It’s Friday. Mom comes to pick me up in the car when school gets out. There’s a suitcase and a pretty decent selection of toys in the back. We go straight to Grandma’s for lunch. It’s a boring drive, and the inside of the car is roasting. We don’t have air conditioning. The heat makes my feelings turn in on themselves. It’s like it highlights the pain, condensing it and filling it with color. Mom’s arm hangs out of the window, a cigarette between her hard, worn-out fingers. Her skin glistens like a pale gypsy woman’s. She studies the drivers around her with defiance. She keeps track of the toys I like most, often raises her hand to me in anger, and always has her rifle loaded, ready to defend our trench. All things in life are war, she tells me, pretty much. Being a warrior seems to come really naturally to her. I’m afraid when it comes to having guts I’m a bit of disappointment. Though I think I probably make her proud in other ways. She tells me the world is an ugly, dirty place, full of trials; that people like us have got to be ready to conquer a lot of hurdles, most of them unfair and out of proportion, but that if you can get up the nerve you can handle anything. We could handle a guy two meters tall and wielding an axe if we had to. She could skip right over him. I could climb up his body like a squirrel, make eyes at him, and plunge a corkscrew into his neck when he lets down his guard, just like the killer girl in RanXerox. Our relationship is very intense and very close. I was born into a fragile, unstable home. My mom is the only constant in my life. Wherever she is, that’s where I belong. She juggles fears, precautions, danger, and all kinds of animal instincts, while at the same time taking care of herself and wherever we happen to be. We’re the same, her and me, seized by urges as powerful as trucks and almost unstoppable. If it was up to her she’d succumb to vice in a heartbeat, just like me. We both know it. I wish we could talk about it, but it’s too weird. It’s really hard to be open like that. It doesn’t matter, we don’t need to talk about it. It’s in the air. She knows I wasn’t born to be her daughter, and I know she couldn’t have felt less ready for motherhood when she gave birth. It’s an accident that we’re both here, resisting temptation as a favor to each other. It’s really tough. I live in a hideout full of fugitives.
The simple little plaza by Grandma’s is a relief. I like going back to familiar places. I feel quite sociable when we arrive. I run into Cristina in the courtyard and it makes me happy to find that she’s pleased to see me. We agree to call each other after the siesta to play. I hope I can keep my word. Grandma is smoking a cigarette with a nasty look on her face.
“You’re twenty minutes late! The stew is so cold we’ll catch our death!” she scolds us from her chair as soon as we come in the door.
“But Mom, how’s it my fault if you serve the soup too early? If you know I’m always a little bit late, why can’t you just wait half a second?”
“Because it’s perfectly normal to serve at two thirty if that’s when you tell me you’re coming!”
“Well, why the fuck don’t you wait until we’re here to dish it out, just in case? ”
I know how this tantrum ends and it’s such a pain in the ass. Mom’s in the right, so I suck up to Grandma to make her forget all about it. I give her a hug and praise the menu, which includes croquetas, stewed meat, bread, soda, and dessert. The soup is tepid, which isn’t such a big deal given that it’s pushing 40°C outside. For dessert it’s a choice between rice pudding, apple compote, watermelon, ice cream, or strawberries and yogurt. I volunteer to bring them out. At this time of day in the kitchen, the contrast between the indoor temperature and the scorching heat from the back patio feels so good it makes me woozy. It’s a long and narrow room, one half sweltering, the other relatively cool. The furniture in the kitchen all has a silly-looking plastic texture, with light tones and rounded corners. When I was little, I wanted to know what the silverware drawer looked like from above. As soon as I’m there, I go straight to the cookie cabinet, open it, and inspect the first shelf. I stand on tiptoe and peer at the second. There are Inés Rosales biscuits, long breadsticks, chocolate cookies, and regular bread. Not bad. I can see there’s nothing interesting on the third shelf from down below. I wish I could get up there by myself. I put the cookies in the fridge and collect the desserts they asked for. I’ll have to make two trips. Two blasts of heat are better than one. It makes you want to take a shit twice as much.
Soon they’re both snoring in front of the TV, one in a chair, the other on the couch.
“Wake me up at five,” Mom mumbles, her cheeks soft and slack.
The blessed siesta. I’ve been holding in a turd just for the pleasure of letting it out with the bathroom door open, the light out, and all the peace in the world. I’m sitting on the toilet, my feet dangling. The door is right in front of me. I look at the calendar hanging on the other side of the living room, at the kitchen entrance, and I’m suddenly scared. I try to ignore it for the first few seconds, but soon I’m lifting my ass in the air and turning on the fluorescent light. The pink tiles start glowing just as the turd comes out, splashing me as it drops. What can you do. Even downtime is rife with danger. But it’s worth it. I manage to expel the rest of my load and head out to the back patio so I can boil in the shed under the asbestos roof and terrorize myself by pretending I live with a monster that sometimes looks like Freddy Krueger and sometimes more like Don Pimpón from Barrio Sésamo. I make believe that I’m cooking, writing a list of household bills, watering the yard, caring for the sick; I take stock of the wardrobe and the trunk. Sometimes, without warning and out of sheer malice, the monster scares the bejeezus out of me. The more distracted I am, the better it works. It’s an odd relationship. There are times when I give myself such a good fright that I have to run for cover. These monsters are a great match for all the nasty pictures stored in my memory. They can show up at any moment and it’s hard to make them stop. The train of terror, I call it. I don’t try to stop it – we know each other well enough by now.
