Laura Restrepo - Hot Sur

I was awakened by an acrid stench. It smelled like urine and was coming from her. I opened my eyes and I noticed that she had the giraffe pressed between her legs, but it took me a while to realize that she had been about to burst from the urge to pee and that instead of asking for the bathroom she had peed on the giraffe. And now the giraffe was soaked, a disgusting stuffed thing dripping a yellow liquid. So I snatched it from her, and she screamed again.

“The crew is going to find out you peed on yourself and there’s going to be hell to pay. If you don’t shut up the plane will crash; shut up already, pee-head.” The more I insulted her the more she screamed.

“Let’s go to the bathroom, nena.” I opted for a new tack. “Inside the plane there’s a bathroom with running water and everything. Let’s go wash you and the giraffe up. They’ll send us back to where we came if we arrive in America looking like this. Everything is clean there and you smell like urine. Bolivia told me they don’t accept dirty people.”

Fortunately, she was uncomfortable enough on the wet seat that she allowed me to convince her. We walked down to the end of the aisle and went into the same bathroom, where we barely fit in to close the door. Miraculously, Violeta was no longer screaming. She pulled down her panties and sat on the toilet although I told her not to do it, because Leonor de Nava had taught me that in a public toilet, women should urinate squatting without touching anything for balance. But Violeta seemed peaceful in there; the tight quarters didn’t seem to bother her. She sat on the toilet as if it were a throne and looked at me for the first time.

“Make sure the door is locked,” she said, and I realized that she could speak normally whenever she wanted.

I washed the giraffe in the sink with the liquid soap and afterward tried to mask the lingering smell with the hand lotion and cologne offered there for the passengers in small bottles ordered neatly on the counter. I really liked those little bottles and the only reason I didn’t take one was because I was afraid that they’d detain me for being a thief in America. I read the sign in the mirror that said, “Out of courtesy for your fellow passengers, please leave the bathroom in the same condition you found it,” and I found that very civilized and very American. After wringing out the giraffe as best I could “out of courtesy for my fellow passengers” I wiped and dried the whole bathroom until it was in “the same condition I found it” or even cleaner. The nena seemed calm at last, sheltered in a corner as if inside a cave, pressed up one against the other without protesting, her skin not repulsed at the contact with mine. That’s where I began to understand that Violeta was threatened by large spaces, and that on the contrary, her personality softened when she was in small spaces where she could feel protected by the four walls.

We returned to our seats and they brought us the meal on individual platters. I was astonished at how well everything was organized. It was incredible to see each item in a separate plate covered in aluminum foil, the plastic cup in one corner and in the other the dinnerware and napkin in its plastic bag. The best part was going to be the hamburger inside, with French fries and milk, because this would be our first true American meal. What a disappointment when I saw it was just chicken with vegetables, salad, and flavored gelatin, exactly the same thing I was served almost every day in Las Lomitas. But nothing was going to dampen my enthusiasm, and I consoled myself with thinking that if it was an American chicken it must be an amazing chicken.

That was the first time I was served a meal on a platter; the last time was in solitary confinement. Sometimes someone or something reappears out of nowhere and makes you feel as if a circle has been closed, that something that began a while ago has come to an end, that some maktub is being fulfilled, as my friend Samir would say. Even if it’s something as silly as a plastic tray. They had me locked up in a cell where everything was gray, with no natural light. The walls, the metal door, the bunk bed, the cement floor, the stainless steel toilet, all gray, gray, gray, and lacking a sense of time because they had taken my watch, and not seeing anyone, not even myself because there were no mirrors. I couldn’t even see the face of the human being who opened the slot to slide in my food. The tray came in, the tray went out. Three times a day. They only gave me a plastic spoon, I guess so I wouldn’t think of cutting my wrists. Useless precautions. Later I’d learn that you can make a stabbing pick from a spoon, even a plastic one, it’s what the Latina inmates called chuzo or manca . Spoons, pencils, hairpins, and other innocuous objects of daily life, here they become weapons.

The tray came in and the tray went out, but I could not tell who was bringing it to me. At first I shouted my head off. “Is there someone there? My husband is a cop,” I yelled, “let me call my husband.” But no one answered. I started to think that maybe I had died and that death was that gray place where I didn’t know about anyone and no one knew about me. Day and night with the buzzing fluorescent light that I wanted to turn off to rest or at least to cleanse my eyes of the insistent gray, exchange it for a darkness of deep black. But no. If I closed my eyes, I saw the dirty pink light that filtered through my eyelids. If I opened them, there was the gray, gray all around. They always gave me exactly the same food three times a day, a Styrofoam cup of café con leche and a donut. I used to like donuts, now I hate them. Café con leche and donut, café con leche and donut. Until one morning there was an orange on the breakfast tray. An orange! I couldn’t believe it. It seemed like a miracle, as if suddenly light had entered my cell. That orange shone as if it were alive, I swear, Mr. Rose, and it let me know that I too was alive. Because of that orange I was able to remember what the color yellow was like, which I was forgetting. I thought, the sun is like this orange, and it shines out there. I can’t see it, and its light doesn’t shine on me or warm me, but that doesn’t mean that the sun is not still there, and any moment I’ll be out of here too, and I’m going to sit in the sun and rid myself of all the dampness and confinement. And never again will I eat a donut. In jail, where you don’t have much, every object that falls into your hands takes on religious qualities, of a medal or a scapular; a pencil or a comb can take on those qualities. You press it in your hands, create a bond with it, treat it as if it had a soul. That’s what happened with my orange. My mouth watered just looking at it, but if I ate it I’d lose it, and it was my only company in that hole. I kept it intact until it began to turn and then I ate it before it was too late. But I saved the rind, which emitted a pleasant smell for a while and then lost it. But I didn’t lose the color; I was able to save that little piece of yellow.

Later, there would be my first night outside of solitary confinement, in the section with the other inmates. They transferred me late at night, and I stood for a long while looking through the bars at the endless, well-lit hallway with cells on each side. It was pleasing to be able to look beyond the cell wall, a joy to the eyes to be able to see far and deep, a good thing to confirm that the world was bigger than a cell. A bit later I lay down and fell asleep immediately, dreaming of the hallway, which became a subway station, and the cells train cars that passed quickly by. I woke up with a good taste in my mouth. I thought, if I’m on the subway and this is one of the trains, does that mean it’s going to take off toward some other place?