Before the two weeks were up, just as Rita had declared, she bought the weather-predicting seal. She paid for it in cash. She had a debit card she’d received when the school officially hired her and set up direct deposit payments into her account, but she never carried the card with her out of fear it might get stolen. She asked them to wrap the seal in a lot of paper so it wouldn’t break but they used bubble wrap instead and Rita enjoyed popping it later, after she’d ridden with the sea lion on her lap the whole bus ride home.
Elena still keeps it, like she keeps all of Rita’s things. She put everything in a big cardboard box that her neighbour’s twenty-nine-inch TV had come in. The neighbour had taken it out with the trash and Elena asked him if she could have it. To put away Rita’s things, she told him, and he gave it to her without saying a word, but like he was silently giving his condolences. He even helped her take it into her house. Elena put everything inside it. Everything except the clothes; she couldn’t stand to put the clothes in, they still had her smell, the smell of her daughter. Clothes always retain a person’s smell, Elena knows, even if they’re washed a thousand times with different detergents. It’s not the smell of the perfume or deodorant the person wore or the laundry soap it was washed with when there was still someone to stain it. It’s not the smell of the house or the family because Elena’s clothes don’t have the same smell. It’s the smell of the dead person when they were alive. The smell of Rita. She couldn’t bear to smell that smell and not see her daughter. The same thing happened with her husband’s clothes but at the time she had no idea how much more that smell could hurt when it was your child’s. So not the clothes. She also didn’t want to give them to the church and then have to see Rita’s green sweater someday turning the corner keeping somebody else warm. So she burned her daughter’s clothes in a pile in the back yard. It took four matches to light it. The first things to catch fire were the nylon stockings, melted by the heat into synthetic lava, then little by little everything began to blaze. There were underwires, snaps, zips left in the ashes afterwards which Elena put in a rubbish bag and took out for the garbage man. So the clothes didn’t go into the neighbour’s box. But she did put in the shoes, a brand new pair of wool gloves that didn’t smell like anything, old photos, Rita’s address book, all her important papers except her ID, which she’d had to give to the funeral company so they could take care of the burial, Rita’s calendar, her bank cards, her half-finished knitting, the newspaper photo taken of all the teachers the day they inaugurated the new high school, the bible Father Juan had given her, with the inscription May the word of God accompany you as it did your father, Rita’s reading glasses, her thyroid medication, a little Saint Expeditus prayer card that the school secretary had given her when Elena’s retirement pension had taken a long time to go through, the clipping from the newspaper the day Isabel’s daughter was born. Isabel and Marcos Mansilla joyfully announce the birth of their daughter, María Julieta, in the City of Buenos Aires, March 20, 1982. The announcement was carefully clipped, the edges perfectly straight. The folder with the cards that the Mansillas sent every Christmas. The empty heart-shaped box of chocolates that her friend from the bank had given her which she’d used to keep pieces of paper and a bundle of badly folded letters tied with a pink ribbon. Elena hadn’t dared to read the notes, not out of respect for her daughter’s privacy, but for her own sake, to avoid learning the details of a story she’d never wanted to know anything about. For some mothers reading their daughter’s love letters could be interesting, illicitly thrilling, Elena thinks, affirming that the daughter had become a woman, that she was desired, that she was on her way to fulfilling her duty to the species, following the cycle of birth, maturity, reproduction, and death, knowing her torch would continue on in the world. Elena looks at the bundle of cards and she thinks about that word, torch. Torch. This wasn’t the case with Rita, she wasn’t a young woman meeting her intended and Roberto Almada was incapable of rising to the circumstances. They were two hopeless creatures, two losers in love, or not even, two lonely people who had never even entered the game, who had contented themselves with watching from the stands. As far as Elena was concerned, it would’ve been more dignified at that point for her daughter to abstain from playing altogether. But Rita did enter the game, however late, at the age Elena had already been widowed. She suspects little happened between them, just a few kisses and some clumsy groping in the plaza as the sun disappeared behind the monument to the nation’s flag, or at Roberto’s house before his mother got home from the beauty salon. Whatever happened, she prefers not to know, much less to read about it in those letters, more terrified of the words Roberto wrote in response to her daughter than of what they might’ve done. So she did not untie the ribbon, she did not let the bow come undone to expose those papers full of words, she hardly touched them as she put them back in the box of chocolates and dropped it into the big box that the neighbour gave her, along with all of the other belongings left over after the fire took everything that smelled like her daughter.
