Cantoras

by Carolina De Robertis

In the last moment before she jumped, she saw her mother’s face twisted into a scowl of disgust (and her father, behind her mother, staring past Malena as though she were not there, as though she didn’t exist, had never existed) and she saw Romina too, blank-eyed, indifferent, the faces blurring into each other as one united truth, a thesis confirmed, this is this, this is not that, will never be. Spring, release, away from all that, into the ocean, the living ocean, the great blue arms of the only one she knew would never hate her, and she’d been planning for so long that

Romina’s mother and father, ninety and ninety-one years old, leaning on their grandchildren’s arms and walking slowly toward their daughter, who was finally, and in a manner they never would have dreamed of, a bride.

wedding of this congresswoman who’d voted for gay marriage, helped the law pass, and then publicly declared her intention to marry, it was a new time for Uruguay, the leftist Frente Amplio ran the nation, from the

free. Ocean as church, she thought. Woman’s body as church. She had so much to say to Virginia, then, but only said it with her hands.

In the silence that followed, the lighthouse beam came to wash them with such stealth and persistence that it almost seemed as if light could be made sound. Diana

don’t think you killed her, Ro, nor me. I think silence killed her.”

silence of the closet, as we call it now—all of that is layered and layered like blankets that muffle you until you cannot breathe. For many people it is too much. In Paraguay we have seen it. And so, here, none of you should carry the blame.”