Elena Knows

by Claudia Piñeiro

Clothes always retain a person’s smell, Elena knows, even if they’re washed a thousand times with different detergents. It’s not the smell of the perfume or deodorant the person wore or the laundry soap it was washed with when there was still someone to stain it.

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.

Do you need any help, grandma? I’m not your damn granny, she thinks, but she doesn’t say anything, she looks at him and keeps going, as if she were deaf too. Deaf like her feet when they refuse to respond. Deaf like everyone who refuses to listen when she says it was raining that evening.

The more observant ones stay out of her way, the unobservant bump into her. She continues on, as if no one else existed, just like she feels no one else knows she exists. But they do exist, they pass in front of her, they move away, so many pairs of feet.

Before it turns off and leaves her stranded alone and immobile in this strange city. Alone, without a body. What can you do if your body won’t obey?

She made the sign of the cross every time she passed a church. As if her religion were based more in the rituals, in the folklore and traditions, than in the dogma or faith.

She should’ve got drunk at least once in her life, and learned how to drive, and worn a bikini, she thinks.

She wonders why she says she has Parkinson’s when she doesn’t have it, it’s the last thing she wants to have. She suffers it, she curses it, but she doesn’t have it, having it implies a desire to keep something close, and she desires no such thing.

Hug. She doesn’t remember the last time she hugged someone or was hugged by someone. She can’t remember.

Was I a good mother? Who can ever know?

That’s enough for today, petting a cat. Maybe tomorrow, when she opens her eyes and takes her first pill of the morning, she’ll know. Or when she takes the second one. Maybe.