13
Go away and don’t ever come back
Father took out the brush he always kept in the glove compartment and combed back his curly hair, looking at himself in the rear-view mirror. Don’t raise your voice, I told you, didn’t I, in hospital you can’t shout, you have to be quiet. I hope mother doesn’t ever, ever have any more children, I thought, because being alone with your father and being the eldest daughter was one of the worst experiences ever.
Lying in her bed, mother said, couldn’t you have put some clean clothes on your brothers, they’re still wearing yesterday’s covered in tomato stains? I’d changed and washed my face as I did every morning, and it never occurred to me there was something else I should be doing. But I felt more sorry for her than myself, although I felt as if I was in a pit I couldn’t climb out of.
The sheets were very white and you could crank up part of the bed, you could call a nurse with a push of a button, and we ate the pasta soup mother didn’t like. When you coming home? Father had bought her a nightdress to wear in hospital and a dressing-gown and slippers that mother had never worn because she’d never been in a hospital. I felt sorry for her because I couldn’t translate everything she had to tell the doctors, nurses and room companions for three days. I felt sorry because in fact she was alone, and in fact we too were alone although father was there. What would we do if he decided to throw knives or the other things he usually throws and mother wasn’t there to provide some kind of shield?
Father used to leave us by ourselves for a long time when he had to go off with Rosa, who said she didn’t want to see us ever again. Better that way, so I wouldn’t know how bad father was being and how much he was hurting her. Better alone than with her, if she didn’t want us, because father was then starting to do very odd things. Soumisha would come and see us in the morning and ask, is he in? I’d tell her he wasn’t and she’d tidy up, wash up and cook a hot meal, and it was like when Ángel took my hand and said don’t worry. My dear, she said, it’s time to stir yourself, you don’t have much choice. I know you’re more interested in reading that big book, but you won’t learn anything about life there. Mother will be coming home and will need you to look after her, she’s only got you and you’re old enough now to do some things. I wanted to be old enough to do other things. I didn’t want to spend my time cleaning so others could spread their dirt again, although maybe I didn’t think like that because I could only have been ten or eleven.
We spent those three afternoons in the hospital. We took mother food and the nurses scowled at us. A small pot of chicken broth that Soumisha had cooked, that will help build up your strength, and was a sacred food for women who’d just given birth. Good bread, and those crumbs we called rolls, all kinds of fruit juices and yoghurts and fruit. Mother was breastfeeding and should nourish herself properly. Make sure she drinks the broth and eats the chicken, there’s nothing better for you. And we gobbled down the hospital food that nobody likes except us.
Obviously father couldn’t sleep at home if mother wasn’t there, so we slept by ourselves. If someone wets the bed, remember to change the sheets and have a shower in the morning, if I’m not there it doesn’t mean you have to walk around stinking to high heaven. I didn’t know how washing machines worked, so the sheets full of pee piled up next to the machine.
I felt someone was holding my hand when mother came out of hospital, although she’d just enjoyed her first holiday from housework since she’d been married. She soon started to busy herself, even if the little baby cried now and then and she stopped to suckle him. Do this, do that, she said, and now she’d stopped nagging, I shouldn’t have to tell you what to do, you should know by now, I helped her as much as I could. Sometimes we’d run out of nappies and father still wouldn’t have left any money for us, lucky we didn’t have to buy baby milk.
One day he came and said give me ten thousand and she refused. Give me ten thousand, I’ve got to go, and she retorted I know where you’re off and I’m fed up with all that, I need to feed my children, I’m not going to give you the money so you can spend it on that whore.
It was winter and mother had lit the butane gas heater in the bedroom and I was really worried she might fall on the grille over the flame if he hit her. I was worried in case she fell on the baby in his cradle or in case something worse happened. Give me money, he said. No, no and no again. I’d never seen mother and father looking like that before and father not knowing where to put himself. She said you leave her, or I leave you. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, but it was mother speaking, it was Mila who had tired of cleaning chapels and relics, Colometa who was running away from everything in order to find herself. She won’t let go of me, I told you, whenever I get rid of her she chases after me.
Tell her to come here. Are you mad? She doesn’t know he’s been born and thinks you and I never sleep together. Tell her to come up, I said, and I’d never seen mother wave her arms like that or father look so frightened.
Rosa had been waiting for some time in the car and in the end she got tired of hooting, she rang the door bell and said, tell your father I’m waiting for him, are we going or not? Mother told me, tell her to come up, and father said no, mother yes, father no and mother yes. I needed to look for my cape and rescue that family that was no family at all.
Come upstairs, mother wants to talk to you, and a sheet was draped over the cradle so that no spirit could get inside and hurt the young child.
