Read Online The Body Where I Was Born by Guadalupe Nettel - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Guadalupe Nettel
Tags: Biographical fiction, Fiction, Literary, Family, Biography, Memoir, Novel, Adolescence, Relationships, Personal Memoir, growing up, life, World Literature, Childhood, mexican fiction, growth
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bay, crouching in a sinister place in our memory, when we least expect them they leap into our faces like enraged cats. I focused on the other paintings Ximena’s mother was showing me and politely answered the questions she asked. It wasn’t a long conversation. I believe that neither of us was ready to open the floodgate of emotions for the fear of the torrents that would wash over us; our feelings were only exposed at their tips like icebergs moving beneath the surface. Even though it was my day off, I was on a work trip and didn’t want to enter into the vulnerable space that encroaches every time I invoke with words all those memories, a space from which it takes me several days to climb out. Nor did I want to hurt her or to put her in a similar state. In that house, Alejandro and I drank tea, spoke about literature, and let my son play with a Moroccan drum. I found out that Paula, her other daughter, had also returned to Santiago, had become a mother like me, and was a fan of Manu Chao. Then we left, leaving behind no trace but a forgotten pacifier.
After Ximena’s death, the presence of insects became much more frequent and commonplace, but no longer scared me. I had learned there were things much more terrifying than those diminutive little animals, venomous as they could be. I should also say that the insects were no longer as poisonous. Instead of burning bugs and tarantulas, I saw earthworms, beetles, and cockroaches. In my visions, the last in particular showed me friendliness, even kindness. Unlike other insects, cockroaches didn’t look at me with aggressive or challenging eyes, but the opposite; they seemed to be there to keep the other critters from coming to bother me. That’s why, whenever I found one in my room, instead of the usual nervousness, a mysterious calm would come over me.
Except for my grandmother’s mess, the apartment remained exactly as my mother had left it. Many of her clothes were still in the closet, like the old gray robe she almost always wore at home. We called it “the skin.” Her desk was the same, her pencils still sharp. Her library stood unmoved, including the I Ching . Everything gave the impression that she had only left for the weekend and at any moment would return to her regular life. Maybe we would have missed her less if we’d moved to a completely different place in which she had never set foot, where at least there wouldn’t be a trace of her to find. During the few times I was left alone in the house, I carefully went through her belongings, as if searching for an encrypted message that could tell me the exact date of her return and give me some sign that she definitely was coming back. And that was how, looking through her books and at pieces of paper slipped between their pages, I came upon a book whose title immediately caught my attention. It was a novella by Gabriel García Márquez, The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Eréndira and Her Heartless Grandmother. It was a Saturday morning. My grandmother had taken my brother to the mall near the house. I opened the book and began to read voraciously. Since my mother had left, I had set aside many of the things I liked to do. I didn’t even slide down the service staircase to refresh my body and mind when it was hot out anymore. In those months I read very little and wrote nothing at all. Books made my grandmother suspicious. She knew that in her daughter’s library there were some rather uncivilized works, such as those that explained new ways to approach sex. She didn’t like to see me in the study and every time she caught me prowling the shelves she complained.
“I don’t know why your mother left all those books there, where you and your brother can get to them. She should have put them away. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to sell them by the pound,” said the woman who stored magazines from the 1930s in the bedrooms of her house.
I didn’t want my grandmother to sell my mother’s books to a
After Ximena’s death, the presence of insects became much more frequent and commonplace, but no longer scared me. I had learned there were things much more terrifying than those diminutive little animals, venomous as they could be. I should also say that the insects were no longer as poisonous. Instead of burning bugs and tarantulas, I saw earthworms, beetles, and cockroaches. In my visions, the last in particular showed me friendliness, even kindness. Unlike other insects, cockroaches didn’t look at me with aggressive or challenging eyes, but the opposite; they seemed to be there to keep the other critters from coming to bother me. That’s why, whenever I found one in my room, instead of the usual nervousness, a mysterious calm would come over me.
Except for my grandmother’s mess, the apartment remained exactly as my mother had left it. Many of her clothes were still in the closet, like the old gray robe she almost always wore at home. We called it “the skin.” Her desk was the same, her pencils still sharp. Her library stood unmoved, including the I Ching . Everything gave the impression that she had only left for the weekend and at any moment would return to her regular life. Maybe we would have missed her less if we’d moved to a completely different place in which she had never set foot, where at least there wouldn’t be a trace of her to find. During the few times I was left alone in the house, I carefully went through her belongings, as if searching for an encrypted message that could tell me the exact date of her return and give me some sign that she definitely was coming back. And that was how, looking through her books and at pieces of paper slipped between their pages, I came upon a book whose title immediately caught my attention. It was a novella by Gabriel García Márquez, The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Eréndira and Her Heartless Grandmother. It was a Saturday morning. My grandmother had taken my brother to the mall near the house. I opened the book and began to read voraciously. Since my mother had left, I had set aside many of the things I liked to do. I didn’t even slide down the service staircase to refresh my body and mind when it was hot out anymore. In those months I read very little and wrote nothing at all. Books made my grandmother suspicious. She knew that in her daughter’s library there were some rather uncivilized works, such as those that explained new ways to approach sex. She didn’t like to see me in the study and every time she caught me prowling the shelves she complained.
“I don’t know why your mother left all those books there, where you and your brother can get to them. She should have put them away. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to sell them by the pound,” said the woman who stored magazines from the 1930s in the bedrooms of her house.
I didn’t want my grandmother to sell my mother’s books to a
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