Everything except the little sea lion. She placed the weather-predicting seal on a shelf in the dining room, between the radio and the telephone, but pushed a few centimetres forward. A distance proportional to the one Rita and Elena maintained after each fight. A prime location. So she could see it every day, so she’d never forget that, on the afternoon Rita died, it was raining.
3
Elena advances towards the station. Five blocks lie ahead of her. First things first. She’ll walk five blocks, she’ll look out of the corner of her eye at the open window of the ticket booth, she’ll say round trip to Plaza Constitución, open her coin purse, remove the coins that she counted out last night for the exact cost of the ticket, stretch out her hand, let the ticket seller take the coins and give her the ticket, grip the little piece of paper that allows her to travel, not letting it fall, put it in the pocket of her cardigan, and once she’s sure she won’t lose it, descend the stairs holding on to the rail, if possible on the right side because that’s the arm that responds best to what the brain orders, at the bottom of the stairs turn left, walk through the tunnel, trying not to breathe in the smell of urine that saturates the walls, the ceiling, and the floor which Elena drags her feet across, the same acrid smell since the day she crossed the tunnel for the first time long before she ever needed any pill to help her walk, when she still knew nothing about dethroned kings or messengers, holding Rita’s hand when she was a little girl or several steps behind her when she stopped being little, always the same smell of urine that burns her nostrils just thinking about it, always with her mouth closed and lips pressed tight to avoid inhaling it, and never opening her mouth a crack, dodging the woman selling garlic and spices, the boy who sells pirated CDs that she wouldn’t be able to play, the girl who sells key rings with coloured lights and alarm clocks that sound as she walks by, or the man with no legs who holds out his hand for coins like she held hers out a few minutes ago for the train ticket, turn again to the left, go up the same number of steps that she just went down and then, finally, step onto the platform. But all that, Elena knows, will be after she’s managed to walk those five blocks she still hasn’t walked. She’s just finished the first one. Someone says hello. Her stiff neck forces her to walk looking down at the ground so she doesn’t see who it is. Sternocleidomastoid is the name of the muscle that restricts her movement. The one that pulls her head down. Sternocleidomastoid, Dr Benegas had said, and Elena asked him to write it down, In capital letters, Doctor, or I won’t understand your handwriting, so that she wouldn’t forget, so that even if her executioner wore a hood, she would know his name and be able to include him in the prayer she recites while she waits. The person who greeted her continues on their way and although she glances out of the corner of her eye she doesn’t recognise the back moving away in the opposite direction, but she says good morning anyway, because the person who greeted her said Good morning, Elena, and if they know her name they warrant a gree
ting. At the first corner she waits for a car to pass and then she crosses the street. With her head down, all she can see are the worn tyres as they approach, pass her, and then move away. She steps off the pavement, walks quickly taking short steps, scraping along the hot asphalt, steps onto the pavement of the next block, pauses for a second, just a second, and continues on. A few steps ahead the black and white checkerboard paving tiles let her know she’s walking past the midwife’s house. Rita refused to set foot on those tiles ever since the day she learned that abortions were performed inside that house. She’s an abortionist, not a midwife, Mum. Who told you that? Father Juan. And how does he know? Because he gives confession to everyone in the neighbourhood, Mum, of course he knows. And doesn’t he have to keep what he hears in confession confidential? He didn’t tell me who had the abortion, Mum, just where. And that isn’t covered by the confidentiality of confession? No. Who told you it isn’t? Father Juan. Elena, to humour Rita, didn’t walk past the house either, they always crossed the street and walked on the other pavement and then crossed back over once they’d passed it, as if they were afraid stepping on those tiles would somehow contaminate them, or make them complicit, as if just walking past the house were some sin. But Rita isn’t here, someone killed her, Elena knows, even though everyone else says something different, and while she’d like to respect her dead daughter’s memory she can’t allow herself the luxury of observing all her rituals. On that very checkerboard pavement is where Rita met Isabel, the woman she’s going to try to find, she makes the connection for the first time, and then she steps more confidently, calmly, as if the checkerboard her daughter had cursed so many times