Rain Over Madrid

by Andrés Barba

  On one of those visits, she conveniently asked her to go have a coffee at the bar next door to Mamá’s building, on the pretext of needing to explain a few things. What she really wanted was to be alone with her, to interrogate her. Anita listened to the information about Mamá respectfully but not particularly attentively. Despite being only nineteen, she didn’t seem impatient, she showed no signs of her youth aside from those revealed by her body. When she spoke of her family in Colombia, she sat a little stiller. Her father had died (“It was his time to hang up his cleats,” she said, and that was the only explanation she gave), her mother looked after Lolito in Medellín (here she took out a photo—the boy had an indescribable look about him, a mix of scared and comical, dressed in a Spiderman suit; he could have been anyone’s kid), Manuel had come with her to Madrid and lived in an apartment he shared with roommates.

  “He respects me,” she said, as though respect were somehow ineffable, a concentrated quality or a complex mechanism whose balance might be thrown off by anything at all, and she stopped with her lips parted, about to say something else that, in the end, simply morphed into a look of wonder and then a tenuous smile.

  Sometimes she seemed like a little girl. She looked at her now and was amazed at how erroneous her recollection had been when trying to describe her to Pablo. To Raquel, all she’d said was that she was competent and cheerful, but on considering those words now, she was shocked at having offered something so unfitting, so far from the truth, to describe Anita. That she was nineteen could be seen in her sense of wonder and the clothes she wore, but something made her suspect she’d experienced great violence in her life, perhaps a single episode, that had somehow left her face or her expression looking like someone attempting to remember a tune. It wasn’t just her unusual “absences” but something that could be seen in the way she cared for Mamá, in the way she touched her. Despite being nineteen, she seemed to have already fully apprehended something difficult and disturbing—that when an old person decides to destroy themselves and destroy everything around them, the only thing to do is sit back and watch the show. She wasn’t cheerful, but was childlike, wasn’t happy, but was optimistic, wasn’t active, but seemed to contain the concentrated, motionless velocity of a gyroscope. She used a hasty, spiderlike scrawl to copy down the names of Mamá’s medications, and when she took blood samples to monitor her glucose levels, she behaved not like someone administering to another human being but like a scientist taking a resin sample from a tree. She read romance novels that seemed totally unsuited to her personality but with a voracity that was entirely in character, and almost every time she came over, she found the two of them in the living room, Mamá watching television and Anita buried in her book.

  “Are you happy, Anita?”

  “With what?”

  “With my mother. Are you settling in OK?”

  “Señora is a difficult woman,” Anita replied after a silence, and then she regarded her as though their roles had been reversed and she was the one who might or might not be able to bear hearing certain things. She fell silent again.

  “What do you mean?”

  Anita smiled, seeming disinclined to add anything further to her statement. It occurred to her that maybe she was afraid she’d lose her job if she was honest, and she felt a desperate urge to turn her into a confidant.

  “My mother is angry. At life, at the world, who knows. Maybe at me. She wasn’t always this way. She was once very strong, though you may find that hard to believe.”

  “I know.”

  She’d never spoken that way to any of Mamá’s other caregivers. In fact, she’d always prided herself on having a detached, professional attitude, but there was something about Anita that compelled her to do it, perhaps the desire (it was almost absurd to even think it) to protect her from Mamá, perhaps a strange feeling that there was some sort of bond between Anita and herself, it didn’t matter what exactly, some kind of compassion.

  And then Anita said, “Your mother is ashamed.”

  The response was so bizarre that she didn’t even dare ask of what.

  “Ashamed?”

  The waiter appeared to clear their cups, and Anita took the opportunity to conclude the conversation with a smile that turned her back into a nineteen-year-old girl. She looked sorry all of a sudden, sorry to be there, to have colluded, maybe. She tucked back a nervous lock of hair that flopped straight back to its initial position. At that moment, her face looked almost flat, full of miniscule, dark moles that she’d never noticed before.

  “What makes you say ‘ashamed’?”

  “I don’t know,” Anita replied. “I don’t know if my mother loves me or not, either.”

