— You asked me for the menstruation piece.
— I need more. Something longer. Everything you read me the other day. This is full of English. I want more Spanish. Mixing languages like this is typical of your social class. It’s your hang-up, not mine. You discuss philosophical issues in English and leave your feelings in Spanish, reinforcing Hispanic stereotypes — all sex like Almodóvar, all tango — and you leave all the cerebral, intellectual speculations to the Anglo-Saxon tongue. How insulting to Hispanidad!
— But Cenci, you only asked me to bring the menstruation scene.
— But I don’t want them to say I’m publishing you because we’re friends.
— Them who?
— Olmo-Olmo.
— You care what the sophist says?
— No, but it doesn’t help. He ripped you apart the other day.
— For god’s sake—I said—leave her alone.
— She’s all washed up. Talking about gobbers and scabs and snot and lashes and tears. Why doesn’t she pick a theme to inspire change in mankind? What a waste of talent to talk about human waste. What’s she trying to prove?
— She must have an ace up her sleeve.
— She thinks dialogue is everything. She should work on description. Take someone’s face for example and describe it. Because she loses track of her themes.
— And you lose track of your characters.
— Mine is an allegory of lost souls. You know what a dead man did to me? He copied my narrative techniques.
— Schizo-realism.
— My school is not called Schizo-realism. It’s called Story Workshop.
— Schizo-realism.
— Quit calling it Schizo-realism.
— I think it’s more original. I just don’t like the psychological reference.
— Cut it out. The dead man was plagiarizing my narrative technique. A solemn voice rose over a shrill one. Then a faint whistle replied with an awkward flute, a real amateur. The guy wasn’t dead yet, but he was about to die, so I didn’t want to accuse him of plagiary.
— So what did you tell him?
— Nothing, I let it go. After all, he was about to die and I still have a career ahead of me. You scribbled something out here.
— I already told you why. It’s one thing to publish a book as a book. A fragment is another story.
— What did it say here?
—“Today I woke up happy. Something transformed me last night.” I thought it was over-the-top to publish as a fragment. The dream really starts with: “It was a classroom. Jabalí was teaching.” I was sitting in the first row at my desk. All the students were preschoolers, except me. I was the oldest and felt self-conscious because I had my period. My uniform was a knee-length chiffon jumper, the kind that swirls up in the wind. I was wearing bobby socks and moccasins. My hair was cut like Audrey Hepburn’s. I was taking an exam on Rubén Darío. Jabalí came over to read my exam and whispered in my ear:
— The Boy. The Boy.
— What’s with the boy?
— Don’t wax theoretical. Sign your exam: The Boy. That will do it. The Boy gets an A no matter what you write. Don’t sign your name. The Boy is unforgettable. I’ll be sure to write The Boy a letter of recommendation for Yale.
Then the bell rang, and the students got up. I didn’t dare get up. I signaled you to check the back of my skirt to see if it was stained because the Kotex had ridden up my butt.
— Does it show? It feels like a bun up my butt.
— No, it’s okay.
But I knew it showed. Just then the bell rang, and we all sat back down. Then a three-year-old boy with a naughty face hopped on my lap and grabbed hold of my breasts, making me three years old again, three naughty years old, three worldly years old. And whichever way I looked, there was his little face of wonder in front of me, and he was milking my breasts, guanábanas, for all that I had inside, and all that I ever knew was in his little hands, and he wouldn’t stop squeezing and staring and grinning relentlessly like a ventriloquist’s dummy, until I entered his world. There were crags and cliffs, and I was climbing a mountain, following the barefoot boy straight up the path. His mother was calling from below that it was naptime. I recognized her voice. It was Lourdes, my cousin Eduardo’s wife.
— Lourdes—I asked—remember me?
She looked at me the way Dulcinea did the time I left her in the kitchen without food. Three weeks went by and you forgot all about her. The truth is I didn’t dare to face her for fear she might be dead. And one day, I said:
— What about Dulcinea?
We went to the kitchen to see if she was dead. No longer was she a Scottish terrier. Her coat was orange and knotted, and her tail was long and hairy like a collie. How could it be that she was still alive and fat with so much hair around her eyes that she hardly saw what was going on around her, but she recognized me, and she looked me square in the eye, letting me know she was so lonely, so hungry, she had been eating books, eating empires of pain.
— Hey, dyke—I said—what brings you here?
— I had to leave Eduardo because I was starving for affection. We weren’t having sex, and I wanted a baby.
I followed the boy down the mountain and rushed to greet Lourdes.
— It’s naptime—she said to her son.
— And what brings you here? — she asked me.
— I’m reading Darío. I know his work inside-out, but I’m researching this article because I forgot the date 1898 and the meaning of Modernism. You’re Parnassian, aren’t you?
— Actually, I’m a lesbian. Son—she said to the boy—it’s naptime.
Then she spread her legs, and when she spread them, the boy stuck his head inside her uterus.
— Doesn’t it hurt? — I asked her.
The boy pulled his head out and said to me:
— Nah, it doesn’t hurt her. Me neither. See how my face is all wrinkled, I’m a shar-pei puppy, my skin is all wrinkled, but not from suffering, experience, or maturity — they’re tender caresses of the womb — and I bet you wish you had a mama like mine so you could tuck your sleepy head inside her and pull it out refreshed. Look at me, outside in Conservatory Park — snuggling inside my mama — even with my eyes open the sun doesn’t bother me — it’s like nursing but even better because I don’t even have to suck her tits — I just stick my head in and pull it out — like a sunflower — it’s a sunflower of tenderness — nobody gets more tenderness than me — and it’s hard to know if I should grow up or keep mushing up like a ball of clay — it took a lot of squishing and squashing to squoosh back inside once I learned to talk and walk and return to the womb.
He scrunched his face back inside. And that was the last I heard of him until I woke up.
— It was your duende.
— Well, he certainly wanted to possess me. He knew I was bleeding. He caught the smell of blood and was fascinated by it, like dogs that recognize better than men when a woman is bleeding. They immediately start sniffing the crotch, getting high, inhaling blood, death, life, sex. Menstruation was my first experience with mortality. When I used to play tennis with my friends, our conversations were based on this fact of life.
— Did it come?
— Nope, not yet.
— We’ll all get it, sooner or later.
My grandmother and her friend Elvira Matienzo used to read the obituaries together every morning, browsing for the names of their friends. I guess they awaited the news of death the same way we awaited the first drop of blood.