Elena Knows Read online

  The waxing was the easiest part, the girl just crouched beside Elena with a stick smeared in hot wax and, as she placed her left hand on Elena’s forehead, she pulled her head up with her right hand and spread the wax on her upper lip turning the stick like someone kneading dough. It didn’t hurt, but some of the little hairs remained and the girl insisted on plucking them out with a pair of tweezers. That’s not necessary, child. And Mimí herself did her hands and feet while Elena watched the woman work, bent over in front of her, almost at the same height. That woman doesn’t want my daughter to marry her son, just like I don’t either, she thought. Deep down we’re alike, and she laughed at how surprised Mimí would have been to hear it, if Elena had dared to say it out loud, to say that Mimí was anything like her.

  By the time the woman was placing Elena’s feet in the hot water, Rita was probably already hanging from the church belfry. And as it was getting late, Mimí’s assistant cut Elena’s hair and styled it while she was getting her pedicure. You’ll have to excuse us, Elena, but if not we’ll never get out of here. When she was done they helped her stand, once again the three of them. You have to come more often, Mimí said, your feet are a disaster, how do you ever wear sandals with those heels? I just put them on, she answered, or Rita does it for me when I can’t. At least put some lotion on them at night, Elena, that helps with the roughness. And even though Elena showed no concern for the roughness of her heels, Mimí said, I’m going to send you some calendula cream with Roberto. It’ll just go to waste, Elena thought, because she wasn’t willing to add any more chores to the unending list of daily challenges: walking, eating, going to the bathroom, lying down, standing up, sitting in a chair, getting up from a chair, taking a pill that won’t go down her throat because her head can’t tip back, drinking from a straw, breathing. No, she definitely wasn’t going to put calendula cream on her heels.

  Mimí guided her to a full-length mirror. Take a look, Elena, she said, you’re a whole different person. And Elena, so as not to be disagreeable, turned her head to the side and tried to look at herself. A strand of hair had fallen right over her eye, but one of the girls, meticulous about her work, rushed to pin it back with a clip and some hairspray. She was able to see a little, enough to compare her body to the body of the woman beside her, the woman who was deep down a lot like her, just a year or two younger. How do you think you look, Elena? Old.

  7

  The taxi turns onto Olleros as Elena indicated, and carries on for two blocks. It’s two or three blocks, I don’t remember, she tells him, and the driver turns right as soon as he gets to a street running in that direction. Tell me if you see a wooden door with bronze fittings, Elena says, still lying on the back seat with her eyes on the roof of the car. Any other clues, ma’am? And a clinic or doctor’s office, she adds. I’ll tell you everything I see, ma’am: a greengrocer, estate agent’s, apartment building, Mexican restaurant, like we need any more foreign food than we already have, the man complains and then continues, a 24-hour kiosk, a bar, and the block ends. No clinic. Any bronze fittings?, Elena asks. Hold on, wait, hey, man, is there a clinic around here? A clinic?, repeats the voice of the person the driver has asked. Around here, not that I know of, there’s a hospital on José Hernández. No, it has to be on this block or the next one, the taxi driver insists. No, not around here. And any bronze fittings?, Elena asks, but neither the driver nor the voice answer, but the voice shouts, María, is there a clinic on this block or the next one? Or a doctor’s office, the taxi driver adds. There was a doctor’s office years ago, a woman’s voice answers. No, María, when was there ever a doctor here? Before you came. I’ve been here ten years. Well then it was eleven years ago. Where? Where the Mexican restaurant is now. You see? They push the doctors out and replace them with that crappy food, the taxi driver complains, and the voice responds, We were lucky the people who live next door didn’t want to sell, if not, they’d have put up another tower like they did where the parking lot was. We’re going to have to stick all those cars from all those people, where the sun don’t shine. The taxi driver parks in front of the Mexican restaurant, the yellow curb indicating that parking is not permitted. Beside the restaurant, a wooden door with bronze metalwork that can just barely be seen. You’re going to have to help me out, Elena says. The man looks back and holds out his hand, but quickly realises that won’t be enough. He opens his door and gets out, huffing. He walks around the taxi but stops and goes back to remove the key from the ignition, Can’t be too careful these days. He opens Elena’s door, holds out his hand, and she grabs onto it, but he doesn’t pull, he waits for her to do so. Pull, Elena says, and she moves her arm to show the man what he has to do. The taxi driver understands and he pulls. She stands, wobbling, using the headrest as a lever, though it tilts over and the taxi driver pushes it back into its correct position with his free hand as he helps her out onto the pavement. Elena straightens her clothes, opens her purse, and asks, How much do I owe you? The driver bends down to look through the window and tells her it’s $22.50. Elena opens her purse and finds a twenty and two twos, Keep the change, she says. Thank you, the man responds and then asks, I can get going then? Yes, of course you took me where I needed to go, Elena says, still standing exactly where the driver placed her. The man walks around the front of the taxi and sits down. As soon as Elena takes her first step the taxi driver starts the engine and forgets all about her. Elena doesn’t see him go, but she can picture him, humming another bolero or talking to the radio announcer, complaining along with him, shouting insults and honking the horn because the person in front of him doesn’t move fast enough and he isn’t able to get through the intersection before the red light.

