Nona's Room

by Cristina Fernández Cubas

Sometimes I think that Mum isn’t very convinced either and like me wonders why on earth Nona needs an imaginary friend. She’s not an only child. She’s got me, and if she doesn’t play with me it’s because she doesn’t want to. What is more, she’s growing up really quickly. I don’t get her cast-offs any more. Mum realized her mistake years ago, and although Nona’s more developed than I am and is still taller than me we each dress in our own individual style. We don’t even look like sisters. A school friend told me just the other day, ‘You and Nona don’t look like each other at all.’ I don’t know why, but I liked that. Then I felt bad about it. She’s my sister after all. But the truth is that Nona is special, very special. She behaves as if she’s angry with me, as if she wants nothing to do with me, as if I’m a drag. Sometimes when I’m listening to her laughing on the other side of the bedroom wall I think that when it comes down to it she’s got a great life. I don’t laugh as much as she does or have such a good time in my bedroom. There’s more. When I had my ear to the wall for a little longer than usual the other night I discovered something. Nona was talking, but she wasn’t alone. I listened more carefully than ever, and although I couldn’t understand everything they were saying I could make out several voices and different types of laughter. There was a lot of laughter. For a while I thought Nona was a fantastic actress and could imitate different voices. Then I didn’t think about it any more as I fell asleep. The next day, as soon as I woke up, I remembered what I had discovered and thought up a good explanation. Nona didn’t have an imaginary friend. She had a whole group of imaginary friends! That was it. Nona had a whole gang who had a brilliant time together and that was why she didn’t need me. She didn’t need me or anyone else either. That was a Sunday, and as we usually did on Sundays we went to see an uncle and aunt who live out in the countryside. We sunbathed and swam in the swimming-pool, and what happened there in the pool really frightened me. We were all drying ourselves off with the towels, and only Nona was left in the water. She was laughing and splashing her imaginary friends. She went down under the water, shouted at them to leave her alone, and she was laughing, laughing, laughing. But that Sunday I noticed something odd. It was more than odd; it was impossible. The water was splashing and making waves all over the swimming-pool as if it really were full of people. And if that wasn’t enough (and this is what really scared me) Nona was still laughing and shouting when suddenly her entire body emerged out of the water. ‘Bwutes,’ she shouted, still laughing. ‘You bwutes!’ She only appeared for a few seconds and then lost her balance and fell back heavily into the water. But I immediately knew she couldn’t have managed that feat on her own. It was as if I saw a whole host of hands and arms lifting my sister up by her feet. Once the joke was over those hands, arms and feet splashed about in the water again all over the place. They do exist, I said to myself, worried. Her friends really do exist. I was about to call out, but I stopped dead. My eyes met Nona’s slanted eyes, and I immediately saw her mechanically waving a hand and looking very serious. It was just how she looked when I caught her in her room when she was far away and she’d had no choice but to come back down to earth and pretend that she hadn’t been found out. I’m not entirely sure what she meant by that mechanical wave, but I can guess who it was meant for. The water gradually became still until there were just some ripples lapping around Nona as if nothing had happened.

  When we got home in the evening I waited for the best time to talk to my parents. Dad folded up the newspaper he’d begun reading and went out of the sitting-room. At first Mum listened to me attentively.

  ‘A gang? Well, that’s not such a bad thing.’

  That spurred me on. It was difficult to explain what I’d found out. I couldn’t find the right words, and when I thought I had found them they didn’t ring true to me. But I plucked up courage. It was too serious to keep quiet about it.

  ‘Yes, a real gang. There are loads of them. We can’t see them, but they do exist.’

  ‘Of course they do,’ she said smiling. ‘That’s what imaginary friends are for, and when children grow up real friends take over from their imaginary friends. It’s always like that.’

  I realized that it was all going to be quite a lot more complicated than I had thought. So I started at the beginning: the voices coming from Nona’s room the night before and the riot she and her friends were creating in the swimming-pool that morning. When I got to the bit when Nona was hoisted up out of the water the same thing happened as before. My words didn’t ring true, and I didn’t know what to say and kept quiet.

