While the three of us were there drained, squashed like plasticine, colored by the intermittence of the television, I thought I could tell him. I thought that I could calmly go to her, early in the morning, when there was no one in the room yet, and tell her. So. Simply. “Hey, Lucía, sorry, good morning, can I talk to you?” And tell him everything. Very carefully. “Sorry, it's not that she's mad at you, really, but well, it made me feel a little bad and I wanted to tell you.” I could. Nothing was going to happen if she approached me like that. Calmly. Simply. But I kept thinking about it. Because maybe the situation would get worse later. Because then, outright, there would be no one who would want to hang out with me, if she got angry and if she said something about herself and if everyone listened to her, as always.
Better if I didn't tell him anything, right? I turned to my grandmother's side, who also had her face muddy on the television, and I secretly told her:
Hey Grandma, I'm kind of sad,
and she blinked a little, reflecting intensely, and answered me with a certain tone of obviousness. :
Well, if you're constipated, go to the tree and eat some tejocotes, those go down very well, mija
, and Mauricio, all asshole, began to laugh amidst his drool filled with snot, while the movie faded behind the commercials:
Aren't you afraid? Does Marifer poop come out? Jijiji.
And I felt like crying, squashed between the two of us in the center of the couch, suddenly overwhelmed by the perfect images on TV, because although I was going to the bathroom very well, we no longer had our tejocote tree. there in the patio of the house.
Aren't my heels around?
My mother became a worm to peek out between our legs, from under the couch.
Have you not seen them?
Her voice echoing
when colliding with the fluff of the underworld.
No I do not. No, me neither.
The cat Mauricio, baptized by my brother Mauricio in honor of his own name, came out of his hiding place in terror after noticing the searching hands.
Damn.
My mother with her turulata midge eyes reviewing the four corners of the short wall.
Oh, I left them on top of the refrigerator, my dear, so that they could cool down
, my grandmother said
.
My mother looked at her with a truly puzzled face. An eighty-seven-year-old woman dragging her
animal print
heels
from the darkness of the closet, taking them out of her cardboard box, gently dusting them off and placing them like someone who puts the star on the Christmas tree, there on top of the refrigerator.
Mauricio the cat was now making space in the kitchen sink, like a dirty dish. My head was already starting to hurt at that moment, I think from thinking so much. In reality, I shouldn't have gotten so complicated with the speech, but there I was, thinking about how Lucía would make me laugh at every word I stammered in front of her. The TV changed color. My mother began to raise her voice towards my grandmother:
Oh mom, but how
do you think that,
although she quickly shut up on her own. She expired. She leaned carefully towards the seat on the couch, leaning on the suitcase that we still had thrown on one side of the entrance, and gave her a small kiss on the forehead:
Thank you, cool mom.
My mom was gone in a second, dragging her flip-flops across the tiles she had mopped that morning with my brother. I saw her quickly grab her hairy heels and take them into the bathroom, slamming the door.
You'll open it if he arrives, Marifer!
she, she howled even though she was three meters away, and I answered her with the same volume:
Aha!
I assumed she was going to shave her legs, or paint her toenails, or curl her hair with a straightener, or touch up her makeup, or put cold spoons on her eye bags, or change her hairstyle for the third time, or plucking hair from the
intimate area
with burning wax . Once, when my dad's last months at home were progressing, when it was almost time for us to come here, he asked me to help him by holding a little mirror down there. I remember thinking that she looked almost opaque, like washed out, very different from mine.
I want to open it for you, Marifer.
Mauricio was already getting up from the couch, unbalancing the arrangement of the cushions that were now scattered over my grandmother's side.
I asked your sister Mauricio!
, my mother answered instantly, because when it was convenient for her, we stopped pretending that that place was a mansion in which sounds were easily lost.
Ash! And don't nag at me!
Mauricio walked towards the TV cabinet. One, two steps. Turning sideways, he stuck his tongue out at me, my ten-year-old brother, histrionic.
On that piece of furniture we had one of those plants that grow and grow and can drag its branches to the ground. In the little store that a Chinese woman ran, they were labeled “poto”, although in Mexico we called them “telephones”, I don't really know why. It was the first plant we bought when we arrived here, under the promise or threat of my mother that if we took good care of it we could buy more, but two months after the success of our resistant acquisition, it was still the only plant we had.
