She leaves her car in the car park and goes through the main door. She walks quickly towards the lift without stopping at the reception. They’ve already given her the details over the phone. Sixth floor, room 638. Unfortunately, she knows the place well. Her mother spends long stretches of time here and her stays have been almost unbearably frequent over the past few months. The elevator, which is crammed full, gorges on and spews out visitors on every floor, in slow-motion, while Marta simmers and seethes. Finally, with an unpleasant screech and a slight jerk, number six lights up on the display. Marta gets out of the elevator, walks past the empty security desk, and turns right. Room 638 is in an L-shaped area at the end of the corridor.
“Mom?”
A nurse is checking her fluids.
“We’ve sedated her,” she says, with a neutral tone. “It’s better to let her rest now.”
“Oh, I see. Okay.”
“The doctor will come by later and explain everything to you. If you need anything, press the call button.”
Marta doesn’t respond. The doctor. She can guess what he will say word for word. “You know the score—there is no treatment. Your mother has Alzheimer’s and advanced osteoporosis. She gets confused, falls and breaks a bone. That’s how it’ll be from here on out . . . maybe you should think about getting her a wheelchair.” Marta realizes that the situation no longer rouses any emotion in her. She’s heard it too many times. She knows it’s sad, but she can’t help it. She sits down next to the bed and looks at her sick mother’s face. She has unkempt hair, a pointy nose, and gaunt cheeks. A wheelchair? Maybe. What else could she do?
Suddenly, she hears a sob from the other side of the curtain that splits the small room in two. She gets up and turns around. The curtain’s thin fabric is immaculately white, spotless. Carefully, she pulls it open at one end and peers inside. She sees a large, uncovered window and her mother’s roommate, an elderly woman, in bed. Marta means to ask her what’s wrong, if she needs anything, if she wants her to call the nurse, but the words won’t leave her mouth. Her shock chokes them and they wither, suffocated in her throat as she stands there wide-eyed, her hands shaking.
But . . . but . . . what? No way, it can’t be.
She feels her parched tongue and a bitter aftertaste belching from her stomach. Her head spins and her legs almost give way. She can barely breathe. Feeling faint, she grabs the curtain with both hands to stay on her feet.
The woman has drooping eyelids and a tense grimace. She’s hooked up to a machine that measures her vital signs and the drip attached to her left arm releases liquid in steady intervals. She seems anxious. She writhes around whimpering, letting out little cries of pain. Marta takes a deep breath and stares at her uneasily for a long while. Then, when she feels she has somewhat regained her composure, she moves slowly towards the woman and looks at her from up close, arching over her. There is no doubt—it’s her. The angular face, the ape-like expression, the muzzle that protrudes displaying a look of permanent irritation. And that vulgar, graying skin. Marta knows that those eyelids hide her light, short-sighted, slightly crossed eyes. She can’t see them now because they are not fully open. Fuentes. That bitch Fuentes. The Gorilla.
What’s happening? I don’t understand it! But it can’t be, it can’t be.
The woman opens her eyes. For a few moments, it seems like she is looking at Marta, but she suddenly turns her head with a wince of pain. Marta knows her well enough to recognize those inexpressive blue eyes.
She has that look, and here she is. I can’t believe it. I thought that . . . it can’t be!
Marta runs her hand over her face, as if this might rid her of the torrent of feelings taking hold of her. A thousand images flash through her mind. Just like they did a month ago.
A year ago. Her whole life.
The nurse comes in to replace Fuentes’s drip bag, which is about to run out.
“She needs a tranquilizer,” she says.
Marta builds up her courage and nods at the nurse. She wants to see what she can get out of her.
“What happened to her?”
“She was run over in an alley behind the building. She’s been in intensive care for a month, it’s very serious—she has major trauma and internal bleeding. They just brought her to the ward yesterday, but she’s still got a long recovery ahead.”
The nurse stops talking and smoothes out the top of the bed sheet. Then she leaves. Marta is left alone. Major trauma and internal bleeding, but she’s still alive. It sounds impossible. Marta casts another glance at the woman lying in bed and, like a wave, those treacherous memories overwhelm her, triggering that same old feeling, familiar, unchanged. A whole life carrying the burden of those insecurities, doubts, fears. A whole life of anxiety, romantic failures, loneliness. Despite the passing of time, which they say heals everything. Despite extensive therapy.
