My Favorite Girlfriend was a French Bulldog

by Legna Rodríguez Iglesias

  Likewise pleasant was the conversation between those who, like me, belonged to an institution. In contrast to the people who came individually to request permission, those of us with institutions had full confidence that our permits would not be refused, for obvious reasons. And our faces—those of us with institutions—displayed the calm that comes from self-confidence.

  I waited my turn for approximately three hours, sitting alongside painters, filmmakers, distinguished professors, doctors, scientists, businesspeople, engineers. Our institutions favored us. It was the Ministry that protected the community of our institutions. Infinite gratitude to the Ministry, and the desire for it to continue tirelessly improving the world.

  The conversations of the institutional men centered on academic subjects. A man beside me stared at my thighs, naked and pale, covered in unshaven fuzz. That was when I realized that an interview should be attended in pants or a dress, never in a garment like the pair of shorts I was wearing. The tokens in my right pocket brushed nervously against my thigh. Jangling and cold. “It’s cold in here,” I ventured. I crossed my legs. I bit my lip. I scratched my breast. I smiled. I asked the man what his job was, and he replied that he worked in the Ministry.

  I didn’t ask his name because the knowledge that he worked at the Ministry was enough. A Ministry sustains a country. Makes it strong. Establishes it. I raised my arms to the sky and gave thanks on behalf of my family and my people, and myself, to be sitting beside so important a man, someone who really honored me with his presence, his destiny.

  Near us—the applicants endorsed by institutions—there were at least three windows, glassed and with their respective holes in the center, through which we could hear the voice, feminine or masculine, of the questioning person behind it. The queries, seemingly innocent, revolved around personal, almost intimate matters regarding family or work. The requested permits were for the most part denied. The citizen made a face, shed some tears, moved toward the door on the verge of collapse. “Have a good day,” said the voice from the other side of the glass. “Next, please.” And a similar scene played out again.

  We shouldn’t have had doubts about our applications: the certainty they would be granted almost won over our spirits. After all, the institutions we belonged to had already given their opinions about us. Even so, the terror showed in our eyes, our pupils wanted to dilate. The air conditioning, so pleasant at first, had taken on a wintery quality. I took off my glasses.

  One by one, we of institutions went inside. Interviews short or long, frivolous or meaningful took place during a period of more or less three hours. My turn finally came, and I was called by my surname, then my first name. “Good afternoon, ma’am,” I managed to hear, “how are you?” “Very well, and you?” I replied. “What is the reason for your trip, exactly?” was the first question. “It’s an international event,” was my reply. “And what are you?” asked the voice. I hesitated a moment at that question. I was me in all my being, I belonged to an institution that belonged to a ministry that belonged to a country, and I was proud of that, very proud. “Do you have family there?” was the third question. “No, no one.” “Would you like to stay there?” “No, I wouldn’t.” And then, before I could even wipe my sweat away, I heard the all too familiar phrase: “Have a nice day, it’s been a pleasure, next please.”

  If permission was granted, this phrase was preceded by another, which informed the applicant of the day and time he or she should pick up the permit. And if the applicant belonged to an institution, he or she was informed of the day and time to pick it up at the Ministry. Those words didn’t come for me, and instead there was this: “Your case must be investigated at the Ministry, the Ministry will inform you.”

  Finally, I was given a document called Confirmation, which confirms that an application to temporarily leave the country has been submitted. Said document consists of two pages.

  On the first page is a summary of passport information and, underneath, an explanatory note: The electronic delivery of your application is the FIRST STEP in the process of applying for leave. The next step is to read the website of the place where you plan to request your leave. Most applicants will have to schedule an interview for this, although some applicants may meet the requirements to renew past permits. The information could contain instructions specific to the place regarding scheduling your interviews, presenting your application, and other frequently asked questions. You must present (bring with you) the Confirmation and the following documents throughout the process. You will also be able to provide additional supporting documents that you consider important during your interview.

  The second page clarifies the documents you must present. No more and no less than this very Confirmation page with a bar code legible at the time of the interview. If you do not have access to a printer at this time, choose the option of sending your Confirmation by email to a specified email address. You may print or email your Confirmation to an email address. You may print or email your application for your own records. You do NOT need to present the application at the time of the interview. Bear in mind that you could be required to provide proof that you have paid the processing fee and/or other payments related to the process. We ask that you check the Reciprocity Table for the country you are visiting to learn what other charges you may have pending. If you have additional questions or need to know how to contact our office, please see.

  On this same page—the second—another explanatory note: Unless you are exempt from the interview, you are asked to personally sign your own application biometrically. By giving this particular kind of signature, you certify under oath that you have read and understood the questions on your application, and moreover that you yourself have made all statements truthfully and according to your best understanding and conviction. (Understanding and conviction are repeated a couple times more in the same paragraph).

  And it ends with: The information you have provided in this application can be accessed by other agencies with the legal and statutory authority to use said information, including for law enforcement and other purposes. The photograph you have provided with your application can be used to verify your information.

