August

by Romina Paula

  I took my clothes off, your house was nice and warm, I wanted to forget about everything as fast as possible. I go to bed wearing my underwear and a T-shirt. I get into a fetal position, but I’m not even close to falling asleep. My ovaries hurt. So fucked up, I did it again. Or rather, he did it again. He could have, he could have had me. I can’t believe it, can’t believe I’m so easy. Even though I don’t like his shirt, even though I’m irritated by his way, so aggressive, so constantly on the defensive, but there I am again, as though no time has passed, like an idiot, clingy. I realize, I now acknowledge that I would have liked to kiss him. I would have wanted him to kiss me in the truck and I would have wanted to try to resist him, a little, because of his wife, because of his children, and I would have wanted for him to insist, and I would cede, cede, cede to him and everything he brings up in me, everything he can do to me, and have him fuck me, like that, very awkwardly in the car, in the front or in the backseat, wherever there was more space, in front, I guess, so as not to have to cut off/interrupt the moment, I would have wanted him to fuck me like that, fast, with everything still on, the two of us with our clothes still on, and to sweat and steam up the windows of the car and to come, as I almost always did, with him. I’d jerk off if I wasn’t bleeding so much.

  I’m alone, I’m hungry, my ovaries hurt, and I’m bleeding furiously and nonstop. I go to the kitchen and make a sandwich with the meat leftover from the barbecue the other day, cold, and tomatoes and mayonnaise. It’s amazing. There’s nothing like mayonnaise, and I feel better. My body, when it’s in transition, requires fat, the more saturated the better. That’s how I end the day, this long day of shock upon shock: crying and eating a sandwich, like Chihiro but sadder, because it’s not even because my mom and dad were turned into pigs that I’m crying, it’s for myself, because I’m nothing now/because I’m such an idiot.

  17.

  This one comes from an American suburb—again. Two sisters, both that semi-ugly blond type with eighties hairdos, very high school, with big/loose college sweatshirts, videotaping themselves in their living room. There’s someone else, the boyfriend, the boyfriend of one of them. At the very beginning I couldn’t figure out if what I was seeing was a reenactment or if it was really them. Later on we find out that it really is them because everything or almost everything that’s about to happen is recorded on what I imagine is the family camera. So anyway it’s Christmas, or almost Christmas, and they, the sisters, get drunk, and a few hours later Karla, the eldest, calls a friend of hers on the phone and tells her something terrible has happened to her little sister, that she’s passed out and choked to death on her own vomit; that she passed out, and she died. I see the images from Tammy’s autopsy: she has some splotches on her face, deep purple. The voice-over says forensics says it must have been the gastric juices, that that must have messed up her face. And that she must have died of asphyxia because vomit had gotten into her lungs (like Daisy, to just take the nearest example, like Daisy). Up to this point it would be an accident, a family tragedy. Shortly after this Karla and Paul, the older sister and her boyfriend, move in together, move into one of those suburban houses. There are a couple of police reports about young girls, of rape. The identikit of a young man of twenty-five, youthful blond, regular face, face from the prep-school yearbook, from the extended window where victims and victimizers resemble one another in such horrific fashion, matches the face of Paul Bernardo, Karla’s boyfriend. The police ask him to do a DNA test, and they question him. Since Paul is so polite and obedient no one suspects anything of him, and they don’t even look into his results. So. They get married. They go on a honeymoon to somewhere or other, someplace in the Caribbean. There are pictures and videos from the wedding, from the honeymoon. Idyllic. A few days after they get back, there’s another rape in the neighborhood, but this time it’s followed by a death. They find the young lady, parts of her body, carved up and buried in cement, buried in blocks of cement and scattered around/distributed in trash dumps. They can’t find who did it. A little while later another girl is killed. Another young lady, blond, from a nice suburban neighborhood. And then at some point around then Karla can’t take it anymore and she goes to the police. She’s ready to talk. She’s tired. Her husband, Paul Bernardo, beats the shit out of her, just never lays off. She says she can’t handle it anymore, and she wants him to get what he deserves. And she starts confessing: that yes, she knows about the homicides and the rapes. And not only as an accomplice, but also as a participant, because she was also part of the rounds of violation and torture. That they have everything on tape. Everything. She negotiates turning over the videos in exchange for a lesser sentence. Isn’t the denunciation worse? Shouldn’t they augment her punishment because of that? What is the logic of commuting? Anyway, through the tapes they verify that she was indeed an active participant in the crimes. And there’s more. She confesses, she has something to confess about the death of her sister. Why is she talking now? It turns out that it was actually her, Karla, who gave her sister to Paul as a Christmas gift. Paul, her boyfriend, had expressed interest in the younger sister, and Karla had decided to let him rape her as a Christmas gift, an offering for her Paul. So they gave her alcohol to stupefy her a little bit, and then they definitively put her down with some substance they had her inhale, I don’t remember what it was.

  They exhume Tammy’s cadaver. They do the relevant tests. It’s true, they find remnants of substances in her face. Paul raped her with the consent (and under the gaze?) of her sister, and that’s when she threw up, choked on her vomit, and died. And here we have what may be—at least to me—the most horrifying tidbit: among the videotapes there are some from just a few weeks after Tammy’s death where her sister dresses up as her, puts on her clothes, and performs oral sex on her boyfriend. He films it.

  18.

  I wake up, and I’m in stoppage time. Starting now I ought to be returning. To be in transit, a passenger in transit. Here I am, someone with a life in the big city, and yet for some strange reason, or for many, I don’t want to return to it. To the city, to my life. I feel panicked. Now my life back in Buenos Aires makes me panic. Manuel, school, work, the apartment: I don’t see what any of it’s for. I can change the channel, I feel like I could do it and just leave everything, like a movie with no finale, on cable, that couldn’t quite hold your attention enough to make you want to stick it out and see how it ends. The problem is that there’s nothing really on the other channels either, but at least they’re running different things, there’s potential, there’s still the possibility that something will happen. Right? I’ve woken up in a foul mood, I realize. Today not even your cat wanted to sleep with me. Hardly a surprise.

