Читать книгу Ramifications - Daniel Saldaña París - Страница 12

6

I guess my father must have spoken to someone (an acquaintance or one of the secretaries in his department) who knew something about bringing up children and told him that it wasn’t such a good idea to leave me alone in the house for eight hours a day so soon after Teresa’s disappearance from our lives. I find it hard to believe that, without assistance, he would have understood the risks that situation might involve for my mental health. My father was never capable of anticipating extrinsic emotions. The inner lives of others – including his own children – were a strongbox for which he didn’t have the combination. He was incapable of empathy, and all his decisions were based on his own feelings and needs. At times, when I think of all the years we spent under his guardianship, I’m still surprised that both Mariana and I have survived.

To cut a long story short, my father decided that it wasn’t possible to leave me alone every day, and as he couldn’t take me to work either (this would have raised suspicions and generated questions among his colleagues: appearances had to be kept up), he opted for leaving me in the care of my sister. One night, making an enormous effort to break through her absolute refusal to discuss the matter, my father interrupted the movie we were watching (much to the annoyance of Mariana, who immediately complained), and asked us to try to spend more time together ‘until Teresa’s return.’

Naturally, ‘spending more time together’ meant Mariana had to be my babysitter and couldn’t just take off every morning and return late, as she’d been doing, while I spent the whole day in failed attempts to master origami. My sister looked at Dad incredulously and, with some justification (time brings understanding), complained: ‘It’s not fair. You can’t spoil the holidays just because my mum’s decided to leave.’

Mariana always referred to Teresa as her mum, while I usually just called her Teresa. Mariana or my father would sometimes try to correct me, force me to say ‘my mum,’ too, but Teresa never seemed to mind. After all, it was her name. Nevertheless, I now wonder if that difference between my sister and I didn’t in some way determine our experiences as offspring. Maybe Mariana was a little more Teresa’s daughter, maybe I, as her son, should also have called her Mum right from the start.

My father and Mariana entered into negotiations. In the meanwhile, I feigned complete indifference to their discussion, snacking on successive bowls of cereal with added sugar and trying to imagine endings for the movie that had been left on pause throughout. I don’t remember which movie it was but am almost certain it had dinosaurs or alien life forms or alien dinosaurs. Finally, they came to an agreement: Mariana could invite her friends to the house so she wouldn’t be bored, and I had to play in my bedroom and ‘let them have some space.’

The following morning, my father left for work very early, and Mariana and I had breakfast alone. She explained that some of her friends would be coming around, and that I was categorically banned from asking them dumb questions. A few hours later, just after noon, the first of Mariana’s friends began to arrive: Citlali, Ximena, and Javier. I’d memorised all their names even though they didn’t know mine: I was simply ‘Mariana’s brother.’

When the second wave of teenagers turned up, my sister’s bedroom became too small for them all and they took possession of the living room. They played very loud music and someone appeared with four cans of beer, which they passed around, pretending to like the taste. I made discreet forays into the kitchen for one glass of water after another to check what was going on. It was annoying to miss out on all the noisy fun, but I knew that Mariana would be angry if I spied on them at close quarters. Luckily, her friend Citlali took advantage of one of my trips to talk to me. She asked if I liked beer and laughed without waiting for a reply, possibly amused by my discomfort. ‘Your brother’s really lovely,’ she said to Mariana, who was stumped by her comment. I guessed that she hadn’t planned the beers and was irritated by the thought of having to ask me to keep them a secret from my father. If she did make that request, we’d both know that she would automatically owe me one, and I could make her pay by ordering Hawaiian pizza or talking to Citlali for hours without her being able to complain. But Mariana had no other option: she pulled me aside and made me promise not to say a word to anyone about the beer or the presence of male guests (four or five teenagers wearing huge T-shirts who were attempting to overcome their shyness and talk to the girls). I assumed an offended expression and, conscious that her girlfriends were listening, replied in a loud voice: ‘I’d never snitch on you.’ Citlali and Ximena, who were nearby, laughed affectionately; Mariana blushed.

