Read Online Umami by Laia Jufresa - Free Book Online Page B

only one who’s fully dressed. Pina will have to stay there all weekend.
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‌ II
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‌ 2004
    It’s midday when I set off for the tools. Mostly I go so I don’t have to be around my emotionally disturbed mother. She’s completely loca . This morning she burst into my room screaming, ‘Go back!’
    â€˜Eh?’
    â€˜Go back to that song,’ she said, sitting down on what used to be Luz’s bed but is now my chaise longue. ‘Pass the remote.’
    I passed her the remote. The stereo was playing a CD I barely know. Mom went nuts with the rewind button and hashed the song as if she were slicing an onion. Look at this big-eyed fish swimming… You see beneath the sea is where a fish should be… You see this crazy man decided not to breathe…
    â€˜What is wrong with you?’ I asked when she finally threw the remote on the bed and let the song play on.
    â€˜Did you ever play this to Luz?’ she asks me.
    â€˜No siree, Marina just burnt it for me.’
    Mom went on staring at me, I laughed, and then she got up and took the CD from the stereo.
    â€˜I forbid you to listen to this song,’ she said, already by the door. And then, looking at the CD cover, ‘I forbid you to listen to Dave Matthews! Or his band!’
    â€˜Yeah, right,’ I told her. Mom has never forbidden me to do anything.
    â€˜And don’t say no siree,’ she said before disappearing down the hall.
    â€˜You’re messing with my mental health, you are!’ I screamed, but she had gone. When I went down for breakfast, I found the CD broken into pieces in the kitchen.
    *
    I go out into the mews’ passageway and the salmony light hurts my eyes. Last night I stayed up reading. I got through an entire novel, but an easy one, not like the ones Emma sends me. The charactress was fifteen and had a brain tumor. Her titties, according to her, look like bananas. Now it’s my favorite book, because usually in metaphors they look like apples or melons or oranges. Or rather similes. But when I bend over, my titties hang down as if I was forty not thirteen, and that’s why I never have a bath at Pina’s anymore, even though she has a big bathtub. Pi likes to chat while I’m washing and I don’t like her seeing me naked. She’s got pointy, pert titties. If it were a simile I’d say: like Grandma’s hat. On the end of each one sits a dark nipple like a hazelnut. But me, I have flat nipples and my skin’s so pale that my sad blue veins show through like a bad omen. Anyway, I don’t want to think about this anymore. The Girls are sunbathing in a corner of the passageway. Sometimes Alf leaves them outside for hours. I go up to their double stroller.
    â€˜Charactress isn’t a word,’ I tell them, ‘but it should be.’
    I have the red trolley with me so that I can bring back whatever I manage to wangle off the neighbors. I start with the house across the street: Daniel and Daniela live just out in front with two Pugs, a baby and another on the way. They’re not so bad, but they’re not especially nice either. Their house has white tiled floors in every room that make the whole place feel like a giant bathroom or a spaceship. All the furniture is made of dark, fake leather, except for the baby’s stuff, which is yellow because they refuse to buy anything blue or pink. Some afternoons, Pi and I look after the baby and root through their half-empty bookshelves. It’s mostly manga and then this one book about how men and women come from different planets. One thing they do have going for them is their giant TV – bigger than anyone’s in the mews – and while the baby sleeps we watch the random shows Daniel downloads and warns us not to touch.
    As I might’ve guessed, they’re not at home. I take out one of the pre-prepared notes I brought with me and write their names at the top (Daniel,