Umami

by Laia Jufresa

  ‘Squeeze!’ she’d say.

  Sometimes I was scared I’d hurt her or break something, and I always let go sooner than she wanted me to. We all did. My brothers held on a bit longer, but not much. Luz always wanted to be squeezed more.

  ‘Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze!’ she begged Dad, and he would squeeze her with a single arm.

  I don’t want to, but I can’t help imagining her in her box, in the cemetery. But that’s another silly idea because there’s not even anything in that box. It was too expensive and complicated to bring the body back to Mexico.

  ‘What?’ I ask Pina, who’s staring at me.

  ‘Are you crying?’ she says.

  ‘Are you stupid?’ I say, and she goes off in a sulk.

  ‌

  ‌2003

  The woman is absurdly beautiful. That’s how Marina sees her: with an adverb. She shouts to be heard above the racket of the hail against the tile roof:

  ‘You’ll go to heaven for this, missy!’

  ‘Thanks,’ Marina says, because she can’t think of anything else to say. But what she’s really thinking is, ‘An evangelist!’ and ‘I am such an idiot!’ And then, this time in her brother’s voice, ‘You have opened the door to an unknown, soaking wet, and possibly dangerous evangelist.’ But she can’t stop staring at her.

  ‘I’m a friend of Beto and Pina,’ the woman yells, pointing to the house on her left. ‘Do you know Pina? Does she still live there?’

  Relief. Marina knows Pina. She’s Linda’s kids’ little friend, and yes, she lives with her dad in Sour House.

  ‘They’re not in?’ Marina shouts.

  ‘Do you think I could come in for a second?’ the woman shouts back.

  Marina thinks, ‘No,’ but says, ‘Of course.’

  They run to her house. Marina opens and closes the door with a yank and a shove. You can’t even hear the door slam for the storm. Her feet are soaked. The damn drains in the mews become blocked at the first drop of hail. She kicks off her flip-flops and dries her feet, rubbing each one against the opposite thigh.

  The woman emerges from under the black trash bag and, after studying it for a second like she’s making sure she hasn’t left anything valuable in there, she reopens the door and tosses the bag out into the passageway. This surprises Marina, maybe it even annoys her a little, she can’t decide. Is the woman going to take the bag with her when she goes, or leave it there as a memento? Will the bag get caught up among her plant pots or will it float off toward the bell, or even to her landlord’s doorstep? The woman shuts the door again and Marina thinks to herself how, even on the balmiest, rain-free day she wouldn’t have heard it closing, so gracefully and soundlessly the woman carries herself. What’s more, whereas before she seemed stooped under her bag, now Marina can appreciate how upright she is. She feels another wave of fear, but this time it’s quieter, perhaps offset by her curiosity: it sounds less like one of her brother’s reproaches and more like the muted hum of a neighbor’s radio. ‘She’s no evangelist,’ says the radio host. ‘But a hardened criminal, maybe? A member of an elite kidnapping gang?’

  The woman rubs her arms and shakes out her thick black hair. Then she takes a moment to stretch, and in one long breath regains her natural shape and size. Short, but seemingly taller with her plumb, proud posture, the woman fills the space she occupies. She’s also dripping wet. She points to a broken chair next to the door and Marina says, ‘Be my guest, ma’am.’ But the woman doesn’t sit down; she hangs her jacket on the back. It’s an oversized denim jacket.

  ‘This is really so cool of you,’ says the woman as she unties her scarf: a flimsy, tie-dyed thing, so youthful it ages her.

  ‘Come in, ma’am,’ Marina says.

  ‘Bah, let’s drop the formalities,’ says the woman, drying her hair with the scarf.

  ‘Come in,’ Marina says, pointing her to the living room. ‘I’ll get you a towel.’

  The last time Marina spoke to her dad on the phone, he said, totally out of the blue, ‘You’re not a little girl anymore, Dulce Marina.’ And she felt robbed, because that’s what she’d been telling him since she was about twelve! And now he was trying to take the credit for discovering the fact, not only robbing it from her but also slyly sugarcoating it in her full and sickly name (Sweet Marina, ugh), which no one apart from him and the Federal Electoral Institute ever used. She’d felt like the victim of a postal crime; like he’d stolen a letter she was expecting. It had been deeply infuriating, but all she had managed to say to him was, ‘I know, Dad.’