I remember that I liked that feminine warmth, that it seemed a new and desirable possibility: living with Teresa and Mariana, I’d never had occasion to experience it. Both Teresa and my sister expressed their affection obliquely, without falling into the trap of sentimentality or being overly demonstrative. Ximena and Citlali’s bubbly warmth was, by contrast, a window into a world of attentions I’d unconsciously longed for since I was small: I wanted to stay in their company, make other pronouncements that would bring fond smiles to their faces, listen to their reedy voices, treasure their gestures of approval. And what’s more, I wanted to rub myself up against them like a cat, brushing my shoulders against their knees, and I wanted that odd behaviour to seem even more attractive, wanted them to be on the point of exploding with tenderness for me. But that would have been taking things too far: however ominously the threat of being found out might hang over her, when faced with such blatant upstaging, my sister would have pinched me, pulled my hair, locked me in the tiny downstairs bathroom.

As I’d earned the right to join the party, I decided that it would be best not to attract too much attention – however much that idea appealed to me. I stubbornly stuck it out for quite a while, but the truth is that their conversation didn’t really interest me. No one mentioned origami, or the Bogeyman, or how to build a Zero Luminosity Capsule inside a wardrobe. And neither did they talk about Choose Your Own Adventure books, even when I timidly attempted to raise the subject. Their only topics were boyfriends, girlfriends, bands, and what they could expect in senior high (which they would start in September). More teenagers arrived – by that time they numbered around twenty – and I thought that there had never before been so many people in the living room; maybe never so many in the whole house, not even when I turned seven and Teresa unexpectedly – it was a first – allowed me to invite all my classmates to break the piñata.

As they entered the living room, the adolescent guests greeted one another with kisses, making me deeply jealous. I wanted Mariana’s female friends to treat me as an equal, wanted to feel them slobber on my cheek, wanted them to visit my bedroom to admire just what I could do with a simple square of coloured paper: ‘This is the crane,’ I’d say. ‘If you succeed in mastering this figure, you’ve taken the first steps along the road to mastering your own fears.’ It was a phrase I’d thought up in case anyone ever asked me about my hobby, but sadly had never had the chance to use.

They ordered pizzas and I ate a few slices, even though there were no Hawaiians: Citlali, whom I considered to be very good looking (her hair smelled of bubblegum), had ordered salami. Shortly afterwards, as if attracted by the leftover food or the scent of boredom, Rat appeared. Mariana opened the door and he came in, followed by his band of emulators. One of them had a colourful bandana tied around his head, like some kind of indigenous Mexican ninja. Another had an eyebrow stud, and that impressed me.

I was surprised to see a local celebrity in our living room. That would never have happened if Teresa had been home, I thought. Mariana’s party was becoming increasingly large, serious, and unsafe. I was a little concerned that they might use drugs – temporary tattoos – or have sex: activities about which I knew very little but that were generally associated with teenagers (not adults: they drank tequila and made love, almost direct opposites to taking drugs and having sex, according to my worldview at that time). More beers materialised on the coffee table, and I decided it was time to ‘give them some space,’ as my father had said I should. Moreover, my superhuman efforts to be accepted and pretend that I was interested in their criticisms of the Year 9 physics teacher were becoming wearisome.

I went upstairs to my room and closed the door. On the floor was the note I’d written about going to play with Rat. Suddenly it seemed dumb. I tore it into small pieces and hid them around the bedroom: I didn’t want anyone to reconstruct the note, as I’d learned was possible from my Choose Your Own Adventure books.

I attempted to make an origami pagoda. The manual included a couple of explanatory sentences for each figure: ‘A pagoda is a Chinese house,’ it said, but no one could have lived in the house I produced: it was a piece of crumpled paper with folds that refused to stay folded. If a family of origami Chinese people had lived in my pagoda, their lives would have been extremely tough. The origami mother would undoubtedly have run away to Chiapas.