I learned that people could laugh at your suffering while still believing they were decent.<\/p>\n
At first, the jokes in Valdeondo had seemed harmless to everyone except me.<\/p>\n
They called me the girl under the ground.<\/p>\n
They pretended to dig when I walked past.<\/p>\n
They spoke about my tunnel as if it were a foolish game.<\/p>\n
I did not enjoy it.<\/p>\n
But I could endure being laughed at.<\/p>\n
What happened next was different.<\/p>\n
Don Baltazar controlled the village store.<\/p>\n
Nearly everyone depended on it at one time or another.<\/p>\n
In our valley, money did not always arrive when supplies were needed.<\/p>\n
People bought flour, salt, and other necessities with the understanding that payment would come later.<\/p>\n
My father had used that arrangement when work was slow.<\/p>\n
He always settled what he owed.<\/p>\n
I believed that history would matter.<\/p>\n
It did not.<\/p>\n
When I went to the store to arrange for more provisions, I was told that I could no longer buy on credit.<\/p>\n
I thought there had been a mistake.<\/p>\n
I asked whether someone had confused my father's account with another.<\/p>\n
The answer was clear.<\/p>\n
There would be no further credit for me.<\/p>\n
I knew whose decision it was.<\/p>\n
Don Baltazar did not need to stand beside the counter to make his wishes known.<\/p>\n
I had refused his offer for the property.<\/p>\n
Now the store was closed to me unless I could pay immediately.<\/p>\n
I stood there with my hands resting against the edge of the counter.<\/p>\n
I wanted to argue.<\/p>\n
I wanted to ask how someone could speak about concern for my safety while making it harder for me to feed myself.<\/p>\n
But I knew an argument would not change the arrangement.<\/p>\n
I counted my remaining coins.<\/p>\n
There was enough for one sack of flour.<\/p>\n
Not much more.<\/p>\n
I paid for it.<\/p>\n
Then I carried the sack uphill.<\/p>\n
It was heavier than I expected.<\/p>\n
The road seemed longer than usual.<\/p>\n
I had already spent the morning digging.<\/p>\n
My shoulders hurt.<\/p>\n
My palms were tender beneath the cloth I used to protect them.<\/p>\n
I stopped once to adjust the weight.<\/p>\n
From farther down the slope, I could see the roofs of the village.<\/p>\n
Sixty houses.<\/p>\n
Dozens of families living close enough to call out to one another.<\/p>\n
And I felt more alone than I had since the funeral.<\/p>\n
I knew some people disagreed with what Don Baltazar had done.<\/p>\n
I could see it in the way they avoided my eyes.<\/p>\n
But nobody challenged him.<\/p>\n
He owned too much.<\/p>\n
Too many people depended on him.<\/p>\n
I understood their silence.<\/p>\n
That did not make it easier to bear.<\/p>\n
When I reached home, I set the flour on the kitchen table.<\/p>\n
The bag left a pale mark on the wood.<\/p>\n
I opened it and looked inside.<\/p>\n
It was food.<\/p>\n
It was also a measure of how long I might continue before hunger became another problem.<\/p>\n
I thought about the coins Don Baltazar had offered me.<\/p>\n
I could still picture the bag resting on the same table.<\/p>\n
He had known what he was doing.<\/p>\n
He had given me a choice that was not really a choice.<\/p>\n
Sell while the price was high, or keep resisting until I had too little to eat.<\/p>\n
I wanted to prove him wrong.<\/p>\n
But wanting something would not make flour last longer.<\/p>\n
I began using it carefully.<\/p>\n
I had potatoes stored at the house.<\/p>\n
I still had the well.<\/p>\n
I had shelter.<\/p>\n
I was not yet without food.<\/p>\n
But every meal now carried a calculation.<\/p>\n
How much could I use?<\/p>\n
How much would remain?<\/p>\n
How many days until I had to find another answer?<\/p>\n
The questions followed me into the tunnel.<\/p>\n
Digging made me hungry.<\/p>\n
The harder I worked, the more food my body wanted.<\/p>\n
I tried to ignore it.<\/p>\n
That was not sensible.<\/p>\n
I knew it even then.<\/p>\n
But I was frightened of running short before I reached the well.<\/p>\n
Some afternoons, I worked longer than I should have.<\/p>\n
I continued after my arms became weak.<\/p>\n
I told myself that each bucket of soil brought me closer to safety.<\/p>\n
