Free Firefly by Severo Sarduy

shining red hair, plaited into a French braid, was held in place at the nape of her neck by two ivory pins.
    When they entered the office they left an aroma of bitter lime, hair spray, and camphor in the stale air of the corridor.
    â€œAda,” the stout one sprung on her once she had her face-to-face, “you are the oldest of the group. Your breasts are already showing.”
    And she brushed her graceful, pallid right hand against them like an emeritus emcee, deadpan.
    â€œWhat we are going to do to you,” skin-and-bones chimed in, her tinny voice interrupted by a nervous hiccup, “might nowadays seem abusive . . .” She took in air. Her bronchial tubes whistled like moist bellows.
    â€œBut once you are a full-grown woman,” clarified her expansiveaccessory, “you will thank us with all your heart.” She let out a sigh. “Come sit on this stool,” she added sweetly.
    â€œHere it is,” was all Munificence managed to articulate. She drew from between her breasts an angular vial like a polyhedronic crystal of rainbow quartz that fit nicely the curve of her palm.
    Ada began to sob. From a wide square pocket in the starched apron tied around her, like a kangaroo’s pouch, she pulled an immaculate lace handkerchief, which she handed immediately to Munificence.
    The newly shorn woman moistened it carefully by turning over the vial, which she held tight in the hollow of her left hand. An aroma of pounded leaves inundated the cubicle. The transparent and viscous concoction, with a slight green tint like snake’s saliva or the sweat of a diseased orchid, left sticky stains on the fabric.
    The gaunt one undid the brooch holding her headscarf, drew a shiny black thread, like the kind used for sutures, from between her breasts, and with it threaded the needle that, in place of a simple pin, had held the clasp in place.
    â€œAfter this, I’m absolutely certain,” murmured her heavy and haggard partner, “if for your fifteenth birthday you get the urge to put on – and she yanked the brooch from the skeletal hand, squinted her myopic turquoise eyes, and without further preamble drove the needle into the lobe of the redhead’sright ear – the finest hoop earrings, you’ll be able to do it,” she concluded.
    Ada’s scream was an animal’s pierced by an arrow tipped with curare, an unbearable howl.
    She tried to break free while the obese woman knotted the black thread in her earlobe. Munificence pinned her arms, immobilizing her in the chair; the skinny one’s wiry olive-skinned hands covered her mouth to stifle her shrieks.
    â€œThink of the earrings, the earrings,” the perforator repeated, her mouth very close by the left ear she was about to stick with the needle. Ada struggled in the claws of her executioners, a trapped prey.
    Along with her tears fell minuscule drops of blood on the greenish leather desktop, on the empty silver tray, and on the piles of thick file folders softened by the heat and the humidity.
    Munificence staunched the wound with the lace handkerchief, now a blood-soaked rag on which she kept smearing goop from the bottle.
    They noted – winking at one another, if discreetly, fearfully – that the victim was growing pale; she rested her drooping head on the back of the easy chair; her eyes kept closing. A purplish stain like a sick jellyfish spread across her eyelids. She was sweating. Her lips were white.
    â€œHang on,” Munificence ordered the busy perpetrators. She watched Ada uneasily and with pity, perhaps even an unexpected love. “Let’s wait until she recovers before we continue. A bit of lemonade, with lots of sugar.”
    But she would not drink.
    Then they rubbed her face with a slice of lime. Munificence began to speak to her quietly, to awaken her: “Ada, Ada, the worst is over. We’ll do the rest another day. Think of the earrings.”
    The scarecrow restrung the