She and her shadow relished that scene from the telenovela, which made them and their friends laugh so much because of its kitschy language and its singularly disturbing and maladjusted hero... but this was no time for jokes. Now they needed to understand if that stuff that made her feel wet and broken was in fact the white blood of love. Leaning against the wall, they wanted to determine how the unknown substance had been deposited inside her. They wanted to determine who had extradited her from her peaceful world in the provinces to bring her to this place, and especially to this corner where it was impossible to see the small turret of the chapel in which resided the city’s most loved virgin — her patron.
If we could at least see the steeple, she thought, we’d know which way to walk. If, at the very least, they could reach a small fragment, a miniscule piece of the compound around the Virgin, they’d be saved. The Virgin would protect her shadow and would bring back all that had been taken.
But here at the wall the only things in sight were her and her shadow. They looked at each other with shame because of the twisted projections on the wall, still in the thrall of recent events.
She let herself fall. With her back against the wall, she eased her way down it, and once on the ground, she opened her legs. The substance was still there, lingering. The substance took her back to the memory of a drunk Horacio, his tongue in her ear, saying, Let me suck your tits... Horacio squeezing her against the bed while Michelle brushed her teeth at the bathroom sink. Horacio saying over and over how he wanted to tangle them both with his body, to join them in an infinite night. She was going to say in an infinite night of love, but the words got stuck in her throat and she left it at that.
Michelle, an innocent, would talk to him from the bathroom: My love, let the girl rest... Get her ready for bed and come to our room, I’m waiting.
The girl kicked. The girl had no shadow to defend her then because the house was full of light. The girl cried and hit Horacio so that he’d leave her in peace, so that he’d get off her, so that he would not stick his hard fiesh into her flesh... and Horacio just laughed... Horacio never answered Michelle but rather bit the girl’s mouth. A girl almost as small as Michelle, but more lost, more alone in the storybook wilderness of his mouth and then the neighborhood to which Horacio had brought them.
That’s when she stopped fighting and just let things happen... She decided to pray, but she didn’t know any prayer in its entirety, didn’t know any potent psalms, but she prayed nonetheless — so that Michelle wouldn’t step out of the bathroom and surprise them, so that she wouldn’t have to offer explanations, so that she wouldn’t have to ask forgiveness, that’s what she prayed for.
The only thing left was Horacio whimpering, his continued delirium: Gimme your tits, gimme the milk from your tits, lemme drink it, lemme... and then silence. Silence and an acute pain in her vagina. A sharp pain that hours later was still present. A pain that made her shadow bend over while the two of them ran through the blackness of the night in Regla, looking for the Virgin. A lacerating pain, acidic and nauseous. A pain that made her breathing short, a pain that made it impossible to shake off her worsening, perpetual tremors.
Michelle didn’t come out of the bathroom. Michelle never knew what Horacio did to her. Michelle found him on the floor, without his pants but with his underwear undeniably on. Michelle was so determined that he be a part of things that she refused to look at the condition of the girl’s bed. Michelle did not see the disoriented eyes of her friend, nor did she feel her tremors or the sharpness in her lower abdomen. She only had eyes for him: Sweetness, you’re so drunk.
Nor did Michelle ever understand why the girl used the pretext of getting some fresh air to go out the door and never come back. Years later, they would talk about these things. Years later, the girl would say she had a panic attack and decided that the best time to visit the Virgin on the shores of the bay would always be right then, at dawn. Years later, Michelle would feign belief in this excuse, as if she was actually convinced, then change the subject.
But in those wee hours, she and her shadow were not thinking about Michelle. They imagined as they wailed against the wall that Michelle had been devoured by Horacio, swallowed by his dark mouth. His mouth and the streets were part of the same image. Horacio’s mouth extended the length of the neighborhood, through all of Regla. He couldn’t live anywhere else in Havana. He and Regla belonged to each other. His mouth and this ultramarine district, black lines on the same color strip. Black like the sea and the Virgin; the only black woman adored on this island.
They adored her too. Ever since Emilio, right smack in the middle of a trance, had told them that the Virgin was their mother too, she and the shadow had made intermittent pilgrimages to the chapel just to leave white flowers at her altar. Trips made on the mythic ferry, each one to view the appearance of the black mother in the midst of the stench, in that bay saturated by oil; so many journeys to Horacio’s neighborhood without ever going as far as his house out of sheer terror that that night could be repeated; so many restrictions; so many pleas to the mother-virgin-black-woman-Yemayá-patron-of-Havanaguardian-of-fishermen-docks-stevedores-seas-pregnanciesfury-storms-peace-and-pools-of-water. So much begging: Please don’t abandon me, please don’t leave me, don’t leave me, oh Virgin, men’s anger is aimed at my sex; liberate me from heartlessness and wildness; liberate me from lack of affection; be my mother; make me virginal always, before and after each birth, so that each one leaves my womb untouched.
There was so much supplication to the small black woman dressed in that intense blue, to the talismanic stone that Emilio had given them the day of the baptism — deadline day to name guardian angels — only to falter in the end, to let Horacio drag her along with Michelle; to leave a celebration that could not be postponed, and the long list of acquaintances who kept leaving, finally abandoning her in the vestibule full of fear, knowing that once Michelle went off to the bathroom there was no going back, that the only relief would be exposure to that darkened place, chock full of thieves from the docks, workers, traffickers in whatever merchandise filled their hands or their bellies; all that praying, for this. It wasn’t fair.
Emilio said the black mother was obsessed with justice. Emilio, godfather-father-big-brother-blood-of-her-blood poisoned against other men, said their mother would never abandon them, especially if they were in Regla, her home, the ultramarine. But on this airless night, as dawn neared, the only thing she and her shadow had to hold onto was a wall that left them exposed. It was so high they couldn’t possibly climb it and try to guess the way to the chapel.
If only we could hear a siren, they thought, any kind of sound from the boats, a sign from their mother that would allow them to slow the infinite tremors in their legs, in their belly, in the head that could barely sustain itself. Her body continued to lean against the white wall, the screen on which her disharmony was amply projected. Her shell of a girl, broken, deflowered, stained... This wall that took in her shadow just to show her how naked she was under the only streetlight in the area. If only we could hear a siren, they thought again.
But the silence insisted on swallowing all hope. Silence crowned her, covered her, enclosed her, surrounded and embraced her; the silence whispered to her: I am as divine as you’ll ever get, only to me should you direct your prayers; only I will be your guide in this city that has never wanted you, little provincial girl, simple, simple country girl, backwards girl, so backwards, adorer of false gods, lover of women who will not save you. I am Almighty Silence, I’m the man you cannot hurt, now you see me, now you don’t, but I’m always here... Let me caress you and your terror will be different...