The tunnel was slowly taking shape.<\/p>\n
The supports stood behind me in a narrow row.<\/p>\n
The opening beneath the kitchen looked less like a hole and more like the beginning of a passage.<\/p>\n
I had learned to move within it without striking the roof.<\/p>\n
I had learned to keep my tools close.<\/p>\n
I could tell when a bucket was full enough to lift safely.<\/p>\n
I could also tell when my body had reached its limit.<\/p>\n
The trouble was admitting it.<\/p>\n
My father had been stronger than I was.<\/p>\n
He had worked for years in places far more difficult than this.<\/p>\n
But he had also stopped when the ground required patience.<\/p>\n
I remembered that whenever I became tempted to hurry.<\/p>\n
I kept reminding myself that a finished tunnel would be useless if I did not survive to use it.<\/p>\n
Still, the pressure was always there.<\/p>\n
Winter.<\/p>\n
The first heavy snow.<\/p>\n
The possibility that Don Baltazar was right.<\/p>\n
The fear that I would run out of food or strength before reaching the well.<\/p>\n
And the memory of those eleven paces.<\/p>\n
All of it lived with me.<\/p>\n
The house was quieter than it had ever been.<\/p>\n
When my father was alive, he sometimes spoke to himself while repairing tools.<\/p>\n
He made small sounds of approval or annoyance as he worked.<\/p>\n
I had scarcely noticed them.<\/p>\n
Now I missed them.<\/p>\n
I missed hearing another person move a chair.<\/p>\n
I missed the scrape of his boots near the door.<\/p>\n
I missed being able to ask a question without already knowing that nobody would answer.<\/p>\n
One evening, I returned from the tunnel with both knees aching.<\/p>\n
I washed my hands.<\/p>\n
The water became brown with soil.<\/p>\n
I could see the blisters beneath the dirt.<\/p>\n
Some had opened again.<\/p>\n
I dried them carefully.<\/p>\n
Then I looked at the bread I had left.<\/p>\n
It was not enough for the hunger I felt.<\/p>\n
I ate slowly anyway.<\/p>\n
I told myself there would be better days.<\/p>\n
I did not know whether that was true.<\/p>\n
The next morning, I opened the door and found a loaf of bread resting near the threshold.<\/p>\n
It was fresh.<\/p>\n
Still warm.<\/p>\n
I looked down the path.<\/p>\n
Nobody was there.<\/p>\n
For a moment, I thought someone must have made a mistake.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the bread was meant for another house.<\/p>\n
But no one could confuse our place with another.<\/p>\n
We lived alone above the village.<\/p>\n
There were no neighboring doors nearby.<\/p>\n
I picked up the loaf.<\/p>\n
It smelled wonderful.<\/p>\n
I had been hungry enough that the smell made my stomach tighten.<\/p>\n
I carried it inside and set it on the table.<\/p>\n
I stood looking at it for a long time.<\/p>\n
Someone had brought it.<\/p>\n
Someone had climbed the hill.<\/p>\n
Someone had chosen to leave without waiting for thanks.<\/p>\n
I wanted to know who.<\/p>\n
But I was too grateful to be suspicious for long.<\/p>\n
I cut a piece.<\/p>\n
It was soft inside.<\/p>\n
I ate beside the kitchen opening.<\/p>\n
For the first time in days, I felt full enough to work without thinking constantly about my next meal.<\/p>\n
That bread meant more than the person who brought it could have known.<\/p>\n
It did not solve my problems.<\/p>\n
I still had a tunnel to dig.<\/p>\n
I still had very little money.<\/p>\n
Don Baltazar still wanted the land.<\/p>\n
But someone in the village had looked at my situation and decided to help.<\/p>\n
That mattered.<\/p>\n
I spent the rest of the day underground.<\/p>\n
I worked with more patience than I had managed the previous afternoon.<\/p>\n
I measured the next section.<\/p>\n
I checked the wooden supports.<\/p>\n
I lifted soil through the opening and emptied the buckets behind the house.<\/p>\n
The work remained hard.<\/p>\n
But I was less distracted by hunger.<\/p>\n
At dusk, I went outside for water.<\/p>\n
The air had a sharp chill.<\/p>\n
I looked downhill toward the village.<\/p>\n
I wondered which house the bread had come from.<\/p>\n
There were people my father had helped over the years.<\/p>\n
Perhaps someone remembered.<\/p>\n
Perhaps somebody felt sorry for me.<\/p>\n