  Likewise attached to this Confirmation was a letter that the Ministry sent from its Processing Center to the Department of Interests on March twentieth. In the letter, I read that the Ministry sent its greetings to the Honorable Department, grateful for its cooperation with regard to the application prepared on my behalf, bearer of ordinary number B908863. Then it explained the purpose of my application, the length of my stay, my departure and return dates. The Ministry took this opportunity to reiterate its opinion to the Department. Finally, the Ministry’s stamp, no signature.

  When I left the Office I went straight to my institution, first collecting my bag, then my telephone. I couldn’t manage to fake a smile. I needed an explanation. “You shouldn’t have gone there looking like that,” they told me. “Nonsense,” I retorted. “They could only see my face, maybe my shoulders and chest, through the window.” “Of course they could see you. They’re watching you from the moment you turn the corner; they’re watching you in the park; they’re watching if you talk to someone, or you sit down, or you buy a cheese sandwich, or you open your parasol. They see everything. You’re so naive.”

  I waited a week, two weeks, three, for some sign, a call from the Ministry that would inform me about my case. Whether things had been cleared up, whether my application would be accepted—maybe not now, right away, but in the future. A layer of dust settled over the phone, and I brushed it off every night before cooking.

  Many times I wished I could see that man again, the one who’d sat down next to me in the Office and with whom I’d felt so at ease. Sometimes I thought I passed him in the street, or saw him on a bus, or on some TV news report about the changes the Ministry was enacting in the country. The Office never appears on TV. Sometimes the announcers give official readings of the new laws regarding the Office. The people ar
e distressed. The work day is affected. The institutions try to encourage discipline.

  I also asked myself questions for which I would later reproach myself, branding myself ungrateful or nonconformist. They were questions no one would answer, except maybe an ingrate or a nonconformist.

  I knew of several others like me, people who suffered the same fate, and of others, endorsed by an institution, who reported to the Office with applications like mine, attesting to their situations, and who were accepted, their permits granted, and who left. I don’t miss those people because I only saw them in meetings, or at commemorations.

  A French bulldog

  and a telephone

  cost the same,

  and both can provide you with

  the affection

  you lack.

  POEM

  By my side you don’t know what’s inside me, mami. What it is to yearn to open your arms without arms, even more to open your legs without legs, or to open your chest, mami, your heart. By my side you won’t be able to have a garden with those flowers, the yellow or orange ones you like so much. Or have books of poetry, academic essays, those erotic novels you like. No books, mami, none at all. By my side you won’t be able to have a cat, mami, not a boy or a girl cat. No smoking, mamita, not that cigarette or the other stuff. By my side, strangely, you’ll have only a little of me.

  Don’t say you love me, mamita, you have no idea that I’m impossible to love, to adore, or feel a certain affection for. Attachments, like asthma, suffocate me. You better go, mamita, down that road or the other one further on. Hand me the inhaler and get going. Before you go, mamita, hand me the inhaler.

  When you come back, bring me something chocolate. Candy, gum, egg yolk nougat, almond nougat, dried fruit. Chocolate is bad, mami. You’ll kill me with that stuff, you’re going to choke me. I’ll devour it. I’ll lick it, suck it, and I’ll nibble the corners. If you want half tell me now, because it’s running out. Everything runs out, mamita. The good stuff is the first to run out. Chocolate, coffee, money, toilet paper, desire, imagination, youth, winter. It all runs out.

  I have a proposal for you, mami. It’s quite simple and innocent. It has to do more with you than with me, mamita, but I’m embarrassed to tell you. It has to do with something I’ve got that you want, and I can give it to you, mamita, if you swear to me that I’ll never, ever see you again. I’ll give you what you want for twenty-four hours straight, nice and open and clean, fresh out of the box for you. Only if you swear I’ll never see you again.

  * * *

  It’s a sickness, mamita, this whole situation and any other similar situation. The history of our inability to be alone, to be happy with ourselves. The need to be heard and what’s worse, to listen to the other person, mami, to hear a bunch of foreign, inconsequential words. You are an individual and I am an individual, and that word, mamita, comes from a primary word that means: a thing that cannot be divided. The reference is simple, an independent unit, an elemental unit in a larger, more complex system, a numerically singular thing. I think it’s fascinating, mami. I am fascinated.

  Last night I missed you. I admit it, mami. You set a trap and I fell into it. You called me on the phone and told me you’d come by in half an hour to see me and kiss me, to give me what was mine. That’s how you operate, mamita, you spend your time engaging the word necessity. Because if someone needs something, that is, precisely, what belongs to them. The equation is as follows, I need it because it belongs to me. And vice versa, mami. So I missed you. I cooked for you. I put together a wonderful dish using sliced and sautéed ingredients. I showered and soaped and dried myself, for you, mamita, who never came. I laid down naked, on the sheet that you put on, mami, fifteen days ago. I have to wash the sheets.

  At five in the morning I opened an eye, mami, and then another eye, and then my mouth. I was drowning. I always dream I’m drowning in the ocean when I have an asthma attack in my sleep. This time was no different. I was sinking and I couldn’t move my arms, mamita, or my legs. It’s horrible, mami, you know it is. You’ve seen me wake up in the middle of the night, gasping and wet. I’m all the way down there while my respiratory system is paralyzed by the contraction of my bronchial tubes. I compare my bronchial tubes to dead fish. The ocean’s dead fish and my bronchial tubes lure me down, bewitching me.