In fact I felt sorry for her. She can’t have thought that it would end as it had to, that she’d never set foot in that house again. She walked in to face mother in the passage, father with his head in his hands, out of his mind. Vin, vin, and mother gripped Rosa by her sleeve and led her into the bedroom. Come here and take a look. Look, and suddenly she lifted the sheet to reveal the baby. This is my son, mine. And Manel’s, he and I like that, and she put her two index fingers together to show how they’d been together. Is it true? asked Rosa, looking first at father and then at me, who was feeling I was in one of those soaps like Crystal or Ruby and not in real life at all. What she’s saying is true, and still she made me translate what mother said. Then mother did something that put the final seal on everything. She slapped her, thwap, and turned her face round forty-five degrees, thwap. Silence followed. For a while I admired mother, because she was more than Mila, or Colometa, and was for real. Silence. Then tears streamed down her cheeks, first down one and then down the other. Tears with no sobbing, and I stopped translating for her: go away and don’t ever come back. And I played out the role for a bit, felt harder than ever, folded my arms over my chest.
La, sixth musical note. Làbar, a standard adopted by some emperor or other. Labdàcida, the definition’s far too complicated for me to read.
14
Love God and He will love you
I thanked God for solving everything. Father said he wanted to return to the true path and began to go to the prayer-house they’d opened a few streets away across the bridge. He said, all of you as well, and it was strange remembering chants we’d learned so long ago as we sat and swayed.
They said you had to wear a djellaba to go to the prayer-house, so as not to insult God, you couldn’t dress just any old way. I didn’t have one and my mother’s were too long, so I wore the nightshirt she’d worn in hospital and pulled it over my usual clothes. Lots of other children attended who, like us, didn’t know what they were reciting every Saturday and Sunday morning as they sat on carpets tied together with paper that’s used for painting.
Father said now I will be a good Muslim, all that stuff led to my ruin and I’m going to commend myself to God. He bought videotapes that showed a woman who’d led a very bad life before becoming a good Muslim and she sang so beautifully you felt like crying and giving yourself totally to God. He also bought the tape of The Message, which recounted the life of the Prophet, and The Lion of the Desert, which was about the decolonisation of Libya, but also a bit about God. What’s more, the ge
neral leading the Libyan resistance movement was the same as the Prophet’s uncle.
I decided I’d be a good Muslim too, the best. That’s why I just happen to be in the archives of the local newspaper, a photo of me in that nightshirt when they announced the opening of the first mosque in the district. One thing will lead to another. A Muslim, who’d not been born a Muslim, drew up the plans for the future mosque, and his wife, who had been born a Muslim, came to see us. Everyone spoke slowly, weighing their words, and the architect never looked at any woman who wasn’t his wife. How peaceful, apparently they’d never had any Rosas in their house or Bottles of Butane or flying glasses or knives. Because they loved God and followed what He said they should do to the letter.
I’d do the same, be like that family that so loved and respected each other. Then ours would be transformed. I prayed five times a day and always ended up asking, please, my God, make father return to the true path, though I spoke in Catalan because I’d not have known how to say that in the language of Muslims. Nothing wrong in that: in the final part of the prayer, when you’re asking God for something, you can use the language you feel most at ease in.
That orderliness was a boon, was like when Ángel held out his hand. I couldn’t resist. I asked my mother to let me keep Ramadan, and she said only at weekends. Someone told her where Mecca really was and she changed the direction she prayed towards. She no longer broke the fast by herself and father would soon be ready to come back, but that would have been too many changes in one year. Despite the fact he watched films with divine and anti-colonial messages, alternating them with Bud Spencer and Terence Hill films and the Tom and Jerry tapes he liked so much.
Now he only came home drunk once in a while, or perhaps I no longer woke up when he made a racket at night. Or else my mother had stopped telling me so much, or else I was too busy reading the lives of the prophets and my dictionary that I didn’t pay so much attention to all that.
I began to read the labels on our food. Mother, these biscuits contain pork. And she’d reply, what’s that, well, they’re what we’ve always eaten. It says animal fat, at best, it’s fat from an animal that’s not been sacrificed properly, or, worst of all, is just pork fat. We’d go to buy cheese cut in slices and say clean the machine, please, you’ve just been slicing ham, and I couldn’t get over the fact I was acting like that. Our teachers made us sing Christmas carols and I couldn’t say no, I don’t want to sing them, like the daughters of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, I couldn’t. I sat among the other children and sang and didn’t sing, pretended, just moved my lips and told myself, my God, forgive me, I know Jesus isn’t your son, I know they’ve got it wrong, and I know it’s Christians who sing these songs. But I wouldn’t have been sorry at all to get presents on the Day of the Kings or to celebrate another Christmas, even if it came with flying knives or Bottle of Butane singing Go away.
If I’d heard about Saint Teresa of Jesus I’d have known I was on my path to perfection. If I’d heard about Marx I’d have known I was taking refuge in all that stuff so as not to die so soon. I decided to take my unusual religious belief as far as I could and it was at that precise moment that the architect’s wife gave me a white headscarf and some gilt safety pins. For when you’re praying, she said, and I hugged her I liked them so much. White suited me and was the colour of purity; I knew nobody purer than myself.
I wore it to prayers first. Then when I was home. Until I felt it was indispensable, that I couldn’t go back to walking down the street with my head bare. I put it on to go shopping and noticed the astonished looks on the faces of the shopkeepers who knew me. Nobody said anything. I went out a couple of times wearing it and one day father saw me. Where you off to like that? he asked, looking put out. You know, that’s the last time you go out with that rag on your head. But if… You heard me.