  Elena moves to the inside of the pavement, in front of the Mexican restaurant, and follows the wall in the direction that the taxi came from, dragging her feet. The warm brick scratches her arm but she doesn’t mind, because she’s finally made it, she’s here. When the wall of the restaurant ends a wooden door with polished bronze fittings and a bronze knocker appears. Elena takes a few more steps and she reaches the door, she caresses it, running her hands over the bronze as if she were polishing it, closing her fist around the ring of the knocker, because it’s the same one, the same one that Isabel held onto that afternoon, begging, pleading, Don’t make me go in there, and Elena is grateful that in twenty years no one thought to change the knocker, because it’s thanks to that, thanks to this door knocker, Elena knows that she’s found the place she set out for this morning on the ten o’clock train.

  III: AFTERNOON (FOURTH PILL)

  1

  Elena met Isabel twenty years ago, when Rita dragged her into the house one afternoon. It was cold, Elena was knitting beside the heater; orange peel in a pot of hot water perfumed the house. The door opened abruptly, as if Rita had kicked it open, her hands occupied with supporting the woman. She walked in backward, first her body and then the other body, the one she was dragging. Who is that woman?, Elena asked. I don’t know, her daughter answered. What do you mean you don’t know, child? She feels bad, Mum, Rita said and she half-carried the woman into her room and lay her on the bed. The woman was sobbing but then fell silent: she’d fainted. Bring me a bucket, Mum. Elena brought her one and Rita put it on the floor beside the woman’s head. In case she needs to vomit again, she said. Then she went to the window, closed the wooden shutters, and turned on the light. Should I call the doctor?, Elena asked, but Rita didn’t answer, she went back over to the woman, dumped the contents of her handbag on the bed, and started going through it. What are you doing? Looking. For what? A phone number, an address. Why don’t you just ask her? Because she can’t answer, Mum, can’t you see she can’t answer? She’s crying, Elena said. Yeah, she’s crying, now. A tube of lipstick rolled across the bed and Rita caught it before it fell to the floor. There was a box of Valium, a wallet, several slips of paper, two envelopes, loose change. Elena walked over to the bed, still in control of her own body, twenty years ago, withou
t shuffling her feet, her head high. The woman cried, hugging the pillow, covering her face with it. Elena asked again, Who is this woman? Why did you come back? And this time her daughter explained. Rita had found her on her way to work at the Catholic school, on her way back from having lunch with her mother like she did every day, walking quickly to get there on time, to ring the bell that signalled the start of the afternoon classes, but she never made it to ring the bell, because there was Isabel, on the other side of the street, on the checkerboard-patterned tiles Rita refused to set foot on, the ones she wouldn’t let Elena set foot on either. Isabel, gripping a tree, was bent at the waist and vomiting. Rita gagged and sped up trying not to look at her. The image disgusted her, but gradually her disgust gave way to something else, she didn’t know what, something that made her stop. A voice, Mum, I heard a voice calling me, she’s going to go in there, she’s pregnant, it said, and she’s going to go in. So I turned around, I went back, I offered her help without stepping onto the pavement. And she said no, thanks, I don’t need anything, but she was still vomiting. And I told her, you can’t even walk in the state you’re in. And she said, I don’t have to go far. She had a piece of paper with an address in her hand, and a name, you know the name, Mum, Olga. So Rita said, Don’t do it, you’re going to regret it. What do you know? All the girls who come here regret it. How do you know? I know. Mind your own business. It’s a mortal sin. I don’t believe in God. Think about your child. I don’t have a child. You’re going to have one. No. You have a life inside of you. I’m empty. When you hear its heartbeat you’re going to want it. How