Never mind the heat spell, querida,
she
said when I arrived on the 10 o’clock bus.
There
were still tangles in my hair and sweat
stream
deltas at the nape of my neck when I
noticed
the chemical reaction happening on
my
skin, the way her river soil dampness was
blending
with the travel odor on my wrists
and
on my clavicle. How a city will smell
on
you is not something you can predict.
I
felt dizzy. She grasped both my hands
and
we started walking, following the
train
tracks. As she glanced around in her
distracted
way, I noticed her cleavage
glistening
under the street lamps. The
cathedral
glowed. People here are
boisterous
and suffused with self-
important
warmth, intoxicating for a
girl
coming from somewhere haunted,
a
place that had seen her off with a
deafening
hailstorm and a downpour that
had
seeped into her corners. The beers and
the
tinto de verano and that piña colada-like
concoction
on a mostly empty stomach helped,
of
course, and the sevillanas that spilled out of
wine
glasses and doorways, brightly lit bars in
Barrio
Santa Cruz. You don’t get this back home,
she
said once, flashing me a triumphant smile.
Her
laughter dove, resurfaced with the posture
of
a suspension bridge, and she wore a silver
bracelet
that clung to the delicate shape of her
wrist.
Toward me she behaved as an indulgent
aunt
would, she humored me when I wanted to
snack
on roasted almonds, nap by Guadalquivir
all
day, and the time I ate pork cheek and then
felt
sure I had been drugged, although she did
reproach
me the day I double-fisted ice cream
cones
in a plaza somewhere in Alfalfa where
seven-year-olds
on rollerskates were testing
out
what it is to be unkind. Despite her good
breeding,
she couldn’t help but judge other
women’s
figures. Just imagine yourself in the
bata de cola, she’d say, as
if that were the
cure
for a lack of self-restraint. I found that I
could
not slip away from that city of extroverts,
unnoticed.
At night the big river is like a well,
and
I knew that’s where all of her sadness lives,
meanwhile.
Holding its breath for someone like
me.
Everything about her was contagious. Yes,
even
her sevillanas, which I dutifully
tried to
resist,
and those dark ripples in the water, which
followed
me home. I’m always wondering where
the
things I’ve known and lost go, but those nights
and
afterward I just wondered where the things
I’ve
never known and lost go, in a city like that,
where
everyone called me querida, what can I
bring you, even her name rhymes
with marvel, a
city
unfit for girls with ghosts inhabiting their bones.