suddenly made sense. She hesitates when she reaches the end of the second block. If she goes straight it’s only three blocks to the ticket booth where she’ll say round trip to Plaza Constitución, but that route will take her past the bank where the pensioners are waiting in line, and it’s quite likely she’ll run into someone she knows, that that someone will want to give her their condolences, that they will hold her up longer than she wants them to, and then she’ll miss the ten o’clock train. If she goes round the block she’ll have to add three more blocks to her route, and that would be asking too much of her illness. Elena doesn’t like owing Herself any favours. No debts and no favours. Herself would make her regret it, Elena knows, because she knows Herself almost as well as she knew her daughter. Fucking whore illness. Before, when she had just a little difficulty getting her left arm into the sleeve of her coat, when she’d still never heard of Madopar or levodopa and her shuffling gait didn’t yet have a name, before her neck began to force her to always stare at her shoes, she would avoid going past the bank. Even though back then there was no risk of condolences, she did it anyway, to avoid running into Roberto Almada, Rita’s friend, the son of the hairdresser. My boyfriend, Mum. A person of your age can’t have a boyfriend. What do you want me to call him then? Roberto, that’s more than enough. But she isn’t up to taking the longer route now. When the pavement switches to grey tiles, larger and glossier than any others on her route, Elena knows she’s walking past the bank. They’re special tiles designed for heavy foot traffic, Elena, made locally but just as good as the Italian ones, Roberto had explained proudly when talking about the place he’d worked since age eighteen. Now she can see, out of the corner of her eye, a row of shoes lined up in front of the door. She can see the wearers of the shoes up to the knee. She doesn’t see any trainers or jeans. Just worn loafers, espadrilles, a sandal covering a bandaged foot and ankle. Purple feet, crisscrossed by veins, freckly, spotted, swollen. All old feet, she thinks, the feet of the old people who are worried the money will run out. She doesn’t look at them, she’s afraid she’ll recognise a leg and she prefers not to stop. Then, once the line has ended and she feels safe, once there’s no longer a row of shoes to her left, someone says Good morning, Elena, but she keeps going as if she hasn’t heard. But then the person speeds up, touches her shoulder. Roberto Almada, the man Rita insisted on calling her boyfriend. The cripple, as Elena called him in front of her daughter to provoke her. Or the hunchback, as the neighbourhood kids called him when he was a boy. Elena can’t see his hump, she can just barely raise her eyes to the height of his chest with great effort, but she knows Roberto’s back begins to curve around at the shoulder blades. Hello, Doña Elena, he says again, and his formal tone hits Elena between the eyes. Oh, Roberto, I didn’t recognise you, you got new shoes, didn’t you? He looks at his shoes and says Yes, they’re new. They both go silent, Elena’s worn out shoes beside Roberto’s shiny new ones. Roberto shifts his feet uncomfortably, Mum wanted to send her love and says you should stop by the hair salon sometime, if you liked your last haircut she’ll give you another one, on the house. Elena thanks him, even though she knows that the last time, the only time she went to Roberto’s mother’s beauty salon was the afternoon that her daughter died, but she stops her thoughts before they can go too far in that direction, because she can’t afford the luxury. If she lets her mind wander back to that afternoon she’ll miss her train, so she wills herself to shoo them away and remain focused on the present, on Roberto. What she’d like to have done at his mother’s beauty parlour is to have the shadow of fuzz removed from her face again, and to have her toenails cut. She clips her fingernails herself, or she files them, but she can’t do her feet. She hasn’t been able to reach them for a while now and since Rita’s death the nail of her big toe has begun to scratch the tip of her shoe and she’s afraid that it might break off in a bad spot, or worse, rip open the worn leather of her shoe. Rita cut them for her every two weeks, she brought a washbowl with warm water, a piece of white soap inside to soften her calluses, and a clean towel, always the same one, that she washed after every time and put away with the washbowl. She scrunched up her face in disgust as she cut her mother’s toenails, dirty, flaky and yellowed, swollen from the water like a dry sponge. But she did it, putting Elena’s foot on her knee as she worked. And when she was done she washed her hands with dish soap, one, two, three times, then, with the excuse of disinfecting the towel from any possible fungus, she washed her hands with bleach. What do people who don’t have daughters to cut their toenails do, Rita? They let them get long and filthy, Mum.
