by Igiaba Scego
Mom doesn’t know this side of being a stocker. Otherwise who would bear it anymore? She already thinks I’m unhappy. The phone call with her left a bitter taste in my mouth. I’m going to snack on good cassata. Then I’ll shut myself in this cesspit of a room they gave me. I have to take the entrance exam for Arabic school. I have no choice but to study. I’m shitting my pants just thinking about it.
THE REAPARECIDA
I have very large hands. The right one is slightly swollen. They’ve always been this way: barely feminine, an aesthetic failure. I have reservations talking about my hands. I’ve been ashamed of them for as long as I can remember. Honest to God, they were dreadful. I say they “were” because I’ve gotten somewhat (not very) used to their chunkiness. But before, when I was a girl, I wanted to cut them off, those dreadful paws. They unsettled me. They felt like a foreign body light years away from me, from my dreams.
Today I’m an adult. No, what am I saying, I’m old and, come to think of it, I’m still ashamed. The feeling hasn’t completely subsided. It’s ridiculous. I’m already decaying, certainly my fat hands shouldn’t concern me. They should be the last thing on my mind. Instead they’re still the first. The years go by, priorities change, and still we suffer from fourteen-year-old bullshit. More than my hands, shouldn’t it be my flaccid thighs? My saggy chest? I have wrinkles around my mouth, my forehead is so full of creases that it looks like one of Ikea’s mass-produced striped rugs. My hands should be the least of my concerns, carajo. I stand in front of my tiny bathroom mirror every morning (the one that reflects my best image) grappling with the passage of time. I saturate myself with creams, salves, elixirs of purportedly everlasting life. I anoint myself with oils as though I were an oven-ready cake. But it’s still my hands that vex me.
Maybe it’s because I wanted to be a pianist like Rosalyn Tureck. Not too many people remember her, but she was a goddess. I wanted to play the piano like her. I wanted to soar on those ebony and ivory keys like a deranged tightrope walker. My fingers would’ve danced vehemently and perhaps what would’ve come out was a symphony or a motif to be sung softly between one thing and the next. I dreamed fancifully of exquisite nails and oblong fingers, like a vampire’s. One hand able to caress and remediate. One miraculous hand, the hand of a saint. Things turned out differently. I had a truck driver’s hands. My parents didn’t have the money to pay for piano lessons. Ernesto was already taking them. Mother said: “You’ve got no future with those giant hands,” and she wasn’t just talking about the piano. I was useless to Mother. My dream was in shambles. Goodbye Rosalyn Tureck.
My fingers were thick, square, massive. Mother made sure I knew it every day. She scolded my imperfections. She wanted a daughter who resembled her in both charm and malice. Instead, she got me. She never did abide it, and if it wasn’t Mother making me notice the defects of those stubby fingers, some especially odious companion would think to do it. My nails were so thick they made you think of exertion, manual labor, the plebs. My hands were not of noble stock. They were adapted to hard work—southern hands, like those of my parents. They were wide, but not extraordinarily long. Compared to the rest of my body, my hands were ridiculously big. They were broad and used to holding objects. They looked like spheres more than anything.
By contrast, Ernesto had beautiful hands. He knew how to play the piano. He skipped between the black and white keys like a grasshopper. When he played, he was happy. Ernesto was always happy.
I didn’t become a pianist. I didn’t follow in Rosalyn Tureck’s footsteps. I didn’t follow in anyone’s footsteps, actually. For a little while I was a goalkeeper. Don’t laugh, I’m serious. A goalie like Zamora, Bacigalupo, Jašin, Zoff, Banks, el pato Fillol. I wasn’t half bad. If my vagina weren’t an obstacle, I could’ve lifted a world cup in the air. To play soccer, and certainly to make money off it, one needed a penis. It was unjust. Think about it, today someone could’ve had an old poster of me hanging in their back shop. Maradona and me. Instead, no penis, no poster. Just a vagina that has brought me a great deal of trouble. And it’s not me on the wall, but Maradona, still skinny in his Naples jersey.
