That afternoon, I finished in the kitchen, and in a burst of energy also classified everything in Mariana’s former bedroom, now converted into a junk room. Rat turned up later, at about eight o’clock, and cast a professional eye over the collection of boxes in the living room and kitchen. I told him that there was more stuff upstairs, but he decided that it wasn’t necessary to look it over: he already had an idea of what he’d need for the job.
The following morning I went to the market in search of more cardboard boxes, and within a couple of hours had decided on the fate of everything in my bedroom. I set aside a few of my elementary school notebooks, two or three novels, and some CDS from my teenage years that had nostalgia value. Everything else could be sold.
To cut a long story short, the clear-out progressed without incident until I got to my father’s bedroom: the room that had once also been Teresa’s. There was the bed that my mother had slept in until that Tuesday in July or August 1994; the desk in the corner at which she’d most likely written the farewell letter to my father; the night table on which I’d found that letter under a ridiculous porcelain dog.
For me, there was a touch of the museum about that room. In some way it resembled one of those houses of historical personages, preserved intact for the delight of tourists. Except that there, I was able to become a tourist of my own history. Since it was the area of the house I’d entered least frequently during all those years, for me it preserved more clearly than any other the memory or ghost of my mother: I could imagine Teresa reading, arguing, getting dressed in that room, suspended in a time before everything happened, like a hologram projected by my grief and fatigue.
5
ON SEPTEMBER 23, 1994, six days after the incident at Guillermo’s party, my father said he needed to talk to us. Mariana and I were just coming in from school, and we were surprised to find him in the house at a time when he still should have been at the bank. His hair was tousled and he hadn’t shaved; he was wearing his Sunday pants. The atmosphere had been exceptionally tense for the whole of that week.
I’d taken it for granted that he was annoyed with me because of the party, but had no idea how to scold me since the whole situation was so odd: a child of almost eleven wetting himself at a party inspired more pity than rage, and my father tended to have a very hard time dealing with complex emotions.
At school, the regime of jibes and humiliations to which I’d been subjected continued, although never reaching the nadir of the party. Retreating behind a planter during recess, sitting with my knees drawn up and my glossy-pink-paper covered notebook open at the back pages, I passed the time writing my Left Hemisphere Theory as a means of evasion and philosophical consolation. I filled several of those pages in my spidery handwriting, explaining the magical associations of the left side, and the merely practical (“concrete,” I wrote) ones assigned to the right.
One night, Mariana was unusually considerate. She entered my room without knocking and, with a sigh, lay down on my bed. Staring at the ceiling, she murmured, almost to herself: “I know things are really weird right now, shorty. But you’ll see: my mom will come home soon and everything will sort itself out. They’ll probably get divorced, but that’s no big deal, all my friends’ parents are divorced.” And without waiting for any response, she went back to her bedroom and shut the door.
I’m now uncertain what I was thinking about Teresa in those days. I wasn’t particularly interested in making conjectures about her life as an outlaw in the jungle, and although at times my imagination took flight to that region, in general I tried to keep my mind on any other subject. Most likely I was tired of so much change, so much asymmetry.
My father’s tone presaged a serious conversation. Mariana was trying to pretend that she hadn’t heard, like when she was asked to wash the dishes or come back early from Citlali’s house. I didn’t have the self-assurance to feign indifference: I sat in the living room, next to my father, in victim mode, ready to receive a sermon that, if things went badly, might degenerate into shouts and insults—as they generally did. Yet despite his unkempt appearance and the announcement that he had something to say to us, my father looked relatively calm.
“There’s been an accident,” he began, but then seemed lost for words and, after a momentary hesitation, had to start again, this time expressing himself more clearly. “Your mom was involved in an accident. A traffic accident. Teresa is dead.”
I don’t recall the rest of the conversation. But I do remember that the name Teresa sounded strange on his lips: for some reason I clung to that observation, as if trying to erase the real content of his message.
Mariana shouted some question or other and then—in a scream that degenerated into a wail—sobbed, “It’s all your fault.” She ran upstairs and slammed her bedroom door. That noise unblocked something inside me and I started to cry as I’d never cried before. It was a silent, muffled bout of tears, with spasms but no sound, like a mime. My father tried to hug me and I squirmed, contorting my body in an attempt to avoid his touch until I slid from the couch to
