Tender Is the Flesh

by Agustina Bazterrica

She gives him the same speech every time, tells him how difficult it is even in this day and age to be a woman and have a career, says that people continue to hold prejudices against her, that only recently have they started greeting her and not her assistant who’s a man, because they think he’s the one who’s head of the laboratory, it was her choice not to have a family, and socially she has to pay for it, because people continue to think that women have to fulfill some biological plan, when her great accomplishment in life has been to press ahead, to never give in; being a man is so much easier, she says, this is her family—the laboratory—but no one understands, not really, she’s revolutionizing medicine, she tells him, and people continue to care whether her shoes are feminine, or that her roots are showing because she didn’t have time to go to the hairdresser, or that she’s gained weight. He agrees with everything she says, but he can’t bear her words, which are like tiny tadpoles dragging themselves along, leaving behind a sticky trail, slithering until they pile up, one on top of the other, and rot, vitiating the air with their rancid smell. He doesn’t answer because he also knows that she has few female employees working for her. And if one of them were to get pregnant, she’d look down on her, disregard her.