This is how Mauricio got into the habit, after discovering in a YouTube video that the famous telephone could survive practically anywhere, of cutting small twigs that he then planted in bottles filled with water and deposited in any corner possible.
Are the plants to be given as gifts?
My grandmother crushed her little eyes behind her glasses, examining.
No, they are so that we have more.
Mauricio left the new cutting on the windowsill. A window invaded by a large metal grill mesh that gave the apartment a chicken coop appearance, but in reality it was nothing more than a mechanism to prevent Mauricio the Cat from escaping us. My brother sat next to me again, returning stability to the chair. At that time they began to show
Pasapalabra
on TV.
Start with B. Measuring instrument that measures atmospheric pressure. Barometer. Yes.
I, of course, wanted to tell my brother that we didn't have any more plants in the house. That we had the same and only plant as always, only he had spread it out throughout the tiny apartment.
Starts with C. Time of night when everything is quiet. Conticinium. Yeah.
But with anything I said my brother would scream with his whistle voice.
Qui ti pisi Mirifir, qui ti pisi.
If I told him that he was really stupid, that all his fucking plants were going to die in his fucking water bottles, he was going to tell me
Yi quiilliti Mirifir, ni qué ti pili Mirifir.
Because my mom had already been repeating the same sentence for a while:
You're really heavy Marifer, but you're getting really fucking heavy, huh.
And Mauricio always supported him, claiming that yes,
Marifer is already in “burrescence,”
referring to the fact that I was a donkey on the eve of adolescence, or an adolescent donkey, or a teenager transforming into a donkey.
Burriscienta, Burriscienta,
the little boy hummed, while my grandmother just stayed crushed and silent, wrapped in her serape, always cold even though it was infernally hot. And Mauricio screams and screams and screams. So I better not say anything.
E. Visigoth king who ruled between 466 and 484 after having murdered his brother Theodoric II. Pass word.
Maybe he could lighten the approach to Lucía by asking her if she had also seen
Pasapalabra
with her family. Just like the three of us,
there, gawking at the sequences of the wheel. My grandmother, Mau and Me. Spread like jelly on the couch. Paying attention to the glare of the TV as if hypnotized. As if there was something of life or death there behind the presenter's dry face. As if we were trying to find the code behind it. As if
Pasapalabra
were the summary of all of Spain, as if that nightly program were its very essence and to guess just one of the answers would be to begin to understand its truth. Mauricio the Cat carved his little ear with a fork from the sink, full of joy.
And even amidst the roar of the television, at a volume of forty-something so that my grandmother could understand, my mother's tune could be heard sneaking through the crack in the bathroom door.
EVERYTHING COLLAPSED INSIDE ME, INSIDE ME.
For each lengthening of her syllables he could translate her gestures in front of the mirror, the look of hunger she gave herself as if longing for future despair. She even my breath already, it tastes like ice to me, it tastes like ice to me. She would be smearing her fingers soaked in body oil over the image of her reflection, unburdened by the obligation to clean it up after herself. She would purse her lips as if she were being told a tragedy, the stricken face of an opera singer in the throes of the final drama.
Let's see Marifer, learn the answers, let's see if we can send you to TV later. Oh grandma, it's not that easy. Contains the Ñ. Represent images or events in your fantasy while you sleep. Dream. Yes.
My grandmother wrapping herself in the serape, Mauricio sniffling, Mauricio the Cat placidly in the sink, my mother singing in agony and me thinking that I could tell him. That it was enough to approach her on Monday when everyone was arriving at the room: “Hey Lucía, can I talk to you for a moment?” And tell him everything. Just like that. “Well, the truth is that what you said the other day at recess bothered me a little.” And that's it. Tell him everything. No? I don't know. She was capable and looked at me with that rabbit face of hers, preparing revenge in her mind. And I'm very fucking naive. She would look out of the corner of her eye at her little group of friends laughing in the back of the room and they would know. And there she was no longer a friend of Lucía, nor of Lucía's friends, nor of any of the twenty in the room, who were also Lucía's friends in some way.
