Swallow, Starving Faithful | ONC 2020

7. AHORA SON MÁS DISTANTES QUE LOS DESCONOCIDOS.

"Why?" It's all I can ask. I'm in the womb with her now, and it's so dark I can see very little, but I feel her close, and that comforts me. 

Bernadette takes a deep drag, almost spitting the smoke in my face. "Do you really wanna know? I'd rather not kill the mood the day after I met you."

"I want to know," I insist. "I understand I have no right to know. I understand we've only known each other for a day. But it feels like so much longer to me, and I feel so attached to you, I really do. I want to kno—" 

"I'll tell you. Sit on a better branch, then. I don't know how long this'll take."

"Okay," I say, feeling morbidly giddy. "Will you... will you tell me where—" 

"I'll tell you everything if you stick around."

"I'm sticking around."

"Well," she says, "I lived in Buenos Aires. My parents aren't English teachers. I lied about that. They were addicts. Though, I think they worked a shitty post office, and our family had money. We're foreigners. Well, someone was."

"Addicts?"

"But yeah, we were well-off, at least in the grand scheme of things. Heroin, by the way. Heroin addicts, but if you have the money, an addiction won't fuck you up. Then, maybe the economy stunted, or maybe dad just did something stupid, because we were broke. I started spending less and less time with them. Mom and dad would argue about the smallest things, and dad attempted suicide thrice. He started mouthing off about government conspiracies like we were still stuck in the dictatorship. I left home at fifteen to live with friends. Lived across the city, and this is Buenos Aires we're talking about. You have been there, haven't you?" I shook my head. "Well, you'd know how big it is."

"Father Pierre says it is the biggest and most vibrant place in the world, and that it is one of the many homes of Christ."

Bernadette grunts. "I guess. I don't love it."

"What friends did you live with?"

"There were three of us: Sierra, Maya and me. Sierra was a runaway, just like me. She was obese, had these horrid, botched tattoos, and was off her face a lot of the time. But fuck, she was fun to be around, and when I was young and scared, she showed me how to get by. She would drive her brother's van around. She couldn't really drive, but we'd come along with her through backstreets and drink and snort cocaine during blackouts, which were pretty common in that district. We were furious and just wanting to be fucking alive."

"Right... What about Maya?"

"She was a white girl from Recoleta. I don't know how she ended up with us, really. She would get harassed around our neighbourhood. But she was a beautiful girl with light-brown hair and a bright smile. She wanted to be a poet when she was older. Her parents were overbearing, so she spilt out into the street. Maya would bury herself in books. There was nothing she hadn't read. You know, she's probably the reason I can speak such good English. Can't read well, though."

I strain my brain to imagine what it would be like spilling out into the Buenos Aires streets. "How old were you all?"

"Fifteen for me. Sierra was eighteen, I think... and Maya was fifteen too. But age doesn't mean shit there. Does it anywhere?"

"I don't know," I say, blushing suddenly. "Whenever I see someone younger than me with more intelligence and wit and respect, I can't deal with it."

"You mean Valentina."

"I guess."

"Eh. Anyway, it didn't matter how old we were. We were just young. And we were close, us three—we would get into fights in the street once. Fights with boys, too. Sierra taught us how to beat them up. She was a big girl, but she hit hard. I remember, once, Sierra and I sat down to write a song for Maya's birthday. We'd got our hands around a guitar. We sounded shit, but Sierra played and I sung. We celebrated her birthday in an abandoned house by the river. It didn't have power or anything, but it was a nice place, and no one lived in it."