was the city that my dad went for business. Mamacita’s face was pale as a white paper, she did not tell us that she thought that papacito was dead, but we could read her mind. Night came, our neighbor had arranged a place for us in his car. I could not sleep because I could still feel the city shivering. People wept and cried all night long. I heard a young woman screaming and pointing up, so I look through the car window. I looked and saw something I can never forget. Her parents were hanging from the building by their legs, trapped by the second floor roof. My heart sunk. At the moment, I thought that I was lucky because Mamacita was alive, but still worried about my dearest Papacito. There was a hope inside of me. I prayedFor Papacito, I wanted to see him again. The next day, there he was, his face wrinkled by the hours he walked from the vanish city, Yungay, to my city Huaraz. I ran. I screamed with such happiness “Papacito esta aqui! Papacito esta aqua!” Mamacita who was still in an improvised bed, was so happy to see him again. Such a mixed bag of emotions happy that papacito was home safe with us, sad that my brother ,Ignacio, had died, overwhelmed by the destruction around us. Even though I am no longer a 7 years old child, as I was on the 31st of May in 1970, I still carry the sights, sounds, the smell of that day within me. It still makes me quake when I hear the news reporting about earthquakes.
Mercedes Natividad de Frausto