My plans of escape were delayed by the onset of a debilitating disease that forced me into the depressive blur of constant drowsiness and heady medicine.
During my condition, people would shuffle in and out of the room; to deliver water, check my temperature, and stare at me, muttering prayers as if sounds and a rubbed rosary would convince my organs to function properly again. I experienced and dismissed it with the indifference of a jaded old man.
To distract myself from my parent's voices carrying from the other room, I would stare at the ghostly white curtains and wonder how lovely it would be to dance right now. Sometimes, when the medicine was particularly strong, I saw myself five feet away, twirling with the twin curtains as dance partners. Sometimes, little birds would land on the open windowsill; they would stare at me with bugging beady eyes. My parents would continue to speak, voices rising to a crescendo. The bird would fly away. I always mourned the loss of the little winged angels for company.
After one particularly long bout of parental hissing from the other room, my mother told me that the doctor was here, again.
I let him take my temperature, and I responded in one-syllable monotones to his questions. I let him and my parents gawk at me as if I were a songbird.
He nodded, gravely, and left the room gesturing for my parents to follow. ‘Hospital’ was all I heard.
I groaned at the thought of anti-septic perfumed rooms and blinding white. Hell is a clean place.
That night I packed a valise amid the rhythmic back and forth of my parents from the other room. I slipped out the door of our apartment a few minutes past midnight. I wandered several streets before finding a park bench. I lay, trying to forget about the dull throb of my body and recalled my plan to escape from this city.
The modern citizen worships cities for their efficiency and industry, quickly forgetting that they are an inescapable vacuum. The modern city is a medley of all the world’s evils, and once you realize that you have already bought a shoebox apartment with all your life savings. You are trapped in a box cut into streets, profuse with people tainted by existence.
I needed to leave.
When I wake up, the pain has lessened. I find my way to the train station and get myself a ticket. I watch the pigeons that have gathered in the arches.
I wake up when the landscape became green. I get off the train and let my feet take me to the plaza. The sun is the one I remember; it blinded, tears through my paper skin. I stumble under an awning and take a seat at a bar. I order a lemon tonic.
I hear a voice say my name, a voice I know very well; the lightness of a mezzo-soprano, undertones of the low crackle of a flamenco song.
I feel the pain flow out with the last sip of tonic, and I allow myself to smile.
Dappled morning sunlight and yesterday's raided red wine stained the sheets in the master bedroom of the house in my family’s abandoned finca. I wake up with the feeling of having been reborn at some point throughout yesterday's night spent with Rosa. Her father found us once and hit her in front of me. When I got home, my father struck me. Our bruises are gone, now.
We walk the estate in nightgowns before breakfast. It looks the same.
I missed you, she says. I missed you too.
I see Antonio in the street in the plaza walking to the church. He looks the same. We look the same.
Antonio sits on a gravestone after mass and spoke to me. I’d call it callous and yell at my brother to not disrespect the dead if it weren’t his.
How are mama and papa?
The same.
The apartment?
Ugly. And small.
Do you miss me?
Sometimes, Antonio. Mostly I’m angry.
Angry?
That you got to stay and I didn’t.
What could I have done?
I don’t know. Tell the angels to go fuck themselves.
How did you get here?
Train.
No, no, you know what I mean, don’t you?
I’m not sure.
How is Rosa?
Perfect.
Do you know what happened to her?
No.
I think it was her father?
I wouldn’t be surprised.
Do drunks do that to their daughters in the city?
Everywhere, Antonio.
When will it end?
I don’t know.
In this town, there are no birds, only angels. My grandmother would tell me that there are angels everywhere; that is why you should hurt no one—you might be killing an angel. Here, they do not have to be disguised.
Rapheal, do you know what happened to Rosa?
Yes, I do, I was the one who told her.
And what of her father?
He continues
Does your God not consider that sinful?
You have to understand, she was not entirely clean
I don’t understand?
You have to understand; that’s how it goes
There is a blood stain on the front of Rosa’s dress. She told me that she tried to wash it out, but soap and water did nothing but wrinkle her fingers. I tried to clean it once, too, and the suds turned red but the dress stayed the same. I don’t have to ask her where the stain came from.
I see him at church and then at the bar and then I don’t remember what happens. There are red suds, after.
Rapheal comes again, on a Sunday.
You’ll have to leave
Why?
You should understand why
When?
Tonight, don’t worry, I won’t wake you, it’ll be painless but I’m sorry you did what you did, you have to understand--
I don’t tell Rosa or Antonio but they’ll figure it out soon enough.
I try to remember as much as I could: lace curtains and white dress and stars and boys sitting on tombstones and drunk men and pretty girls with rosy cheeks and red lips and soft hands and scars and blood—I don’t want to remember the red suds but I feel as if I should--- and angels and stars. I’m sorry for leaving so soon. Beauty is in chaos.
I wake up. I smell antiseptic perfume.
Hell is a clean place.
