MY MOTHER HAD SPECIAL FOBIA to the washing machine. It was one of those old horizontal drum machines, which had a rotating paddle in the middle.
Whenever my mother had to put her hand in the soapy water of the drum, to remove the garments, she reluctantly did it and assumed a defensive position, as if preparing to flee.
Once, during an afternoon of rain, I asked her about that particular fear. My mother this time had drunk too much and maybe that's why she told me a story that left me frozen.
She said that a long time ago, when I was a few months old, she was waiting for the washing cycle to finish when the machine started making a strange sound.
It was like a serious buzzing, she said, which terrifyingly resembled the breathing of a person. My mother was impressed and got into the house, but then she calmed down and told herself that she was letting herself scare like a child.
She returned to the machine, which had already finished washing, and reached into the muddy water to remove the garments.
Then she felt a sharp pain in her hand, and when she tried to remove it she found it impossible to do it, there was something down there that held her and tearing her skin.
She screamed and tugged again, and in that second she tried to withdraw her hand ... dripping with soapy water and blood.
It lacked a finger, the ring, whatever it was that was under the water had ripped it off. She felt like she was going to faint and did not understand anything.
And at that moment two things happened. First, the machine started to operate again despite the fact that the cover was open, which was impossible according to the instruction manual.
The second thing that happened was the worst of it. From the muddy water a head came out. A bare, devilish, yellow-eyed head staring at her.
He smiled. Between his lips was my mother's bleeding finger, which still twisted like a worm on the hook.
My mother reached to close the lid of the washing machine and ran to get inside the house.
That was the story that my old woman told me that evening. But my father then told me something else.
He said that the finger lost him in an accident at work, while he was drunk.
But if that story is true, why did my mother choose to tell something so terrible to a ten-year-old boy?
My parents died later, and I still keep asking myself the same thing.
