by María Ospina
The young ladies said good-bye to the nun who unlocked the gate for them with a boundless enthusiasm Aurora did not associate with a life of seclusion. Two of them embraced for a moment, as if to prove to the neighbors, including the one they didn’t even know was watching them from above, that they still promised their friendship through touch with the easy intimacy of girls. Aurora imagined there was more to their gestures than just the remnants of childhood, that they were resisting the passage into the solitude and isolation of adulthood, the demands to which every young lady is subjected: of being a discrete body. The four of them set off down the street, pressing their books against their nipples, stoically enduring the scarves that made them sweat under the polluted sun. They brushed against one another. What reason did they have to smile so confidently? Aurora wondered if they felt pleasure as they sat on the toilet and their hot urine ran along areas rarely explored. If they were aware of it. If they preferred to ignore it.
When she wasn’t walking around downtown Bogotá, Aurora spent her time at the dining room table in front of the picture window, trying to edit a novel she’d written and rewritten in the few moments she’d been able to steal from a job in New York that had just ended. She’d spent four years grudgingly employed by a company that produced generic photos for advertisements, magazines, newspapers, and billboards. She was in charge of staging all kinds of images: a businessman holding a globe, an ecstatic woman jumping into the air in the middle of a crowded street, a child hugging a puppy under a hundred-year-old tree, a white father and black mother celebrating with their mixed-race children in a park, executives negotiating something in a top-floor office, a woman on the verge of a crisis staring out at the horizon from her kitchen table, a little girl pouting with boredom in a classroom, a rubber duck floating in a real lake. She had arrived in Bogotá with what she’d managed to save during her turbulent career, one month after being fired for sabotaging the photos by adding disturbing details to each scene. She had the unfounded hope that she would find, in a city she left when she was fourteen, the inspiration to finish that faded manuscript that had been gathering dust somewhere in her computer’s hard drive, the only thing she had. If she liked Bogotá, she might even look for work. Think about staying.
But the young ladies had robbed her of the restfulness she needed in order to face the written word. She felt like her great-aunt, who lived near Armenia—an obsessive ornithologist who spent her life staring at birds and wondering what emotions they harbored about the man-made din. Meanwhile, weevils and fungi were taking over her farmhouse, and its foundations were beginning to rot. She was also cultivating a chronic case of pneumonia from all the time she spent outside, searching for birds that migrate before dusk at certain times of year. Aurora didn’t want to miss the chance to capture the exceptional movements of the elusive bodies outside her home, either. Avoiding the carnage of the edits she needed to make to her novel, she spent every night searching for a glimmer of disorder or discontent in the darkness of the home across the street, certain that before long she would catch some disobedient insomniac in a bit of mischief. But the only new detail revealed by these early weeks of spying was a room on the second floor, behind a veiled window, that had been converted into a chapel. It was lit up every evening and was most likely where the young ladies and the nuns went to finish their entreaties before going to bed.
As the weeks went by, the restfulness of the home for young ladies made the movement in the six-story building on the block behind it seem even more pronounced. Aurora noticed as soon as she moved in that the building’s red balconies were always full of young men with their eyes fixed outward, like hers, regardless of the hour. A vague boredom seemed to ooze from their muscular bodies and through their tight clothes. At least, that’s what Aurora thought she saw when she studied them in the light of day. An impatience they controlled by chipping away at time, an awareness that what they were hunting up there was difficult to catch and ultimately wouldn’t satisfy them. When she studied them through her window, Aurora got the unsettling feeling that she was watching a television series on mute. But then the vallenatos and rancheras blasting from those balconies would reach her, and it would all begin to seem more real and concrete. And more disturbing.
One afternoon, Aurora surprised two of those adolescents (what should she call them—young gents?) surveilling the houses in the neighborhood through giant binoculars from a top-floor balcony. That is, until they reached her—probably the only one who didn’t have curtains and wandered around her apartment until dawn. Aurora wagged her finger at them in an emphatic no before stepping away from the window and chiding herself for her clumsy, false courage. She’d read in the newspaper that the government had chosen her neighborhood to create “peace homes,” shelters for former members of guerrilla and paramilitary groups who had decided to trade their uniforms, weapons, and military orders—given by different people, on different mountains—for a new life in the capital. Local residents complained to the mayor’s office about the “throngs of demobilized fighters with nothing better to do than make trouble in our treasured historical neighborhood,” as one article had put it. An explosive had gone off in front of one of these shelters a few months earlier, and the neighbors had organized to protest the lack of security. Aurora was sure that the building with the red balconies was one of those peace homes, though there was no plaque or sign to identify it. From that day on, she intensified her study of the young gents who spent their time looking for something from above, wondering about the people and animals they’d killed in their wars out in the countryside. Then she felt guilty. Wasn’t it more important to welcome, embrace? Maybe that was the only thing to do in a war. So she swallowed her anger when they catcalled her from their balconies as she walked down the street. She silenced her misgivings and pretended to be a tolerant citizen. But sometimes she couldn’t help herself and told them to shut up while quickening her pace.