I’m still in a good mood, so it doesn’t bother me. We go out into the street.
“Mom, sing me a Diana Ross song.”
“Which one do you want? I don’t know many.”
“Whichever. It doesn’t matter. I know even less than you. I’ve only seen her two or three times on TV.”
She starts humming one of the star’s oldest songs. The light grows pale and sharp. I’m over my back-patio episode. I look up at Mom and try to store away the tune for use in potential future predicaments. Oh, I wish I could sing that easily in front of someone, without knowing the words, without caring at all. Why do I have to care so much about everything? I try to take in Mom’s example, yell Cristina’s name, and then we say goodbye in a hurry. My friend appears on the balcony, scurrying cheerfully like a mouse.
“Be right there!” she shouts. I hear the door close and her steps coming down the stairs. It’s been a while since we’ve played together. We’re not bad at it, our styles are compatible. She’s a good person and I find it touching, I have a weakness for her. She’s peppy and her bird-like titter is so sincere and persistent that it’s contagious. Her Grandma Lola’s balcony is the liveliest and most colorful I’ve ever seen, it’s my favorite thing to look at in the whole plaza. And our families get along. We’ve never argued. Now Macarena sees us through a window and comes down too. These are the friends I chatter and hide behind the jasmine bushes with, and who save me again and again. Not that I get along too well with Macarena. We’ve been unconscious enemies ever since our moms were pushing us around in our strollers. One time I slapped her for breaking my glasses and there was a scene. These days she’s gotten kind of pretty, languid, like some beautiful little fly. Everything’s going fine, but when night falls at around nine, I start missing Lucía, the most mysterious girl I know. Though I don’t run into her often, I think of her as a great friend. Partly because of the mystery but mostly because she’s the only one interested in talking about dirty things for hours on end. Before dinner, I run my fingers over the clumsy graffiti I did ages ago by her door. In the orange glow of the streetlamps that have just come on, you can make out the floppy boobs, the coochie with a stream of piss, and the high-heeled shoes like the ones Smurfette wears that I drew for her when I was four, with only the help of a blue wax crayon. She never noticed, though, and I never had the guts to show her. I thought I might’ve gone too far. They’re still there, inconspicuous, alongside the greatest compliment I know how to bestow, in capital letters:
DIRTTY GIRL
I’d only just learned to write. I soon realized the message was inappropriate, that I was lucky you could hardly see it. Cristina’s mom comes to get her. The rest of us go in for dinner.
I don’t go back into the street until Mom comes at noon on Sunday to put a layer cake in the fridge and dress me up and do my hair just how she likes it. I don’t complain. It’s Grandma’s birthday, and a perfect day for a family celebration, not just because there’s a dazzling sun in the sky. It’s also the day of the general election. I hold hands with both of them on our way to the polling station, and watch as they vote proudly, one for the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party and one for Felipe González, which seems like the same thing to me though Mom insists that it isn’t. At the polling station, some people go into the private booths with curtains and others don’t. Some people brandish their ballots proudly, like they want everyone to see. It’s really hard to tell which party the ballots correspond to. Almost none of the names are familiar. I don’t stop looking until I find Felipe González, like I’m looking for Waldo.
We wolf our food down with relish in front of the TV. There are stuffed eggs, meat casserole, apple compote, and rice pudding. Since the whole menu horrifies me, they’ve set up a buffet of fried chicken and potatoes too, an alternative I never get tired of. Each time Aznar from the People’s Party comes on they boo and make disgusted faces. They grumble about his voice, his moustache, and everything he says.
“He’s so hideous. He’s got helmet-hair,” Mom keeps muttering.
When Felipe comes on it’s another story.
“My Felipito, look at my Felipito! He’s so handsome!” Grandma cries. She’s so in love with him her cheeks even get flushed. I’ve been watching her sigh for him all weekend.
I have no choice but to like the party they vote for and dread its nearest rival. But I’m sure the good guys will win. The days when the bad guys used to win are over, they were just a kind of shadowy prologue to make the story that begins with my birth a bit more exciting. The nine years since my arrival have more weight than all the previous millennia combined, more than the Romans and the Moors, more than the Civil War. They have more weight than the dinosaurs.
Canica orbits us, wagging her tail hysterically. There’s plenty of chicken, so sometimes I slip her a morsel when no one’s looking. I love being naughty with her. She tries to get her paws near a plate but they shoo her away.
