Her
I cut my hair very short. It’s electric blue. I’d dreamt of blue hair ever since I was a teenager, but adolescent rebellion had taken a less extroverted form: silent quarantine. Blue suits me even now.
My baby was born. It’s a girl. I thought till the end that it would be a boy.
‘She has her father’s mouth,’ the others tell me with a hint of sadness. But I’m not sad to hear it. Her father has a beautiful mouth. I miss his lips. I sent him photos of his daughter. My Rolleiflex left with him, but they gave me another camera as a gift. They told me my photos were beautiful. They tell me a lot of nice things. I know he gets the photos, but he doesn’t respond. I’ll keep sending them, though. I still don’t feel like sending him a video of our little girl. Even if I kept myself out of the frame, a certain amount of interaction would still be noticeable. My girl would react to my prompts. Who knows if she can already perceive the blue of my hair. I don’t want to alter their relationship, I don’t want my presence to arouse resentment in her father.
The girl comes to see me often. She takes care of my daughter if I want to go out. But on some afternoons all three of us stay at home. I’ve stopped making tea. When she came to see me the first time, as soon as I got out of the clinic, she asked me what the baby’s name was. I hadn’t decided yet.
‘Give her my name,’ she said.
‘Why not?’
About the Author
Veronica Raimo is the author of two novels published in Italy and a collection of short stories published in Germany. She wrote the script for Marco Bellocchio’s Bella Addormentata, and has written for Robinson/La Repubblica, TTL/La Stampa and Rolling Stone. She has translated writes such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Octavia Butler, Iain Sinclair and Vikram Seth into Italian. She lives in Rome.
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The Girl at the Door Page 14