For a short time—with the young ladies barricaded behind their walls, window grates, and curtains—the young gents, always so tangible in their porous building, quenched Aurora’s thirst for spying. But Aurora grew tired of the compassion she made herself feel toward them. And that was how the young ladies, surly and elusive, won the battle. Aurora had always felt nervous bewilderment around the lucid, discerning cynicism of teenage girls. When she was that age, she’d wanted to cling to the hidden good in things, observing the world with patience and tolerance while the other girls marched resolutely toward sarcasm and unruliness. On her search for a different path, Aurora had ended up alone in her backyard with her books, unable to get to know the other girls, but fascinated by the fissures they were being drawn into. During recess they would belt out the lyrics to a popular song about soaring through a city of rage. “Me verás volar por la ciudad de la furia …” And then there was Aurora, who didn’t know how to fly like that, but wanted to.
One week after her first glimpse of the young ladies, Aurora took advantage of a moment when four of them said goodbye to the nun who held the keys to the gate and started walking away from the old mansion to run down and meet them face-to-face. Their long hair shielded their hearts from behind. Their socks rose, tight, to their knees. They were sensuality and order. A restrained profusion. Aurora crossed the street with quick steps to catch them at the intersection where they were waiting for the light to change. The thinnest of the four, who might also have been the youngest, pulled off her sweater and tousled her hair as soon as the nun returned to her enclosure. She was saying something that held the other girls rapt.
Aurora approached them near the traffic light and interrupted their conversation.
“Hi. Do you live in that house?”
There was a collective but reticent nodding of heads.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Aurora. I live in the building across the street, on the fourth floor. I was just wondering. I moved to Bogotá a little while ago, and I’m still getting to know the neighborhood. What do you all do i
n there?”
The one with the tousled hair turned her head a bit to get a better look at Aurora, her eyes moving down to the boots she had on that day. She was sizing her up.
“It’s a boarding school. We study with the nuns, and they prepare the ones who want to take their vows.”
Her companions took a step forward, revealing the primal distrust of anything that happens in the street that is drilled into Bogotá’s children from infancy. Seeing the others a few steps ahead of her, the one who’d answered hurried to join the collective sway of double-knotted shoes. As the young ladies walked away, Aurora noticed how their waists strained the seams of their uniforms. They were clearly about to discover the fascination they produced. Aurora stood in the street, watching their synchronized movements until they turned the corner and disappeared from sight. None of them turned to look at her as she’d been hoping they would. She tried to ignore the flirtatious whistles coming from the shelter. It wasn’t clear whether they were meant for her or the young ladies, or for all of them. On the way back to her apartment, Aurora met the eternal, haughty gaze of the stray dog who spent mornings on her block searching for scraps and bones, carrying her nonhuman dignity on her back. Aurora always felt vaguely unsettled whenever she’d greet the animal or bring leftovers down, but she’d never wanted to figure out why.
Two days went by without anything happening in the old mansion, aside from the appearance of a few beggars who rang the bell for a plate of food that was brought to them by a cook in tight clothing ill-suited to the beatitude that reigned there. Each time the doorbell rang, a young lady would peek through the curtains of a second-floor window, but Aurora never had time to commit her face to memory. It bothered her, the silence that hung over the house, the stillness occasionally broken by the young ladies’ laughter in the garage, by the sound of a ball bouncing in some internal courtyard or a body passing a window without leaving any trace. Every now and then a splotch in motion would interrupt the calm behind the glass door when they all should have been asleep. It was too fleeting. It divulged nothing.
One Thursday evening, as she went through the motions of editing her novel, Aurora saw a silhouette behind the curtain in a third-floor window that, according to her calculations, looked out from one of the bedrooms. As Aurora approached the window, the young lady pulled back the veil of the curtain to reveal the face of the one who’d been willing to speak to her days earlier at the traffic light. She raised a hand in greeting, and Aurora returned the gesture before being overcome by shame at the thought of her bare legs, in full view of the tresses, dresses, gates, and window grates of the other. The young lady continued to stare at her, comfortable from her glassy distance, and Aurora, unsettled by her audacity, walked back to the sofa, bent her legs to hide her feet under the cushions, and grabbed a few pages, pretending to read. She looked up from her papers several times to find her still there, her forehead pressed against the window, observing her shamelessly. Until she lowered the curtain and did not let herself be seen again.
The following week, after searching in vain for the young lady from her window at different hours of the night, Aurora found an envelope with red borders and yellow hearts floating in relief in her mailbox.
Mrs. Aurora
El Zipa Apartments, 4th Floor
BY HAND
The nuns had taught them the proper way to write correspondence, maybe as a way to prepare them for a cloistered life. Maybe this was why she’d remembered to write the sender’s name in neat letters.
