Catalina

by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

My grandfather told me I had dimples because when I was born, my parents called an indigenous woman to come to the hospital and rub raw dry peas into my cheeks to form the indentations. It was their choice to make me beautiful. I was never told where this woman came from. How did they find her? Is this a service she provided widely? How much did she charge? The point of the story, in any case, is that I had been created.

I was very scared of space heaters as a little girl. The Spanish news in winter is full of stories of the ghetto on fire, space heaters killing people who did not deserve to die, just nice normal people who were cold, god forbid. It occupied an outsized space in my mind; alternatively, it occupied a normal amount of space in my mind and it’s everyone else who’s crazy.

It’s hard to stop thinking like a prey animal. Best to never start, really.

I was never beautiful, exactly, but my body listened to me when I aimed it at men. I know that’s how men write women, but how men write women is how I learned to speak English.

I listened to music the entire time. If I was sad, I listened to Radiohead. If I was angry, I listened to Fiona Apple. If I was feeling slutty I listened to The Neptunes. Those were my three states.

Anyway, the gold was here now, just like the khipu and just like me. We could have been anywhere in the world but tonight we were here, for you.