Clean: A Novel

by Alia Trabucco Zerán

Happiness is always served in small doses. Write that down in your margins somewhere.

Of all the possible colors, the poison was the color of the sky, the exact same color as the sea.

And the girl wiped her dirty hand on the front of my uniform, her dirty hand on the fabric over my heart.

As if she’d only just realized that the wound belonged to her, that the pain, too, was hers, and nobody could ever feel it for her.

The damage was already done, it’s important you understand. Spilled blood can’t return to its source.

I preferred my mama and her stories: never sad but happy, never cold but warm, never harsh but gentle.

The laughter was catching and soon the pair of us could hardly breathe, two belly laughs in the infinite blackness of the open countryside.

And then, like a premonition: You’re going to have to learn to look after yourself.

On this occasion I remember her saying “Cheers,” drinking from her glass and then brushing off the dirt that was to come. That’s what I thought, at least. Or perhaps it’s just what I think now. That she was anticipating the dirt in which she’d soon be covered.

And he, the señor, only fell quiet and stopped lavishing praise on his daughter once he saw what she was capable of.

Standing there in shock, she looked at the girl as if she hardly knew her. Or worse: as if she were afraid she knew her too well.

Her maid, prime witness to her unhappiness. And no one likes their happiness to be called into doubt.

I wanted to hold on to those images: the swans’ perplexed expressions, the black arc of their necks.

You expect to feel certain things: a sudden cool breeze on an otherwise hot day, maybe, or the sound of your mother’s voice.

But what is the feeling that comes before pain?

I would have closed my mama’s eyelids and placed a button on her tongue before sealing her lips.

It was a good while before I felt reality digging its claws back into me.

It’s always annoyed me that other people think they know more than I do, especially about me. What did he know about my pain?

Her prominent cheekbones, her small eyes, the brown freckles on her forehead, her thin, arched eyebrows and square, slightly yellow teeth.

I grew anxious and thought: Something terrible is about to happen. Then I remembered my cousin Sonia, my mama buried in the ground, and I could picture the rain hammering down onto the freshly dug mound of earth at the cemetery.

If I had to define it, I’d say it was more like a maze: after a while spent inside it, I could no longer find the way out.

I didn’t have a mother I could call, and that opened up a silence in me so profound that anything anyone said was mere noise.

My pain did have words, but as I scoured the bottom of the toilet bowl, as I scrubbed the mold from the bathtub, as I sliced an onion, I no longer thought with words.

And it’s almost impossible to tell a story without a beginning. The boiling water was my clock, fire was fire even if I didn’t name it, and the dust still traced the outlines of the objects around the house.

With each day that passed, the silence embedded itself deeper in my throat and my words set hard.

And her words in her throat, where they should remain.

My mama didn’t say a word in her presence, but I heard her silence as a kind of scream.

A piece of clothing can hold a lot of secrets, I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about it. The worn-away knees from repeatedly falling over, the shiny crotch from two chunky thighs rubbing together, the elbows threadbare from hours and hours of boredom. Fabrics don’t lie, they can’t pretend: where they fray, where they tear, where they stain over time.

Here she is, Carlos said. And then: She always comes back.

And I, or rather my silence, was only encouraging him. As if each unuttered word of mine opened the way for another of his.

The señor thought he heard a gravelly, clipped voice, a voice full of loathing, giving an instruction: to take a scalpel, stick it in his cheek, and rip out his tongue.

The señor stared at me with that face that looked like it was about to peel away from his skull and he asked me what I saw.

The defining feature of a tragedy, she said then, is that we already know how it will end.

The señor had his head in his hands to stop it rolling off onto the floor.

I had no idea that life could do that: be put on pause for years and years and then make up for it in a matter of days.

It’s no good loving your masters. They only love their own.

Then, starting from his neck, I slowly began to lift his balaclava. It felt like I was ripping a scab from his scalp.

A child and yet not really a child. A being who had not for one second known childhood.

I pictured my mama, her leathery hands, her spotless skin at bedtime, and I thought about how in my memory she was safe from harm, she would always be safe from harm, and how I would soon be with her in the faraway place where she was waiting for me.

My mama had warned me: It’s a trap, Lita. But my mama was dead. My mama was still dead. And that’s a trap no one escapes from.

One slash on top of another, on top of another, on top of another. Messages from the women who came before me. Warnings for those who’d follow.

Of course I’d miss her. In the way you miss a habit until another one replaces it.

I looked into her eyes and believed I could see straight through her: to her fear, her anxiety, her boundless arrogance.

Time came to a halt, or maybe I got left outside of it and time just carried on without me.

Enough, I thought, enough, that’s enough now, but that thought alone couldn’t put an end to her suffering.

A shudder ran through me too. As if, all at once, I’d woken up.

How can you recognize the main road without the odd detour?

The simplest of thoughts fell apart; routine actions, like how to swallow without choking, how to expel the air from my lungs, how to muster the next heartbeat, melted away.

Just thinking about the sun makes my head spin: even on a cloudy day, even at nighttime when it disappears, the sun goes on being true.

Death, I thought, meant becoming pure past. It meant never again falling ill. It was simple, quick. Death wasn’t horrible, do you understand? It never had been. What was horrible, truly horrifying, was the act of dying.