Jessica Sofía Hinestroza (your neighbor)
Saint Theresa Home for Women
Bogotá
Dear Neighbor:
Maybe what I’m writing is the key to a safe I can’t open. I didn’t get a chance to say my name the other day but I was the one who talked to you. The others are a bunch of uptight scaredy-cats who don’t talk to anyone even me sometimes. My name is Jessica, but here they call me Sofía which is my middle name but the nuns say it’s prettier and it has a Christian saint. You can call me whatever you like. To be honest, I prefer Jessica. I’ve been living here literally forever, like a year and eight months but it seems like a lot more, ever since my dad died from cancer. I took care of him until his body gave out, at least I got to be there with him when he took his last breath. You know what? The last book we read together was the biografy of Abraham Lincoln but we didn’t get to finish it, he’s been gone almost two years and I’m finishing it now in his honor. That’s what I was doing the night I looked for you in the window but, you know what? I don’t like it really, honestly it’s kind of boring, even though the guy was so great and famous and everything LOL. When my dad died my mom desided to sell his hardware store and we switched neighborhoods. Then it turned out she was planning to leave for Barranquilla with some new boyfriend who was a banderillero, those guys who end up all bitter because they never made it to being real bullfighters, a total mooch. My younger brother had no choice and had go with them because he’s so little but I said no way am I going anywhere with that guy. My aunts and uncles sugested dropping me off here because this is where my older cousin ended up of course she was here for punishment since one day she came home with her head shaved and a tattoo and they found some love letters she’d been writing to a friend of hers, a girl, but she’s not studying here anymore and that’s a shame because it would have been really cool to have her for company. I did figure though that this would be better than staying with my mom and starting over in a new city, she’s not an easy person you know. When the nuns let us go out I always head straight for my grandma’s. We get along great thank God.
I’m not really sure why I’m writing you. I think I just want to tell you a little bit about my life. When I saw you the other day in the window I wanted to meet you because everyone who lives here is only nice when they feel like it. Yesterday the nun’s pet who is a total suck-up called me a name while I was waiting in line for the bathroom and I wanted to rip off her towel so she’d turn bright red in front of everyone but in the end I chickened out, too bad LOL. I’ve realised that friends turn into enemies fast in here, or else they turn into, like, creatures that spit daggers, words that are way too sharp for a heart as cracked as mine. I’m getting tired of living with these jerks. I sometimes feel like I’m doing time in prison, paying the price for a sin I committed in another life or that someone else did. Anyway, your probably busy so I won’t bother you anymore. If you want to write to me you can give your letters to the caretaker her name is Gilma and she’s a friend of mine, better if no one thinks I’m getting love letters or anything I mean I’d love to make those bullies jealous but better to keep things secret.
Okay. Bye.
Many blessings,
Jessica
She had drawn a smiley face in pink marker under her name. Aurora read the three pages again, noticing the large, heavy letters. She thought about Jessica’s cracked heart. And could only imagine it as a glowing plastic decoration.
That night, Aurora waited for Jessica to appear at the window again but came to the conclusion that she’d gotten over her insomnia, which made her happy. The next day, she was about to go across the street and ring the bell, but she didn’t know what to say when they opened the door, so she decided against it. The day after that, she spotted a few of the young ladies clustered around the door with guitars in their hands and rushed down to be there when they stepped outside. She was glad the nuns hadn’t caught on to her fascination. They’d probably assigned all their paranoia to the men the next block over, who honed their aggressive catcalls on the young ladies.
“Behave yourselves, please. And don’t be late.”
The nun hurried back inside. Aurora noticed that Jessica had seen her, and she crossed the street to approach the group. Jessica broke off from the line of uniforms and waited for her as the others continued on. They exchanged greetings.
“Hey, thanks for your letter. Feel free to ring my buzzer if you ever feel like hanging out. Whenever you wan
t. I’m in 401.”
Jessica smiled a little, breaking the tension of her mouth. She looked over at the others, who had turned to wait for her. Aurora’s eyes fell on the transparent hairs above her lip.
“Standing invitation. I live there alone.”
Aurora wanted to smile, to see if Jessica’s lips would unpurse, but she held back. She could never escape the feeling that her smile revealed a slight falseness, that it gave away how hard it was for her to live up to the benevolence it promised. She wanted to ask Jessica something mundane to soften her invitation but couldn’t come up with anything in time.
“No, I mean, I can’t right now. But thank you. Bye, see you soon, they’re leaving me behind.”
Jessica quickened her pace. The furrows of calculated indifference in her brow, her way of hiding the curiosity in her eyes behind their constant movement, her flirtation with cynicism, all announced, perhaps, her exile from childhood. Aurora wondered how easy it would have been to save her if she had still been a little girl.
The next morning Gilma rang Aurora’s buzzer to give her a new letter from Jessica. It came in an envelope with a floral border. Inside was a card with a photo of two puppies begging on a heart-shaped red carpet. Their gaze was softer and less disquieting than the look the dogs that Aurora sometimes visited in the pet shops in La Caracas had in their half-closed eyes as they ignored the passers-by, their hair matted with soot from the rundown city buses. Not long before she was fired, she’d arranged the set for a similar photo of puppies on a couch, which was meant to spark feelings of tenderness and joy.