do you know? Don’t kill it. Go away. Don’t kill your child. There is no child. Yes there is. There can’t be a child without a mother. You already are a mother. I don’t want to be a mother. This woman told me she didn’t want to be a mother! Can you believe that? But I told her, that’s not your decision. And she had the nerve to ask whose decision it was, and I shouted at her, you have a child inside of you! I don’t have anything inside me, she said again, but I was persistent, its heart beats, I said. And she said, there can’t be a child without a mother. Don’t kill it. Shut up. You’ll have to live with your guilt forever. I won’t be able to live at all if I don’t. None of the girls who do it ever forget. You can’t force someone to be a mother. You should’ve thought about that before. I’ve always thought it, I never wanted to be a mother. But you are a mother. No, I’m not. They hear babies crying every night. What do you know? The aborted babies cry inside their heads. I’m the one who cries inside my head. Don’t kill an innocent being. I’m an innocent being too. Then the woman covered her mouth and vomited again and Rita saw the wedding ring on her finger. You’re married? That’s right. There’s a father, mum, do you see? And what does he say?, I asked her. I don’t care what he says. He has the right to have a say, he’s the father, or is he not the father? Mind your own business. If he finds out he’ll kill you. He already did. You can’t go against God’s will. I don’t know anything about his will. He knows, you don’t have to understand, just trust. I don’t want this thing that’s inside me. Don’t call it that, I told her, give your child a name. And she keeps arguing, she said again that what she had inside her wasn’t a child, and that there had to be a mother for there to be a child, and that she didn’t have anything inside her, but then she vomited again, I could tell she was dizzy and that gave me the idea, I told her, you’re going to be a mother, and I could tell she was still dizzy so without saying anything I took her by the arm and brought her here. It wasn’t hard, the woman was exhausted and Rita was determined. She dragged the woman away from that place. That afternoon, Rita, who was not a mother and never would be, forced another woman to become one, applying the dogma she’d learned to another woman’s body.

  One of the two envelopes that fell from Isabel’s handbag held the lab results that confirmed her pregnancy and the other was an electric bill in her name, Isabel Guerte de Mansilla, and an address. Soldado de la Independencia. Rita read the address twice. It was the first time she’d heard the name of that street. Have you ever heard of a street called Soldado de la Independencia, Mum? But Elena hadn’t heard of it either. The streets they knew were all named after founding fathers or countries or battles; they couldn’t remember ever having heard of a street named after an anonymous person, someone without a name who had to be referred to by what they’d done. Woman who vomits. Woman who stops abortion. Woman who watches the woman who stops abortion of the woman who vomits. Independence Soldier. What soldier? What independence? Rita got a taxi, it wasn’t easy, twenty years back there weren’t private car services on every corner, people did other things for work, when someone lost their job they simply found a new one. She locked the woman inside her bedroom. Get changed, Mum, she told Elena and she left. Elena went to the closed bedroom door, to listen, maybe if she’d heard the woman sobbing she would’ve gone in, but no, so she went to change like her daughter had ordered, so that she wouldn’t get angry with her too. Rita went to the train station, to what twenty years ago was the only taxi rank in town, and she got one to drive her back to the house. She got out and went to bring the woman from the bedroom. Help me, Mum, she said as she struggled to lead her outside, and Elena helped her. Through the open window she gave the driver the envelope with the address, she put Isabel in the back seat and had Elena get in after her. Rita went around and got in on the other side, saying Wouldn’t want her to try to jump out and kill herself and the child.

