Free Thursday Night Widows by Claudia Piñeiro

the drinking fountains – which, although they made a lot of mess, had given the children so much fun in summer – with purified-water dispensers. That was not part of the original plan, but was incorporated after a television programme claimed that water tables in the area were contaminated – with some substance which never turned up in any analysis.
    The playground was not only home to new equipment, but to new sounds as well. For the voices around the sand pit had been gradually transmuting, without anyone really noticing it, until one day a new cadence held sway. The noise of children laughing and shouting was the same, but the adult voices were different now. Up until the start of the 1990s, Paraguayan accents had been the rule, along with the sing-song inflection of some far-flung Argentine province. But in the 1990s,
the Peruvian accent began to dominate – if “dominate” is the right word, because this voice was particularly sweet, calm and polite. “Put that down, now, or you’ll get all dirty.” “That little boy is a naughty so-and-so.” “That little girl is always half-undressed.” “I saw that little girl get right in the sand and cause a nuisance.” But all this was said quietly, as if they did not wish to annoy anyone. And around them the usual hubbub of laughter and shouting continued, ebbing and flowing through myriad plastic circuits.
    The new playground boasted yellow, red and blue slides, tunnels and walkways. There were monkey bars that you could hang from and swing your way across from one side of the sand pit to the other. There were swings in wood-effect plastic for older children, and in green plastic, with a safety bar, for the younger ones. There were basketball hoops, a see-saw and a roundabout. They put in a house, on wooden pilings, with a blue roof and yellow door, which was imported direct to Cascade Heights from the Fisher Price factory in the United States. It was a kind of tree house, with nets in the windows (so that the children could look out without risking a fall), from which you could reach the slide, via a hanging bridge. The playground, cleaner than ever, was now brilliantly decked-out in primary colours. All that was left of the old incarnation were the chains on the swings; these were thick chains of the kind that are no longer manufactured. The architects had not been able to convince anyone that the new plastic rope was tough enough to allow the twisting and vertiginous swinging that these chains did.

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    Romina and Juani first meet in the little playground at The Cascade. Even though they go to the same school, they have never crossed paths before. They meet one afternoon. Juani arrives on a bicycle, alone. He is one of the few children who go to the playground alone. Everyone else comes accompanied by the “girl who looks after us”: their families’ domestic servants. Juani doesn’t have one of those any more; he used to, but not now. There’s just a woman who comes to clean the house in the morning, when he’s at school.
    The children swing themselves far too high. Some of them twist the swings up, then spin madly around. Romina doesn’t look at them, so as not to feel dizzy. She uses a stick to draw in the sand. She draws a house and a river. She scratches them out. A very tall boy throws the swing over the top crossbar, to lift it further off the ground. Antonia pushes Pedro in one of the baby swings, while she chats to another maid. They are speaking the same language, but they sound different. The very tall boy grows bored and leaves. Juani gets onto the swing he has left. He untwists it. He swings on his own. Two little girls fight over another swing. One of them, in embroidered jeans, pulls the hair of the other one, who’s wearing a pink dress. The other one cries. Nobody looks at them, apart from Romina. The girl in the dress cries harder. She starts shouting. Then the maids