  ‘And?’ she simply said. But I had the feeling she was getting impatient.

  ‘They lifted her up,’ I suddenly said, and even I was surprised by my decisiveness. ‘I couldn’t see their hands because they’re invisible, but I could see Nona’s ankles. On the surface of the water. Like an apparition, a virgin or a saint, although she’s neither of those things. It was them. Her friends. Do you understand me now?’

  My mother shook her head and shrugged her shoulders at the same time. She was saying yes and no at the same time. I just had to carry on to the end and tell her what I had realized when I was wrapped up in a towel beside my aunt’s and uncle’s pool. To lots of people my explanation would seem crazy, but not to me. There was a reason I’d started shivering that morning, and it wasn’t because I was cold.

  ‘They could be aliens from another planet. Beings that we can’t see but Nona, or children who are as special as Nona, can. Or perhaps they’re ghosts. Children who died ages ago and who have come back into the world to play with Nona.’

  I stopped there. I couldn’t do anything else because Mum was looking at me furiously. I’d never seen her like that.

  ‘That’s enough!’ she said, and now she was extremely cross. ‘Enough of that! I’ve had just about enough of your imagination!’

  Then she left me on my own in the sitting-room in exactly the same place where I’d gone to ask for help, to tell her what I’d found out. A little later I could hear her arguing with Dad in another room. They’d argue sometimes but not very often. Mum spent her time reading. Books and more books, essays, especially papers on psychology. Dad was interested only in the newspaper and sport. But they got on well together, really well. That was the first thing You-Know-Who asked me at the beginning of the school year. Do your parents get on well? Yes, very well. I think I added, although they don’t always agree. This was one of those times. They didn’t agree. They were arguing, but I didn’t even try to listen to what they were saying. I felt hurt and upset. There’s nothing worse than telling the truth and no one believes you. Or they think you’re joking. Or they refuse to listen to you, which is what had just happened to me. So I ran to Granny’s room. Granny, whom I love so much. She looked as happy as ever and so understanding, sitting in her rocking-chair with her lovely smile.

  ‘Granny!’ I shouted.

  And I threw myself into her arms. I told her about the voices I’d heard on the other side of the wall, about all the splashing in the swimming-pool, about my eyes meeting Nona’s, that more than anything else. Our eyes meeting. My eyes wide with fear meeting Nona’s slanted eyes and her suddenly understanding what I had just realized, what I had found out. And that when she waved it was just a reflex reaction. As if she were batting away flies or flicking away something nasty or as if she were saying ‘That’s enough! Enough! Stop it!’ The gesture was a lot like an order, a strict warning from a person used to giving orders and being obeyed. And she did it. She made those beings – aliens from another planet or dead children – stop playing and splashing about in the swimming-pool, and all of a sudden the water became still and the only ripples left were the ones lapping around Nona.

  ‘She’s the queen of a kingdom we can’t see,’ I shouted.

  Granny was still smiling, and she stroked my hair. I buried my head in her lap, and we both rocked in silence. Granny can’t talk. She hasn’t been able to talk for a long time. She can’t move either, but she’s never lost he
r smile. I love her more than anyone else, and I feel safe in her lap. Perhaps that’s why that day I clutched her so tightly that the rocking-chair started creaking. Or groaning. Or grumbling. It was as if all of a sudden Granny, the rocking-chair and I had fused into a single being and into a single grumble. Because the see-sawing of the rocking-chair on the wooden floor made a noise that repeated a name.

  Nooonaaa, Nooonaaa, Nooonaaa. It never changed. Nona.