Maybe I should let my hair be long. I felt around the back of my neck and there was no way that would be enough for a braid, or two buns, or a ponytail, not even with gel. I imagined all the hairstyles that the girls at school wore, neatly tied in sturdy rubber bands for physical education classes, and then I saw myself with my mop hair, arriving late to class with the pillow printed on my cheek. She looked with two little braids that stretched her temples, turning around to pass a piece of paper to her friend. Both laughing softly. I had to let my hair be long.
Already when my grandmother said with a plaintive tone:
Well, doesn't the condemned man know how to get there?
, the buzzer that we had as a doorbell was heard:
RIIIIIIIIIN. MARIFER GO OPEN IT UP! I ALREADY HEARD I'M COMING! RIIIIIIN. MARIFER! WHAT A FUCKING MOTHER! I'M COMING!
Me in my star pajamas and shark slippers, straightening my hair in front of the door. The intercom:
Yes? Yes, go ahead. It's at the bottom by the stairs. Yes you're welcome.
I hung up. I exhaled. The door was heard closing, footsteps dragged down the hallway, the strides
tUn tUn tUn
as if climbing the steps two at a time. I had to say
Tsss, get out, get out
to my brother who was already stuck in front of the door:
Get out, net Mauricio.
I already had my hand on the handle when he knocked.
BZZZ BZZZ
. When he opened it, a smell like liquefied pine entered the house, truly scorching. A smell that would permeate the fabric of our cushions, the fur of the Mauricio Cat, and the hairs in my nostrils for several more days. The smell of man. He was a very tall man, really very tall. He was wearing highly polished moccasins, seventies-style flared pants (holy cow), a belt with a prominent buckle, and his shirt was open halfway, showing a few measly little curly hairs.
Very good.
And the squeeze of his hand.
Of the little that I knew about Spain before we came to Spain (ignoring the Spanish tortilla) it was Picasso, Picasso the painter and the paintings of the painter Picasso. Faces disfigured by the draining of his features, noses with the rigidity of a stone and eyes like squeezed lemon, disinterested. Faces that I quickly sensed in the first people I saw at the airport, at immigration control, in the taxi driver, in the people on the street. They all seemed to me to be, in a certain way, extractions from the same brush, from the same god who distributed his masterpiece. Picasso people from the land of Picasso. But this man. This man was truly the pinnacle. A real cubist gentleman. He was a horrible man.
Even though I was a little girl who cried little, at that moment I felt a huge urge to scream. I don't think I had ever thought about my dad in any of the times I opened the door to a maternal suitor. And it baffled me that the first thing that made me remember him with such fervor was not his status as his father, his participation in my upbringing, his moments of affection, but thinking that he was much more handsome than this disgusting man.
Since that day when the first guy came to the house (the new house, the one here), my mother had told me to always offer:
Do you want a glass of water?
when she invited him in. But at that moment the only thing I wanted to say to him was “Get out of here, Mr. stinker, stay away from my mother, what do you think, you damn squibby lizard, don't even think about showing your horrible face in this house again, eh, do you hear me?” ?” I thought about the consequences that a comment like that would bring me and I pushed it out of my head while I poured the glass with the sink key.
I also thought about my dad's eyes. Eyes as dark as the burning straw. I thought that if a ghostly genie like
Aladdin
's came out of the faucet , I wouldn't hesitate to beg him to transport me to the filth in which I would be living now. That he would take me there and leave me abandoned forever, washing the dishes in the sink all day, washing his dirty clothes, putting up with the nightly scandals that my mother put up with. As long as I'm not here. As long as I was in front of a friendly face, tailored to the size of my memories.
I was about to hand the glass of water to that man who had my grandmother scared, suddenly a tamale lying silent among the many blankets, when my mother came stamping out of the bathroom as if nothing had happened:
Hello Juan, thank you for waiting.
Juan. The name of the demon.
He gave her a kiss on each cheek, as everyone here greeted each other (hypocritical cynic), and took the fake leather bag that he had left ready on the dining room chair.
Well, children, they take care of themselves, they take care of their grandmother, they have a good dinner, they go to sleep early, eh.