“Fucking hell, Canica, you’re such a pain in the ass!”
It’s too early to predict the election results and the atmosphere is heated. Such a decisive struggle makes for an exciting birthday, which is great since our family celebrations are usually fairly dull and depressing. I envy those scenes in the movies where people get together and have lively conversations and you can tell they all love each other. I even envy them when they fight. What would I have to lose? My real family has plenty of fights. Mostly, I fantasize about being seen and spoken to. I feel like I’m alone. The election coverage on TV provides some relief.
It’s different for Mom and Grandma. They’re stressed and all they can think about is their pensions and the country’s future. They chain-smoke. Grandma hoards cartons of L&M in a chest in the living room, but Mom prefers Fortunas and sends me out on a mission to buy some. They both used to smoke Buffalos. I loved the picture of the buffalo on the cartons. I don’t see it anymore. I wish one of them had kept up the habit. Canica comes with me to buy cigarettes and pees as soon as we get outside. We cross the little plaza and come out onto the street. It’s four o’clock and the blast of heat makes us both want to poop. It makes me mad that she can relieve herself here and now and I can’t. The kiosk is closed but there’s an old lady who lives round the corner who operates a small stand out of a room in her house. We call this local clandestine outfit the Little Window. Stuck on the inside of the glass is an exhaustive selection of rancid candies. They’re just there as a reference catalog, but we kids are afraid that one day we’ll ask for a strawberry gummy and she’ll try to sell us the one hanging there covered in glue and dust. The window is closed. I knock and a woman who isn’t the usual old lady opens up. She’s wearing a yellow T-shirt and has bleached hair, glasses, and a sour look on her face.
“A pack of Fortunas.”
“Who are they for?”
“My mom.”
“OK.”
It’s easy to figure out how old Grandma is because she was born in 1920, a year I associate with ringlets, porcelain vases full of flowers, delicate handwriting, and sepia tones. The candles barely fit on the crowded cake. She’ll be blowing out seventy-three. Lighting them is an ordeal. By the time we make it to the last ones and run to the table, the first are already melting down. Only the three of us are here to sing the obligatory song. Grandma purses her lips; it takes her several puffs to blow them out. The layer cake is covered in drips of wax. We cut three slices. The TV is still on, showing the first exit polls, which are predicting a victory for the good guys, the heroes. Mom and Grandma raise their hands to their chests then take out a bottle of Marie Brizard. It’s still not a done deal, we can’t get complacent, we need to be strong. I have two more helpings of cake. Who’s going to eat it if I don’t?
The election thing is like soccer games in bars. On those days there’s a kind of collective mood that’s as fervent as it is exhausting. I guess the fans are addicted to the company, and sports give them a low-stakes excuse to get together and feel less alone once a week. Loneliness and boredom can take you to the most unexpected places. Things get serious at around eight o’clock. I’m told to shut up every time I open my mouth. I was all packed to go home but I’ve taken my dolls back out and spend the time admiring them on the couch. There are two girls and a boy. Each time I touch their adolescent bodies my palms burn with lust and anticipation. It won’t be long now. It won’t be long until I can rub up against other humans, just like the dolls do in my hands. I change one of the girl’s clothes and dress her up for a party. I give the boy a stylish jacket. I whisper cheap excuses for them to make out as soon as possible.
“Oh, Peter, I’ve missed you so much.”
“I’ve been dying to see you too.”
“What about this? Did you also want to see this?”
I slip off the straps of her princess dress and show the boy doll her tits. He sucks them for a few seconds and then adds, “But what I most wanted to see is this.”
I move his hand toward her flat, hard pussy, outside her clothes, and with a tiny, dexterous flourish, manage to make her lift her own skirt and show him she’s not wearing any panties. He starts groping her mercilessly and my voice makes a faint, inaudible moan. I turn their heads to imitate passionate French kisses as they touch each other. The third doll has been spying on them from behind the arm of the chair with her leg in a cast. When they see her, Peter and the girl in the princess dress start playing doctors and nurses, providing the spy with all kinds of medical care.
Illness is just another member of my family, one with the power to decide what will become of me after this summer. Our lease is up at the end of August. All this year, Mom has been getting worse, and faster. When I was born, she’d already been told she was terminal twice. But I’m feeling relaxed since the people they voted for are going to win. Felipe González is going to be president. That’ll be Grandma’s birthday present. She’ll sleep soundly tonight. No one’s going to take away her pension. The bad times are behind her. Orphanhood, hunger, her dead brothers, the sisters who fled to America, the lost husbands, all the chaos. I know this because things can only get better since I came into the world. I give Mom and Grandma’s lives meaning. I’m their light and I know how to shine. There’ll be no more wars or dictatorships now that I’m around. Mom won’t be cleaning houses for three hundred pesetas a day again, and she’s not going to die.
I’m not going to go to boarding school with the nuns. Though I’ll get baptized, in case. Just in case.