not the damnedest idea
Ipso facto, my mother would come. Not two days would pass, two or three days spent consuming another novel, me, and filling the refrigerator with food, Ignacio. But what am I saying? There was the work of preparing ourselves for the worst. Calls to the insurance company that doubtless would send us around in circles, to my thesis director to let her know my recovery promised to be long, the department head to put my registration indefinitely on hold, to the dean to beg him not to cut off my grant because I’d be left without insurance, and then. All delicate tasks, those and others we would undertake during those too-brief days in the muggy south of Manhattan. Visiting the eye doctor and bringing him an unlikely souvenir. Lekz made us wait while Doris demanded we fill out forms and hand over detailed descriptions of the situation in writing. I dictated to Ignacio. Yuku greeted me with her learned Japanese courtesy, but saved herself the bows before dropping in the paralyzing drops. My hand slid some fingers along the plastic petals of the plastic flowers in some pots of the same material, and returned to plant itself nervously on my knee while my body rocked slightly, forward, backward, like a tireless rubber doll. Stop doing that, Ignacio demanded or implored. Please, he said, stop rocking. I didn’t know why I was doing it, I didn’t realize I was until he pointed it out, maybe I did it to be sure I was still there, sitting in the chair. And I was still moving when Lekz came out of his office and approached me. He was standing in front of me, but he didn’t call me by my name but rather said, ceremoniously and mechanically, welcome back missus…Missus, I repeated mentally, realizing he had completely forgotten my name. Follow me, he said, like a false missionary, missus… ashamed, not daring to ask. Lucina, doctor, I told him officiously, knowing he’d be unable to pronounce it, while I reached out my hand, but you can call me Lina. He doesn’t know who the hell I am, I murmured then in Spanish to Ignacio, he doesn’t have the damnedest idea, this doctor to whom I’ve handed myself over in body and practically soul for two whole years. Ignacio pinched my arm because Lekz spoke a little Spanish, in addition to English and Russian. He understood something because his wife, an eye doctor like Lekz, had been born in Galicia, like Ignacio. It was all true, his pinch and Lekz’s wife’s Galician Spanish. It was also true that my doctor did not remember my name. I smiled at him like an African doll, showing all my teeth, showing my tonsils if I had to, and I said again to Ignacio. Not the damnedest idea. Lekz must have already been deep in his illegible notes, because suddenly he seemed to remember and he said, surprised and happy, weren’t you the writer? Aren’t you in Chile? We were, for a whole month, corrected Ignacio, self-importantly. We saw the city, she showed it to me, it’s not a pretty city at all, in fact it’s pretty ugly, though it does have its corners, and he stopped, suddenly uncomfortable at seeming ungrateful. I ignored him; I’d been thinking about the word writer next to a verb in the past tense, the past of the books I’d written and that I wasn’t sure I would go on writing. One eye would be enough, I thought for a second, until I felt Lekz’s fingers taking my hand like a dancer and leading me on tiptoe toward the chair crowned with lenses. I opened my eyes resolutely and I let myself be looked at through the same apparatus as always. And from there I moved to the reclining chair and I leaned my head back, giving myself to the most potent magnifying lens, exercising my neck, preparing my ear to hear that the blood had not dissipated. There even seemed to be more of it, and it could already be coagulating. I think, said Lekz, with a slight cough, and I could imagine him stretching his lips into one of his Russian grimaces. I think, he said again without rounding out his idea, I think these malignant veins have gone on bursting. I think, he said, thinking again, that hopefully you aren’t anemic, because the lack of iron would be an impediment to an operation. You will operate! I howled inside, you will operate, even if I’m dying. But Lekz went on thinking out loud, and next he asked, with calculated calmness, how have things? and I, without letting him finish, whinnied: good, very good, healthy as a horse, doctor. I’m full of energy, I could go to the operating room now carrying you on my shoulders. I’d carry you on my back or drag you, I’d take off running unchecked, wearing blinders so I wouldn’t be distracted, I’d barrel past the signs saying do not enter, I’d break the window of the operating room, jump onto the cot, I’d separate my eyelids with my own fingernails so you could stick in the blades, I’d offer myself to the needles strung with thread so you could finish sewing me up. You’ll need tests, he said, to rule out anemia. Tests! I don’t want tests. I want you to operate. Right now. But Ignacio got tangled up in my arm and he dragged me off to the laboratory and when we got there, in spite of his sqeamishness, he stood firm beside me: roll up your sleeve and stretch out your arm. And I obeyed, swearing vengeance, and I made fists so my veins would pop. Ignacio’s stomach turned when he saw how that blood of mine flowed, a blood that is always so like itself, my blood, like his but different only because it was mine, filling the tubes. And after the blood we went mutely to his apartment that was also my waiting room, which would be my mother’s campsite when she arrived the next morning to interrupt the peace of the worried. Of course you’ll have the operation, my mother reassured me as soon as she’d planted her high heel on the apartment’s only rug and hugged me. Don’t worry, dear, she repeated with absolute certainty, you have more than enough iron in you. They didn’t have to bleed you to know that. Look at her face, she said to Ignacio, look at her fingernails, and she squeezed my finger. And then, without warning me, she stuck her long nail in my lower eyelid. She turned it inside out. She peered into it and said, you see, Ignacio? It’s pink. That’s irrefutable proof, she said, still not letting go of that insensitive bit of hide. Ignacio was taking nervous steps over the bare tiles, pacing to get away from my mother who went on saying, these doctors are so specialized they don’t understand anything that’s happening in the rest of the body. Only in the organ they study. They don’t know anything. I agreed: they don’t have the damnedest idea.
