This is how it all starts: with your mother calling you into the bathroom. You will remember what you were doing at that precise moment for the rest of your life: You were reading Watership Down and the rabbits and their does were making their dash for the boat and you
didn’t want to stop reading, the book has to go back to your brother tomorrow, but then she called you again, louder, her I’m-notfucking-around voice, and you mumbled irritably, Sí, senora.
She was standing in front of the medicine cabinet mirror, naked from the waist up, her bra slung about her waist like a torn sail, the scar on her back as vast and inconsolable as a sea. You want to return to your book, to pretend you didn’t hear her, but it is too late.
Her eyes meet yours, the same big smoky eyes you will have in the future. Ven acá, she commanded. She is frowning at something on one of her breasts. Your mother’s breasts are immensities. One of the wonders of the world. The only ones you’ve seen that are
bigger are in nudie magazines or on really fat ladies. They’re 35 triple-Ds and the aureoles are as big as saucers and black as pitch and at their edges are fierce hairs that sometimes she plucked and sometimes she didn’t. These breasts have always embarrassed
you and when you walk in public with her you are always conscious of them. After her face and her hair, her chest is what she is most proud of. Your father could never get enough of them, she always brags. But given the fact that he ran off on her after their third year
of marriage, it seemed in the end that he could.
You dread conversations with your mother. Those one-sided dressing-downs. You figured that she has called you in to give you another earful about your diet. Your mom’s convinced that if you eat more plátanos you will suddenly acquire her same extraordinary
train-wrecking secondary sex characteristics. Even at that age you were nothing if not your mother’s daughter. You were twelve years old and already as tall as she was, a long slender-necked ibis of a girl. You had her green eyes (clearer, though) and her straight hair
which makes you look more Hindu than Dominican and a behind that the boys haven’t been able to stop talking about since the fifth grade and whose appeal you do not yet understand. You have her complexion too, which means you are dark. But for all your
similarities, the tides of inheritance have yet to reach your chest. You have only the slightest hint of breast; from most angles you’re flat as a board and you’re thinking she’s going to order you to stop wearing bras again because they’re suffocating your potential
breasts, discouraging them from popping out of you. You’re ready to argue with her to the death because you’re as possessive of your bras as you are of the pads you now buy yourself.
But no, she doesn’t say a word about eating more plátanos. Instead, she takes your right hand and guides you. Your mom is rough in all things but this time she is gentle. You did not think her capable of it.
Do you feel that? she asks in her too-familiar raspy voice.
At first all you feel is the heat of her and the density of the tissue, like a bread that never stopped rising. She kneads your fingers into her. You’re as close as you’ve ever been and your breathing is what you hear.
Don’t you feel that? She turns toward you. Coño, muchacha, stop looking at me and feel.
So you close your eyes and your fingers are pushing down and you’re thinking of Helen Keller and how when you were little you wanted to be her except more nun-ish and then suddenly without warning you do feel something. A knot just beneath her skin, tight
and secretive as a plot. And at that moment, for reasons you will never quite understand, you are overcome by the feeling, the premonition, that something in your life is about to change. You become light-headed and you can feel a throbbing in your blood, a beat, a rhythm, a drum. Bright lights zoom through you like photon torpedoes, like comets. You don’t know how or why you know this thing but you know it cannot be doubted. It is exhilarating. For as long as you’ve been alive you’ve had bruja ways; even your mother will begrudge you that much. Hija de Liborio she called you after you picked your tía’s winning numbers for her and you assumed Liborio was a relative. That was before Santo Domingo, before you knew about the Great Power of God.
I feel it, you say, too loudly. Lo siento.
O excerto em análise apresenta como personagens Lola Cabral e a sua mãe, Belicia, num contexto de constatação de uma possível doença num dos seus seios, como por exemplo, um tumor ou um cancro. Nesta cena em que Belicia chama a sua filha para que ela sinta o nó que está por debaixo da sua pele, verifica-se que Lola compreende o que está a acontecer à sua mãe e lamenta. É também nesta cena que Belicia é dócil e não áspera como costuma ser e, portanto, Lola repara nesse facto.
ReplyDeleteA adolescente aparece descrita como uma rapariga de doze anos, tão alta como a sua mãe fora, de olhos verdes, cabelo liso, o que a fazia parecer mais hindu do que dominicana, e tendo um traseiro que os rapazes não conseguiam para de falar desde o quinto ano. Lola caracteriza-se também por ter um tom de pele escuro igual ao de sua mãe e por, ainda, não ter os seios desenvolvidos.
Este excerto começa por abordar a personagem Lola que se encontrava a ler Watership Down, muito entusiasmada, no quarto de banho quando, de repente, a sua mãe a chamou. Ela não tinha grande vontade de interromper a sua leitura, mas depois de ouvir a sua mãe, uma vez mais, a chamar por si, desta vez um pouco impaciente, rapidamente chegou perto dela. Belicia estava desnuda da cintura para cima e pretendia mostrar algo a Lola, assim como pretendia que ela sentisse o que estava por debaixo da sua pele. Neste excerto encontram-se algumas comparações como, por exemplo, quando o soutien de Belicia é comparado a «like a torn sail», a cicatriz ou a marca das suas costas a «as vast and inconsolable as a sea», sendo que esta última comparação pode ser interpretada como a distância entre a Republica Dominicana, onde anteriormente vivia Belicia, e os EUA, para onde fugiu, e o facto de ser o mar que separa ambos territórios. Alguns traços físicos descritos da mesma personagem são os seus olhos, «big smoky eyes», a sua voz que é rouca e os seus seios que são «…immensities. One of the wonders of the world». No excerto encontra-se, também, o recurso estilístico referente à aliteração: «…and you can feel a throbbing in your blood, a beat, a rythm, a drum» que descreve o estado em que a adolescente ficou depois de ter sentido o nó no peito de sua mãe. É ainda importante notar que quando Lola diz: «Lo siento», esta expressão apresenta um carácter ambíguo, na medida em que a relação de mãe e filha não era amigável, Lola não gostava de sua mãe pelo modo como ela a tratava (era implicativa). No entanto, pelo facto de Belicia ser sua mãe, ou seja, pertencer à sua família, criaram-se laços que, por mais que se desvalorizem, não podem ser ignorados. E o que se pode constatar é que Lola sente compaixão pelo estado de sua mãe.
Há uma referência no excerto a Hellen Keller (1880-1968), escritora, conferencista e activista social estadunidense, quando, no mesmo, se afirma «So you close your eyes and your fingers are pushing down and you’re thinking of Hellen Keller and how when you were little you wanted to be her except more nun-ish and then suddenly without warning you do feel something». Keller ficou sem o sentido de visão e de audição desde tenra idade, tendo-lhe sido diagnosticada uma doença, no entanto, a escritora provou que as deficiências sensoriais não impedem a obtenção do sucesso.
Para terminar, há também que ter em conta, numa análise literária, o tipo de narrador presente que, neste excerto, se caracteriza por ser um narrador focalizado na segunda pessoa, que descreve o que está a acontecer naquele determinado momento.
(por Cristiana Frade)