  And he’d gone on:

  ‘At your age your mom had already had her first child.’

  ‘I know that too.’

  After they’d hung up, Marina welcomed a kind of pure, clean rage: a healthy development. But now, the taste of that rage comes back to her as she looks around the bathroom for the least dirty towel. She really did not like the tone of the woman’s ‘let’s drop the formalities’, as if she were the host and Marina the intruder. Marina inspects herself in the mirror for a few seconds, no longer than that, but long enough for her to feel embarrassed about how long she’s taking, because she is, after all, the host. She grabs the green towel, the one she uses least, and heads back.

  She finds the woman sitting on the yellow sofa. Not leaning back into it; just perched on the edge, very erect, but not tense. Quite the opposite in fact: she looks perfectly at ease. (Mellow-yellow.) And Marina feels irritated again. How can this woman seem so comfortable here in her home, as if they’d had a prearranged appointment, as if she were a social worker sent to check if Marina is sticking to her recommended daily intake of calories? Marina doesn’t know how to hold her back straight without stiffening all over, and as a general rule she resents people with good posture.

  The woman points to the wall opposite the whozac wall.

  ‘What is Doctor Vargas doing up there?’

  Marina flinches. It takes her a moment to take in the fact that this woman knows her neighbors.

  ‘Her husband commissioned me to paint her portrait,’ she answers. ‘But in the end he didn’t want to hang it in his house. He paid me and everything, it’s just he gave it back.’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t like it.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘I’m not saying it’s ugly.’

  ‘He asked me to paint it like that. In the style of Joaquín Sorolla.’

  ‘They always were a little pretentious.’

  ‘Can I get you a coffee?’

  ‘Do you have tea?’

  ‘Chamomile.’

  ‘I’ll take that.’

  Ugh, thinks Marina as she puts the kettle on. She really didn’t like that response at all; like it was a concession on the woman’s part. Nor does she like her turning the TV off without asking. Or the fact that she wasn’t even the slightest bit surprised to learn that Marina is a painter and that people actually commission her to paint portraits. When Linda first saw the portrait she’d cried, ‘Bravo!’

  Marina’s not scared anymore. She’s pissed, and getting more so by the minute. Pissed at herself, or at the woman, or at the completely absurd fact that it took her twenty years to feel the slightest anger toward her father, and two minutes with this stranger. Everything’s the wrong way around.

  ‘I’m getting her out of here the moment she’s finished her tea,’ thinks Marina, but at the same time she tunes the radio to a jazz station, as if preparing the house for a long, lazy night with friends. She doesn’t wait for the water to boil. As soon as it starts simmering, she pours it into two mugs, adds a couple teabags from the ones Linda leaves when she comes for class, and goes back to the living room. She sits next to the woman and hands her one of the mugs.

  ‘You collect cushions?’ asks the woman. ‘They’re rad.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Marina says, looking down at her tea and blowing into it. Then, realizing her error, she adds, ‘It’s not chamomile.’

  ‘Yerba mate,’ the woman says, reading the label on the teabag.
‘Far out,’ she says, ‘I haven’t drunk one of these since I was in Patagonia.’

  ‘Ah,’ Marina says, and she takes little sips on hers while looking at the woman’s feet. She’s wearing heeled brogues with laces, and the tips are ever so slightly pointed, ever so slightly witchy. They can’t be from here. Or maybe they are, but not from this decade.

  ‘Are you Mexican?’ Marina asks.

  ‘Born and bred,’ the woman answers. And then, ‘My name’s Isabel, but call me Chela.’

  *

  They begin in Patagonia, then move onto the marihuana Chela happens to have on her and which she offers to Marina as a thank-you for entertaining her while she waits for her friends. She hands it over with a little curtsy, and Marina accepts it, shrugging her shoulders.

  ‘Obligreenation,’ she thinks. Green out of obligation.