  That year, it seemed like the holiday season dragged on forever, and Anita’s words hung in the air for weeks, as though she’d unconsciously cut right to the heart of the matter. Mamá came and spent Christmas week with them. She was more silent than usual, and in a worse mood. Raquel couldn’t be in Madrid that year, having gone on vacation to Buenos Aires. But she called every other day to tell them how hot it was, how pretty the Punta del Este beaches were, how sunburned Donovan had gotten, and how tan she herself was looking.

  “And the men, Mamá, now these are what I call handsome men, not like the Brits, I tell you.”

  While Mamá was speaking on the phone, she glanced at her profile, trying to identify the change. Because there had been a change, somewhere. Something had happened to Mamá, and perhaps to her, as well. She tested out the thought—she’s ashamed. Since the day she’d spoken to Anita, from time to time she tried out those words in regard to Mamá in different situations: sitting beside her with the kids in the living room, at dinner on Christmas Eve, while helping her shower in the morning. She’d grown used to her naked body. She’d seen it for the first time four years ago, when Mamá was admitted to the hospital with something serious. She’d always been modest, and when she saw it that day, she felt a spasm of astonishment, though she tried to behave naturally. Now she was used to it. The two of them locked themselves in the big bathroom every morning and she undressed her, helped her step into the tub, and turned on the shower to wait for the water to get hot. She moved awkwardly, like a sickly, undernourished girl. Sometimes her astonishment diminished, other times it came flooding back. She thought, she’s ashamed. Perhaps that feeling mattered only to her, but she felt it would never stop roiling inside her, pressing down on her at times and leaving her short of breath. Mamá’s skin was unfathomably thin, and covered in little bruises, marks she got knocking into things. Was that what Anita had actually meant? The shame of those marks, of those little bruises? It was curious, she almost had the urge to phone her and ask, or to tell her that now she understood. Marks on her inner thigh, her leg, by her knee, on her arm, under her breasts, suspended like watery inkblots. Maybe they weren’t even bruises but weird vagaries of the skin that simply appeared and disappeared, like sparse vegetation. She understood why Anita took her blood samples and checked her glucose levels as though she weren’t treating a human being. She, too, when helping Mamá shower, proceeded as though it weren’t really Mamá’s body she was touching. Was that what the shame was?

  When she ventured to tell people about her Christmas, she found it hard, at this point, to explain what happened next. Pablo bought the newspaper that morning, and as he was checking the winning lottery numbers, he turned to her and hooted.

  “Your mother won fifty thousand euros,” he said.

  At first she thought it was a joke, but when she realized it wasn’t, she couldn’t tell whether the feeling that pierced her heart clear through was one of pleasure or pain.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just what I said, she won fifty thousand euros.”

  Mamá wept all morning long. She seemed afraid they might say something to her, might stare at her too long. She wept for joy, but it was an ugly, anxious joy, her ticket crum
pled in one clawlike hand as she sat before the television lest they make another announcement, saying that it was all a lie, perhaps, that in fact there was no prize money. They were broadcasting the celebrations of the grand-prize winners in a village in Soria, at a sad, squalid little lottery office. Someone poured a bottle of sidra over an old man’s head, and at the entrance to the place, the woman from the lottery office was being tossed over and over again into the air. The kids got more worked up than usual that year, and she felt a certain displeasure at their delight, which manifested as a sort of secret, greedy desire to receive some gift for themselves. Pablo was the only one to behave normally. He went down to buy a bottle of champagne, ate heartily and happily at lunch, and an hour later was taking his siesta as though nothing had happened. It was a lot of money, but at that age, fifty thousand dollars wasn’t truly going to alter anyone’s life; it was simultaneously too much and too little to lead to a radical change, and, besides, how could Mamá’s life really change as a result of it? Though in fact it already had—as soon as Pablo announced that she’d won fifty thousand euros, something inside her had contracted, as though her jaws had been tied shut. Her face had become void of expression, but not of tension, and she’d remained very still, breathing wearily, noisily. She said she loved her, as though it pained her.

  “I love you, daughter.”