  Today my head hurts. It must be the heat, mami. Even the computer has been corrupted. I have zits on my neck and armpits. My hair is falling out, mami. Soon I’ll be bald and people will think I’m in chemo. I don’t know why everyone likes bald women. I think they find them sexy, somehow. Some kind of morbid interest related to pain or death. I’ll be a sexy girl for the first time ever, mami, you’ll see.

  The day you disappear will be a normal day, for you as well as for me. It’ll pass unceremoniously, both for you and for me. You’ll get many things back, mami, things you’ve lost. Things that you don’t even remember, that you don’t recognize anymore. Meanwhile, mamita, I’ll gain space and time, my whole life will be only mine, as it should be, mami, and always will be. I’ll be alive again inside myself, while outside of me I’ll be a bratty child climbing over rooftops. I’ll buy rum in bulk and raise a glass to you on the rooftops, mami.

  The best memory I’ll have of you, mami, if you’ll allow me, will be the way you cleaned my fan. You took it apart mechanically. You got a wet cloth. First the blades and then the motor. You got a toothbrush, and with the toothbrush you cleaned every one of the casing’s plastic divisions. You stuck the toothbrush in and out around fifteen hundred times. You did it with a jeweler’s care, mami, a beautiful job. I thanked you, mamita, with love. The best memory you’ll have of me, you’ll take with you.

  We were irresponsible, mamita. We shouldn’t have planned what we planned. A child, at this stage in the game, maybe a daughter. You wanted to name her Esperanza and I wanted to name her Alegría—hope or joy. Names that were too strange, mami, too exotic for our reality. Too romantic. I don’t like to play with human weaknesses. For a woman, mamita, having children is essential. I don’t like to play with anyone. I like to play alone. And dance alone within four walls.

  You wanted me to tell you what I feel for you, mamita. What I feel for you is the same thing I feel for anyone. It’s pity, nostalgia, and boredom. Things that, to tell the truth, don’t mean anything. But you wanted to know, mami, so I whispered it in your ear. And now I’m repeating it so you won’t forget. Because everything is forgotten. The bad stuff is the first to be forgotten. Every time you leave, mami, every time you go out that door and I’m left here dancing alone, I forget you. I forget you exist, mami. I forget what is there inside me.

  What’s there inside me I’m not going to tell you because it’s the only thing that’s mine. It’s the only thing people have, their insides. It’s ugly to say, mami, but I don’t care about your insides. What you have inside that you always want to give me, that you offer like a gift, it slides right off me, mami. I don’t want anything from you, mamita, or from anyone. I want you to leave, get on, on a plane, go far away. Whether you’re happy or not doesn’t matter to me either, mami. I only want you to leave and not bother me anymore with that tenderness and warmth, mami, that make me wilt.

  Whether you take Air France, or Iberia Airlines, or Mexicana, or whatever other airline, doesn’t matter to me either, mami. If the flight’s delayed, I’ll keep you company. If you have a lot of luggage, I’ll carry your luggage. If you need money, I’ll borrow it, mami. We’ll go to a restaurant and eat like two kings. Like two presidents. Like gods. You can wipe my mouth with your napkin, mami. You can do what you want. If the plane crashes, even better.

  Nuclear family

  in decline

  composed

  of a person

  and a pet.

  They seem content,

  healthy.

  NO ONE

  ETECSA announces: Top-ups from abroad starting at twenty dollars, and domestic phone cards for twenty dollars, will give you d
ouble what you paid for between December twenty-sixth and twenty-ninth—happy new year.

  Sometimes, from the highway, I can see her. I watch her for a couple of minutes, entranced by what I see; I leave the park, leave my orbit, the universal axis. Then I turn on my phone and take a poor four hundred KB photo. There’s a buttress, a brick wall, that separates her from the world. Protects her from the world. Strengthens her.

  * * *

  The day of my thirtieth birthday I receive an empty, anonymous message. That same day I receive a message from my best friend, in Toronto or Montreal, I’m not sure, saying this: I’m at H&M but there’s practically nothing here. Do you want a gray sweater with two black hearts? I do want it, but I don’t have data to reply and tell him that I want it, so I sit there thinking about my own heart, empty and black.

  I’m sitting on the bed in the lotus position. Along the petal edges and the stem, the remnants of morning dew are still visible. Through the window a wind enters and shakes my petals violently, they fall to the floor, a cat plays with them. Not the stem. The stem stays vertical. As you can see, Mom, your daughter is adult enough not to care about the wind that comes in through the window, or about the cats that appear and disappear.

  I’m sitting on the bed in the downward dog position. There is no wind coming through the window nor remnants of morning dew. I was shaken violently, but not today. Nothing falls to the floor. Even so, I remain vertical. As you can see, Mom, your daughter is adult enough to care about the things that really warrant it. What opinion do I warrant from you, if someone were ever to ask?