An attempted threat that since then lacked the weight of yesteryear.
Oh the keys! The keys, the keys.
My mother grabbed the keys that were next to the sink, pinned to a souvenir from Veracruz. She approached my grandmother's forehead.
Goodbye cool mom.
And she grabbed “Juan’s” arm before slamming the door in my face.
Juan…
Contains the Q. Technique, activity or sport of horse riding. Horse riding!
I shouted the answer without even realizing it. Damn Juan, son of a bitch. He could still hear my mother's laughter and heels rushing down the stairs. She didn't want to think about the messes he would make when he started drinking. Thinking about my mom dancing like she was crazy, pulling up her dress in the middle of the street, rolling down some avenue, vomiting on Juan's shoes. (Well…) My mom falling asleep on the sheets with her heels still on.
Animalprint
heels
. I dropped between the two lumps of the chair, suddenly completely tired.
Maybe if I told Lucía what I thought we would become friends. Maybe that was just enough for her to ask for forgiveness. For her to admit, perhaps under a boost of confidence, that she also felt tremendous pressure to please others. That from then on we could eat together every break, go to the movies on Wednesdays, invite each other to our homes on weekends, just like I did with Ana Pau before we left Puebla. She would shake her two little braids and hug me. Maybe.
That's it, but I'll rewrite that damn thing!
On TV they had gone to some commercial breaks.
Oh grandma, don't even tell me.
The three of us were already fulfilling a silent agreement to stay crushed there until our bellies began to growl. My grandmother, Mau and I: three defeated skins.
Even then it happened to me that when an advertisement for feminine hygiene products came out I would turn red, red like a tomato. Even though my dad was no longer present and it was only fucking Mau who acted like a fool when the false drops of menstruation shone brightly, I felt as if a heavenly force had suddenly undressed me, spread my legs, and sniffed me with its hands. invisible and say out loud: “Yes. This girl is bleeding from her pussy.”, so that everyone would know.
In this ad there was a tall woman, with her hair tied up and sports clothes, preparing to run a marathon. It was clear that a tampon was placed in the locker room, one of those that to date I did not dare to put in because a cousin had told me that tampons take away your virginity. I knew that all the girls in my school used them because one day when I went down and I didn't have wipes, I whispered to one of my classrooms if she brought some because I was “in my day.” At first she didn't understand me, but I guess she saw something in my rueful face that made her understand the occasion and then she stealthily passed me a tampon under the table. Since I didn't know how to tell him that I didn't use tampons, I went straight to the bathroom and made a primitive towel with the toilet paper, rolling up my pants like a diaper. Then I threw the tampon in the trash, trying to bury it deep in all the used papers, for fear that my partner would come in and see that the tampon she had given me was unopened.
At the end of the advertisement the woman won the race. She looked happy, dazzling, full, while she ran the colossal track, as if effortlessly, as if pushed by the force of wearing a tampon well placed and inserted to the depths of her soul. She raised her arms in front of the audience. She was hugging her mother. She played a closing song. It seemed to me that if she grew my hair long and learned to put in a tampon, I too could run like her. Incessantly, to infinity.
The church bells rang outside. The screams of the little Portuguese couple who lived above us. Chair legs dragging. The machine gun on television. And we are soporific. The three of them there drained. My grandmother in a ball, Mauricio biting his nails, me with a terrible headache, thinking about my dad's eyes again. And Mauricio the Cat.
Mauricio the Cat.
Mauricio, where is your cat?
The fucking Cat Mauricio.
I told my brother to keep his mouth shut, that it hadn't been my fault, to calm down, that it had been that disgusting Juan with his cubist face, that he had left the door open. And Mauricio screams and screams, wondering what was going to happen to poor Mauricio the Cat, how he was going to survive in the danger of the night.
Don't suck Mauricio, your cat is stray.
And Mauricio screams and screams. And I wanted to cut off the idiot Juan's balls, which is why we shouldn't let anyone in who wasn't part of the family, who didn't know how we lived. And my grandmother waking up from her fourth dream saying that if eggs were needed she would go to the store to buy some.
Oh grandma...
And Mauricio screams and screams, saying no, no, that he wasn't going to stay, that he wanted to go look for his cat, who was accompanying me, that I should stay if not.