  A fraudulent attempt at reconciliation, like that glass of champagne that hadn’t agreed with her at all but she’d insisted on finishing anyway, taking tiny sips as though it were her arthritis medication. Raquel assured them over the phone that they were going to celebrate that night at dinner, that they’d toast her, and she shrieked with joy over and over and made Mamá cry yet again. When she put her to bed that night, she thought she looked like the kids did after an exhausting day filled with too much excitement. She’d aged brutally.

  “Tomorrow we’ll collect the money, isn’t that right, daughter?”

  “I’m not sure if we can, tomorrow.”

  “We can,” Mamá answered, “they said so on the television.”

  It was on opening her own bedroom door and seeing Pablo reading in bed that she felt the urge to sob, but making a scene wasn’t in her nature, so she tried to compose herself while she took off her clothes. When she’d laid down beside him, she covered her face with her hands.

  “What a day, huh?” he asked smiling.

  She tried to smile and then leaned over and kissed him desperately.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I need you to fuck me,” she said.

  Pablo laughed, and then, seeing that she looked serious, grew serious himself.

  “Hey, what’s the matter?”

  “It’s like everything makes me feel ashamed.”

  She wasn’t sure why, but she had the absurd conviction that Anita was the only person who could help her. She’d been looking forward to the day she’d take Mamá home, pining for it like a date, and when she saw Anita awaiting them in the doorway, she was flooded with a gratifying sense of tranquility, like a schoolgirl who’s aced her exams. The week off had done Anita good, and as she watched them approach, she smiled with that unreadable smile of hers. Sometimes it seemed that within Anita lived an anxious person, one possessed of strange appetites, like a tiny predator that pounced and trapped insects.

  “You’ll have to congratulate my mother, Anita, she won the lottery this year.”

  “How much?”

  “Fifty thousand euros, we collected the prize money three days ago.”

  “Congratulations, Señora.”

  Mamá disapproved of her telling everyone about it, but she had sensed from the start that that was exactly what she had to do, that the lottery was like a dangerous room that had to be kept aired out at all costs. The days after they cashed in the ticket had been strange, too. Mamá seemed to have relaxed a bit, but only at the expense of having aged even more, and as for herself . . . she didn’t know what was the matter with her. She saw Mamá as a different person, not Mamá, but a more complicated, reserved, mysterious woman, a woman streaked through with miniscule vices and virtues, as though suspended in time on a branch that was about to break but at the same time sprouting new green shoots everywhere. The last few days, she’d had fleeting bouts of absentmindedness and on three occasions had said things that bore no relation to what was going on around her. After collecting her prize money, Mamá turned to her on their way out of the lottery office and, when she asked her if she was happy, replied, “Tell me something interesting I can do.”

  “With the money?”

  “No, me. You never tell me anything, you never tell me what I should do, tell me something interesting I can do, you always just stand there, staring at me . . .”

  She’d let fly like that inexplicably, as though something inside her had suddenly come back to life, robust and incongruent. Now, on seeing Anita, she seemed to be calling up that same attitude, acting as though something displeased her.

  “Why do people say you’re smart and I’m not?”

  “What are you talking about, Mamá?”

  “I can think the things you think, too . . .”

  Anita showed no sign of astonishment, simply helped Mamá inside. She stayed with the two of them for nearly another hour, as though unable to take her leave, helping Anita unpack Mamá’s bag and then preparing an early supper. Night fell quickly those days, with almost no transition, and when it did, the apartment got dark in a way that was cold, impersonal, like an empty office building. Before they knew it, they’d spent half an hour like bats, in near total darkness. She sat in the dining room, which was between the living room and Mamá’s bedroom, and smoked a cigarette before leaving. She felt she was hoping to be overwhelmed by certain thoughts, but the only thing that came to her was the vague recollection of having lived in that place as though in a state of transition. No, not even as a girl had it felt like home, though she’d never lived anyplace else. She was always thinking things like The minute I get out of here . . . Then she thought of Mamá, with no reproach. She’d been a fearsome mother. She’d been intelligent but not levelheaded, told everyone what she thought of them to their faces, been neither sweet nor sensitive, worked hard for as long as was strictly necessary and then closed herself off in a comfortable but solitary life. Perhaps Mamá was solitary by nature. Even something as simple as that seemed difficult to ascertain now. For years, she recalled hoping Mamá would find another partner, but even that memory, as she sat in the dining room in the dark, was just a feeling. Anita walked in suddenly and, seeing her sitting there in the dark, nearly jumped out of her skin. She was carrying clean sheets to put on Mamá’s bed and dropped them in shock. Then she picked them up, laughing, a little nervous.