Even my papa had one of those posters in his backroom. Of course, it wasn’t of Diego Armando Maradona. In his time, people doted over Di Stefano, that player with the face of a sad accountant. Di Stefano was one of the greats, and among the most humble. The man on Papa’s poster, however, was Amadeo Raúl Carrizo. He was with River. A man who revolutionized what it meant to be in the goal. They should’ve treated soccer like Western history—a BC and an AC, before Carrizo, after Carrizo. Before him, players used to block with their bare hands; they’d scratched each other while the ball slipped away like silk. The risk of doing serious damage to one’s own team, letting a ball get away into the goal, wasn’t that remote. Amadeo Raúl wore gloves, he was the first. Genius idea. He was also unquestionably the first who left the penalty area to defend the goal with his teammates, not to mention the first to kick from one end of the field as a means of attack. He was a teammate and friend to Di Stefano. Yes, that sad accountant who brought glory to Real Madrid.
Maybe it’s because of the poster that I also rooted for River Plate. Mother was, as expected, with Boca Juniors. Ernesto too. Mother would say to me, “River is a pompous team. You’re just one of the rabble. Like Boca.” It was true. I denied it. I had feelings of grandeur. With an aristocrat’s body and a laborer’s hands. I was ashamed of myself. River let me dream. I felt different, cleaner, cheering for River. It gave me the illusion that my station in life would improve, that I wouldn’t always be confined to the slums where Mother thought I would flail. Plus I loved the team colors. They were taken from Saint George’s flag, a red cross on a white background. The red was like blood and the white was like a kind of milk you could swim in, where you could exist (or resist?). It was the Genoese coat of arms, from Papa’s city. Many of River’s founders came from the port city. That’s why I listen to De André nowadays. I like everything that comes from there. Papa didn’t speak much of Genoa, but when he did, I was awestruck. I was with River for Papa and for Amadeo Raúl Carrizo. Papa wasn’t a fan of River. He didn’t root for anyone. He was perpetually tired. I wonder if Carrizo had ended up in the store’s supply room accidentally.
It was my hands that got the attention of the boys on the Santiago field. The day was more humid than usual in Buenos Aires. High humidity was one thing porteños were used to from the cradle. It exceeded human imagination, seeped inside you, the bastard heat, down to the marrow. Five-year-olds already stricken with rheumatism. The boys of Santiago field asked me to be the goalie for their ragtag team. They were missing one Ruiz Hernández Blasetti. He had chicken pox and that was the main challenge for the brawny kids of Pepe Rinaldo corner, which wasn’t a neighborhood, but a residential courtyard that just so happened to be called that. The matches took place between either end of the courtyard. The team names were randomly assigned, too. One day you were from Santiago and two weeks later you came from Pepe Rinaldo, then after a month the cards would be reshuffled and you’d end up on Claudio Ramírez. There were classics that lasted for years, others that disappeared after a day. My first team was Santiago and so was my last.
Because of my hands, they didn’t realize I was a girl right away. I was on my way home. I had to do homework at my friend Ana Franca’s house but she was running a fever and Doña Rosalba, her mother, gave me a piece of pie and said, “Go straight home, hija, and don’t stop for any reason. Tomorrow you have your history exam.” Ana Franca and I had to study. I enjoyed history; I wasn’t worried. The pie was great, especially the browned crust. Ana Franca’s mom had a way with sweets. I ate very well at my classmate’s house. At my house, there was only disgusting salted fish and bread. Every now and then someone would indulge in asados, but no sweets, not even a miserable stale cookie. Mother wasn’t a great cook. In general, she wasn’t anything special on other domestic fronts either. Our clothes were drab, almost completely faded.