  The next morning I thought about the whiting. The whiting that Crispi had so expertly made a few days ago for lunch, biting their own tails. I thought about everything they had called to mind then and especially about the idea of finding a crack or a door that would let me into the forbidden room. But now I realized that I didn’t need to release the pressure of the teeth on the tails to create an opening and break the circle. There was no need at all. If the whiting was Nona and Nona was the dragon protecting its treasure, all I had to do was to evade her watchful eye and slip into her lair as calm as you like. I also realized that the reason I hadn’t thought about this before was because it wasn’t easy to imagine her room without its permanent occupant. For me, it was as if Nona spent her whole life there. She was at school when I was; we left home and came back at pretty much the same time. So whenever I was at home Nona was already living in her room. It was the same thing every day. Even though we might have met at the front door or come in together hand in hand in the hallway, a few seconds later Nona would shut herself away in her kingdom. But the time had come for things to change. That very day. All I had to do was to wait until the time, just like every day, the dragon went to school, Dad went to the office, Mum went to the library and Crispi took Granny out for a walk. Then on the way to school I would turn around and go back home.

  Going into her room without knocking was strange at first. We had all got used to knocking on the door, although we would open it straight away without waiting for a reply. That’s why we always surprised Nona, distant, withdrawn, lost in her secret world. But it was different today. There was no one guarding her lair. So I went in without knocking, and although Nona wasn’t there I could smell her: that strange mixture of medicine and eau-de-Cologne. Nona’s smell. I opened the cupboard and searched the drawers. I wasn’t surprised that everything was clean and tidy, as that was the strict condition for Crispi not going into her bedroom any more than was agreed. Then I sat down on the bed. Nona was doing an excellent job all on her own. The sheets were beautifully smooth, the pillows plumped up and the quilt didn’t droop over any corner more than it should. I went over to the window and opened it wide. Her bedroom looked even more clean and tidy in the morning sunlight but more impersonal, too, more unremarkable. Then I wondered what exactly I had been expecting to find and couldn’t find. But I didn’t know the answer.

  If it weren’t for Nona’s unmistakable smell – which impregnated the sheets, the furniture and the curtains – that room could have belonged to anyone. There were no clothes out of place and not one single personal object. There was nothing to explain why she enjoyed being shut away within these four walls. But I wasn’t fooled for long. I gradually started to understand. I reminded myself that in her own way my sister was clever, very clever indeed. I realized that I was simply seeing what she wanted me to see: a room just like so many others; a bedroom with no personality; a room that only came to life when the owner came back from school and took up her rightful place again. Because Nona brought her room with her wherever she went – along with her friends, the gang of friends who had been splashing around in the swimming-pool the day before and would no doubt now be waiting silently for her outside the classroom, sitting on the benches in the corridor, invisible to everyone else and desperate to get back home so there would be no more obligations and no need to pretend. Yes, Nona, the queen of the gang, was very clever, and her room simply told me what she wanted it to tell me: nothing.

  I closed the window so that everything would be as it should be and was about to leave when I noticed a light flashing on her computer. I went over to the desk, hardly able to believe my luck. It was a miracle. Nona had stopped halfway through a session on the computer, and, even better, had forgotten to shut it down. I pressed any old key and the screen lit up. Then I did get nervous. But I can’t remember if that was right at the beginning, because I felt that what I was about to do wasn’t right at all, or if it was later when I realized that I’d just gone into the Pictures folder and a whole mosaic of photographs and drawings became available to me at a click of the mouse. And that’s what I did. I clicked on Slideshow and, half nervous, half amused, watched a procession of film stars, models and athletes on the screen. There were only boys, many of them bare-chested, in swimming-trunks or leotards. They were all handsome and some of them were muscular and robust as well, proudly showing off their healthy bodies or bulging biceps. They were blond, dark-haired, black, white and mixed-race boys. There were all kinds in Nona’s album. ‘My little sister. Who would have thought it…’ I said out loud. Then almost immediately I went red, out of annoyance, surprise, embarrassment. I went red and froze the last picture in astonishment because in that endless procession the one person I would never have expected to see had just appeared. It was someone posing, smiling, beside a window in exactly the same position as the photograph I had taken at school. But now he wasn’t wearing the light-blue polo shirt that matched his eyes. He wasn’t wearing a shirt or a bathrobe or a tracksuit either. It was You-Know-Who on Nona’s computer screen. Completely naked. Smiling.

