A noise must have awoken me. I opened my eyes and through the window I saw a patch of very dark sky indicating dawn was near. On the ceiling, the shadows of the trees were still on a morning without wind. Shifting my position, I discovered that Li wasn’t there. I stood up, heavy with sleep. The light in the bathroom was off. Walking around the bed, I saw that her bag wasn’t on the floor.
I left the room without a sound and walked down the hallway to the living room. There was a shadow in front of the door. In my mind, I immediately understood that something was breaking. I thought of all sorts of ways I could react, but opted for simply turning on the light. As if a lightning bolt had passed right over her head, Li wheeled around in fright.
— Where are you going? I asked. I stood naked by the dining table, before a woman who bore all her belongings on her shoulder.
— I was going to the restaurant.
— I don’t think they’re open yet.
— I mean, I was going to the rooftop room.
Li set her bag down and dropped onto the sofa.
— You think that’s enough of a good-bye?
— No.
She shook her head with a whisper that contained the last word she was able to utter before bursting into tears.
I did not move closer. I let her choke on a wail that she tried to stifle with a faltering movement of her hands, which rose toward her face and did not reach it. I went to get dressed. On the way back, I stopped in the kitchen and poured two glasses of water. I put one in front of Li and sat on a chair. I knew the moment had arrived when all the questions would be asked, the ones I had avoided so many times and the ones I hadn’t even seen coming until now.
I had no intention of consoling her. Her attempt to escape forestalled compassion. Nothing took its place. I felt a tremendous, almost inhuman pain, a hemorrhaging I had to ignore or else I’d fall apart.
For an instant, Li lowered the hands covering her face and looked at me. I waited a second before asking the question whose answer I hadn’t stopped imagining.
— What did Bai do to you?
The muted voice came from a body doubled over, rocking back and forth.
— Raped me.
— When?
— When I was thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen…
The words were cut short by her falling to pieces. She wept uncontrollably and seemed to be trying to hide in the very middle of the room as if my presence were hateful. But even so, she seemed willing to talk.
— So many times, rape probably isn’t the word for it any more. We shared the same room, with other cousins. He would come to my bed when they were sleeping, and at first, I didn’t know or didn’t want to know what he was doing. Of course it didn’t take me long to figure it out and realize it was something terrible, but how could I confess it, to whom. Not to my mother, who was still alive, I couldn’t. Also, I filled myself with ideas, I was a silly teenager, and I guessed it must have something to do with love, with the things that happened and were always resolved in Hong Kong movies, when the characters didn’t beat each other to death. It was also something to dream about, to forget the waste of a life I was living, waiting for him to climb into my bed. Bai was irresponsible and egotistic, but I had a secret bond with him, something that tied us together at night, when the rest were sleeping like the beasts of burden they were.
“They discovered us when I got pregnant, right after I turned fifteen. The boss’s wife had them send her some roots from Hong Kong. She boiled them for hours to make a tea for me to drink on an empty stomach, ten days in a row. They locked me in a room on the rooftop, with nausea and pains, and I went half crazy. Finally the spasms came, and I got the worst fever I’ve ever had in my life. They took me to the Centro Médico right on time, because I was hemorrhaging. In the end the treatment was effective because I lost the baby.”
I sat up to push the water closer to her. Li drank it and looked outside before going on.
— It marked me. You can imagine what petit bourgeois morality is like in such cases, but you have no idea what it, or rather the caricature of it, can be among a pack of ignorant Chinese. Bai was sent away for years to work in a restaurant in San Germán, in what you might call the end of the world. I didn’t see him again until I was an adult. Fortunately, I did pretty well in school, and I found a refuge there, until I fussed and fought to get them to let me go to the university. But nobody was as close to me as before, and nobody thought of me as a victim. I was always surrounded by an aura of dirtiness and scandal. It was easier for them; they even got a kick out of it, and that way, they didn’t have to come up with consciences of their own. My mother died feeling I had disgraced her, convinced I’d always be worthless.
“At the university I realized that something had changed, that many of my hopes and dreams were gone, and that now men were blocked off by a wall of terror and shame. I also found out, this is how serious my case was, that this was a possibility, that it happened to many other women, and that it was called lesbianism. I had a few flings with women at the university, but they didn’t last long since in the end I was still the Chinese girl who worked six days a week and slept in a room on the rooftop. I must not have been much fun, and they really weren’t for me, either.
“I hate the Chinese, it’s terrible to say it, but it’s the truth. I hate Bai and therefore all the Chinese who looked the other way as if none of this had anything to do with them. He destroyed a whole part of my life, a part I can never recuperate, that nobody, not even you, could give back to me. That’s why I was leaving, in spite of what happened last night. That was my good-bye. I wanted you to know that I was ready to go where I never thought I could and also, though I’d rather not admit it, that I cherished some hope. I wondered what I would feel, whether Bai’s body would interfere with yours, if I would get better or find the thing I don’t know how to name and that I lost forever. I tried to talk to you about it so many times; I know you expected that of me, you offered me the opportunity, but the words wouldn’t come. Today we did it, but it’s as if my body had no reality. That body was there — I’m not nuts, believe me — it acts, it feels pleasure, but in the end it’s a mirage. Something that isn’t altogether there, or is like a tragedy for which no one is responsible.
“If anyone doesn’t deserve my problems, it’s you. It all started as a game, a very serious game, because your books bedazzled me, and when I learned who you were, I found you attractive. You don’t know how I enjoyed fantasizing about a man again. I didn’t think we were going to meet. Even when we did, I thought it wasn’t happening. I was all alone then and didn’t know what to do, and our getting together grew too quickly. Before, I had only fallen in love with women, and I was hoping that through you something different might happen. It’s dumb, but a person has those dreams, those fantasies of being like everyone else again, as if it were possible or worth it.
“I don’t know if I’ve used you. I don’t know if the love I feel for you might be a way of using you. It probably is, and that’s also why I was leaving. I admit it was a very bad way to do it. A while back, I was on the verge of a panic attack and at the same time completely numb. I’m not asking you to understand it or to forgive me. But I’m sorry I can’t stay because if I stay, everything will be worse.”
— And Carmencita? I asked, knowing she was only telling me part of the story.
— What?
— Carmen Lindo, the sociologist. Li and Lindo, sounds like a joke.