So be it on earth...

Ch. 5 Fear

In the tiny apartment, the silence was absolute. The workday was finally over.

At night they were free. There were no landlords or managers forcing their wills and actions, yet in those few hours of rest there was only tiredness and hunger to scourge their souls. Ronalda Manzano walked out of the one room into the small living room, stamping her feet and kicking everything that got in her way. Before she could soak the cloth in fresh water, the man of the house burst in anger.

"Damn it, woman, will you stop throwing things?" Agustin, her husband, shouted before getting up from the couch. "Mr. Tetherbee will charge us as brand new everything you break!"

Tired of intervening in the same fights every night, Roberto got up from the table, soaked the cloth himself and went into the only bedroom of the house, inside, his stepsister was burning with fever.

"That bastard's name is pronounced Tetherby" Ronalda, equally tired of the same fight, didn't move an inch from her place. Her husband, realizing that this time he couldn't intimidate her, made his way to the kitchen, but his wife blocked his way. "And don't you dare bring him into this discussion, the bastard already owes you three months' pay... you and your son are literally working for free on his land and..."

"And what?! Be thankful we have a job! A place to sleep when we're tired! Understand that we were very lucky to end up here!"

"Lucky? You really think we're lucky?" the meager fire in the fireplace grew to almost overflow the iron rims. "Look at the conditions in which we live now, before at least the hut in which we slept and the field in which we worked were ours, here we have done nothing but spend our savings. That alone should be enough to end this discussion!"

Augustin imagined that if the sun could speak, its words would sound exactly the same; a will impossible to bend, a will capable of intimidating and comforting at the same time.

"... All right, the mustard seed harvest is only a few days away," Agustín began. "as soon as I finish that last task I will talk to Mr. Tetherby about a raise and ..."

Even without being the smartest man who ever lived, he knew his employer would never give him more pay, carefully closing his jaw against his upper lip, the man tasted his own blood, the fleeting dose of pain helped clear his mind, and allowed him to speak more calmly.

"At least let's wait until this last fortnight, let's hope this is the good one and we get paid this time. After that... well, the Guzmans will go out to town in the van to repair the tools and buy some things, we can ask them to give us a ride and then..."

"We don't have time left, Agustín," Ronalda pointed to the paired door of the only bedroom. "If we don't leave really soon, we'll die here!" Lifting one of her sleeves, she pointed to her skeletal arm. "The girl has not been able to work for almost two weeks, with less money, we have been left without food to feed her... on Saturday, Saturday I helped Alicia to bury her youngest daughter," Ronalda's parched lips, like her voice, trembled for a moment as the fire still burning in the tiny fireplace began to fade. "Her daughter was already five years old, but so thin she still looked like a babe in arms, our own daughter is already fourteen and she still hasn't had her first flow of blood, doesn't that worry you?" She looked away for a moment as she wiped away a tear, after exhaling a couple of times the fire grew again until it almost overflowed from the fireplace. "I do not want to and will not be the next mother to lose her baby to exhaustion."

"Then we'll leave tonight, let's start packing our things," trying not to make any more noise, the man took out the same cardboard box in which they had put their things the first time. "We will hope that no one notices our absence until the sun rises... then we will be far away, don't you think?"