Perla by Carolina de Robertis Page B

other wall, over the ominous sofa, the painting of the sea, the sea, slashed in thickblue paint not made of water but he knows it is the sea, with something riding it the color of the water, a ship, plunged in water, made of water, a ship risen from the wet arms of the sea itself, and he can swim-pour-flood into those brushstrokes and ride the swelling curves of blue, dreaming the waves of his lost home.
    She comes back from the kitchen with a plate of empanadas. On the way, she watches the turtle amble past her with an expression that he recognizes as tenderness. She loves the turtle, he thinks, and his mind is stabbed by the word loves . She sits down at the table, and eats without looking up. Her hair is pulled back in a rubber band. Gloria used to pull her hair back when she was serious about something: scouring the stove, taking a test, winning a fight. Gloria always won their fights. She was able to turn his words around and hand them back to him, hard, polished, proof of her triumph. She was going to be the greatest lawyer in the nation, that’s what he always told her, throwing his arms up in defeat. He had such faith in her. Thanks to her fighting prowess they wouldn’t always live in a small apartment with gray water leaking through the roof from the third floor. Good things would happen. They were sure to. They both said this. They were happy. The gray water didn’t matter, anyway. But they didn’t know that; they didn’t know, back then, how little the leaks mattered, how happy they really were. Didn’t know how good it was to have all of their toes. To drink too much red wine. To feed their animal joys, naked, slippery with sweat. To take doorknobs, showers, speech for granted, and complain bitterly about getting up early in the morning, as if it were some monumental sacrifice. What brats we are, he thinks, when we are happy.
    The woman at the table glances over at him, though when their eyes meet she stares down at her empty plate. Her body is young and beautiful, it is so whole, uncut, unbruised, unburned. She has the luxury of sinking in a vague sadness. She has never been raped with rods that deliver electric shocks. The skin has never been peeled from the bottom of her feet. She has never hung from a ceiling hook, basted inshit. She has never been shown panties, bloody, torn, in the hand of a man whose voice is intensely familiar but whose face is unknown. She has never even had the smallest bullet wound. And all of this is good: he is nourished by her wholeness. A wholeness that he knows she cannot see.
    They are linked, he and the girl. But how? By a rope of light, a truth that flickers for an instant before fleeing into the morass of his mind.
    The phone rang and I didn’t want to talk in front of the dripping man, so I ran from the living room to my father’s study.
    “Hello?”
    “Perlita.”
    “Hi, Papá.”
    “It rang so long, I thought you weren’t home.”
    “I’m home.”
    “Yes. Well, we’re just calling to make sure everything’s all right.”
    The room was dim, the curtains were drawn, and I hadn’t turned on the light when I came in. I leaned against his desk. “Everything’s fine.”
    “You’re fine?”
    “Yes.”
    “And the house?”
    “What would be wrong with it?”
    “Perla, I’m just asking.”
    “But what could happen? I don’t see why you need to ask.”
    “Because it’s my house.”
    “Only yours?”
    “What’s the matter with you?”
    I was wondering the same thing myself. I hadn’t meant to pick a fight, hadn’t meant to expose him to my private chaos. “How’s Punta del Este?”
    “Beautiful. We’re having a great time.” He sighed, the heavy sigh of a man beseiged by a child. “Look, just be careful. Here’s your mother.”
    I waited. There were distant murmurs before she came.
    “Perla?”
    “Hi, Mamá.”
    “What’s happening over there? Is everything all right?”
    “Everything is fine. Papá’s just being paranoid.”
    “He