Silver Nitrate

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

With her headphones on, she could notice any pop or crackle, but she wouldn’t know if it was Tuesday or Friday.

Shit, Montserrat, stop at the deli, get a slice of ham and a bit of cheese and make yourself a real lunch. No wonder your gums bleed. You probably have the nutritional deficiencies of a seventeenth-century sailor.

Pfft same.

She considered washing her hair and straightening it, but was immediately daunted by the idea. She stuffed her feet into a pair of old sneakers and congratulated herself on having found clean, matching socks.

People’s eyes glazed over when she spoke, if she deigned to speak. Sometimes, at parties or reunions, she preferred to simply stand in a corner and pretend she’d lost the ability to string words together.

Tristán wondered who had been the kid who had the gall to ask Montserrat for a blow job, not because she was unappealing—she had, as he liked to say, her angles—but because she looked like the kind of person that would knife you in the bathroom stall if you asked for that.

She liked the idea of systematization; an orderly world appealed to her nature.

We are all taught to despise the whiff of darkness, of Indigenous blood and of Blackness. We speak about ‘bettering the race,’ and by that we mean injecting more European blood into our veins.

“You lie and cheat. If we let you, you will consume us.”