  But once she’s smoked the weed, it opens up Marina’s sternum and launches her into a rolling monologue about everything that’s wrong with art at the service of the market and moreover with the very design degree she’s pursuing; about everything that’s wrong with Chihuahua, and in Chihuahua, poor, poor Chihuahua: indoctrinated by the border. Chela listens, and every now and then she says, ‘The border you saved yourself from. The fat bullet you dodged, my friend.’

  Marina thinks that’s taking it a little too far, but thanks Chela anyway. She hasn’t spoken like this in years; with real freedom and creative license, with someone who listens without charging by the hour, and who tells her she’s right (right on!), just because. Maybe this unexpected visitor will turn out to be more effective than all the pills, the therapy, and the Lord’s Prayer put together. Marina imagines passing the joint to Mr. Therapist: he accepts it, takes a toke, and holds the smoke in his lungs as he says, ‘Weed, Marina, knows what the body doesn’t.’

  Back in the real world, Chela is telling her about a fling she’d been having these last months, with a Swedish dude who never came because he was into Tantra. It doesn’t seem such a bad policy to Marina.

  ‘All men come too fast,’ she says.

  ‘I know,’ Chela says, ‘But it’s no good if they hold it in. They get frustrated. It’s like all the semen Patrik won’t let out turns into bile.’

  Marina isn’t sure what to say to this.

  ‘Want a beer?’ she asks.

  ‘Why not?’ Chela says.

  They go together to the kitchen, but Chela freezes on the spot the moment she steps foot inside. She puts her hand to her mouth, looks at the screen door and wells up. Marina doesn’t understand.

  ‘What?’ she asks.

  ‘Nothing,’ answers Chela, rearranging her expression so quickly that Marina convinces herself it’s the weed making her see things. Chela goes around freely opening drawers until she finds the bottle opener, but the ease with which she moves about the house no longer annoys Marina. Now, Marina notes, she’s started to admire her. Oh, to be someone like that! Someone who turns up any old place and settles right in.

  Back in the living room, Chela opens a large bottle of beer, pours it into two disposable cups – tilting them to control the head –, hands one to Marina and together they make the anticlimactic, silent toast of plastic on plastic. Chela puts hers on the floor, raises her arms and says, ‘Confession.’

  ‘I’ve already told you so much!’ Marina says.

  ‘No, I have a confession,’ Chela says.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I told you a lie. I’m not a friend of theirs. I used to live in Sour House. We had a kitchen just like yours.’

  Marina raises her eyebrows. That’s all. She can feel how, after a few hours spent together, her body is naturally starting to mimic Chela’s movements. Or, perhaps it’s not at all natural? She doubts herself, then asks Chela, ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘I’m Pina’s mom, and I didn’t dare knock on the door.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I haven’t seen her in three years.’

  ‘You mean, they’re in?’ Marina asks, lowering her voice as if they might hear her from the other side of the passageway.

  ‘They might be.’

  ‘Isabel! Why don’t you go over right now?’

  ‘Right now I’m stoned. And please, call me Chela. My mom was Isabel.’

  ‘Why didn’t you knock?’

  Chela gets up, takes a few steps, sits on the floor and opens her legs. They’re short and strong-looking. She rests her elbows on the triangle that has formed between her thighs, lowers her forearms and pushes her open palms against the floor, her fingers stretched wide, bits of carpet poking out between them.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘I chickened out.’

  Marina wants to interrogate her. Is she scared of Beto? Does he have custody? Is her being here illegal? But she’d rather just raise her eyebrows. She’d rather go on talking about Chihuahua. Chela took her shoes off a while ago and now Marina studies her bony feet, perhaps the only imperfect part of her anatomy. She’d still be up for seeing them without the socks, though: to see if they’re as brown as her arms, to see if she paints her toenails or not.

  ‘What’s with all the little boxes?’ Chela asks.

  ‘Light bulbs.’

  ‘Why so many?’

  ‘Because I changed them all today.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s a long story.’