You stay here with grandma, Mauricio. Piri Mirifir! And don't nag at me.
I grabbed the keys, slammed the door, went down to the heat of the street.
How was I going to find fucking Gato Mauricio? People and people passed by in front of the portal that closed behind me. How was I going to find him on that fucking avenue? Surely he had already gone far away. If the fucking cat could climb up to who knows who's house. If I only knew how to go to school and back. If it had been so long. If only I was there. Well click alone.
Then I had the idea of going to the neighborhood police. Go to the police about a missing cat. At the reception window, a very fat woman opened her eyes like a toad. I told him that Mauricio and that my grandmother and that I don't know what, and that it had been half an hour, and that the cubist gentleman who was my mother's suitor, and that my brother, and that Mauricio, and that Mexico, and that no, and that Yes, and that I still didn't know my street, and that time was passing, and that
Pasapalabra
, and that it was passing very quickly, and that yes, and that thank you very much, and that I would wait in the room that you indicated to me and that I thank you very much again.
I didn't wait long because then a uniformed man came and asked the room:
To report a disappearance?
And I got up and followed him down a very narrow hallway. He opened the door to an office for me and said:
Take a seat, please.
He had a thick, bushy mustache.
Never, not even in Mexico, had I been in a police station, trying to fake the solemnity that I pretended in front of this man. My inexperience was also aggravated by the cloudy feeling of surveillance that emanated from the two paintings hanging in my periphery, one on the left wall and the other on the right, both like mirrors, exactly the same: portraits of the Spanish king with his arms crossed, in a suit. gray, smiling majestically at the camera. Pictures that in that tiny office marked a ratio of two kings of Spain for one police employee.
I told my tragic story from the little chair. King number one was looking at me. The cop looked at me. King number two was looking at me. My banishment was quick, of course. When it became clear that Mauricio was a cat and not a child with suicidal tendencies, the mustachioed man's face changed into visible disgust. I tried to hold back the little tears of humiliation. And no, and no, I repeated to myself. They couldn't send an agent to look for the cat for me. That was not like that. In a small town perhaps, but not in Madrid. Here they were always overwhelmed. Always. That couldn't be done. Arriving at a police station to report the disappearance of a cat. No. But you would do me the favor of registering the incident. In case anyone reported a missing cat. Although it did not correspond to his functions. He was being generous.
And I was grateful. A “Thank you very much” which was thank you very much for giving me your time, thank you very much for letting me come to your office, to your country, thank you very much for allowing me such first world luxuries, to me, a poor Indian in need of mercy. The king of Spain looked at me pleased with his four eyes while I timidly closed the door and repeated a third “Thank you very much” and a last “Excuse me,” even though outside the office there were at least five cops having a coffee, chatting. and laughing and not helping me look for the fucking cat.
Leaving the police station I started walking in search of him. Well, what was I going to do to him? Even though I was sure that Mauricio the Cat, after his brief stay of just one month, would never return to our apartment. I held back my anger, I held back my shame, just to avoid crying in public. Out of pride, yes, I started walking very firmly, as if nothing had happened. I began the route I took every morning to go to school, to try something. A rather boring path that consisted of going straight, straight, straight, and turning to the end in a small closed street where the primary-secondary-high school where I studied was located.
You could tell it was Saturday. People walked past me in groups, passing me, speaking in unnecessary tones. The sidewalk tables were full. With beers in huge mugs and wines in plastic glasses wobbling with the passing cars. Avenue. A few steps to the right and your name was called. My mom would be here, I thought. In one of these underground bars overloaded with LED lights, rubbing the ass of fucking Juan, whose face would already be more than disfigured by now. The
chuntachunta
, the
chuntachú
. What would the club where she met my dad have been like? That dive from the state of Hidalgo. Was I born in a den?
The streets of Mexico would never be like this. A succession of even buildings. Flowered on the edges. Creamy and honey color. Absent of grated clotheslines. Dogs like wolves drooling on you while you pass unconsciously underneath. And the sidewalks. The sidewalks to trip over and never live again. Unthinkable in Spain. Just as the cop had explained to me, things worked differently here. Definitely.
