Laia Jufresa - Umami

‘The neighbor?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘No way!’

‘Yes way.’

‘How do you know?’

‘The other day I went and knocked and he was there but he didn’t open the door.’

‘And?’

‘And I peeked a look under the door and saw some shoes.’

‘So what?’

‘There was a pair with high heels too, just sort of lying there. And Daniela doesn’t wear heels.’

‘Men are scum.’

‘Where did that come from?’

‘It’s what Chela says.’

‘Shall I tell you something else? When Emma went to the University of Michigan in the seventies, the women weren’t allowed to go in through the main door.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Uh-huh. There was a little door to the side with “Ladies’ Entrance” written on it.’

‘That’s awful! And it wasn’t even that long ago. But, shall I tell you something? If Theo isn’t careful, he’s gonna turn into a macho .’

‘Theo? But he plays the piano!’

‘Uh-huh, but he never takes that T-shirt off. The one with the naked girl on it.’

‘She’s a pin-up girl.’

‘It’s deprading.’

‘Degrading?’

‘Whatever! It’s wrong.’

Pi lets the hoop fall to the ground and she sits down at the table. I pour her some lemonade. I feel strong and tan. I pass her the glass and illuminate her, Marina-style, ‘It isn’t wrong, darling: it’s vintage .’

‘What really is wrong is Chela giving me a hula-hoop.’

‘Wrong how?’

‘Like she thinks I’m still nine.’

Mom opens the sliding door and says, ‘Look who came over!’

Marina emerges from the kitchen, as if summoned by my impression of her. The second she sees Pina, though, her eyes drop to the floor. Marina always avoids Pi. It’s one of those things that goes on in the mews and which we all know about but nobody understands. The same with Alf, who every evening takes The Girls around the block in their stroller. Pina doesn’t care. I think she might even like it: it amuses her. She says hey to Marina and offers her a go on her hula-hoop. Marina tries it while I tell them all about the Iroquois, a tribe of American Indians who had their own constitution and shared out all the powers equally: only the women could be chiefs of the clan, and only the men could be chiefs of the military, but the chief of the clan was the one who chose the chief of the military.

‘And were there less wars?’ Marina asks.

‘No idea. What I do know is that they planted a kind of milpa . I’m using their technique actually, it’s called the Three Sisters. The three sisters are corn, bean, and squash.’

Marina and Pina look over at the plants in the planters.

‘No,’ I tell them, and point to the part where it looks like there’s nothing but soil.

They nod, unconvinced.

‘It’ll take a few months to get going,’ I say.

The window opens and Mom whistles for me to go over. I’m convinced she’s going to tell me to get rid of Marina, and that by some secret Protestant mafia law she’s not welcome in this house. But instead she passes me a clean glass. It has movie characters on it and a straw built into the side. Theo got it in a fast-food promotion. Mom says, ‘It’s the only plastic one we have.’

Marina blows her a kiss, but Mom doesn’t react: she’s staring at something else. I think she’s about to notice that I planted the corn. She might be able to tell from the notches I made in the planters where I’m going to tie thread to mark out the plot (I don’t want anyone stepping on my three sisters thinking there’s only soil there). But her eyes are on something else.

‘Pina, where did you get that?’ she barks, all weird and aggressive. My mom never calls her Pina.

I look at my friend. She’s holding the cuddly dog I found the other day. Marina looks at it too and shouts, ‘Patricio!’

‘Did your mom have it?’ my mom asks.

‘What?’ Pina asks.

‘That was Luz’s dog!’ she says.

‘It was mine!’ I tell her.

‘I remember that, Ana. When I first met you, you wouldn’t let it out of your sight,’ Marina adds.

Pina is still looking at my mom, clearly feeling hard done by. Mom studies my face carefully and then raises her arms.

‘You might be right,’ she says, before disappearing from the window. For a minute we think she might reappear at the screen door, but we can only see our reflection, which shimmers on the glass in the sun. When you look at all of us three together in the glass, we don’t look that different. No more than corn does to bean, or bean to squash.

Marina lights a cigarette and every now and again, without saying anything, passes it to Pina, who takes strategic drags facing away from my house. Smoking is a dumbass thing to do. But a dumbass thing that right now makes me feel pretty jealous. I don’t want those two to be friends. I can’t believe they’re sharing the cigarette and the hula-hoop and they haven’t even insisted that I try, all because I said it was a dumbass thing to do. Although it also bugs me the way Marina is so awkward every time she sees Pina. Something went on there that no one will tell me. One day everything was fine, then Marina did something and my mom ran her out the house, and suddenly there were no more English classes, and no more babysitting. Every time Pina and I ask my mom what happened she just raises her eyes and starts singing, which is her way of summoning her powers of discretion.

Before leaving, Marina says to me, ‘I made you a color.’ Then she whispers in my ear, ‘Gleenery.’

‘Shall we go grab an horchata ?’ Pi asks.

‘I’m on a diet.’

‘Quit it, will you? You’re not fat.’

‘OK, but you’re buying.’

‘OK,’ she says. ‘I’ll see you at the bell in an hour.’

God knows what she’s going to do all that time. Probably her hair. Since she came back, Pina spends her life grooming herself. She walks off and I stay outside reading Euphues and His Anatomie of Wit. But ‘reading’ is a manner of speaking really: it’s more like deciphering a code. But thou Euphues, doft rather refemble the Swallow which in the Summer creepeth vnder the eues of euery houfe, and in the Winter leaueth nothing but durt behinde hir: or the humble Bee, which hauing fucked hunny out of the fayre flower, doth leaue it and loath it: or the Spider which in the fineft web doth hang the fayreft Fly. For a millisecond, I wish my brothers were here. If I were reading out loud to them with a British accent, Olmo would be chuckling and Theo would be composing a song for our non-existent band, The Honey-Fucking Bees.

When the sun gets too much for me, I go in. It feels cool, almost cold, and unlike outside, it’s dark. I can’t see two centimeters in front of me when I go through the door, and I trip over something. It’s Mom. She’s on the floor. I yelp. She laughs.

‘What are you doing there?’ I ask.

‘Oh, just my jujitsu,’ she says.

‘Doesn’t jujitsu involve some movement?’

‘Not this kind, no.’

*

We’re all eating dinner when Pina brings up the launch party.

‘It’ll be open to the public and pay-on-the-door,’ she adds.

‘Are you kidding me, Pi?’ Mom says.

Dad pours Beto some wine, then some for Mom, and he says to her, ‘You used to sell lemonade.’

‘Different times,’ Mom says. ‘Different country.’

‘You and I sold crickets, do you remember?’ Pi asks me. ‘You’d trap them and I made little holes in the containers so they could breathe.’

I stare at Mom and, without knowing what exactly I’m referring to, say to her, ‘I’ve earned it.’

‘Totally,’ adds Pina. ‘The girl’s been slogging away. Look at her arms, she’s bionic!’