My mother spent the night dancing and Roberta's was sick. That's why we were sent to Saint Bonny's. People, when they find out you've been in a shelter, want to give you a hug, but it wasn't really that terrible. We didn't sleep in a huge, elongated ward with a hundred beds, like in Bellevue Hospital. There were four of us per room, and when Roberta and I arrived, there was a shortage of girls in state care, so we were the only two in the 406 and, if we wanted, we could move from one bed to another. And we wanted, go if we wanted. We changed beds every night and throughout the four months we spent there we did not get to choose one in particular.
The story didn't start that way. When I entered and the Alelada de Remate introduced us, my stomach turned. It was one thing to be taken out of bed at dawn and quite another to be released in a place I knew nothing with a girl of a completely different race. And Mary, I mean, my mother, was right. From time to time he would stop dancing long enough to tell me something important, and one of the things he would tell me was that these people didn't wash their hair and it smelled weird. Roberta, of course, does. It did smell weird, I mean. And so, when the Alelada de Remate (no one ever called her "Mrs. Itkin," just as no one said "Saint Bonaventure") she went and said, "Twyla, this is Roberta. Roberta, this is Twyla. Do your best to help yourselves," I replied:
"My mother won't be amused if I get in here.
"Great," said the Alelada. Let's see if that's how he comes looking for you.
Now that was being bad. If Roberta had laughed, he would have killed her, but she didn't laugh. He went to the window and stood there, turning his back to us.
"Turn back," said the Alelada. Don't be rude. Let's see, Twyla. Roberta. When you hear a very loud bell, they call for dinner. It is served on the ground floor. No quarrels if you don't want to run out of film. "And then, to make sure we knew what we were missing," he added, "The Wizard of Oz.
Roberta must have understood that what I meant was that my mother would be angry because they had put me in the shelter, not because I shared a room with her, since as soon as the Alelada left, she approached me and asked:
"Is your mother also sick?"
"Nope. It is that he likes to spend the night dancing.
"Ah.
He nodded his head and I liked that he understood things the first time, so for the moment I did not care that, planted there, we looked like salt and pepper, which was how the others sometimes began to call us. We were eight years old and we always suspended everything. I because I couldn't remember what I read or what the teacher said. And Roberta because she just couldn't read and didn't even pay attention in class. He was not good at anything, except playing tabas, for that he was a phenomenon: pam pick up pam pick up pam pick.
At first we didn't like each other too much, but no one else wanted to play with us because we weren't real orphans with great dead parents and in heaven. We had been kicked. Not even the Puerto Ricans of New York or the Indians of the north of the state listened to us. Inside there were girls of all classes, black, white, even two Koreans. The food was good, mind you. Or at least I liked it. Roberta was disgusted and left whole pieces on the plate: canned cold cuts, Russian steak, even fruit salad in jelly, and she didn't care if I finished what she didn't want. For Mary, dinner consisted of popcorn and an industrial chocolate milkshake. To me, a hot mashed potato with two Frankfurt sausages seemed like something worthy of Thanksgiving.
Saint Bonny's wasn't too bad, really. The older ones on the first floor bossed us a little. But nothing more. They wore lipstick and eyebrow pencil, and wiggled their knees while watching TV. Fifteen years old, sixteen even, had some. They were disowned girls, most of whom had run away from home very scared. Some poor girls who had had to get rid of some uncle of theirs, but that seemed hard to peel and also bad. My God, how bad they looked. The staff tried to keep them away from the little ones, but sometimes they caught us looking at them in the garden, where they put on the radio and danced with each other. They chased us and pulled our hair or twisted our arm. They scared Roberta and me, but neither of us wanted the other to find out, so we looked for a good list of insults to shout at them as we ran away from them through the garden. I dreamed a lot and almost always went out in the garden. A hectare, maybe one and a half, of tiny apple trees. Hundreds of apple trees. Peeled and twisted like beggars when I arrived at Saint Bonny's, but laden with flowers when I left. I don't know why I dreamed so much about that garden. The truth is that nothing happened there. Nothing too important, I mean. The older ones danced and turned on the radio and that's it. Roberta and I watched. Once, Maggie fell in the orchard. The lady in the kitchen, who had legs like parentheses. And the older ones laughed at her. We should have helped her up, I know, but those girls with lipsticks and eyebrow pencil scared us. Maggie didn't speak. The girls said they had cut out her tongue, but I guess it was a matter of birth: she would be mute. He was older, had brown skin and worked in the kitchen. I don't know if she was nice or not. The only thing I remember are those legs as parentheses and that swayed when walking. He worked from early in the morning until two, and if he was late, if he had a lot to scrub and did not leave until quarter past two or so, he would cut through the garden so as not to miss the bus and have to wait another hour. She wore a most idiotic hat (a children's hat with earmuffs) and was not much taller than us. A horrible hat. As much as she was mute, hers was ridiculous: she was dressed like a girl and never said anything about anything.
"But what if someone tries to kill her?" "I wondered those things." Or if he wants to cry? Can he cry?
"Sure," Roberta told me, "but all she has tears coming out. It doesn't make any noise.
"Can he scream?"
"What goes. Not at all.
"And hey?"
"I guess.
"Let's call her," I proposed.
And we call it:
"Hey, mute! Hey, mute!
He never turned his head.
"The one with the bowed legs! The one with the bowed legs!
Nothing. He kept walking, wiggling, while the little strings on the side of his boy's hat swayed back and forth. I think we were wrong. I think he heard perfectly, but he concealed. And even today I am ashamed to think that in reality there was someone in there who was not insignificant and who heard us insult her in that way and could not give us away.
Roberta and I got along pretty well. We changed beds every night, suspended Civics, Communication and Gymnastics. La Alelada said we disappointed her. Of the one hundred and thirty girls in state care, ninety were under the age of twelve. Almost all of them were real orphans with stupendous parents dead and in heaven. We were the only ones who had been kicked and the only ones who failed three subjects, including Gymnastics. So we got along well, because of that and because she left whole pieces of food on the plate and also had the detail of not asking anything.
'The Two Friends (a recitative)', by Toni Morrison. Epilogue by Zadie Smith. Translation by Carlos Mayor Ortega. Lumen. 96 pages, 17.90 euros. On sale June 8.
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