It usually took me twenty-five minutes to get to school, if I had half an hour to spare. The closest buildings were the prettiest. Because of that height, the area improved and it was noticeable in the type of premises, the little green park, and even in the cleanliness of the sidewalks. In my classroom there was a group of girls: Paula, Violeta and Lucía, who lived there, right around the corner. I was stupid, of course, when it was time to leave I tried to go slower than them so as not to bother them with their post-class gossip, but no matter how stupid I was, every day I saw them saying goodbye in front of their doors. , give each other hugs, say see you tomorrow, smile.
That's just where I found the fucking cat. The fucking cat Mauricio. His mother's son. Licking his paws next to a garbage container. The most common black cat. But it was him. Our cat.
MAURICIO!
I yelled at him without him flinching. The fucking animal oblivious to all the drama of this world. And I grabbed him very quickly by the skin.
Meow!
It should be said that in my family we were all very spiritual. My grandmother had always preached the importance of unconditional faith, as a safeguard against any type of circumstance, both adverse and favorable. My mother interpreted this inheritance as a faithful dedication to all the religions there were and to be, of which she constantly changed like someone changing underwear. And that's why I came out believing in what happened, that that night it was Mauricio the Cat like a giant star, the star of the Three Wise Men guiding me to his portal.
I rang all the possible bells, starting with those on the first level.
Hello, does Lucía live here?
With one arm she carried Mauricio the Cat, who showed his discomfort with desperate meows.
Hello, is this Lucía's house?
MEAAAU
Hello, good evening, does Lucia live here?
Until I reached the fourth button in which she answered me in a very cautious and feminine voice:
Yes, who is she?
And I said:
Marifer, her classmate.
As much as I had thought about it so much, I had no idea what to say to her when I already had her there, facing me, making a face of embarrassment at me, holding the door of the portal, looking at me without saying anything. He smelled like coconut shampoo and his hair was covered in drool, as if he had just brushed it after a bath.
What are you doing here?
he told me he. And I let off steam.
Well look, Lucía, I was going to wait until Monday to tell you but since I was around here I decided to tell you right now. Honestly, I think you were very rude with what you said about me at recess. What you made up about my feelings towards that nose that really blows my mind. The fucking lie you made up. And she looks, the chili would have been worth it to me, but now they bring it reduro with me and I really don't deserve it. I know that you didn't do it with the intention of screwing me, that it was just because you were afraid that he would know that you are in love with him. Okay, no problem with that. But I think you should at least apologize to me, because they are screwing me and screwing me all fucking day and not even anyone can say anything about you. Honestly, I think you were very rude, but I can forgive you and there's no quarrel, we can be friends if you want.
I told him everything like that. Of one. How it came straight from my soul. I readjusted myself to Mauricio the Cat. I raised my gaze that without realizing it had been slipping to the floor. When I saw her, I noticed that he was looking at me with a face three times as frowny. A face not only of confusion, but of disgust. He told me:
If you don't speak to me in Spanish, I don't understand you
.
I stayed very quiet. I didn't even breathe. We looked directly into each other's eyes for a few seconds. Very quiet. Lucia frowned at me. She pursing her mouth at me. Puckering herself up until she looked like an extraction from Lucía. A dislocation of Lucia. A Picasso painting of Lucia's face. An amorphous and cubist face.
I didn't think anything. I had already thought too much. Suddenly my hand was already burning, trembling. She was holding her face as if it were going to fall. She shouted in my direction a series of words that clouded my tears, rude things from the land of Picasso. I truly slapped her like there was no tomorrow.
I ran away practically instantly. In the depths of my consciousness I could only hear Lucía's voice screaming and screaming and her mother's voice screaming at me not to run away,
savage
, not to run away, from the doorway of her beautiful house. Now that I look back on it this way, I realize how until then I had not considered the improbability of us returning to Mexico. How that burning in my hand became the first indication that what I considered a simple raving of my mother was simply my life.
In my memory I see myself running like never before. I see myself running with the Cat Mauricio whipping himself in my arms. I see myself running as if this well-known city were a huge sock that a giant was starting to turn inside out, and I was going to be squashed, along with all the fluff, inside.