  After the shock I understood immediately that as well as being clever Nona was evil. Really evil.

  He has a real name, as I said earlier, and it’s not a secret any more. Nona has written his name in red below his photograph. She’s also included his job: psychologist. You-Know-Who is the school psychologist. He’s a young man who has just left university and has new ideas about treating patients. Some children at school agreed to be volunteers so that he could work on these ideas and put them into practice. Then we can all learn. He can learn from us and we can learn from him. I love telling him things and listening to him. He likes listening to me and talking about my life. I sometimes exaggerate a bit, as you have to tell him everything. I exaggerate about how annoying Nona is and how difficult I sometimes find it to be a special child’s big sister. But if I do exaggerate it’s only to please him. We see each other once a week in the small classroom that’s sometimes used as an office. As soon as I open the door, there he is with a big smile. ‘How are things going with your sister?’ he asks me straight away. I’m almost certain he’s writing a book. It’s a book all about me or perhaps about the relatives of children or teenagers like Nona. He knows how much we have to put up with and how much we have to sacrifice, but I don’t think there’s any way he could possibly imagine Nona’s latest dirty trick.

  Because that’s what it is, a dirty trick. I don’t know when she got hold of the picture, which I’ve always kept safe with me on my mobile. She clearly stole it when I wasn’t looking, put it in her album and, with the worst intentions in the world, started touching it up. If I looked carefully and enlarged it I would be able to see what she had done. You-Know-Who’s face, the classroom/office window and the naked, muscular body that didn’t belong to him and which had been layered on top. There was a definite change of colour on his neck, and it was precisely there where she had deleted the blue polo shirt and replaced it with someone else’s body. But there was something that was worse and completely inexplicable. How did she find out his real name and his job? Once again you can see how clever she is (finding it out) and how evil she is (writing it in under his photograph). It was as if she were saying to me, ‘You can’t have any secrets from me. I’m the only one allowed to have any secrets in this house.’ And for once she wouldn’t have mispronounced her Rs and so wouldn’t have needed to find alternative words. She was just perfect. Increasingly so. Just like the idea of leaving the Pictures folder on her computer open knowing that one day I wouldn’t
be able to resist having a look through her things and spying on her. One day, or even that very morning. How could Nona know everything? Sitting in front of the screen, breathing in the smell of medicine and eau-de-Cologne, I suddenly lost it completely and I hated her. I hated my sister. I realized that I’d always hated her, and that while I was ashamed of her I was jealous of her, too. I realized that I would have liked to have met her gang and share their secrets. I realized that I couldn’t stand the fact that my parents believed her and doubted everything I told them. That’s why I stood up and bashed in the computer with the chair legs and smashed the screen. I turned the drawers upside down, threw her clothes all over the floor, messed up the bed and stamped on the sheets. I opened the window again and broke the glass. I was in such a fury that I didn’t notice the sound of the door or the creaking of Granny’s wheelchair.

  ‘What’s been going on, darling?’ I heard all of a sudden.

  I turned around with a start and saw Crispi looking scared, not daring to come into the room. It was too late to make up excuses and blame aliens from another planet or dead children.

  ‘Nothing,’ I replied in tears. ‘She deserved it.’

  All of this happened just a short while ago, but it seems like ages. Crispi phoned my parents, and they came home quickly. They arrived together and were arguing. Dad was in a bad mood. He said, ‘I knew something like this would happen’, and added that if it had been sorted out when it first started, ‘I wouldn’t have to leave the office halfway through the morning.’ Mum told him over and over to be patient. But when they came into the room and saw me sitting on the floor in among the broken glass she was the one who lost control. She pulled me up by my arm and forced me to my feet. ‘We’re going to have a serious talk,’ she shouted. Her voice was strange. She sounded furious and as if she were about to burst into tears, all at the same time. She dragged me into the sitting-room. All three of us sat down. Mum and Dad were on the sofa, and I sat down opposite them in a wing-backed chair. Dad was still in a bad mood, and Mum was taking deep breaths as if she was building up her strength to speak.