6

Mimí couldn’t have killed Rita either, Elena knows, which is why she never suggested that Avellaneda add her name to the useless list. She must have wanted to, Elena thinks, but it’s not a crime to want to kill someone, not even if that person is your child. No one can go to jail for thinking or feeling something, only for doing it, and even then only sometimes. And Mimí didn’t do it, although she probably wished Rita dead at some point, for threatening to take away, over her dead body, the only thing she had in the world, that hunchbacked boy who loved her unconditionally, attached to his mother like an infected appendix no one dared to remove. Mimí couldn’t have killed her because Elena was with her at her hair salon, before, during, and after the moment that Rita was hung from the church bells, exhaling the last breath that would ever enter her lungs.

It had been Rita’s idea. Elena never would’ve thought to waste an entire afternoon of her life in that place lined with mirrors and yellowed old posters of women with outdated hairstyles. She didn’t want to spend time in that hair salon or any other. Rita worked hard to convince her mother to go to the appointment she’d made for the wash, cut, dye, styling, manicure, pedicure, and waxing. And she’d made the appointment around her medication schedule, so that Elena’s body wouldn’t be without levodopa. Just go and stop complaining, you’re going to feel much better when it’s over. But I don’t feel bad, it’s only my toenails that bother me, and you can cut them for me next week. That’s true, Mum, even though I think it’s disgusting, I can cut your toenails, I could even do it today, but then what? What do you mean? After the toenails, then what? I don’t know how to dye or cut hair. Is all that necessary, Rita? Her daughter glances at her briefly before saying, Have you looked in the mirror, Mum? No, Elena answers. Well, it shows, go and stand in front of a mirror some time. I stand in front of the bathroom mirror but I can’t see myself, I can only see the tap and the sink. Take the mirror down off the wall, Mum, and put it in front of your face, look at yourself and then you’ll understand. Why do you care so much about how I look, Rita? The problem isn’t how you look but who has to look at you. I’m the one who has to look at you, every day, Mum, I help you out of bed every morning and see your toothless mouth, your expressionless eyes, I have breakfast, lunch, and dinner across from you, watching your drool mix with your food into a disgusting paste, I put you to bed at night and I bring you a glass of water so you can put your teeth inside it, but it’s hard for you to get them in so I have to touch them, to pick them up and put them in the glass with my own hands, I go to sleep but the day doesn’t end there because a few hours later you’ll be calling for me to take you to the bathroom, and I take you, I pull down your underwear, I pull it up, I don’t have to wipe you, that’s true, I won’t wipe you, that’s too much, but I sit you on the bidet and hand you a towel, and I hang it up to dry, I flush the toilet so the water will carry your urine away, I lie you back down in bed, I tuck you in, you stare at me from bed, toothless, with your eyes that look constantly surprised and your whiskers sticking out of your cheeks like wires, and I’m about to leave when you call me back, again, to arrange your feet, or the sheet, or the pillow, so I go back, I see you again, and once again I smell that stench of piss that never goes away completely because it’s you, because it has saturated your skin, and I hear you take your hoarse, snoring breaths, I turn off the light on your bedside table and I see your teeth again, the ones I put into the glass myself, with my own hands, I wipe them off on my pyjamas, but they still smell, like you. So the problem is me, Mum, the problem is that I have to look at you. And that’s going to change if I go to the hairdresser? No, you’re right, if it were up to you nothing would ever change, but you’re going to go anyway and you’re going to change. And she dragged her to the beauty salon and left her sitting on the wicker chair in the waiting area. She was more surly than usual and didn’t say hello to anyone, not even Mimí. I’m leaving her here, she said, and she left. Elena sat still, waiting, her eyes on the woven rug that clearly hadn’t been cleaned in months, peppered with hair of all colours. On the coffee table was a pile of tattered magazines that had been new at one time, and another pile of flyers for natural foods, royal jelly, aloe vera patches and other products of the kind that promised to improve the health of anyone who tried them. Except her, Elena knows, for her there was no hope. She stretched out her arm and grabbed the closest magazine, she flipped through the pages pretending to read while she waited. The stuck-together pages turned a few at a time, so Elena wet her index finger to separate them, which was bad manners but Rita wasn’t there to scold her, to say, Don’t be disgusting, Mum. Can’t you see that the Parkinson’s makes it hard for me to turn the pages, dear? Don’t make up excuses, Mum, you’ve always done that, don’t blame the disease for things that are no one’s fault but your own. There was music playing in the background, an attempt at a piano concert garbled by the speakers hung in the corners of the salon. The smell of shampoo and conditioner mixed with the smell of hair dye and hot wax to create a strange aroma. Elena couldn’t decide if it was pleasant or not. It just smelled the way it smelled. A girl came to get her when she’d almost finished flipping all the pages of the magazine. Come along, grandma. Grandma my ass, Elena answered, and then laughed before the girl had time to react. She’d learned a long time ago that hiding an insult inside a joke would cancel out any anger. Grandma my ass, she repeated, and held up her hand so the girl could help her up. The girl pulled but not hard enough. Another girl came over and pushed Elena from behind, grabbing her under her shoulders, saying that she knew what to do because she’d taken care of her grandmother until the day she died. Once they got her standing, even though it wasn’t necessary, they each took one of her arms and guided her to the chair, like they were a walking armrest. The hair colour was first, they covered her chest with towels, then slipped a black plastic cape over her, open at the back. Are you sure you can’t raise your head even a little, Elena? Mimí complained. And Elena tried, but no sooner had her head raised up a tiny bit than it fell back down to where it always hung, where Herself, that fucking whore illness, told it to stay. She sat for twenty minutes under a dryer with a current of hot air hitting her directly on the back of the neck. Getting the dye off her hair in the sink was the hardest part. It took three of them together, one holding her, another holding her neck and pushing her back, another waiting with her arms open not doing anything, as if her job were to remain alert, ready to avoid any possible catastrophe. It was impossible. Despite the precise instructions Mimí gave from where she sat on the stairs leading up to the massage parlour. She ended up getting mad at her employees and trying to do it herself, but that didn’t work either. Finally they brought over a bucket and poured water over her head using a tea kettle, which they had to refill twice, Elena took deep breaths between the streams of water, until the water that fell into the bucket she held on her lap ran clear. I’m tired, let’s save the rest for another day, Elena suggested. No, no, no, said Mimí, I don’t want to get in trouble with my future daughter-in-law. She was lying, Elena knows, since she didn’t care about making Rita mad. Rita asked me to give you the works and you’re not leaving here until you’re looking brand new. Brand new, Elena repeated. Do you want to rest a minute on the massage table? No, thank you. One of the girls can loosen you up. I said no. Offended, Mimí took her by the arm and sat her in the chair, she detangled and styled her hair in silence and only after her anger had been erased by hundreds of brushstrokes she said, I hope they make us grandmas. And once again Elena didn’t believe her, if there was one thing this woman didn’t want, it was for her son to be taken away by Rita and for a child to be born of that union. Rita’s forty-four, Elena pointed out. So what?, Mimí replied. I don’t think she’s going to be able to make anyone a grandma. Oh, don’t be silly, Elena, didn’t you see on the news how a woman gave birth at age sixty-five? I’m almost sixty-five, I’m a year and a half away, but… Elena said, trailing off, and everyone went silent. I’m almost sixty-five myself, she said again but Mimí didn’t dare to say anything, neither did anyone else, although they were all surprised by Elena’s age, which didn’t match her body. They changed the subject, Elena stopped listening. It was clear that the woman who gave birth might’ve been her same age but she didn’t have the same body. Could a woman with Parkinson’s give birth, she wondered. Would there be room in her bent body to house a child? Would she be able to push? Could she breastfeed? Would the medication she has to take harm the foetus? She wondered if when Rita was born she already had that whore of an illness inside her without knowing it, like a seed, waiting for fertile soil in which to germinate. She thought about the illness like a child of her own body. She wondered if her daughter carried that same seed inside her and if one day it would germinate and her daughter would suffer the way she suffers. A useless question because even though Elena didn’t know it yet, by the end of the afternoon there would be no seed capable of germinating inside her daughter’s body.

