Lina Meruane - Seeing Red

painkillers

Lethargic, no schedules, no routines. We stayed in bed in the mornings like a couple of unemployed or retired people, or hopeless addicts, addicted to each other. Under the sheets we lived in a jumble of newspapers, cassettes, and neglect, of sleepiness and carnivorous groping seasoned with anti-flu medicines (Ignacio) and painkillers and anti-inflammatories (me). Ignacio was bombarded by an invented virus, and I, on top of everything, had shooting pains like needles in my groin. There were hours during the day, during the day but mostly throughout the immense night, when the stiffness in my hip intensified and I shuddered and twisted every time I turned over in bed. I lay still, assaulted by nails that drove into the joint and moved through my body, to come to rest in my insomnia. My mind raced until the fatigue of dawn. Ignacio’s mind, on the other hand, fell into a coma from the medicine and he snored like he was growling; at other times, it was just a deaf and tortured whistle, almost a sigh. His was a sleep as restless, as exhausting, as my lack of sleep, and I wanted to wake him up to give him a little sex. Only a little, to get to sleep. Ignacio, I whispered, Ignacio, and I waited for a sign. From the deep pit of his consciousness rose a hoarse noise suggesting that even if he wasn’t there, his body was indeed available. I started by putting my tongue in a corner of his eyelid, slowly, and as my mouth covered his eyes I felt a savage desire to suck them, hard, to take possession of them on my palate as if they were little eggs or enormous and excited roe, hard, but Ignacio, half-asleep or now half-awake, refused to open them, he refused to give himself to that newly discovered desire, and instead of giving me what I wanted he pushed me back onto the bed and put his tongue in my ear and between my lips although he didn’t dare lick my sick eyes when I asked him to, maybe he was afraid or maybe disgusted, and instead he bit the nipples that were the open eyes of my breasts, and by then I had finished waking up too and I forced him back on the bed forgetting all my pains, and I kissed the start of his thighs, between his legs where it smelled of dampness and confinement, and I put in my mouth the tip of his body as if it were what most excited me, though it wasn’t that exactly, not that but rather the knowledge that my tongue was moving under a thick eyelid of wrinkled and secret skin, to know that under that lid was Ignacio’s blind, round, soft eye, giving in to me, growing taut on my tongue until it shed a tear, spasming, in my mouth. I drank the tear and I climbed up Ignacio’s body to peer over his belly button and enter that socket as well. But Ignacio grabbed me by the shoulders, hesitating, still undecided about whether he should, whether I wanted it too, if it was possible, because between us, like a gash, was the doctor’s warning, the medical words alerting us to the danger, Ignacio’s terror of making me bleed again and making my eyes burst. But Ignacio, I whispered, that already happened, I’m already full of blood. Let’s go for it, I told him, ready for anything. I said it like an extreme athlete tied to an elastic cord, ready to throw myself off a bridge of a not insignificant height, just to try my luck in the fall. But my harness was insecure. But his heart was delicate. But pulled along by the strength of my impulse, Ignacio closed his eyes and clenched his teeth and begged me at least not to try any contortions in the air.

so I tell her, she said

And the door opened, pushed by an inopportune voice. May I? And it was Olga, her nasal undertone trailing a legitimate resentment toward the idleness of others. Her job consisted of cleaning and cooking, but there were unwritten rules: be available at all hours, sleep in fits and starts, get up at dawn to wake my parents with breakfast and the newspaper. In exchange, every day she undertook minuscule revenges that she justified as her duty. You two are still in bed? And she was beside us, loudly shaking out the rug. Come on, get up, it’s ten o’clock. I’m not going to spend all day waiting for you. But you don’t have to wait for us, Olga, we know how to make the bed, I said, finally opening my blindest eye, thinking, while I mentally told her off, that I was wasting my breath protesting. Olga would never concede to change the rules of the house, her rules, which she imposed with more authority than anyone when she wanted, and when she didn’t, she shielded herself behind her old age. I make the beds in this house, she said, that’s my job. It’s what I get paid for, she added, opening the windows next to us without caring that we were sleeping or naked in the bed, clutching the edges of the sheets. Olga, could you give us a minute to get dressed? And what for? she said, utterly immune to the cold air. As if I haven’t seen you in the buff since you were a little thing, you and your brothers and even your father, your dad who still wears those old pajamas. But Olga, that was ages ago, now we have hair, some of it gray, now we have rolls of fat, too-black moles, our feet are covered in calluses. Plus, what about Ignacio? Olga went on talking, making the most of that deafness of hers. She sounded like a preacher when she said, who bathed you all when you were little, huh? One at either end of the bathtub, I washed your hair, scrubbed you with the sponge, and rinsed you off, and then I dressed you. Your mother didn’t even have the patience to feed you, she went running off to the hospital and left all her work for me. Because your mother was sure good at running off. As if the devil were after her. Olga accused my mother of foisting her work onto her, and secretly also blamed her that I’d left home so young, going first to a precarious room in a different neighborhood, then to Mexico and then Madrid on the pretext of writing, and finally to New York with the excuse of continuing my studies on a scholarship. And we were allies in our resentment toward my mother. Only I didn’t resent her professional passion, I didn’t hold her maternal distance against her during work hours; the impossible thing was how she’d brought the hospital home, how she’d turned me into her patient and my incurable illness into her personal disgrace. How shed tormented me with her torment. How she’d never let me be her daughter, simply. To be her daughter I’d had to run away. Ignacio was still in a haze from the anti-flu medicines that he also took to help him sleep. A draught of air blew in. Lethargic, I pulled on the shirt I had within reach, but shivered when I stood up next to Olga, and I decided to get back into bed. No, she said, you two are getting up right now so I can make the bed and then, if you want, you can get back in it, but you can’t stay in this mishmash of sheets. Haven’t you seen how your mother gets mad at me for this mess? And I tell her it’s not fair, said Olga; now that’s really not fair. OK, Olga, I conceded, but give us a minute to get dressed. And she agreed but kept talking on her own from the other side of the door, raising her voice to be sure I heard her: and another thing I tell your mom, she said. If the girl wants to have a baby with things how they are with her, she should have it, I’ll take care of it. Ignacio handed me a sweater while he buttoned his jeans and threw on his shirt, and it was me she was talking to. (Me but also you, Ignacio, about the babies, she was talking about the child that she wanted us to have so she could raise it.) May God bless you two with children so I can care for them. Babies, no, I said very much to myself. What I want are eyes, newborn eyes, nothing more. Yes, said Olga, pushing the door open and coming back in, as if she’d heard me and wanted to reply, you don’t have to worry about anything. Plus, I know God is going to help you with this problem of yours. Cure her with your power, I tell him, and he tells me he will, he’ll cure you if you believe in him. Olga was talking a bit to herself now, almost absently. I tell your mother that but she never listens to me; believe in God, I tell her, she went on, quoting herself. If she’d open her heart to God she wouldn’t suffer, because God is going to cure those eyes of Luci’s. That’s what I pray for every day and night, that’s what I pray for when I put potatoes in the pan and fry up onions, I even pray while I iron your father’s underwear, Olga went on, a little out of it, why do you think I learned to read? So I could understand the Bible, honor God, so I could ask him for things. I even ask him for money sometimes when I need it. I know he’s going to exchange those broken eyes and he’s going to give you new ones, like they were just brought home from the store. And will I be able to pay for them on installment, interest-free? Don’t go making fun of me, says Olga very seriously, you’ll just see how what I’m saying is true, she says again, threateningly. You’ll see, she says, pretending to be furious while I hug her.