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I didn’t listen to Doña Rosalba’s advice. It was Alfredo’s fault. He was a little guy with a pockmarked face, distended like a rat’s. He had a kind spirit, though. He looked shorter than me, but if he really straightened out his shoulders he surpassed me by a few centimeters. His face contorted in the effort. He gnashed his teeth. Then he said something to me like, “I think you’d make a great goalkeeper” or “We’re short a goalkeeper.” I don’t know the exact words, but I do know they recruited me. I’d never seriously played soccer before that game. I don’t know why I agreed. Because I liked a challenge? The team introduced themselves. There was Chico, El Brujo, Mono, Lorenzo García, all boys my age or older. When they asked what my name was I said Ernesto. And that was that, pats on the back all around. From Alfredo, only a flick on the cheek. They were very affectionate boys. They had esprit de corps. I was inexperienced. I’d had a little fun with Ernesto doing a few crosses from time to time, but Lord, I’d never stood in goal. I recklessly accepted, since my desire to belong to a group was stronger than my fear of making a fool of myself. I simply threw myself into a new adventure. I also did it because I didn’t have many friends. Ana Franca, sure, but besides her there was basically no one. I was bashful and everyone teased me because of my hands. I couldn’t endure it and I shut up like a clam. Those boys, though, wanted me because of my hands. I played well and made two decent saves. I had good luck with games, any game. I could intuit my opponent’s moves when they entered my zone. I knew how to beat them. I got dirty. Returning home, I got an earful from my mother. I didn’t tell her about the soccer. She gave me a good scolding.
I lasted for six games on Santiago before I was unmasked. Betrayed, I should say. I’d been followed. She became suspicious because of the filthy clothes. I had a habit of stealing Ernesto’s shorts. Then I’d artfully place them in his dirty laundry. She knew Ernesto couldn’t sully his shorts like that. And everything smelled like me. Feminine, like menstrual blood.
I was splendid in my improvised athletic wear. I’d cobbled together a pair of kneepads. I lined my hips with rags to soften the falls and I wore a real pro’s hat. I didn’t make many saves in that game. We were better than our opponents. I fired up my teammates. Then, I don’t know when, Mother appeared. She stood in the middle of the field. No one dared say anything to her. She came toward me and, as in the worst comic strips, took me by the ear. She pulled me away saying, “Haven’t you realized she’s a girl?”
What a shame, I liked being the goalkeeper, holding that ball between my hands. It gave me a sense of power. My hands were beautiful when they held a ball.
All of Santiago ended up in Esma. Everyone, no exceptions. Even Ana Franca was kidnapped. She’s still a desaparecida. But she wasn’t taken to Esma. I forgot where. Years later I saw Alfredo Díaz again, the one who’d recruited me. His gaze was lost in the nothingness.
Do you see? I can’t be consistent or chronological. I tell you things haphazardly, as they happen. That’s not what I wanted. You know, I let the inspiration of the moment take me away. I’m here, on Carthage Amilcar beach, and they’re scrimmaging in front of me. I’m reminded of myself, of the Carrizo poster, of Ana Franca and her mother who made stupendous pies, of Santiago. When boys play they are beautiful, careless, happy. Who could’ve thought about Esma with a ball between their feet?
They also put your uncle Ernesto in Esma. Here we are again. I’ve told you this thousands of times already. I’d like to retie the strings of the matter. That’s why I repeat myself. But I’d also like to get lost along the way. Retying frightens me, yet I must do it.
Esma. I hope you never forget this name. Write it in your diary. Tattoo it on your body. Repeat it dozens of times. Mark it on whatever post-it notes you’ve got. Teach it to your dearest friends. Add it to your cellphone memos. Do not forget. Your uncle ended up in there. All of Santiago ended up in there. You can’t forget it. It would be like killing them again.
For a while I tried forgetting that accursed name. I tried to forget I had a brother named Ernesto. At night, though, I dreamed of Jesus Christ using the picana on him, that awful instrument of torture whose name no one in Argentina wanted to hear anymore. Thinking of it makes me want to vomit.
I only learned who had been detained in Esma afterward. We discovered many things afterward. Before, nobody knew, they suspected. Rather, we all pretended not to know. They kidnapped our neighbors and we covered our ears as forcefully as we could. The soldiers turned the radio volume up. You couldn’t overthink if one day you didn’t see Veronica again, who always went to buy bread for her mother. Beautiful smile, eighteen years old, a baby bump, her whole life ahead of her. Then suddenly, no more Veronica, no more bread for her mother, and her child perhaps adopted by assassins. These were recurring things in Argentina. One couldn’t fret about it. An entire country was desaparecido. Everyone pretended like things were fine. You went grocery shopping, you planned parties, you watched the World Cup. When someone you knew was swallowed up, chupado, as they say now, you thanked the on-duty military for turning the volume up. Hearing a man scream like slaughtered veal did not sit well with anyone, and it ruined your digestion.