How can this be? Finding her here, at the hospital, in the same room as my mother.
A shiver runs down Marta’s spine. She is soaked in sweat. The same old feelings that have destroyed her life remain intact, determined to survive. Just like Fuentes, who’s still breathing.
Marta walks up to the window and stares through the glass, but she doesn’t look at the moving cars or the reddish clouds of late spring. She sees only a cluster of boney legs clothed in a horrible uniform. She has just turned ten and, for the first time, finds herself at the entrance to the school run by nuns where Fuentes teaches. Marta doesn’t know why but she feels intimidated as soon as she sees Fuentes, with her short-sighted eyes that look Marta up and down, her monkey-like face and those thin deformed lips, protruding like the hallmark of a bitter, intolerant person.
She soon discovers that the other girls call her “The Gorilla” and thinks the nickname suits her perfectly. She’s shabby and ape-like; she looks like a primate dressed up as a woman. She’s fully aware that everyone’s scared of her. She is never nice, never lets a mistake go unnoticed. She demands faultless behaviour, adherence to needlessly strict rules upheld under all circumstances.
Marta closes her eyes. For years her memories have been hazy, blurry, diffuse, incapable of piecing together a coherent, continuous narrative. To stop her hands from shaking, she clings to the window sill. She knows that any minute now, uncontrollable images will emerge from the misty depths of her mind. Vivid. Unchanging. Like shreds of shame, of incomprehension. The silent and searing remnants of fear. Because of that woman, who now looks like a harmless creature in a hospital bed, her mind holds no comforting thoughts. There are just shreds. Shreds that dig deep.
She sees herself shake as Fuentes asks her a question. Despite having studied hard, she stutters fearfully and is unable to string two sentences together. She sees herself freeze up at the door to the lunch room, with her heart in her mouth, when Fuentes does not let her in because she has arrived five minutes late. She sees herself freeze up with panic on the side of the swimming pool while Fuentes, who is supervising, studies her from the other side of the pool with her worst grimace, a face full of scorn. And she, an insignificant insect drowning in her red swimsuit, splutters that she is scared of water, she does not want to jump in, she doesn’t like swimming lessons. And she remembers those harsh words pronounced like a judgement. “You’re a good-for-nothing. Useless. You’ll never make anything of your life.”
Marta tries to tell her parents about it but she doesn’t know how. Those were different times. The teacher’s authority went unquestioned. And in front of her parents, Fuentes was polite and proper.
I was just a frightened little girl, with nowhere to turn. Everything seemed so complicated, so difficult.
Her worst memory emerges from the mist like a mountain peak. The Monday that Marta arrived late to class because her dad’s car broke down. She was twelve. She’s sure of it. And it’s winter, because it’s cold. Fuentes doesn’t let her explain, doesn’t let her say a single word. She looks up from the book she’s holding and pierces her with those light, short-sighted, slightly crossed eyes. Those icy eyes of an ugly monkey. “Do you see this girl?” she says slowly, exaggeratedly stressing every syllable and shifting her gaze to the rest of the class. “Do you see her? Well, she’s a useless good-for-nothing who will never achieve anything in life. If she’s not capable of arriving on time, what else can you expect? Nothing! She won’t even be useful for wiping old people’s asses.” Marta, still standing in front of the class like a broken puppet, isn’t able to hold back the single tear that slowly trickles down her cheek. Then, without realizing what’s happening, she feels a strange heat between her legs.
She was so, so scared. . . .
Fuentes did not let her change. “See that? See how right I am? On top of being useless, she’s also dirty. You know what, Dirty? Do you know what will happen to you? You’ll never find a man who loves you. What man could love a dirty girl who wets herself?”
She makes her sit down and put up with the wetness for the whole morning. Marta’s face is burning with embarrassment, but her legs feel icy, wet, sticky. Her own stench reaches her from under the desk, an acrid smell that becomes more unbearable by the minute. She gags. She’s scared of throwing up then and there. The other girls don’t dare look at her. They keep their heads down and focus only on their writing, as if they’re trying to make time go faster. When the bell rings, Marta disappears in a flash. A wet, yellowish mark is left on the chair.
