I can’t tell you
The first sound was of hands taking dry plates from the rack and depositing them in cabinets. Then came other noises. Stuck wooden drawers that shut suddenly. A broom sweeping dust balls accumulated in corners. A household symphony conducted with a vocation for order — one my mother didn’t tend to exercise in her own house, but always in mine. Once her anxious work was finished, my mother decided to knock on our door. She turned the knob but couldn’t open — it was locked. The floor creaked under her feet. She must have been leaning over, her ear to the hinge, her mouth on the wood singing an are you awake? with a thread of a voice that sounded frayed, about to snap. The loose floorboard creaked again. Feet. Manicured toenails. Slippers. Isolated words of my mother’s under the shower and then, repetition of the scene in reverse. The bathroom door opened again, my mother came back down the hall and stopped, trying to crack our door open, and by then we were awake. Ignacio reached out an arm to turn off the alarm, I reached out another to find his face. My hand touched Ignacio’s lips, Ignacio’s nose, his eyebrows, and for a moment again, fleetingly, his eyelids. I felt the tense bags of his dark, tender eyes while Ignacio squeezed his eyelids for an instant and in one leap was up. I rose after him, slowly. But Ignacio was standing still, sounding out my mother’s presence in the hallway and, when he didn’t sense her and saw that I didn’t either, he opened the door and we went out, goaded by fresh, confused thoughts. I slipped into the bathroom with him and while we brushed our teeth, an entire night of dreams began to swirl in my head. Strange dreams, full of buttons, I told Ignacio as we took turns spitting out toothpaste. Don’t tell me about them, he said indecisively, drying his mouth, I’d rather not know. I smiled while I climbed into the shower, remembering some enormous buttons sewn to our bodies, buttons sewn with fishing line, with hooks, fish hooks, yes, even hanging from our ears, buttons, while I heard him, Ignacio, ask me. So, about your dreams? His voice from the other side of the curtain, waiting for me to get out so he could get in. Were your dreams in color? The water sloshed in my soapy belly button, ran over my neck, splashed my warm back, but those weren’t the kind of dreams I’d had. Dreams of feelings and shapes, unseeing dreams. Maybe, I said, just to say something, anything, because suddenly I was overcome by the awareness that I was going to have an operation, and in just a few hours. And I started to wonder what my eyes would be like afterward, if I would still have them when I left the operating room. I threw that waking nightmare at Ignacio, and I also flung it at my mother, who immediately answered, in a typical outburst, but why would you leave the operation without eyes? What makes you think that? she said with preoperative nervousness, all to avoid saying to me what she said to everyone else: and what do you know? Are you a specialist? Mom, I told her, answering the thoughts that reached me telepathically, I barely know what my own hands are doing. I can’t trust in the hands of others.
no man’s land
At this hour the city is in a coma, but as soon as dawn comes it’s unbearable. It was Ignacio talking. There’s not a soul out, confirmed my mother, looking back over her shoulder; my mother, always terrified of walking down a street empty of people, empty of barking and honking, under the light of opaque street lamps. She feared the dark street, not realizing the danger lay elsewhere. I thought of her pupils, blurry from astigmatism, sunken in the dawn. I thought of Ignacio’s myopia behind his lenses, Ignacio ever more mine, fumbling along the dark sidewalks. What a fantastic trio. My mother glued to me, me glued to Ignacio. And she was saying and this is, a…beginning the phrase and then breaking off. A wasteland? Yes, she nodded, a wilderness. An empty or barren place, I said. Yes, it’s true, said Ignacio, we’re in no man’s land. This is the border between two worlds. My mother said no more. She clutched my arm as if I could protect her from her fears. We went on walking. I sank into my own words while they plunged into theirs, all of our shoes echoing on the cement, hurrying up the stairs to the rusted rhythm of the rails, sliding into an almost-empty car. And we went nodding with the same worried drowsiness to the 14th Street station. The first morning lights would be sneaking out above a city that flowed noisily around us on the streets. There were also the police whistles, the howl of a distant ambulance. Here it is, announced Ignacio, and there it was, I thought as I called up a memory: on that corner, the small, brick hospital founded to treat only eyes, only ears. The history of my eyes was archived there. In the hospital’s underground memory lay hundreds of splendid images of ruin. I sat in reception pressing my fists against my temples, knowing they were going to operate on me but that no cure existed. The illness would remain, no matter how they opened and shut me. And even if I got my sight back there was always the possibility my veins could stretch out again; the blood could always spill again. My rush to throw myself on Lekz’s knife lost its momentum; this was the choice, the bet on the Russian roulette. I had to bet to prove myself to my bodyguards. They had faith and picked up their pace, wandered in rooms under sinister fluorescent tubes and hallways crawling with Filipino nurses with Spanish last names. As soon as they handed in the papers certifying me as damaged and Chilean, they came back bearing new instructions. They said let’s go, let’s go, they wore brave faces, let’s hurry or we could lose our turn. Let’s go, let’s go, what are you waiting for? they said in a duet, with the solemnity of a Greek chorus. I’m the heroine who resists her tragedy, I thought, the heroine trying to drive destiny crazy with her own hands. But not yet, I went on thinking, we have to give the doctor and his medicine a chance. Let’s go, I replied, giving in, not that there was any way to resist. Not now that the cards were dealt and the insurance brought up to date, not now that I see no way to go in a different direction. And I know that my mother was glad and Ignacio somewhat intrigued when I smiled. And then I went up some stairs and down others, and then we went down in an elevator full of blindfolded patients, lying on cots or sitting in wheelchairs. Smiling. (That’s what your eyes saw.) And we took steps in different directions. Here it is, said Ignacio. There it was, smelling of disinfectant.