Anyway, I knew nothing about Esma. We knew other things about Ernesto, like how they took him, for instance. Only Mother tried learning more. She was the only one who never stopped knowing. I had no cognition of anything. Where, why, what. Where they had taken him, why him, what he did. I constantly asked myself, Why? For what? And above all: Where? Where? Where?
I didn’t know they were torturing him so close to our home. We’re from the northern part of Buenos Aires. Esma, too, is in the North, in an area flattened east to west by myriad streets and alleyways. Avenida Comodoro, Avenida Rivadavia, Avenida Lugones, Avenida del Libertador, Avenida…
Today, Esma is a memorial museum. In that putrid detention center, they celebrate the finest Argentinian youth exterminated by the military in the ’70s.
I wonder if there’s a point in having a museum there now, in that way. Well, I shouldn’t really be talking. I’m the last one to say anything. I wasn’t much better than the torturers, since I was a vulgar accomplice to the system. A parasite. They say that because of memory, Nunca Más will take effect in all parts of the world. But we know that torture often still happens. It happens at Guantanamo, it happens at Abu Ghraib.
I’m glad schoolchildren now visit the torture rooms, see the horrific sites, capucha after capucha, and the equipment required to apply the picana to the detainees’ genitals. There’s another purpose, too. We Argentinians can no longer fully rejoice. I would say that we human beings can no longer fully rejoice. Memory cannot be enclosed by four walls, even if those are Esma’s walls. Memory shouldn’t be politically correct, much less a destination for a humanitarian vacation. I can see it already, the moral crusader-tourist who, after Chiapas, Cuba, and Santiago Bernabéu Stadium, arrives in Buenos Aires at 8200 Avenido del Libertador, at Esma. Armed with good intentions—not to mention a digital camera—in search of uncomplicated emotions. I imagine the tourist immortalizing farcical poses in that building. I see him months later, in his bland and tranquil house in the Global North, explaining the powerful sensations of that horrible tour to his friends. Bona fide tourists, pretty photographs, enthusiastic comments from his buddies, someone thinking of going the next year. But I wonder, does any of this help Argentina?
We Argentinians snicker and think: “It’s done.” We are thoroughly, sincerely convinced that with humanitarian tourism and a few institutional ceremonies we’ll get through it. We think that period is closed forever and we can finally look to the future. Maybe that’s true. The museum makes sense only if memory becomes flesh, if memory is active. Does it make any sense if the criminals go unpunished? If the criminals are honored? And the reasons behind the extermination left unexamined? What sense is there? Today it’s worse. The country lives in an immense cultural and moral void. Neoliberal politicians make us into slaves. When Menem was still in charge, e
veryone reinvented something about themselves. Their nose, their breasts, a new chunk of fat on their buttocks. It was the country where plastic surgeons made the most money. Then what happened? The illusion of being rich and white went away. In our hearts we returned to the Third World, and the old wounds of the past reopened. In fact, they had never closed.
Esma, Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada. It was enormous. So many trees. Like a playground, a park for martyrs. Your uncle was tortured there before being “transferred,” that is, killed. I don’t know how long they kept him. Maybe six months, perhaps a year or two. But not three. He was still alive when the World Cup was going on. His girlfriend told me that. They probably gave him an injection like all the others and tossed him from a plane. He would have been smashed. Dispersed, in scraps, dissolved by the stomach acids of some flesh-eater. I hope they ate him right away. I think an animal’s stomach is a good tomb, better than putrefying in the open air.
At that point we didn’t know anything. We waited for our swallowed-up loved ones. The mothers waited more than anyone. Your grandmother waited, her hopes never faded. I never believed he’d return. Mother hated me for that. She spit on me and called me traidora. She was right. I was, in a certain sense.
She was a particular woman, your grandmother Renata. She’d adopted the Portuguese grit from her father and the Spanish stubbornness from her mother. She knew how to cook salted codfish like few others on this earth. But if you asked her to cook something else, she poisoned you. She was not a fantastic cook. She would knit, singing fado. She may have made love singing fado. I still remember those inconsolable songs. There was one I liked a lot. It spoke of the fear of eternity. Mother sang that calming, melancholy song whenever you were with her.