nightly bread
I can’t eat, but who could feel hungry the night before? Dinner, no, but neither is it advisable to go to bed on an empty stomach. How about a slice of bread with butter that then becomes two: anxiety sets my mother’s jaws in motion. I just salivate at the smell of the crumbs slowly charring in the toaster, the melted butter. She drinks tea, loudly stirs in two spoonfuls of sugar, takes a desperate bite of the toast Ignacio makes for her. I see it but I don’t see it, it’s as if I’d seen it: I construct it in my memory. It’s good, says my mother, helping me imagine her every movement. Very good, she says, as if asking a question, and then she confesses she’s eating purely out of vice. I’m not the least bit hungry, she insists, her mouth full. Ignacio makes more toast and my mother swallows it, and soon she asks, like a bulimic bird, is there a little more bread? And of course, there are two bags in the freezer, says my baker boyfriend. My mother burns her tongue on the tea but she doesn’t get a chance to complain, because just then the doorbell rings and startles her. Who could that be, at this hour? Even though the hour is barely seven. Girl! screeches Manuela, who never managed to get past her youth, who still lives in the eighties, still in the student protests, running soaked from the water cannons and roaring with laughter, smoking joints. Optimism personified, absolute unfamiliarity with sadness. Manuela, my mom; mom, Manuela. And Manuela exclaims oh, I love the smell of toasted bread, plugging a kiss on each of my cheeks, squeezing my shoulders, giving me a transfusion of energy. What kind are you eating, marraquetas, amasado? Did you make it yourself? she asks my mother, who surely looks at her wondering where I’ve found this earthquake. In Chile, I answer her secretly, while Manuela says and I’ve just brought you some paltas as a present. Palta, repeats my mother, and she shrinks. Manuela stands behind me, and leaning over my shoulders she croons again a girl, how crazy, what happened to you! And right in my house, at that party, when we were having such a great time! Yes, I say, but I don’t remember that happiness until she mentions it. I just stopped by to wish you luck, and she sits down next to me. My mother blows on her tea. Stay a while, I tell her, we don’t have any food, but coffee? Bread and avocado? I’m really not bothering you? My mother straightens in her chair, spreads butter on her umpteenth slice of bread, and continues to watch over me silently. OK! great! If I’m not bothering you of course I’ll stay. I move over to the corner, Ignacio puts more bread in the toaster, and my mother chews on her thoughts. Manuela winds herself up and starts to talk about her new paintings and her new job, the one that pays her rent. Manuela couldn’t import the small privileges of a Chilean artist when she came to this country, I explain to my mother. Just like the entitlements from the musty last names that here no one knows. That’s why so many Chileans leave, says Manuela, maybe I’ll end up leaving because of that too. I hear my mother abandon her silence, prompted to ask more about that new job. I take care of a little girl, answers Manuela. She’s the daughter of a family in transition. In transition, I repeat, Ignacio repeats, my mother repeats with growing curiosity. In transition, Manuela also says, since the father discovered he was a woman. Who’s a woman? asks my mother. The father? Exactly, says Manuela, and the father also discovered he is a woman who is only interested, sexually, in other women. That makes him a lesbian. So the girl has two mothers, I clarify, and Manuela laughs, yes indeed, and she adds that he or she is still in love with the girl’s mother, but that she, his wife, who was fairly masculine and maybe wouldn’t have had such a hard time getting behind the transition, decided to abstain. She wasn’t ready to be with a woman, even though she’d spent years with her. Or him. My mother declares that she’s now lost her appetite, but Manuela ignores her. She says: now he has to decide whether he’s going to have the operation. Operation, echoes Ignacio, still making sure the bread doesn’t burn, and mashing, I suppose, another avocado to keep his hands busy with something. Operation, of course, says my mother, in her knowing doctor’s tone, while I hear her shifting in her chair. Manuela decides to give her the surgical details. My mother doesn’t know if she wants to hear them, and I know Ignacio doesn’t. He goes on mashing avocados, or maybe he steals off to the bathroom. I already know the details, and I also know the story’s protagonists. The father’s identity is a subject that used to interest me, but now I abandon the conversation to concentrate on something more concrete and definitive: find a crumb, a single crumb of toasted bread to calm my hunger. Manuela talks tirelessly while I reach out my finger very slowly toward the table, luring the crumbs my mother dropped and figuring the story would keep everyone’s attention elsewhere. My finger crawls along the surface of the table, trapping one crumb after another. I hear Ignacio cough and I know he’s looking at me that he’s intrigued when he asks me, what are you looking for? Looking for? I snatch my hand away, retreat into my secret hunger and listen enviously to Manuela talking with her mouth full of words and bread with avocado. My mother groans, utterly full on the other side of the table, and she takes advantage of the lull to ask a question that’s more like an impatient order, what time is it? Isn’t it time for bed? But it’s still early. Please, no one move. This is my farewell party. Manuela, says my mother very seriously and very alone but shielding herself behind the pluraclass="underline" we’re going to have to ask you to go. Lucina needs her rest.