The waxing was the easiest part, the girl just crouched beside Elena with a stick smeared in hot wax and, as she placed her left hand on Elena’s forehead, she pulled her head up with her right hand and spread the wax on her upper lip turning the stick like someone kneading dough. It didn’t hurt, but some of the little hairs remained and the girl insisted on plucking them out with a pair of tweezers. That’s not necessary, child. And Mimí herself did her hands and feet while Elena watched the woman work, bent over in front of her, almost at the same height. That woman doesn’t want my daughter to marry her son, just like I don’t either, she thought. Deep down we’re alike, and she laughed at how surprised Mimí would have been to hear it, if Elena had dared to say it out loud, to say that Mimí was anything like her.

By the time the woman was placing Elena’s feet in the hot water, Rita was probably already hanging from the church belfry. And as it was getting late, Mimí’s assistant cut Elena’s hair and styled it while she was getting her pedicure. You’ll have to excuse us, Elena, but if not we’ll never get out of here. When she was done they helped her stand, once again the three of them. You have to come more often, Mimí said, your feet are a disaster, how do you ever wear sandals with those heels? I just put them on, she answered, or Rita does it for me when I can’t. At least put some lotion on them at night, Elena, that helps with the roughness. And even though Elena showed no concern for the roughness of her heels, Mimí said, I’m going to send you some calendula cream with Roberto. It’ll just go to waste, Elena thought, because she wasn’t willing to add any more chores to the unending list of daily challenges: walking, eating, going to the bathroom, lying down, standing up, sitting in a chair, getting up from a chair, taking a pill that won’t go down her throat because her head can’t tip back, drinking from a straw, breathing. No, she definitely wasn’t going to put calendula cream on her heels.

Mimí guided her to a full-length mirror. Take a look, Elena, she said, you’re a whole different person. And Elena, so as not to be disagreeable, turned her head to the side and tried to look at herself. A strand of hair had fallen right over her eye, but one of the girls, meticulous about her work, rushed to pin it back with a clip and some hairspray. She was able to see a little, enough to compare her body to the body of the woman beside her, the woman who was deep down a lot like her, just a year or two younger. How do you think you look, Elena? Old.