Laia Jufresa - Umami

Marina’s not scared anymore. She’s pissed, and getting more so by the minute. Pissed at herself, or at the woman, or at the completely absurd fact that it took her twenty years to feel the slightest anger toward her father, and two minutes with this stranger. Everything’s the wrong way around.

‘I’m getting her out of here the moment she’s finished her tea,’ thinks Marina, but at the same time she tunes the radio to a jazz station, as if preparing the house for a long, lazy night with friends. She doesn’t wait for the water to boil. As soon as it starts simmering, she pours it into two mugs, adds a couple teabags from the ones Linda leaves when she comes for class, and goes back to the living room. She sits next to the woman and hands her one of the mugs.

‘You collect cushions?’ asks the woman. ‘They’re rad.’

‘Thanks,’ Marina says, looking down at her tea and blowing into it. Then, realizing her error, she adds, ‘It’s not chamomile.’

‘Yerba mate,’ the woman says, reading the label on the teabag. ‘Far out,’ she says, ‘I haven’t drunk one of these since I was in Patagonia.’

‘Ah,’ Marina says, and she takes little sips on hers while looking at the woman’s feet. She’s wearing heeled brogues with laces, and the tips are ever so slightly pointed, ever so slightly witchy. They can’t be from here. Or maybe they are, but not from this decade.

‘Are you Mexican?’ Marina asks.

‘Born and bred,’ the woman answers. And then, ‘My name’s Isabel, but call me Chela.’

*

They begin in Patagonia, then move onto the marihuana Chela happens to have on her and which she offers to Marina as a thank-you for entertaining her while she waits for her friends. She hands it over with a little curtsy, and Marina accepts it, shrugging her shoulders.

‘Obligreenation,’ she thinks. Green out of obligation.

But once she’s smoked the weed, it opens up Marina’s sternum and launches her into a rolling monologue about everything that’s wrong with art at the service of the market and moreover with the very design degree she’s pursuing; about everything that’s wrong with Chihuahua, and in Chihuahua, poor, poor Chihuahua: indoctrinated by the border. Chela listens, and every now and then she says, ‘The border you saved yourself from. The fat bullet you dodged, my friend.’

Marina thinks that’s taking it a little too far, but thanks Chela anyway. She hasn’t spoken like this in years; with real freedom and creative license, with someone who listens without charging by the hour, and who tells her she’s right (right on!), just because. Maybe this unexpected visitor will turn out to be more effective than all the pills, the therapy, and the Lord’s Prayer put together. Marina imagines passing the joint to Mr. Therapist: he accepts it, takes a toke, and holds the smoke in his lungs as he says, ‘Weed, Marina, knows what the body doesn’t.’

Back in the real world, Chela is telling her about a fling she’d been having these last months, with a Swedish dude who never came because he was into Tantra. It doesn’t seem such a bad policy to Marina.

‘All men come too fast,’ she says.

‘I know,’ Chela says, ‘But it’s no good if they hold it in. They get frustrated. It’s like all the semen Patrik won’t let out turns into bile.’

Marina isn’t sure what to say to this.

‘Want a beer?’ she asks.

‘Why not?’ Chela says.

They go together to the kitchen, but Chela freezes on the spot the moment she steps foot inside. She puts her hand to her mouth, looks at the screen door and wells up. Marina doesn’t understand.

‘What?’ she asks.

‘Nothing,’ answers Chela, rearranging her expression so quickly that Marina convinces herself it’s the weed making her see things. Chela goes around freely opening drawers until she finds the bottle opener, but the ease with which she moves about the house no longer annoys Marina. Now, Marina notes, she’s started to admire her. Oh, to be someone like that! Someone who turns up any old place and settles right in.

Back in the living room, Chela opens a large bottle of beer, pours it into two disposable cups — tilting them to control the head —, hands one to Marina and together they make the anticlimactic, silent toast of plastic on plastic. Chela puts hers on the floor, raises her arms and says, ‘Confession.’

‘I’ve already told you so much!’ Marina says.

‘No, I have a confession,’ Chela says.

‘Oh.’

‘I told you a lie. I’m not a friend of theirs. I used to live in Sour House. We had a kitchen just like yours.’

Marina raises her eyebrows. That’s all. She can feel how, after a few hours spent together, her body is naturally starting to mimic Chela’s movements. Or, perhaps it’s not at all natural? She doubts herself, then asks Chela, ‘I’m sorry?’

‘I’m Pina’s mom, and I didn’t dare knock on the door.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I haven’t seen her in three years.’

‘You mean, they’re in?’ Marina asks, lowering her voice as if they might hear her from the other side of the passageway.

‘They might be.’

‘Isabel! Why don’t you go over right now?’

‘Right now I’m stoned. And please, call me Chela. My mom was Isabel.’

‘Why didn’t you knock?’

Chela gets up, takes a few steps, sits on the floor and opens her legs. They’re short and strong-looking. She rests her elbows on the triangle that has formed between her thighs, lowers her forearms and pushes her open palms against the floor, her fingers stretched wide, bits of carpet poking out between them.

‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘I chickened out.’

Marina wants to interrogate her. Is she scared of Beto? Does he have custody? Is her being here illegal? But she’d rather just raise her eyebrows. She’d rather go on talking about Chihuahua. Chela took her shoes off a while ago and now Marina studies her bony feet, perhaps the only imperfect part of her anatomy. She’d still be up for seeing them without the socks, though: to see if they’re as brown as her arms, to see if she paints her toenails or not.

‘What’s with all the little boxes?’ Chela asks.

‘Light bulbs.’

‘Why so many?’

‘Because I changed them all today.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s a long story.’

Chela drops it. She takes both her big toes with each hand and lowers her chest to the floor. Her legs are just as wide open as before, but now her whole torso is level with the rug. She turns her head to the side and rests her cheek on the floor. Is she going to fall asleep like that? Marina looks at the boxes scattered around on the floor. She looks at the whozac on the wall and remembers all her good intentions. She looks at the time on her cell; it’s not raining anymore and she considers telling her guest that it’s getting late, that she needs to go because it just so happens that tomorrow is the beginning of Marina’s new life: a healthy routine, a life devoted to her art and wellbeing, and so she really must get an early start. But on the other hand, she doesn’t want her guest to leave. Now that she has her cell in her hands, Marina knows that the moment Chela goes she’ll call Chihuahua; she doesn’t want to go to bed alone. Better if Chela doesn’t leave. It’s his turn to call.

‘You’re so flexible. Do you do yoga?’ she asks.

‘I teach Pilates at my beach, al fresco.’

Marina sits thinking for a moment, then asks, ‘Do you know about the Iconoclastic Controversy?’

Chela, her cheek still resting against the rug, purses her lips, as if weighing up the question.

‘The what controversy?’ she asks eventually.

‘Iconoclastic.’ Marina explains, ‘The iconodules were in favor of having images in churches, while the iconoclasts were against it. There was a big fight. In the end the iconodules won, obviously. That’s why there are so many crucifixes all over the place. Anyway, my point is that the other day I saw a Pilates video and an idea came to me: if you know what your Pilates teacher means when she asks for “praying hands”, that’s thanks to the iconodules.’