When they reach the corner, the measured steps and the arms tied to the waists know that they must break the communion that tightens them. But they are reluctant to do so. It has cost them to tear the invisible threads, the bandages in the eyes that understood what the looks proclaimed. Those fleeting glances in the classroom, made of sparkles, from tables far away like islands in the middle of an impossible sea to navigate. Afterwards, the word also weighed, the sound loaded with what cannot be said, because at the age of fourteen it is difficult to drive with articulate letters the magma that circulates through the arteries of a body that does not have enough wisdom to govern what is given to it it happens Difficult conversations to start, beyond a hello and a smile that must have twisted and made me make a face that I didn’t want to and drew a strange and ridiculous face on me. And there are also the seconds in which, after the hello, the mind goes blank for an infinite time, stuck without being able to move forward or backward. It was no use spending the night blank and at times disturbed by dreams loaded with excellent prose that would amaze her smile if I stood in front of her and let go of everything that I keep and caress at all hours.
But now they walk as one body and as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The barriers have begun to break down when the fingers have met when leaving class; the rucksack on his back, loaded with books and homework, which today do not weigh at all and which will remain to be done. The way home is full of shortcuts that make it longer and that look for the less crowded squares, the suitable corners to seal with kisses loaded with shame and nerves what words are silent, while time, slower than it seems , run faster than they would like.
So now, at this point of intersection, at this corner where they have to postpone this raging rush, they say goodbye and leave and hold each other and come together and find the space just where the breasts meet they embrace as they embrace and confess, in earshot, the dreams they have fabricated while awake, oh, Celia, while I think of you, may your hands not leave the path of the shoulders and not hesitate to descend, oh, Lucia, like this, sweetly, in the buttocks, yes, because nothing will be the same from now on. And that’s why they don’t want to maintain the privacy that is said to be necessary in a public place. And in the desire not to detach, the farewell is postponed again and again until, after more kisses, more experts, they part, now yes; no, not yet, because they stretch out their arms until the tips of their fingers magnetize them and attract them again and they close their lips, thirsty, in sight of the neighborhood… in sight of Engràcia, who has come out to the balcony, watchtower where the mother, worried, tries to find out why the little girl is so late today, as if from this vantage point she could watch over the mysteries of adolescent behavior (of love).
When she sees them, Engràcia feels a powerful force that urges her to keep looking; but a similar force advises him that it is better to retire and go into the house, into the dining-room. What invites her to withdraw is the claw of social conventions, what they will say, what has made her hide, for so many years, what has made her live the farce of ‘a marriage with poor Joan, a good man, with whom she has not been unhappy, but with whom she would not have wanted to be. The impulse that makes her go out on the balcony again is that of freedom, that of being as one is, that of living without having to give explanations, without having to be judged, that of looking in the mirror of her daughter and feeling full, whole, as she had never felt before.
Holding on to the balcony railing, as if she were at the bow of a ship from where she can see land, a territory of barren feelings, she observes her daughter, who walks with confident steps and bright eyes.
-Hello, Celia.
The daughter raises her head and asks.
-Hello, mom… How long have you been here?
-All the life.
Célia doesn’t understand the answer, but she can’t expect any reproach from her mother’s smile. (At this time, the pope has not yet arrived). while she waits for her daughter to come home, Engràcia represses the urge to call Lídia, her lifelong friend, the woman who loves her, the woman she loves, the lover she spends time with on Tuesdays and Thursdays – “girls’ evenings”, their partners proclaim – since before they both married the boyfriends of their lives, two good men, poor people!
