(no subject)
Josefa “Ma Pampo” Romero is 131 years old. She is the oldest human still alive. She was born in 1875 in Mexico. She left school to help her family develop the farm. Every morning she would wake up at dawn in her small room and hard-mattress bed to watch the cows, sheep, and baby goats skip across the smooth green field. She would slowly stand, placing her flat feet upon the warm wooden floor and let the blood rush from her head to the rest of her body. She’d walk across the room, which would take less than a couple of seconds, and stick her head out the window. The warm breeze would blow her long black hair, and like clockwork, the milkman, Peter Rose, would march down their long dirt road to her front door. She would crack her white smile and wiggle her toes as he walked closer and pretended not to notice her subtle cleavage. ‘I’d be killed if my parents ever saw me’ she thought as she waived and said good morning to Mr. Rose.
After years of the same routine, she fell in love with him, and he in love with her. They would constantly run away after everyone had fallen asleep to talk, kiss, and make love behind the barn. When she reached the age of 17, he asked her father for her hand in marriage. He was younger and much poorer than her, and was therefore promptly sent home to a good beating. She was also beat and told repeatedly that she would marry an older man with a noble name. A week later, this older man with a noble man was found and whisked Josefa away to Cuba. The man was forty-eight and reeked of cheap perfume, cigars, and money.
They built a mansion together and she had four of his children. They had no cows, sheep, or baby goats to watch in the morning. The milk was delivered by an old man who looked as if he could have a coronary at any given time. Throughout the years, she had many lovers, yet none as good, as caring, as sweet or generous as Peter. Once, during a lavish party thrown by her husband to his fellow buyers, she was caught in her room with one of her many lovers. The guests were send home and she was beat for the rest of the night. After seeing the cuts and bruises he had created, he sent her on a trip to America to apologize. She took a small plane to a city called Miami, where she only spent a week because, according to her, it “eerily felt too much like home.” On the short flight back, she met a gentleman who was traveling to Cuba on business. They parted ways at the airport, but before she entered the taxi, he quickly caught up with her to kiss her and slip his Florida address in her pocket. Through the next five years, she traveled back and forth between her Cuban mansion and Miami. It took these five years to finally make her husband suspicious. These suspicions were proved correct when she became pregnant once more, but now with her gentleman’s child. Her husband threw her on the floor of white tile and marble, which felt cold against her skin, and raised his arm to deliver a cutting slap across her soft face when he had a massive heart attack and died.
She acquired all of his land and money, but thought it best to give it all to her son, Ramón. He was twenty-five at the time and was later found dead. He was killed by a rival drug dealer. Josepa left her youngest child to her daughters to take care of and left the mansion to live in a shack no bigger than her room on her parent’s farm. She sat at the window for what seemed like a thousand years. The Cuban Revolution came along, she was eighty-four at the time. The older she got, the more the communist party offered her. Yes, this does go against communist ideals, but then again, she is 131 years old. She denied them all. She did attend a few dinners hosted by El Capitán, but gracefully rejected his fancy wines and foods. She ate, by tradition, chicken, rice, and a bit of beans with a small glass of water or orange juice, if it’s a special occasion.
At times, tourists would stop by her house and take pictures of her and ask her to bless their child or dog or car. It seems as if the older you become, the more saintly you become. If this were the case, then she was a goddess. The tourists came and went, but the most constant of annoyances was the Guinness Book of World Records crew that would annually visit to renew her entry in the book. They would come and take her picture and check if she were still alive. They would then go to her next-door neighbor, who ended up being non-other than Mr. Peter Rose, the oldest living man still alive. This was Ms. Romero’s life until now.
Then, there was Margaret Ann Harvey. She is 130 years old, the second oldest human still alive. And she has a plan to become the first.