  Chela drops it. She takes both her big toes with each hand and lowers her chest to the floor. Her legs are just as wide open as before, but now her whole torso is level with the rug. She turns her head to the side and rests her cheek on the floor. Is she going to fall asleep like that? Marina looks at the boxes scattered around on the floor. She looks at the whozac on the wall and remembers all her good intentions. She looks at the time on her cell; it’s not raining anymore and she considers telling her guest that it’s getting late, that she needs to go because it just so happens that tomorrow is the beginning of Marina’s new life: a healthy routine, a life devoted to her art and wellbeing, and so she really must get an early start. But on the other hand, she doesn’t want her guest to leave. Now that she has her cell in her hands, Marina knows that the moment Chela goes she’ll call Chihuahua; she doesn’t want to go to bed alone. Better if Chela doesn’t leave. It’s his turn to call.

  ‘You’re so flexible. Do you do yoga?’ she asks.

  ‘I teach Pilates at my beach, al fresco.’

  Marina sits thinking for a moment, then asks, ‘Do you know about the Iconoclastic Controversy?’

  Chela, her cheek still resting against the rug, purses her lips, as if weighing up the question.

  ‘The what controversy?’ she asks eventually.

  ‘Iconoclastic.’ Marina explains, ‘The iconodules were in favor of having images in churches, while the iconoclasts were against it. There was a big fight. In the end the iconodules won, obviously. That’s why there are so many crucifixes all over the place. Anyway, my point is that the other day I saw a Pilates video and an idea came to me: if you know what your Pilates teacher means when she asks for “praying hands”, that’s thanks to the iconodules.’

  ‘I don’t ask my students to do that.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘But it’s interesting. Where did you learn that?’

  ‘College. I take Art History. It’s the only subject I like.’

  Chela raises her torso to a forty-five degree angle, puts her elbows back on the rug and rests her chin in her hands. Then she covers her face with her hands and says, ‘I never finished high school.’ Next she opens her mouth wide and slides her fingers down her face, pushing hard to drag her cheeks down like in Munch’s The Scream. Marina laughs.

  Chela asks, ‘Won’t you teach an uneducated girl more of that neat stuff?’

  ‘Symeon the Stylite, ever heard of him?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘He was a fifth-century Assyrian monk who only ate once a day and spent twenty hours on his feet, genuflecting on top of an eighteen-meter-high stone pillar.’

  �
�What for?’ asks Chela, sitting up.

  ‘According to my teacher, this guy’s the true father of performance.’

  ‘I have a friend who does performance. She’s really famous because after 9/11 she spent days at a metro station in New York whispering through a megaphone: Please do not despair.’

  ‘I’m taking English classes, did I say?’

  Chela gets up. She wraps one knee around the other and puts her hands together as if in prayer. She does three squats on one leg. Marina laughs. Chela hobbles toward her in the same position until she reaches the sofa and crashes onto it.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ she says.

  The Symeon story makes Marina think that her own problems with food – her sick tendency to waste it – is not such a big deal after all. But she doesn’t say this to Chela, or what she’s thinking: ‘And you, Marina? Are you hungry? No idea. What have I eaten today? Oats–Yakult–twenty-five–pieces–of–popcorn–beer.’

  Chela picks up the popcorn bowl. She polished off the last pieces hours ago with her tea. She picks out the remaining husks and gnaws them one by one, like a poised mouse. Her back still perfectly straight, she collects the husks in the palm of her other hand.

  ‘Do you have any other children?’ Marina asks.

  Chela says no and drops the husks (clink, clink, clink, they cascade into the bowl).

  ‘Did you eat dinner already, before I showed up?’ she asks.

  ‘You don’t look like Pina,’ Marina says.

  Chela lets out a huff.

  ‘Pina looks Asian,’ Marina goes on.

  ‘It’s from Beto. Isn’t that kinda obvious?’

  ‘Yeah, they both look Asian. Why?’

  ‘Beto’s mom was Japanese. That’s essentially why he’s so square. Can we eat something, please, please, please? I’ll make it. I’m an amazing cook.’

  ‘I don’t have anything in.’

  ‘Impossible.’

  They go to the kitchen in their socks. Chela roots through the store cupboard and fridge and then announces she’s going to make some crepes.