I could not know.<\/p>\n
I did not want to imagine gratitude where there was only pity.<\/p>\n
But I could not deny what had been left at my door.<\/p>\n
A week later, another loaf appeared.<\/p>\n
Again, I found nobody outside.<\/p>\n
This time, I was almost certain the visitor had come early, knowing I would not yet be working in the yard.<\/p>\n
I looked for footprints.<\/p>\n
The ground showed signs of someone having passed.<\/p>\n
But that told me little.<\/p>\n
I carried the bread inside.<\/p>\n
I considered going down to the village and asking who had brought it.<\/p>\n
Then I imagined what might happen.<\/p>\n
People would begin talking.<\/p>\n
Someone might tell Don Baltazar.<\/p>\n
The person helping me might be embarrassed or frightened.<\/p>\n
I decided not to ask publicly.<\/p>\n
I would be grateful without demanding an explanation.<\/p>\n
The following days were difficult again.<\/p>\n
I kept digging.<\/p>\n
The earth became stubborn in places.<\/p>\n
Sometimes the shovel moved easily.<\/p>\n
Sometimes it struck stones that took far longer to remove.<\/p>\n
I could never predict exactly how much I would accomplish.<\/p>\n
That uncertainty frustrated me.<\/p>\n
I had a plan for the whole tunnel.<\/p>\n
But the ground allowed progress only one section at a time.<\/p>\n
I began measuring success differently.<\/p>\n
Not by how much distance remained.<\/p>\n
By whether the part I had finished was safe.<\/p>\n
By whether the supports were solid.<\/p>\n
By whether I could return to the kitchen without difficulty.<\/p>\n
Those were lessons my father had tried to teach me long before I needed them.<\/p>\n
I used to think his carefulness made every job slower.<\/p>\n
Now I understood that it allowed him to finish jobs that impatience might ruin.<\/p>\n
On the third occasion, I noticed movement near the fence.<\/p>\n
It was early.<\/p>\n
I had opened the door before going down into the tunnel.<\/p>\n
I saw a small figure trying to hide.<\/p>\n
At first, I could not tell who it was.<\/p>\n
Then a face appeared beside one of the fence posts.<\/p>\n
Jacinta.<\/p>\n
She was the blacksmith's daughter.<\/p>\n
Seven years old.<\/p>\n
I knew her from the village.<\/p>\n
She was small enough that she could almost disappear behind the fence if she crouched.<\/p>\n
When she realized I had seen her, she looked embarrassed.<\/p>\n
I stepped outside.<\/p>\n
I did not want to frighten her.<\/p>\n
I asked whether she had been bringing the bread.<\/p>\n
She hesitated.<\/p>\n
Then she nodded.<\/p>\n
I looked at her hands.<\/p>\n
They were empty now.<\/p>\n
The loaf was already waiting beside my door.<\/p>\n
I asked why she had done it.<\/p>\n
She seemed surprised by the question.<\/p>\n
She told me she had watched how hard I worked.<\/p>\n
She had seen people laugh.<\/p>\n
She knew nobody was helping me.<\/p>\n
That was all.<\/p>\n
I did not know what to say.<\/p>\n
I had spent weeks hearing adults explain why my work was foolish.<\/p>\n
Why I should leave.<\/p>\n
Why I should sell.<\/p>\n
Why I ought to accept that I could not manage alone.<\/p>\n
And here was a child who had asked herself a different question.<\/p>\n
Not whether I would succeed.<\/p>\n
Not whether I deserved the land.<\/p>\n
Only whether I had enough to eat while I tried.<\/p>\n
I remember feeling ashamed of how quickly I had begun believing everyone was against me.<\/p>\n
Jacinta looked toward the kitchen.<\/p>\n
She asked whether it was true that I was making a passage to the well.<\/p>\n
I said yes.<\/p>\n
She wanted to know whether I would be able to reach the water without walking through the snow.<\/p>\n
I explained that was the plan.<\/p>\n
She considered it.<\/p>\n
Then she said she thought I could do it.<\/p>\n
There was no grand speech.<\/p>\n
No promise to change the villagers' minds.<\/p>\n
Just a little girl standing near my fence, telling me she trusted what I was trying to build.<\/p>\n
I had heard so many people call me foolish that I almost did not know how to receive those words.<\/p>\n
I thanked her for the bread.<\/p>\n
She looked pleased.<\/p>\n
Then she went back down the hill.<\/p>\n
I watched until she was out of sight.<\/p>\n