  The taxi took off with the three women in the back seat. The route took them past the place where Isabel and Rita had met, the pavement in front of Olga’s, the midwife, the abortionist, the pavement with black and white checkerboard tiles. There’s no child, the woman said again as she sat sobbing between them and clenching her fists so hard that when she opened them Elena could see the marks left by her fingernails.

  There is no child, she repeated the whole way there. But Rita and Elena ignored her.

  2

  She raises her arm above her lowered head and rings the doorbell. She waits. Someone looks at her through the peephole, but she doesn’t know it and the person looking out can’t see her, because Elena is much lower down, hunched over, staring at her shoes, waiting. Keys turn in the lock, the door opens as much as the chain will allow. What do you want, says a woman’s voice behind the door. I’m looking for Isabel Mansilla, Elena responds. That’s me. And I’m Elena, Rita’s mother, the woman who twenty years ago, but Elena doesn’t get the rest of the sentence out because Isabel undoes the chain, opens the door, and lets her in. She knows Isabel is looking at her, instead of asking what she’s doing there she’s trying to figure out why she shuffles, why she doesn’t lift her head, why she has to wipe her saliva with a damp and crumpled handkerchief. I have Parkinson’s, she says to save the woman from having to ask. I didn’t know, Isabel says. I didn’t have it yet when we met, or if I did I didn’t know it, says Elena as she moves to the couch where Isabel offers her a seat. She wonders why she says she has Parkinson’s when she doesn’t have it, it’s the last thing she wants to have. She suffers it, she curses it, but she doesn’t have it, having it implies a desire to keep something close, and she desires no such thing. Isabel helps her sit. Would you like a cold drink? Or a cup of tea? Tea would be nice, but with a straw please. Isabel goes to the kitchen. Elena watches her out of the corner of her eye. The furniture is stylish: Gobelin upholstery, curved legs that end in a kind of hoof like a goat or a lamb. If she knew anything about furniture, Elena thinks, she’d be able to tell which Louis they were. Or if they were a Louis at all. But she doesn’t know, and she doesn’t care. A vase sits on the coffee table beside some books on travel, cities she will never see. On the mantelpiece, two framed pictures. Elena cocks her head to the side and tries to see the pictures, straining to lift her gaze high enough. One of the frames holds a picture of Isabel, her husband, and their daughter. A photo similar to the one Rita received every December for the past eighteen, nineteen, or twenty years, E
lena can’t remember now. No, not twenty, because it was twenty years ago that they came to this house to bring Isabel home. Rita kept all the cards in a folder, organised from oldest to newest. It would’ve been easy to put them in order without even looking at the date on the back because the girl grew with every new picture, exactly one year older, and the parents grew older along with her, their faces adjusting to the passage of time marked by their daughter. The three of them always smiling, the man in the middle with his arms around the two women. The card was always signed by Dr Mansilla, saying Thanks for bringing a smile to our faces, eternally grateful, Dr Marcos Mansilla and family, and the date. Maybe one of the cards Rita kept was the same photo displayed on the mantel. When she gets home, this afternoon, after all the travelling, Elena is going to check. Pink blouse and two pigtails, she’s going to check. The other photo is of the daughter and a man. A man, who can’t be her husband, Elena thinks, because the girl is practically still a child and the man is older, around Dr Mansilla’s age, but maybe he is her husband, because these days, but she stops before finishing her thought because Isabel comes in with the teacups, a teapot, and two straws, one metal and one plastic. I brought both, she says, so you can choose. Elena chooses the plastic straw, but she cuts it with the knife on the plate beside the coffee cake, she folds it in half and slices across it, Shorter is better, she says, and she takes a sip through it.