  “You scared me,” she said.

  “Sorry, Anita, I was off in my own world.”

  “Ah. The things a woman thinks about,” Anita replied, as though echoing the thoughts of a man.

  She helped her make the bed, and as they put on the sheets, she asked her about her Christmas. Anita told her that she’d spent it with Manolo at his apartment, that Manolo had drunk a lot, that she’d seen Lolito on Skype, and that it made her sad to see him so grown-up and not have him with her. She liked the perfunctory way Anita provided details about her life, that directness, that strict devotion to the facts. Sometimes she thought she recognized in her things from her own adolescence, the ebb and flow of certain sensibilities. It was strange suddenly—she saw Anita making Mamá’s bed and remembered herself doing the same thing when she was nineteen. She seemed to feel a certain reproach for Mamá through Anita’s adolescent body. She recalled what Mamá used to smell like then, her clothes, her breasts.

  “Is it true that your mother won fifty thousand euros in the lottery?”

  The question almost made her smile.

  “Yes, it’s true.”

  “That’s so much mo
ney.”

  “So, what about you?” she asked. “What would you do if you won?”

  It was like a children’s game—If I won a million euros . . .

  “I’d go back to Medellín.”

  When she left that night, she kissed Anita goodbye, too, for the first time. She went over to Mamá, who was still sitting on the sofa reading her novel, and she bent down and gave her a kiss. For a moment, it seemed a farfetched scene—Anita’s subdued expression, Mamá’s motionlessness, the apartment; it all seemed a prelude to death. And she was abandoning Anita there, abandoning that nineteen-year-old girl. Perhaps that’s why she kissed her, because she felt guilty.

  “You’ve got my phone number. Will you call if you need anything?”

  And since she was a little embarrassed and had already turned to leave when she asked the question, both Mamá and Anita replied, in unison.

  “Yes.”

  Then comes the first attack, immediately followed by a second. Anita’s anguished voice on the phone, the image of her boys playing with plastic parachutes in the living room, and once she’s out on the street, the feeling that the sounds of the city—trucks, cars, other people’s conversations—are like strange sounds of war. Even the word itself, attack, is bellicose. Anita repeated it three times on the phone, as though they were being invaded, pounded by cluster bombs. The conversation with Pablo (“You stay with the kids, I’m going to the hospital, I’ll call you later. Call Raquel.”) does nothing to reassure her, in fact gives her another strange feeling, that of calculated, military allegiance. Then, outside, she discovers that there exist two worlds: that of those who take cover, and that of those who head out. She’s one of those who head out, but as soon as she does, she realizes that, in fact, what she’s heading out toward is something unknown. Even the street is filled with an unsettling lack of familiarity. The only thing she can think is thank God this all happened on a Saturday and she was able to head out immediately. Although immediately might already be too late. Sitting in the taxi, she tries to conjure up some touching image of Mamá, as if needing to stockpile ammunition. She has no ammunition. She actually considers calling Raquel, but abandons the idea right away. Then, marching into the hospital, she feels indignant; it’s as though each question and each movement were taking a lifetime, all the effort of a lifetime to figure out who someone is, an effort that she never made. When she first sees her, Mamá is semi-conscious, Anita there beside her. She looks like she’s lost twenty pounds and had her skin glossed with yellowish shellac. She feels nothing. What she feels, rather, is the actual absence of any feeling, as though that absence were in turn an active feeling, one allowing her to advance while making everything inside her retreat, a nonsensical tide that recedes when its presence is most needed. Anita approaches and gives her a shaky hug. It is a desperate hug, a hug full of bones, slightly tremulous, like the embrace of a shipwrecked sailor coming across his first human being, doesn’t matter who it is. Or perhaps it does. Mamá speaks in non sequiturs, she’s sedated.