what eye?
Begin protococlass="underline" take off your clothes, put on this flowered flannel robe, tighten these too-baggy pants. Now we just need the plastic cap. You look beautiful, cries my mother. I adjust the cap while she adds, you look just like a little girl. Mom, I tell her, arranging my hair under an elastic band that’s come unsewn, you mean I look like I did when I was little? I don’t remember having even a moment of childhood. Not an instant of calm. Not a second when I wasn’t wondering when the hand of tragedy was going to touch me. My mother doesn’t answer, she makes a face, she bites her lip with total confidence. I keep trying to get my hair up under the cap, thinking, why it is that when I ask questions no one answers me, telling myself I shouldn’t answer either, now that the interrogation is starting. Filipino voices with cutting accents. One asks me who I am, what my name is. I give my full name, I spell it out. My mother confirms that is the name I was baptized with. Ignacio verifies that it is written correctly. Someone else takes my arm and fastens on it a plastic bracelet that gives my prisoner’s alias. I get up, I sit down. It’s cold, I say, but now no one responds. Another voice intervenes. What is your name? it says. I hear typing while I answer, afraid of making a mistake. And then, any congenital illnesses? What medicines are you taking? How many hours since you’ve eaten? I don’t know and I don’t want to know. Did you go to the bathroom this morning? I hope so. What are they going to operate on? Which eye first? The voices change but the questions are always the same: Which eye will the doctor start with? With my mind’s eye. Have you had any operations before? Yes. Any metal plates? Maybe. And what’s your name? Spell your name, did you sign your forms, all of them? What forms? The authorization to film the operation. Film it? Yes, we need to have it, for your safety, just in case, to protect you. Any allergies to any medications? Any previous surgeries? What is your last name? Which eye will they operate on? This one? That one. Any false teeth? Maybe. Contact lenses? Your last name, your first? Did you sign? Married or single? Which eye will go first? Tell Lekz that I want a copy of the video, I tell the voice of the moment who answers: do you have AIDS? Have you had any venereal diseases? How many lovers? So many? Women or only men? Tell the doctor I authorize it but I want a copy. Stable partner? That I want a copy of the recording, yes, they say, now we’re asking, are your parents alive? Are you pregnant? How many units of insulin per day? The doctor sent me to ask why you want a copy of the movie. Why else would I want it? I ask, to watch it when I can see, with my own eyes or with Ignacio’s. And are you wearing any rings? Why are you here? To supervise the maneuver. Height? Allergic to penicillin or any sulpha drugs? Any painkillers? What are they operating on? Any allergies? The permission to record the operation, did you sign it? But will they give me a copy of that beautiful and repulsive tape, covered in blood? Any metallic prostheses? All of them, I’m a bionic woman, with titanium eyes, and I laugh to myself, aloud, asking in return, asking the air, who was the one with the expensive telescopic and infrared eye? The six million dollar man? Is he with you? Who? What eye? Which one? Are you sure? And what insurance, what plan? How many children do you have? Any induced or illegal abortions? How many? Which eye? And the second? Did you sign the papers? Right or left? The permission to film the operation? What is your name? Who is your doctor? Spell. Which eye are they operating on? One or both? Social security number? Last name? Mine or the doctor’s? Any chronic illnesses? What medicines? Units? Grams? How much do you weigh? Who is with you? How old are you? Authorization of the operation? The document releasing the hospital from any damages? Are you left- or right-handed? With which hand do you sign your name? What is your real name? Any pseudonyms? What do you do for a living? What is fiction for you? And damages? What do you mean by damages? True or false? Which eye first? Does it hurt? Why do you keep pointing at it? is it this one? this one? or this one? And you, who are you? Whose cap is that? And the eye, whose is it?