  When I get up it’s crazy late, your parents aren’t there anymore. On the little note your mom left me it says: Manuel called, call the store, when are you getting in. He wants to know when I’m getting in and not when I’m returning, meaning he’s taking it for granted that I am in fact returning, what enviable certainty. Return. I don’t even remotely feel like it right now, I wouldn’t even know what for. I suppose Ramiro would remind me that the same thing happens every time I take a trip, that then I don’t want to return, that I always get entranced with some other life, that I fall in love with all those other women I am when I’m away, in other places, that what’s hard for me is commitment, that the alternative is easy, that starting from nothing is always easy, and I know, I get all that, and I don’t feel like listening to it, and besides, this isn’t a trip. I don’t know, specifically the feeling I have now is that nobody needs me back there. They don’t need me here either, but something is broken, that’s the sense I have. Now I think I couldn’t leave without first having talked to Julián, a little bit, even if it’s just for a few hours, just to have him talk to me, have him talk to me about everything, tell me how he’s doing, I need to know, everything, maybe meet his kids? Maybe even meet his wife? His pregnant wife? Would it be wise to take that leap? Should I do that? Altho
ugh no, because it would be a kind of deceit, because I want him too. And what would I even do there? I’m going to just chat with—what’s her name? Mariela? Or was it Marianela? I don’t know, I think my mind is clouded from being so upset, I had an unpleasant awakening, and I can’t think clearly. I’d really miss your cat too, if I left right now. And your parents. I’m a wreck, I need a family, I want a family, and in some way, to a certain extent I feel like I’m usurping yours, even though I’m not, even though I know it’s an exchange, and that I am obviously also giving something back, I must be, they’ve like adopted me. I feel like I can’t return like this, the way things are right now if I leave, I’d be returning broken. I realize, I already am, I’m a little bit broken, but it wasn’t the trip, I don’t think it was that this time, I think I was already broken from before, that I’d been breaking for a while, which is why I came, or why I was able to come, by myself, too, because I could have come with Manuel, that’s true, and I decided to come alone, which must be for some reason, there must have already been something that was broken. I can’t leave like this, I can’t, but I also can’t stay. What the fuck am I going to do here? What the fuck am I going to do?

  19.

  I called my brother, in the end I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to, I hoped to, my intention was to get ahold of myself. I called myself to order, in some sense. I knew he wasn’t the person I wanted to listen to, I knew I didn’t want to listen to him, and nonetheless, or precisely for this reason, I called him. I think I kind of needed to be shaken or whatever by somebody who really knows me and is familiar—pun intended—with my self-deception mechanisms. To my surprise, and kind of disappointment, Ramiro wasn’t that clear, nor did he go especially deep with it. He basically told me to think, that’s what he told me, to just think about how I’d been feeling. I explained it to him, I told him briefly about my encounter with Julián and about how confused I’d been and how upsetting I’d found the whole incident; he listened attentively, he asked me what about Manuel, and I said, what about him? And he goes, what are you planning on doing, and I go, what do you mean what am I planning on doing, that’s exactly what I don’t know, I ask him if he’s seen him, if he knows anything, he says yeah, he saw him the other day and that nothing seemed to be up, he was normal, like always, that he’d asked him about me, if he had any news, since I was a spaz and hadn’t even emailed him. And Ramiro had said yes, that he’d spoken with me, and that I was a little worked up about everything, which he understood perfectly, and that anyway I must be about to return. That re: today. Starting today, then, I ought to be returning, there’s no more sense in my being here, I ought to be back on the road. So basically just that, that Ramiro understands my confusion, not that that really tells me anything, not that that helps me. He doesn’t tell me what I might do about it all, nor does he tell me to stop it. He doesn’t tell me to return, nor does he tell me not to. He just suggests I give Manu a call, even if just to reassure him, even if I don’t really know what I want or whatever, but aside from that, you know, that I should just think about it, and take care. He tacks that on, take care, he just throws it in, and it’s the thing that most sticks with me when I hang up. He also said Corsito is chilling, that he’s gotten used to the house, that he’s even taking certain liberties at this point. I hang up and realize I’m in the same place as before, that I have completely failed to move forward, that I have not evolved. That for god’s sake someone please tell me what I need to do.

  It’s him who answers, when I call him at work. Hey, sweetie, he says, already yanking at my heartstrings. How’s it going, he says, and he says how I kind of just disappeared, and he asks when I’ll be getting in. Yeah, there’s been a lot going on (me), with my dad, and your parents, and the ashes, the city, the south, the southern wind, the streets, the climate, or the atmosphere, I guess the atmosphere is what I mean. The scene. And the cold too, I mean. Oh, sure, of course, he can imagine, he had imagined, that he hadn’t been too worried about that, that he knew I must be going through a lot right now. And when am I getting in. And I say, well, you know, I don’t quite know yet, that I’m going to go get my ticket today, I’ll have to just kind of see, that I’ll let him know when I get it, but that things are kind of weird with me right now, just so he knows, like just so he’s prepared or whatever, so he knows. That’s fine, sweetie, don’t worry, he says, that’s what he says, that he’ll be there, that he can’t wait to see me, and I say me too, I want to see him too, and that as soon as I know I’ll let him know, that’s what I tell him, that I’ll let him know as soon as I know. I love you, baby, he says, and I say it back. I miss you, he says, but I don’t say anything to that. I’ll let you know, beso, ciao. And take care, yet another take care.