After eating the lunch of fish and french fries that my aunt had made, I still felt strange. That first feeling of guilt can be a very bitter experience for children. In my case it wasn’t the first time I had lied, but this wasn’t just a simple deception, this was betrayal. I had denied my own mother. And what was even worse, I realized that over recent days I’d forgotten her completely, wishing, perhaps, that she was someone else.

That night, we didn’t read. I crawled into my sleeping bag and covered myself completely. I thought about Mama. I wondered how she was, and I imagined her in the apartment in the dark, lying beside Mauri, killing time before going to sleep, with the same unconcerned expression as always, but getting old. And I missed her and was sorry for hurting her, even though she didn’t know, and I was also sorry that because she didn’t know, I had no way to apologize to her.

I felt disgusted with myself and I spent the whole night with my stomach in knots, thinking that the image of my mother would claw at me forever. By the next day I felt better. I guess it was the normalcy of things. Routine soothes any pain. You make mistakes and life goes on. I think it’s a lesson that has to do with growing older. I was only ten years old, but I realized how everything in me quieted. Nothing was so serious.

There weren’t many days left at the campground, and during the ones that followed I made an effort to keep acting the same with my cousins and my aunt. I showed myself willing to give and to achieve what they expected of me. I repeated the lesson like a good boy, but this time I knew very clearly that I was faking. On the last night we had a rummy championship, which I won, and the next morning we took down the tents, piled into the car, and headed back.

There was an accident waiting for us in Santiago. One night while Mauri was watching the cars, someone had driven over his foot. It happened in the middle of our vacation and they hadn’t wanted to worry us. My brother couldn’t tolerate the recommended bed rest, and it wasn’t long before he sawed off his own cast. Both of us, Mauri with his limping foot and me with my new books under my arm, went back to my mother, and everything followed its normal course until my brother was stabbed in his crushed foot.