Clean: A Novel

by Alia Trabucco Zerán

I know this will sound strange, but it’s what I thought: that my silence had made not only my voice disappear but my skin too, and that he wouldn’t be able to see or feel me.

There are people who go through life not knowing, with the corners of their mouths intact.

She would never wake again, and her memories would disappear with her, as would I, because I was just one of those memories.

And the answer was yes, of course I would miss her. And also no, not in the slightest.

His were warm and their warmth only made me notice how cold mine were.

I’ve told you I didn’t want to look back, but he walked behind me like a shadow.

I couldn’t be sure, write this down, if I was really there. Whether I was still in this world or it had continued on its course without me.

I remember so clearly the look he gave me. Open, serene. That was the way a person should look at another.

This isn’t a digression, believe me. This is exactly what I saw: my mama drinking a mug of tea and looking at me from behind her fogged-up glasses, and Yany lying at her feet, also looking at me, and the girl next to her, stroking her head. There was no sense in being afraid. Afraid of what. Of losing what.

A wound opened up in my gut, right here, and the pain forced me to stop.

The hand that I’d used so often to cook and clean and darn and iron—like the hand that you’ll use to point and judge—held that rock firmly in its grasp. But at the same time, it was no longer mine. It was my mama’s gnarled hand collecting stones on the beach, braiding another little girl’s hair, cleaning the bathroom, mopping the floor, just as my hands had cleaned the bathroom and mopped the floor.

And while I waited, impatient and desperately thirsty, I looked around at these peeled walls, at the door locked from the outside, at the mirror you’re all hiding behind, and I had this thought: no one can withstand confinement like I can.

Maybe, like the fig tree, she died from the sheer anticipation of the torturous future that awaited her.

You can forget what you don’t name, and I’m done putting a name to it all.