Fuentes grumbles and writhes between the sheets. She mumbles something, but it’s impossible to understand what she’s saying. Marta isn’t listening to her. Just one thought resounds in her brain. Incomprehension. The question that’s haunted her since she was young. “Don’t look for a motive,” the psychologist had insisted, “Psychopaths don’t need motives for their behavior. They enjoy hurting others, full stop. Anyway, was she the same with the other girls or was it just with you?”
That didn’t matter to Marta. Yes, she had seen Fuentes insult other girls but she always felt Fuentes was worse with her. Much crueler. Maybe it was Marta’s mysterious instinct, possessed only by animals and children, that let her immediately understand Fuentes’s true nature. When Fuentes looked at her with those piercing, expressionless, blue-green eyes, Marta trembled as if she’d seen the devil. Fuentes never did fool her. Never.
You could hide it when you wanted to, but I always knew you were crazy. You were dangerous. A dangerous crazy woman who destroyed me.
Marta tries hard to return to the present. She moves away from the window, short of breath. The spotless, white curtain splits the room into two small symmetrical sections. She doesn’t know why, but that calms her down. She moves closer to the bed and studies Fuentes up close once again. She looks at her eyelids, wrinkled up over those myopic eyes. Her pale, parched cheeks. Her bloodless, lifeless lips. Marta feels disgusted, but gripped by a strange fascination. She can’t stop looking at her, scrutinizing her. Rage bubbles up inside her, filling her mouth. Every beat of her heart rises into a rush of hate. Congealed hate. Hate she wants to spit out for good.
Fuentes is wearing a hospital gown, faded from so many washes. Marta parts the cloth a little and pokes a finger through to Fuentes’s neck. It’s yellowing. It’s the flesh of an old woman, she thinks, a hideous old woman. She presses her finger firmly on Fuentes’s face and it leaves a lighter mark that stays for a while before disappearing slowly, dissipated in the yellowish blue of her skin. Suddenly, as if Marta’s finger has activated some hidden mechanism, Fuentes opens her eyes. Her light, short-sighted, crossed eyes. Marta steps back. Her body is tense, her vision blurred.
You fucking bitch, what are you still doing here?
Marta steps back from the bed, holding Fuentes’s gaze. She asks herself how many times fate can work in her favor, unexpectedly. Very few times, she thinks. Then she chuckles to herself, because she understands that fate is, by nature, unexpected.
She takes a quick look around but doesn’t find what she’s looking for. The door to the bathroom is at the foot of her mother’s bed. She goes in. It’s tiny, but everything is aseptically clean. She sees two urinals hung on the tiled wall and two very neatly folded white towels near the sink. There is a bottle of soap and some surgical gloves on top of a small shelf. Marta smiles and looks down at her hands. They’re no longer shaking.
Calmly, she pulls down her pants, sits on the toilet and takes a long piss. She pisses with an immense pleasure that causes her to let out a deep moan from the bottom of her throat. She closes her eyes and sighs. She unhurriedly enjoys the jet of warm liquid that powerfully hits the snow-white porcelain of the toilet. Then she gets up, pulls up her pants, and, with the same sense of calm, puts on the gloves.
She leaves the bathroom and hurries over to the bed. She feels incredibly tall. She’s transformed into a giant who dominates the world from way up high. She slowly and steadily presses her right hand against that ape-like face. Her new giant hand squashes those eyes, that nose, that rough muzzle. Unsatisfied, she opens up her whole palm. Fuentes lets out a guttural sound, like a monkey’s snort, while Marta separates her fingers so they let through the wild terror of that cross-eyed glare. Fuentes shakes in agony, she struggles, but she does not have the strength to defend herself. The gloves slip and Marta separates her fingers a little more. Fuentes’s eyes have gone black. They are two holes that devour her, bewildered, terrified, uncomprehending.
Marta can’t tell if Fuentes has recognized her, but she doesn’t care. Just as she didn’t care on that evening a month ago as her white knuckles gripped the steering wheel in the lonely alley.