The Prophecy — A Short Story About Family and Inheritance

Selections from My Amazonian Reviews: Thoughts on Life's Real and Imagined Possessions.

Reviewer's Note: As the author and reviewer of The Prophecy, I find this tale episodic and have decided to review each segment as a separate scene.

Scene I: Conceived Under the Dictatorship

I was conceived under the shadow of a dictatorship—so they say. Perón was in exile, and the military wandered the halls of the Casa Rosada as if it were theirs—which, in truth, it was. The president they installed was their man, a puppet, an extension of their will. Argentina drifted between military promises of order and the chaos of an economy in shambles. In that strange hush of fear, obedience, and black-market dealings, I was conceived, born, and raised. It was the best of times for loud patriots and tough talkers — but the worst of times to be born a sensitive child. 

Scene II: A Legacy of Law and Silence

Mother used to say — not once, but often, as if by repeating it she might keep the remembrance from vanishing — that a gypsy read her palms when she was pregnant with me. In our neighborhood of Vicente López, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, gypsies came and went from house to house like wandering waves, looking for fortunes to read or coins to take.

Her belly was round and heavy, eight pounds of me pressing against her womb. I imagine her sweating in the heat of summer.

Father, always absent, was not with us, of course. In those days of political turmoil and hyperinflation, those who could worked—and Father hardest of all. He took on more clients than he could handle, charging them next to nothing, and juggled two or three law-related jobs to keep food on the table. El laburo.

And that day — the doorbell ringing, the heavy heat, the expectant waiting — Mother looked at one of the gypsies and asked: “What do you want?”

The gypsy didn’t ask permission. She took my mother’s swollen hands, heavy with pregnancy.

“You are in a delicate condition,” she said, quaintly, sharply. Then she studied the palms and added: “You’ll have a son. He’ll be fair-haired (un rubio). And maybe he’ll matter.”

Scene III: My Mother’s Memory of the Gipsy

Mother told that story — the one with the open door to the future — again and again over the years: at birthdays, after lunch with visitors, while sweeping, or while stirring polenta with the same wooden spoon she used to swat us when we misbehaved.

“The gypsy said it, and look at him now…” she’d mutter, watching me cross the kitchen, never quite explaining what she saw in me. Was it my gait? Sometimes she smiled. Most times, she didn’t.

Scene IV: Family and Inheritance in This Short Story

Daily life at home was less than pleasant. Father’s law practice was shaky, his income barely enough — and never quite enough.

At the end of the month, when the money ran out before the bills did, Mother would declare: “We’ll have to tighten our belts. From now on, rice and beans for dinner, bread for lunch, leftovers for breakfast.”

But in my soft voice, I would beg for just a bit of dulce de leche to pour over the rice. “Gross!” mocked my three sisters, united in their disapproval.

That was the classic porteño scene of the squeezed middle class in the 1960s. A world of economic nerves and creeping authoritarianism, where Mom and Dad had dared to wish for a son. A world of paying bills in silence, ignoring the military violence. That’s the world I was born into — Argentina’s collective nervous breakdown.

As they’d hoped, I was blond as a baby — or so the old photos claim. Pale hair, soft light. And I was their first son — in a Latin American, macho world barreling toward yet another military coup. That should’ve been enough to seal the myth of the golden boy — but the seal, like many family legends, was just slightly off kilter.

I wasn’t, by temperament, the baroncito they’d dreamed of. I wasn’t the gifted boy the gypsy had foretold. I would never be a fútbol prodigy, or a wrestling aficionado, or any type of sports fan. I was a boy of books, of long silences, of words that came slowly to me. I was the outsider.

Scene V: The Prophecy Lives in Me

A sissy boy gets hardened. He’s taught, forcefully, the gestures of a proper man: the stiff handshake, the shoving, the manly silence. And he’s made to close his eyes to tenderness.

“Men don’t cry,” they told me at five. So, I didn’t cry.

Outside the house, I remained silent—not out of shyness, but to prevent the other boys from hearing my soft, feminine voice, the very voice that had brought me so much ridicule at home.

Scene VI: I Became the Son She Imagined

The only place I could speak freely — with my little flutter — was with the Bolivian housekeeper, who never judged me. On a typical afternoon, while Rosa cleaned and my parents were away — as they often were — I wandered outside to play.

An image of me in the front yard on a hot January day, under our lone palm tree, plays back in my mind like an old home movie: Rosa, dusting with rags. Me, pale and small, head down, avoiding the sky. It was a scorching day. And as I looked at the ground, I saw the shadow of a creature with wings — and a crown.

I looked up, afraid. It was either a big butterfly or a small dove, marked with something golden on its head. In that moment, I believed I was given a sign. Not from the angels or the saints, but from the deep silence of mystery itself — a private message that I mattered; that I was seen; that fantasy would be my companion.

I suppose the message from the crowned creature was both false and true, like the gypsy’s promise of a fair-haired, successful boy. False, such stories, because they were based on illusion. True, because in their falsehood, the stories offered comfort.

And though as a boy I failed to be the comfort the gypsy had promised my parents, eventually I would return to pay that pledge — but only much later. After all of us had turned old and worn. Comfort to my aging parents, when there was no time left for new lies.

Scene VII: My Story, at Last

It was in their old age that everything cracked. Their bodies weakened, and with them, their certainties.

By then, my father — once a feared and respected lawyer — could no longer manage the bills or paperwork. His memory slipped, anxiety ruled him, and his bones couldn’t hold up the household he once commanded from afar. The man who once worked like a bull to keep us fed now relied on others. And Mother—once all iron rules and roaring opinions—began to fade.

And so it fell on me — the only lawyer in the family, the one who had taken the same reluctant path as our absent father — to handle everything: the papers, the accounts, the bureaucracy. I had learned law from necessity and inheritance, and now used it to care for the two people who, in their time, shaped me — and, in their worst moments, hurt me.

But even in their old age, I showed them only a distant form of affection. No hugs, no kisses. I had learned to show affection from a distance. That’s what gay men of my generation often did. We outsourced tenderness. That was left to my sisters — the near-triplets who had always known how to stay close. And I envied them.

Scene VIII: The Silence Between Her Words

In those twilight years, Mother and I never spoke of the gypsy’s prophecy. But the story hovered in the air whenever I fixed her pillows or laid out her pills, gently, like a prayer.

She wouldn’t revisit that tale again. Wouldn’t risk having the tale questioned by her son — the lawyer. It was as if she needed me to believe it too — as if that tale were the final wall inside her private house, the one she couldn’t bring herself to tear down.

Scene IX: Her Absence, Full of Meaning

Now that she’s gone, I often think of that moment — the gypsy with the colorful scarf, my mother’s palms open like maps, the promise thrown into the wind.

Whose memories am I carrying? My mother’s, with her wish for a son marked by fate? Or my own, which holds on to her story as a way to understand us both?

Scene X: What I Carry Forward

Perhaps the gypsy saw no future. Perhaps she saw only a woman in need of belief. And perhaps, without knowing it, she gave Mother the only true gift: a story of hope. One that she handed down to me wrapped in repetition — as if by giving me her memory, she could give me her love.

And I, who was once blonde, live inside that story — not because it’s true, but because it’s mine. And because it was hers.

Review: No stars awarded to the prophecy. But the story was passed on.

Ernesto Beckford

June 12, 2025

© Ernesto Beckford 2025

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