Elena Knows

by Claudia Piñeiro

And she wonders if Parkinson’s is masculine or feminine, because even though the name sounds masculine it’s still an illness, and an illness is something feminine. Just like a misfortune. Or a curse. And so she thinks she should address it as Herself, because when she thinks about it, she thinks ‘fucking whore illness.’ And a whore is a she, not a he. If Herself will excuse my language.

And he said, an illness of the central nervous system that degrades, or mutates, or changes, or modifies the nerve cells in such a way that they stop producing dopamine. And then Elena learned that when her brain orders her feet to move, for example, the order only reaches her feet if the dopamine takes it there. Like a messenger, she thought that day. So Parkinson’s is Herself and dopamine is the messenger. And her brain is nothing, she thinks, because her feet don’t listen to it. Like a dethroned king who doesn’t realise he’s not in charge anymore.

Arguments layered on top of each other, one hidden beneath another, lying in wait and ready to leap forth, no matter how unrelated to the topic at hand. They fought as if each word thrown out were the crack of a whip, leather in motion, one of them lashed out, then the other. Blistering the rival’s body with words.

They were two hopeless creatures, two losers in love, or not even, two lonely people who had never even entered the game, who had contented themselves with watching from the stands.

A memory for details, Elena knows, is only for the brave, and being cowardly or brave is not something one can choose.

Elena never understood why people chose caskets made of noble hardwoods that would take a long time to break down. If so many people believe that we are all of dust and to dust must turn again, why delay the return.

But Elena is not astray. Elena knows. She waits. With her bowed head and her shuffling feet, without seeing the road or what it will bring. She doesn’t go astray, even if she sometimes wanders.

What did that man know about what the morning meant to her. Forced to open her eyes once again. Daylight signals the start of the fight she has ahead of her,

Motherhood, Elena thinks, comes with certain things, a mother knows her child, a mother knows, a mother loves. That’s what they say, that’s how it is.

Is she still a mother now that she doesn’t have a child? If it had been her who’d died, Rita would have been an orphan. What name does she have now that she’s childless? Has Rita’s death erased everything she was?

to check that Rita’s not a pod without a seed who won’t be able to fulfil her purpose in the world.

To have saved her virginity, for who, to have been faithful, for what reason, to have remained celibate after becoming a widow in hopes of what, believing what? Virginity or fidelity or celibacy means nothing now,

That afternoon, Rita, who was not a mother and never would be, forced another woman to become one, applying the dogma she’d learned to another woman’s body.

People like your daughter, who didn’t even know me, your daughter who didn’t have the nerve to become a mother herself but who treated my body as if it were hers to use, just like you, today, you didn’t come here to settle a debt but to commit the same crime all over again twenty years later. You came here to use my body.

People confuse thinking with knowing, they let themselves confuse the two.

But you only know something once you’ve experienced it in your life, life is our greatest test.

There comes a time for us to give back what our parents gave to us, she needs you like you needed her years ago, you’re going to have to be your mother’s mother,

Your daughter went because it was raining and because there was something that scared her more than the rain. Me, Elena says.

I do want to live, you know? In spite of this body, in spite of my dead daughter, Elena says, crying, I still choose to live, is that arrogance? Not long ago I was told I was arrogant. Don’t keep the names other people give you, Elena.

In addition, four of her novels have been made into films: Las viudas de los jueves, Betibú [Betty Boo], Tuya [All Yours] and Las grietas de Jara, and she has written the script for an upcoming Netflix series El reino [The Kingdom] with Marcelo Piñeyro.

(The novel’s force can be likened to the impact of Portuguese visual artist Paula Rego’s 1998 series of etchings of abortions, which were reproduced in Portuguese national newspapers in the days leading up to Portugal’s second referendum on abortion in 2007.)