Borders of friendship

Borders of friendship

Recently I have read two stories about unique and complicated friendship: “Light skinned girls and Kelly Rowlands” by Alexia Arthurs and “The gift” by Rosario Ferre. The two stories tell us about friendship between girls that love each other. The two stories show us the pure nature of love, in both stories two friends are ready to sacrifice everything in order to keep their friends beside them. But courage and stubbornness can strengthen or end friendship completely. 

The story “The gift” is about two schoolgirls Merceditas Caseres and Carlotta Rodriguez who studied at school “The Sacred Heart” in Santa Cruz. in spite of the fact that two girls were from they same city, they had different family origin and status as well as various life objectives. For the three and half years at school they became best and affectionate friends. When comparing them one could easily realize that they were unlike and opposite. While Merceditas was beautiful, intelligent and shy, Carlotta was plump, merry and lacking social graces. But they fulfilled each other. They did not mention their family names but only appreciated one another. Some nuns at school regarded their friendship as a kind of intimacy. The reason for that was being side by side in the class, in the garden, in the dining room even in the bedroom.

While Merceditas lived in the world of thoughts, Carlotta lived in the world of actions. Merceditas “was a blessing from heaven” for everyone. Her only dream was to graduate the school with honours and continue her study, as it was the only ticket for freedom. On the other hand, Carlotta had no intellectual ambitions; her goal was to participate in her city’s progress. She dreamed to be a carnival queen and represent her city. So she had no choice but to take the risk. Her motto “Whoever wants the sky must learn to fly” clearly proved that she was ready for everything. These two different objectives also influenced their studies and world-view.

A peek of true love between two friends can be observed at the end of the story. When Carlotta was expelled from school, Merceditas had nothing to do with it. But when Mother Artigas started to cut Carlotta’s curly hair, cursing and insulting her, ripping apart her clothes and slapping her face, Merceditas dared to intervene. She put aside all her dreams, goals and 3,5 years of study and took the side of her best and beloved friend. At that moment Carlotta was presented with the main gift in her life - real friendship.

In the first story we can evidence how friends can sacrifice everything in order to save their relation. The next story is completely different to the previous one. It is about friendship that was full of love but was cracked due to stubbornness. The story “Light skinned girls and Kelly Rowlands” is about two Jamaiican origin girls: Kimberly and Cecilia. Kimberly lived with her mother while Cecilia in the dorm room during her study. When Kim met Cecilia for the first time they were both freshmen. From that moment they had eye contacts and smiles across the rooms. Even if Cecilia did not notice her presence, Kim would always remember every single detail about her. At some moment Kimberly thought “We might have been invisible to everyone else but we were not invisible to each other”. After some meetings and hang outs they got acknowledged and became close friends. Kimberly was  like a flower and Cecilia the Sun, she could not exist without her. They became less available for others as if they had fallen in love. Their friendship was complicated and sometimes it was more than that. They could easily cross the borders of friendship towards intimacy. They bought sex toys in the sex shop and sometimes slept together. The two girls could easily take off their underwear facing each other and share some intimate secrets about virginity or their sexual habits. 

It was like a pure love between two females. But there was one person - Adam. adam was the only person that could stop friendship from turning into love affairs between two girls. Kimberly wanted to be more than Adam for Cecilia in her life. One could only wish such a friendship. But one wrong step ruined everything. This step was taken by Kimberly. The two girls had lots of arguments about race and the colour of skin. At the end of the story Kim hurt Cecilia for the first and the last time. And when Cecilia walked away from her, she was too stubborn to get her back. The friendship that had been built through hard moments was ruined with a single action.