There are times in life you don’t know if what people are saying is completely serious or said half jokingly. I don’t know if I knew what it was I should be doing or if I took his warning to be one of his don’t do this remarks he then forgets and mentions no more until he remembers it again, or if it was just that my rebellious spirit expressed itself in the most unexpected of situations.
I’d not planned to make any Muslim revolution, but father couldn’t be serious about the headscarf. His mother had worn one, his wife, his sisters… It couldn’t be a real threat.
Mother made me go to Soumisha’s house to fetch something and I put my headscarf on, thinking it was such a short walk that there wouldn’t be a problem if father were upset. You’re like an angel, she said, you’re sure to go straight to heaven, through the front gate. I was returning home so happily when I spotted him at the top of the stairs, two storeys up by that time, giving my little brother a slobbering goodbye. Our eyes met and at that precise moment I realised I shouldn’t have worn my headscarf. The briefest of moments and I was already running downstairs so fast I don’t know how I didn’t fall down. He said nothing but I heard him behind me and when he said stop, stop or it will be much the worse for you, I don’t know if I ran or stopped, but I do remember being on the ground, face stuck in the drain, and him kicking me over and over. I don’t remember the kicks, I don’t remember if he kicked me in the face, in the stomach. I remember one at the base of my spine with his work boots, and that really hurt, I thought nobody could ever hurt me so much again. And then I looked around and saw the people in the bar opposite our house sipping their drinks and not saying a word and passers-by who didn’t say a word and the people who knew us who didn’t say a word either and that was really to be on your own. Mà, bottom part of the body and lots beside. Maastrichtià, that’s very complicated. Mabre, a fish belonging to the family of Perciformes.
15
A house in an alley, not on Mango Street
When you move, it’s usually a big change or transformation, but what we did was move and change hardly at all. We went from living in a second floor apartment that still smelled of the dead woman who’d lived there all her life and had a son who painted not very pretty pictures, to live in a house that was all for us. Two floors plus a garage and a garden, the works. Our house on Mango Street, but no Lucy and no chicanos. It wasn’t Chicago, it was a local capital where there was less of a stench from the tanneries, the regulations didn’t allow them to empty their waste into the rivers anymore, though it still reeked of pigs.
We were all looking forward to living in an apartment where it was easier to dry the clothes in winter because of the central heating, where the walls were freshly painted white and where nobody had died before we moved in. The rooms were completely empty when we went to see it for the first time and I thought I’d be happy there, that our problem was space and not the way father was.
We had balconies and windows, a terrace at the back overlooked by the kitchen, and a garden under the terrace that linked up with the other gardens. There was no pigeon loft and mother was so happy, what would she do all day now she didn’t have to clean out the pigeon shit and feed them. The neighbours were nice and said hello, neighbours who’d never have watched while you were being kicked to pieces in the street and not done anything as they held their gin-and-tonics over trousers done up under their paunches.
This would be different. It was spring when we took our things there. Father bought a double bed and beds for the four of us. I had my own room, with a window and a desk.
The fridge was one of those big ones that freezes at the bottom and keeps cold at the top, a black leather sofa that sticks to you when you’re sweaty in summer, and a television that worked without having to change the channels with the broomstick.
Everything was going well. Father had employed a man as a secretary rather than a woman and so there wouldn’t be that kind of problem again. He said he loved us more than ever and mother got pregnant again. We hadn’t settled in yet and had already made friends, the street wasn’t a street, it was a cul-desac, and so everything was easier. A dead end of a street where only the neighb
ours’ cars drove down, we rode our bicycles and mother chatted to the female neighbours as best she could in that language she’d been listening to for so long.
The day we finished moving in I was quite old enough to organise everything. Father said come with me and mother said no, I don’t want to leave the children by themselves. She knew he wanted to go drinking and didn’t want to do it by himself. If you don’t come, I’ll find someone else. Come on, we’ll go to Manel’s, we won’t go to a bar.
And so mother said they’ve all had dinner and are in bed, you go and a wash because you’ve got school tomorrow, when you finish, go to bed.
I had a peaceful shower, for the first time we had a proper bathtub in which I could fit my whole body. I still don’t know if I rinsed out all the soap and conditioners, my hair was so long and thick.
I got into bed and continued reading, with a towel wrapped around my head. The baby slept in my parents’ bedroom, and the older boys in the adjacent bedroom. I’d washed up and left the kitchen completely clean so mother would be happy and say look, how nice, and I didn’t have to tell her.
I’d tidied the dining room and gone upstairs to bed. While I was reading I heard noises and began to think how vulnerable that house was. If thieves wanted to get in they could do so via the terrace, balcony or windows, even via the garage if they put themselves out. It was one of those moments when all around seemed to creak, my brothers’ breathing made me suspicious, the breeze that made some trees sway or a car that broke the silence now and then. A silence that didn’t exist. Get back to your book, I told myself. Mulata, mulater, mulatí. I felt I had to do something and decided to check that the door was properly locked.
The Last Patriarch Page 17