The village lay beneath us, quiet in the morning light.<\/p>\n
I thought about her father, the blacksmith.<\/p>\n
I thought about all the people who must have seen Jacinta carry bread uphill.<\/p>\n
Perhaps nobody had noticed.<\/p>\n
Perhaps some had noticed and said nothing.<\/p>\n
I did not know.<\/p>\n
What I knew was that she had come three times.<\/p>\n
She had climbed the path with food because she believed I needed it.<\/p>\n
There was something difficult about accepting kindness from a child when grown people had refused to give any.<\/p>\n
I went back inside.<\/p>\n
The kitchen floor was still open.<\/p>\n
The tunnel still stretched only part of the way toward the well.<\/p>\n
My tools were waiting.<\/p>\n
Nothing about the work had become easier overnight.<\/p>\n
But the room no longer felt quite so empty.<\/p>\n
I put the bread where it would stay clean.<\/p>\n
Then I checked the lantern and went underground again.<\/p>\n
I had reached the thirty-first day of my work.<\/p>\n
I remember the number because I had been counting carefully.<\/p>\n
Thirty-one days of digging.<\/p>\n
Thirty-one days of carrying soil.<\/p>\n
Thirty-one days of measuring the distance between my kitchen and the well.<\/p>\n
The tunnel had grown enough that I could no longer see the kitchen opening clearly from where I worked.<\/p>\n
I was beginning to feel that the well was no longer impossibly far away.<\/p>\n
That morning, I struck something hard.<\/p>\n
The shovel stopped abruptly.<\/p>\n
I thought it was an ordinary stone.<\/p>\n
I tried to work around it.<\/p>\n
But the obstruction continued across the width of the passage.<\/p>\n
I set down the shovel and examined the ground.<\/p>\n
There was a broad slab of rock in front of me.<\/p>\n
It extended from one side of the tunnel to the other.<\/p>\n
I touched its surface.<\/p>\n
Solid.<\/p>\n
Heavy.<\/p>\n
Not something I could simply lift into a bucket.<\/p>\n
I sat back as much as the narrow space allowed.<\/p>\n
For weeks, I had measured my progress in the same straight direction.<\/p>\n
Now the ground had put something across my path that did not care about my measurements.<\/p>\n
I thought about how much work might be required to break through.<\/p>\n
I thought about the days I had left.<\/p>\n
I thought about the village laughing if they learned I could go no farther.<\/p>\n
Then I remembered my father's lessons.<\/p>\n
He had never promised that the ground would give us the route we wanted.<\/p>\n
He had taught me to examine what stood in front of me before deciding how to proceed.<\/p>\n
I lifted the lantern.<\/p>\n
I studied the edges of the stone.<\/p>\n
Then I put down my tools for a moment.<\/p>\n
I was tired.<\/p>\n
I was frustrated.<\/p>\n
But I was not ready to mistake a difficult piece of rock for the end of my work.<\/p>\n
Above me, the kitchen waited.<\/p>\n
Beyond the stone, somewhere in the earth, stood my father's well.<\/p>\n
I had reached that obstacle through thirty-one days of effort.<\/p>\n
The next thing I had to do was understand it.<\/p>\n
I learned that people could laugh at your suffering while still believing they were decent. At first, the jokes in Valdeondo had seemed harmless to everyone except me. They called … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12056,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drama-sory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastestdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastestdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastestdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastestdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastestdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12060"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lastestdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12080,"href":"https:\/\/lastestdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12060\/revisions\/12080"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastestdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastestdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastestdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastestdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}