I deposited your cheque for you like I said I would, Roberto says. And Elena thanks him again and she forgets about her nails. After Rita’s death, Roberto had offered to take care of depositing her pension, So you don’t have to wait in line, what with your health. What health, Roberto? Elena had asked. So you don’t have to trouble yourself. And since when do you care about my troubles? I always cared about you, Elena, and your illness, don’t be unfair. Go to hell, Roberto, she’d said, but she’d accepted his help. Before, Rita had taken care of going to the bank, but now she was gone, and even though Elena didn’t like the man, having a friend inside the bank had its advantages. If you only knew how much I miss your daughter, she hears him say, and Elena hates his words as much as she imagines she’d hate the words written on the letters she didn’t read, the ones she keeps in the box her neighbour gave her, tied up with a special ribbon that Rita picked out for them. She knows he couldn’t have killed her, not because of what he says, not because of what he was doing that day, not because he’d be incapable of murder, but because a cripple like him would’ve been no match for Rita. Very few people would’ve been a match for Rita, and even so the truth eludes her, it’s hard for her to imagine who it could’ve been, that’s why she needs help, because no one has been accused, there aren’t even any suspects, or motives, or theories, just the death. I’m in a hurry here, I don’t want to miss the ten o’clock train, Elena says and starts to raise her foot in the air so she can continue walking when he asks, You’re going to travel alone? I live alone, Roberto, she says without pausing the step she’s already begun. After a brief silence he says, On you go then, on you go. And she’s already going, towards the station. She glances down at the pavement and she knows that Roberto is still behind her, beca
use his shoes are still there, two stains of black leather that gleam almost as bright as the paving tiles they stand on, pointing in the direction she’s walking, alone, without anyone to accompany her, with the nail of her big toe stabbing into her shoe as she follows the route that will take her, after two more blocks, to the ticket booth where she’ll get the ticket that she’ll grip tightly in her clenched fist until it’s safely stowed in the pocket of her cardigan, then she’ll go down the stairs, through the urine-soaked tunnel, and up to the platform to wait, tired, bent over, for the ten o’clock train.
4
Rita was found hanging from the church belfry. Dead. On a rainy afternoon. That, the rain, Elena knows, is an important detail. Even though everyone says it was suicide. Friend or not, everyone says so. But as much as they try to convince her, or remain silent, no one can refute the fact that Rita never went near the church when it even threatened rain. She wouldn’t be caught dead there, her mother would’ve said if anyone had asked her before. But she can’t say that now, because there she was, that lifeless body that was no longer her daughter, hanging from the belfry one rainy day, although no one could explain how she’d got there. Rita had been afraid of lightning, ever since she was a little girl, and she knew that the cross on top of the church attracted it. It’s the town lightning rod, her father had taught her without knowing that this passing comment would keep her from going anywhere near the place in stormy weather. If rain was forecast she kept away from the church and from the Inchauspes’ house too, the only one in the neighbourhood with a pool at that time. Water is an excellent conductor of electricity and pools are magnets for lightning, she’d heard an engineer say on a news report about an accident at a country club when two kids ignored the No Swimming sign during a storm and were killed by a bolt of lightning. And if over the years more pools were built in the neighbourhood, or more lightning rods, she preferred not to know, because every new titbit of information would only further limit her movements. Not stepping on the checkerboard tiles outside the midwife’s, not going to church on rainy days, and not going near the Inchauspes’ house complicated things enough without adding any other detours. Not to mention that Rita patted her right buttock whenever she passed a redhead, as she recited with the solemn tone of the Hail Mary: Ginger, ginger, you’re no danger. Ginger, ginger, I give you the finger. Ginger, ginger, who’s the sinner?, or she touched her right hand to her left breast if anyone mentioned Liberti, a poor old man who was rumoured around the neighbourhood to be cursed because he was always at the wrong place at the wrong time: in front of the Ferraris’ house when the pine tree fell and smashed the roof, queuing at the bank when the widow Gande’s pension was stolen from her, standing on the corner when Dr Benegas hit the bin lorry with his brand new car, and other incidents of the kind. It’s better not to know, said Rita. When she started working at the Catholic school, at age seventeen, a few weeks after her dad’s death and because Father Juan appealed to the board to give the position to the dead man’s daughter, despite her age, Rita learned to make up excuses every time they tried to send her to the chapel in inclement weather. Pressing tasks, stomach pains, a headache, she’d go as far as to fake a fainting fit. Whatever it took to avoid going near that cross on a rainy day. That’s how she’d always been.
Elena Knows Page 2
