<hr/><div class="floatleft">(http://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/8/89/Onnecamug1.jpg)</div><br/><strong>Name:</strong>Onneca de Goni<br/><strong>Faction:</strong>Unknown<br/><strong>Date:</strong>June 2, 1875<br/><strong>Time of Day:</strong>Morning<br/><strong>Location:</strong>Bodega de Goni<br/><strong>Tagged:</strong>Agatha<br/><hr/><br/>The bodega was quiet late in the morning, when the ladies of Gomorra who breathed life into the shop were still busy wrangling children or performing their wifely duties. And since Onneca was unwed, since she had no children of her own, since she rose with the sun and worked diligently, it was only the owner herself at the Bodega de Goni. Maybe later she could look forward to two customers or four, and they always came in pairs; one woman alone seldom seemed to find reason or motivation to be in the bodega. Ms. de Goni was always third wheel to the spirited and hours-long conversations that took place over neatly folded linens and tins of beauty product. If she were kind enough, then often she would sell something, and it only took a little money to get ahead when so much of her merchandise was made by her own two hands.<br/><br/>It was almost a guilty pleasure. It wasn't a guilty pleasure in the way that a saloon might be for the menfolk, but it was very much a place the ladies went to get away from their husbands. Sometimes, when the weather chilled or there was something to lament, Onneca would break out a bottle of sweet golden rum, but for the most part the guilty pleasures were emotional rather than visceral; contemplative rather than obvious. Onneca was good for the conversation. She never talked about any man in her life and preferred to let the ladies direct the flow of it. It was a humble, cozy existence. It was missing something very significant.<br/><br/>It wasn't missing a purpose, exactly. She had come to Gomorra to raise a business, and she had. But when she had come to California, it had been for something else, and now that door was closed. She did not dare open it in front of the gossiping ladies of Gomorra. Alone, ultimately, she sat in the back room of the bodega with the beautiful dresses that nobody wanted, and she was in good company. Her fingers toyed with the corners of a weathered pulp, a cheaply printed novel whose cover was worn to shreds but still barely legible as<em>Un Diario Intimo Entre Mujeres.<sup>1</sup> </em>It was a well-loved copy, eroded by Onneca's own handling, and though she had read it cover to cover a dozen times, she was anxious for the next page before she had even started the one before it. Her fingernails strummed the pages as though she were searching a kitten's chin for a spot to scratch.<br/><br/>The ring of the bell at the front broke her intense concentration, and she jumped in her seat, and pushed the tattered pulp urgently into a drawer where scissors were kept. "Buenos dias,"<sup>2</sup>she called through the shop as she stood and smoothed down the fabric of her bouse and skirt with flighty movements. It would be a few moments before anyone could navigate the aisles and find her there, a bit misty-eyed and pink around her dark lashes from the journey of her book. She was dressed for work, a cocoa walking skirt and sepia blouse that were loose everywhere but the tightly cinched waist. Only a single petticoat insulated the pull of the skirt's fabric across the gentle rock of her hips, a crass difference to the cool weather fashions out East where hoops of steel emphasized and encaged a woman's hips the way a chastity belt would insure a princess' virtue. No, it was a bit warm in California to dress in layers sufficient to stop a bullet, and that, in part, had been why Onneca was successful here.<br/><br/>"Welcome to the Bodega de Goni," she beamed, and not knowing from whence her customer had come, a similar sentiment followed in Spanish. "Siéntete como en tu casa."<sup>3</sup><br/><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Translations</div><div class="spoiler_body"><strong>1</strong>: An Intimate Diary Between Women; also A Daily Intimacy Between Women<br/><strong>2</strong>: Good morning  :P<br/><strong>3</strong> Make yourself at home</div></div>