Laia Jufresa - Umami

They lay Ana’s clothes out on the stone wall that surrounds the hotel’s mini playground and Ana lies on top of them. She lets her feet dangle on either side. Pina inspects her, fully concentrated. It occurs to her that since she doesn’t have a penis she’ll need some kind of tool to find Ana’s hole. She hops off the wall, opens her backpack, and finds a BIC pencil. She clicks the end and pushes the lead nib down: she doesn’t want to draw all over the inside of her friend’s vagina. Her mom told her that’s what you have to call it, ‘Not your peepee, not your girly bits, and definitely not your flower.’

Pina has second thoughts about the BIC. What if a bit of nib somehow broke off inside Ana and stayed there for ever, and then when she had children they came out all shiny and gray? Perhaps she should use the rubber end? Pina doesn’t say any of this to Ana; it was hard enough trying to convince her to take her clothes off. Ana thinks she knows it all. She says babies are made when mommies and daddies make love, because that’s what her mom told her. This theory really bugs Pina. Firstly because it’s plain dumb, and secondly because that would mean that Ana’s parents, who had four children, love each other more than her parents, who only had her. As if they ran out of love to make. Pina wants to show Ana once and for all that she’s wrong. Having children doesn’t have anything to do with love. It’s a physical, mechanical thing: the man slots his penis inside the woman. Her mom explained the whole thing with the proper words for it all: the man’s penis shoots out some tadpole thingies, which are actually baby seeds.

Ana and Pina are looking after Luz while the other kids swim and the grown-ups drink beer by the pool on the other side of the hotel. There are some swings between the stone wall and Pina’s backpack. Luz is sitting under one of them and Pina pats her on the head: her ringlets bounce at the slightest touch. Then Pina climbs back onto the wall where Ana is now standing on tiptoes pretending to walk across a balance beam like a gymnast. Pina pushes her gently and Ana loses her balance but regains it straight away.

‘Quit it, Pina. I could have fallen like Humpty Dumpty and they would have put you in jail.’

Pina doesn’t ask who Humpty Dumpty is. She never asks Ana to explain her gringoisms.

‘Lie down,’ she says.

Ana lies on top of the clothes.

‘Open your legs wide.’

Ana opens them but she won’t stop jiggling about, and Pina can’t find any way in.

‘Stay still!’

This, or something, amuses Luz, who starts chuckling. Pina glances over at her. She’s pushing an empty swing. Ana and Pina had also been pushing each other on the swings before they’d got onto the baby-making hole. Now, if she puts her hand up to her face, Pina can smell the rust of the chain.

With her BIC, Pina carefully combs Ana for an entry point. She imagines the baby-making hole has a secret hatch: you have to press the exact point with a penis or the pencil rubber to open it up. A bit like the barely visible hole on the back of the alarm clock which you have to poke with a pin to set the time.

Ana gives up hope.

‘I don’t have a hole,’ she says, her lip quivering.

Pina carries on her search. It’s not that uncommon for her to make Ana cry, and she always gets over it in the end. This time, though, Ana shuts her legs.

‘Maybe if you’re chubby you don’t have a hole.’

‘Don’t be a ninny,’ Pina says. ‘All girls have a hole. How else would the pee come out?’

This is what she says, even though she knows that what Ana wants to hear is that she’s not chubby. But she is. A little bit. In fact, Pina’s mom told her that the pee hole isn’t the same as the baby-making hole, but she imagines they’re similar: they’re neighbors, after all. It’s like they live in the same mews.

‘Maybe if I pee you’ll be able to see where it comes out,’ Ana suggests.

‘That is gross,’ Pina says, wielding her pencil threateningly. ‘You will not pee on me or I’ll tell on you for leaving Luz by herself on the swings.’

Luz is singing a lullaby to the empty swing. Maybe she can see a ghost there. Pina and Ana have discussed this possibility before because Luz is always talking to an invisible someone or another. That thought barely finished, Pina hears the dull thump of the swing hitting Luz on the forehead. The little girl screams, drops to the floor and starts to cry.

‘Hey, Luchi, Luchi,’ Pina cries. ‘Hey, come over and help me out.’

But Luz doesn’t even seem to hear her. Ana jumps off the wall, goes to her sister, lifts her onto the swing and pushes her gently.

‘We haven’t finished,’ Pina says.

‘Why don’t we try on you?’ Ana says.

‘I’m embarrassed to take off my panties.’

‘I took off mine!’

Pina throws her panties at Ana from the wall. Luz laughs. She’s got a lovely laugh. When Luz laughs Pina thinks how she’d like to have brothers and sisters. Luz puts the panties on her head like a hat, but Ana snatches them off and throws them back in the direction of the wall; they land on the grass. Ana can be pretty snappish with her sister sometimes. All four of them can be pretty snappish with each other, and when they’re snappish Pina thinks how she doesn’t want brothers or sisters, especially not four.

‘I’ve tried a thousand times at home and never found it,’ she says.

‘How can you really try if you don’t even know what a penis looks like?’ Ana asks.

‘Do so.’

‘How?’

‘OK, I don’t,’ Pina admits. ‘My dad wouldn’t show me his even though my mom yelled “It’s natural! It’s natural!” at him. But he didn’t want to so that was the end of that.’

‘I see my brother’s all the time. It’s just like a pinky. How about we try on Luz?’

‘What if she tells on us?’

‘We’ll tell my mom she wet herself and that we had to change her knickers,’ Ana says, lifting her sister off the swing.

‘Alright,’ Pina says, and she proceeds to take the lead refills out of the BIC. She counts them, then puts all eight in her pocket. She doesn’t want to risk them breaking inside Luz. Then she has another idea. On the ground near the swings there’s a drink with a straw in it. Pina puts the pencil in her pocket, grabs the straw from the can and wipes it on her shorts.

Between them they manage to lie Luz down on the wall on top of Ana’s trousers. Pina tries to take off her swimsuit but she gets in a twist. It’s not the same as undressing a doll. But even so Ana knows how to do it. Watching her maneuver the straps, it occurs to Pina that the secret is not to be afraid; it occurs to her that people with brothers and sisters are the least afraid of all. Luz is still giggling and singing, ‘on the swing, a-wing, a-wing there’s a little swinging lady’.

‘What’s she talking about?’ Ana asks.

‘That is so creepy,’ Pina says.

But Luz carries on singing her song, making it up as she goes along. Ana holds down her knees and joins in the chorus to distract her.

‘On the swing, a-wing, a-wing…’

‘Stop it,’ Luz says. ‘My song.’

This vagina hatch turns out to be even harder to open than the last one, and Pina’s job is made more difficult still by Luz, who squirms the second the straw goes near her. Luz laughs at first, but then starts to cry. Ana pins her down by the wrists. But Pina gives up almost immediately. Nobody has ever really punished her, but she has a hunch that what she’s doing is worthy of serious punishment. They let go of Luz and tickle her until she rolls and almost falls off the wall.

‘Maybe Luz and I don’t have holes,’ Ana says, ‘and that’s why we’re sisters.’