But now it is the same as always: The petals are dry and hard, like a fistful of indigenous, maybe obsidian blades. Not a single bud coming up anywhere. He sees himself, as he did so many times at sunset, sharing his secret hiding place between the trees by the river with the boy. They sit in an old abandoned truck covered with vines and flanked by piles of old bricks, and he listens to the boy’s chatter while he gazes out at the trees that don’t belong to him and imagines them covered with orchids.
He lifts the fake branch and waits for the water to drip off the stem and the petals, then scurry down the shower drain. Later, he holds it with one hand, keeping the other hand under it to catch the water that continues to leak through as he takes the plant out of the shower, with his flip-flops dragging, and back to its nail on the wall in the balcony. When he returns, he hears his wife’s voice saying goodbye to the neighbor, tearing into him right away. There you go again with your hang-up with that orchid, instead of getting dressed to go help Marta, that poor woman, and then to the wake. I don’t know how you can concern yourself with that idiotic thing with the boy’s disgrace still so fresh, and knowing that it happened while he was walking over here...
The man doesn’t say anything. He goes back to the bathroom and carefully closes the door so his wife doesn’t hear him lock it. He puts the bucket and the little jug back where they belong; he uses the bathroom rug to wipe off the water that dripped on the floor, then stands before the mirror hanging above the bathroom sink. He looks at his faded eyes and hears the boy’s voice pounding in his ears, telling him not to go to his house, that it’s better to meet by the hideout near the river, the only really safe place. And he remembers his sudden rage, the childish eyes growing wider from shock, and that sensation of power once everything was finished. He pulls from his pocket the blade with the golden handle, a gift from his father, and checks the sharpness with the same spare discipline with which he performed the ritual of watering the plants.
Translation by Achy Obejas
What for, this burden
by Michel Encinosa Fú
Vibora
Daniela killed herself.
She fried her brains, that’s what I mean.
They said it happened in the theater’s restroom. During the blackout. She broke open an electrical outlet, pulled the wires out, and scraped them down with a nail cutter. Then she stabbed herself in the head with a pair of scissors, two times, and tied the wires to them. Right into her brain. They said that doesn’t hurt, that you can’t feel pain in your brain even if it gets bitten. Then she sat herself down on the toilet, they said. And when the electricity came back on, the volts and amps blew through her at will. They said you just had to see what was left after that. You could peer inside her skull through the holes. Can you believe it? And her panties were wet. But her makeup was intact. Daniela wasn’t one of those lezzies who cries, they said.
Though apparently she was one of those who pees herself, they added.
Nobody actually saw anything, but that’s what they said, that’s what they’re still talking about.
And I believe them.
I say thanks and take off down the shaded sidewalk because the red and blue riot of lights from the squad cars is driving me crazy.
It’s a pretty day. There’s a bit of sunshine, little clouds, an incredible clarity.
“Hey, is it true some crazy woman killed herself in there?” La Gloria asks, coming up to me with that perennial smell of garbage that’s always about her. “Were you there? What happened? Hey, what the fuck are you laughing about?”
“It’s a beautiful day,” I tell her, avoiding the hand that’s trying to grab my arm.
“That’s because somebody wanted it to be that way and pushed some buttons in his office.”
That’s true.
It’s horrible.
It’s as if I had to be reminded that the contentment in my belly was owed to a calf that had been dismembered just a few days before.
Or worse: owed to the person who did the dismembering.
La Gloria insists: “What happened? Was it because of trouble with her lovers? Or did somebody tell her she had AIDS? C’mon, you fag, tell me.”
“It’s none of your business,” I say. “Zip it, shove it up your ass.”
She spits at my feet and walks back to the mountain of garbage covering the dumpsters.
I watch for a few seconds as she starts to dive, dig, salvage.
I’m tired of watching her. Every day, the same corners, the same dumpsters. This is La Gloria, from our neighborhood. The one who eats what you shit. The one who dresses in everybody else’s clothes. The one who picks up cigarette butts at bars. The one who scours the whole city as if it were some free supermarket. You know, that one... barbaric, and so damn young.
Her Lycra’s ripped at the butt. Her dark skin is cellulitefree. Thin and straight, her body. Curly and ash-colored, her hair. So young.
I turn my back on her and continue down 10 de Octubre Boulevard. It doesn’t matter, up or down, but down’s easier. Until the intersection with Vía Blanca. Then left, until the Lacret junction. Then down again to the boulevard. Triangles are always worse than circles. I walk along, contemplating my shadow, which moves ahead of me, until I realize I have no shadow at all to contemplate anymore. I don’t know when but at some point the sky clouded over. I’m afraid I can be slow to notice things like that.
They always told me: “Don’t go around breaking girls’ hearts. Especially the young ones. The younger they are, the worse it is.”
Ten years ago, Daniela was seven years old and I was seventeen. Ten years ago, we were both hungry. Like so many siblings in the tenements, we slept in the same bed; it was her fault I didn’t find out for the longest time about nighttime masturbation, serene and alone. But I never held it against her. I never held anything against her. Not even the way she slapped and kicked at me when she had nightmares. Instead, I’d talk to her.
“Just imagine it, Dani, my little dove. A Harley Davidson. Do you know what a Harley Davidson is? It’s a motorcycle like Uncle Patricio’s. That big, like a couch. You and me on one, on the highway. Can you imagine it? A highway, like in the movies. You know: Kansas, Arizona, Omaha, Salt Lake City, sun, big sky, straight ahead, just straight ahead, right up to the clouded horizon. There’s always lightning on that horizon, you know. Can you imagine it, my little dove? You see the light cut through the sky but the Harley’s engine won’t let you hear the thunder, so you go ahead and it never rains because the clouds run away when they see us, and there’s almost no grass, and everything’s quiet except the Harley’s engine; you’re laughing, and I just go faster and faster. Can you imagine it?”
“Yes,” she’d answer. “We’re gonna do that someday?”
“Just like I’m telling you, my little dove, someday, someday we’re gonna do all that.”
Yuri would come over and listen for a while, then leave. Yuri was a very boring older brother because he was never hungry. He’d dropped out of college to sell marijuana and PC components.
It was Yuri who pressured my mother to let me go on scholarship. “We’re too crowded here,” he said. “My clients come over, they see so many people and get nervous.” Later, he found a lover for my mother so that she left the house too. Some guy from Miramar, high up, you know. “And don’t worry; I’ll take care of Dani. She’s gonna be better fed and looked after with me than you anyway.”