me that every year a prominent family brought a cannelloni to baptize. That the doctor had urged them not to have any more children because it wasn’t working. And that they’d said that because they were very Catholic they had to keep procreating. Even with my disability I could tell this was a nauseating situation but I couldn’t say so. That night I was too sick to eat.
And my sister’s soul got longer all the time. I was glad my dad had gone.
The development
Betina was eleven and I was twelve. Rufina said it’s the age they’ll start developing and I pictured something from inside coming out of me and I prayed to Santa Theresa that it wouldn’t be cannelloni. I asked the psychologist if she thought I was developing and with a red face she suggested I ask my mom.
My mom got red in the face too and said that at a certain age girls stopped being girls and became young ladies. That was all she said and I was left in suspense.
I already said that I attended a handicapped school, less handicapped than Betina’s. One girl said that she was developing. I couldn’t tell any difference. She said that when it happens blood comes out between your legs for several days and that you don’t have to take a bath and that you have to use a rag so your clothes don’t get stained and be careful around boys so you don’t end up pregnant.
That night I felt the place she’d said and couldn’t sleep. But it wasn’t damp so I could still talk to boys. When I was developed I’d never even look at a single boy if I didn’t want to get pregnant and have a cannelloni or something like it.
Betina talked or blabbered and everyone understood. So it happened that one night during a family gathering that because of our manners they didn’t let us come to, we ate alone and my sister started squawking like a trombone: Mamá I’m bleeding from my cookie! We were in the next room over from the dinner. A grandmother and two cousins came in.
I told my cousins to stay away from the blood because they could end up pregnant.
Everyone left in a huff and my mom gave us both the pointer.
At the institute I told them that Betina was developed even though she was younger than me. The teacher stopped me. The classroom is no place for immoral talk like that and she covered me with moral and civic lessons. Everyone in the class was suddenly worried especially the girls who every so often felt for any possible dampness.
Just in case I stopped talking to the boys.
Margarita came in radiant one afternoon and said “it came” and we knew what she meant.
My sister left school in third grade. There wasn’t any point. Actually for either of us there wasn’t any point and I left in sixth grade. I did learn to read and write, but with terrible spelling, everything without an H because if you didn’t pronounce it what was the point?
The psychologist said I had dyslexia. But she suggested I’d improve with practice and she forced me to do tongue twisters like María Chusena her shack she was thatching when along comes a thatcher who asks Miss Chusena your shack are you thatching or stocking the shacks dear my shack I’m not thatching nor shacks am I stocking only thatching the shack for María Chusena.
My mom watched me and when I couldn’t untwist it she’d hit me over the head with the pointer. The psychologist made sure my mom wasn’t there for María Chusena and I untwisted better because if my mom was there when I tried to finish María Chusena I’d make a mistake in my rush to avoid the pointer.
Betina wheeled around, vroom, opened her mouth and pointed into it because she was hungry.
I didn’t want to eat at the table with Betina. It made me sick. She drank her soup straight from the dish without a spoon and scooped up the solids with her hands. She cried if I insisted on feeding her by putting the spoon in every orifice on her face.
They bought Betina a high chair with a tray attached and a hole in the seat to piss and defecate through. She’d get the urge in the middle of the meal. The smell made me vomit. My mom told me not to act so delicate or she’d send me to the lunatic asylum. I knew what the lunatic asylum was and from then on I ate my meals perfumed by my sister’s feces and misted by her piss. When she farted I’d pinch her.
After dinner I’d go to the garden.
Rufina would disinfect Betina and sit her in her wheelchair. The idiot would nap with her head on her breast or breasts because now her clothes showed two very round and provocative bumps because she’d developed before me and even though she was a horror she was a young lady and from then Rufina had to change her rags every month and wash between her legs.
I took care of mine myself and I could tell that I was still skinny as a broomstick or like my mom’s pointer because my breasts weren’t growing. And like this the birthdays came and went, but I was taking a drawing and painting class and the teacher thought that I’d be an important visual artist because being half crazy I was drawing and painting like the extravagant visual artists of the day.
The art exhibition
The professor told me, Yuna—that’s what they call me—your paintings should be part of an exhibition. One of them might even sell.
I was so overcome with happiness that I threw my whole body on the professor and attached myself to him with all four feet and legs and we fell together.
The professor said that I was really pretty, that when I grew up we’d get engaged, and that he’d teach me the most beautiful things like drawing and painting but not to tell anyone our secret which actually was his secret and I guessed that he meant another more important exhibition so I grabbed him and kissed him again. And he kissed me too, a blue-colored kiss that affected me in places that I won’t name because it wouldn’t be proper and so I grabbed a big canvas and without drawing I painted two mouths in red joined together, inseparable, musical, and two blue eyes above them crying tears of glass. Still on his knees, the professor kissed the painting and he was still there when I went home.
I told my mom about the exposition and because she didn’t understand art she said that those shapeless blobs on my boards would make everyone at the fine art school laugh but if the professor wanted me to it didn’t make any difference to her.
Two of them sold when I showed my pieces with some from other students. Too bad that one of them was the kisses. The professor christened it First Love. Which seemed fine to me. But I didn’t completely understand the meaning.
Yuna is a prodigy the professor would say and I liked this so much that every time he said it I would stay after and throw myself on him. He never stopped me. But when my breasts came in he said not to jump on him because men are fire and women straw. I didn’t understand. I stopped jumping.
The diploma
So when I was seventeen I got my diploma in painting and drawing from the fine arts school, but because of my dyslexia I’d never be able to teach classes or private lessons. When I could buy boards I kept painting because the paints were a gift from the professor who’d often visit us.
Betina and her vroom chair circled the professor until he was dizzy but my mom never left me alone with him and once she slapped me maybe because she saw us kiss but on the cheek not on the mouth like the movie stars on screen.
I was afraid she’d keep the professor away. But she didn’t so long as we didn’t
