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The Canary
The restroom floor was covered with puke, and the front wall is now dotted with orange stains. The stink of liquor and frustration fills the air. Dona Mica knew where it came from, but she put off cleaning until someone complained. Even after cleaning restrooms for ten years, she hadn’t managed to dull her sensitive nose, which was her Achilles’ heel, according to her supervisor. “Ah Mica, why did you choose this job if you’re so delicate?” He would ask when he saw her trying to suppress the urge to vomit, like a cat coughing up a stubborn hairball. The she would have to get a grip on herself, take a deep breath, and say she was fine, that it was all right now and she would finish cleaning right away.
Doña Mica puts the container of bleach away and rinses the rags. As she removes her rubber gloves, one finger at a time, like milking a cow, she prays that the recently mopped floor will dry before someone comes and makes a mess again. There must be a saint she could ask for help in worldly matters. Is there one? But it doesn’t take long before some woman comes, squats over the toilet without her ass touching the seat, and sprays her piss all over the place. Then the next woman has no choice but to piss spread eagle. So Mica has to clean the toilet for the fifteenth time today. The pain shoots through her back every evening, when she finishes her shift. She picks up loose change in the ashtrays in front of the mirrors. There are fewer coins than before she entered to clean the toilet seat a bulimic girl soiled. Leaving coins is a double-edged sword. It encourages forgetful ladies to leave something out of pity, but it’s also a source of temptation to kleptomaniacs who spend three times as much on breakfast as Mica’s daily wage. Even so they’re capable of stealing a few pesos without a slight pang of remorse.
Mica gazes dispassionately into the mirror, dropping the money into her apron pocket. Her supervisor had told her she was beautiful. That she wasn’t cut out to be a cleaning lady. That she was smart. In fact, if she lost a little bit of weight….
Coffee with milk, a massage with a face pack, a chocolate-covered polvoron, a comfy chair, flour quesadillas, the latest romance of Bianca or Jazman, which she had borrowed from her friend, a warm bath, camomile tea, the nine PM soap opera, sleeping straight through till morning… Mica had daydreamed during her work hours, like a cat playing with a wool ball. That was really what allowed her to keep going and put up with rude women and her supervisor’s sexual advances. With a bit of luck, Pedro would stay in Matamoros until the next month. As he hadn’t sent money on his last payday, she wouldn’t hear from him until he got paid again. The hangover reminded him of the same old vows to the Virgin of Guadalupe not to drink again. Feeling remorse, he wouldn’t come home with empty pockets and whisky breath. Soon he would call to tell her that his boss didn’t pay him again, or that Dinero Express was closed, or that he had been robbed right after he cashed his check.
The hallway of her apartment is dark as usual. The electricity is still out, despite all the calls to Senor Garralda’s call-in show and demonstrations in front of the city hall. There are no moths, Mica thinks, thank God for the dead light bulbs. In her neighbor Juanita’s shrubs, a couple of teenagers are having sex standing up. Mica sees the branches move and hears their panting breath. Outside the dusty window, she sees colored lights flickering. The girl’s mother must be ironing while watching TV. Juanita washes and irons others’ clothes to feed her daughter and grandson. Beyond the hallway some stray dogs sleep belly up, suffering from the heat. On the entrance step a couple of kids take turns sniffing a can of Resistol 5000. At last Mica arrives at her apartment, ready to open the door. Before she enters, she takes a cage with a canary rocking on the swing. The black shiny eyes look at her with reproach.
“Forgive me, Marquesito. I’m late because the bus didn’t come. I’ll change your newspaper and water right away.” The bird was a gift of repentance when Pedro hit her for the first time. An argument over her cooking had provoked her new husband’s rage. They had been married less than a month, when he complained about too much salt in the beans and the lack of variety in the menu. She reminded him beans, tortillas, and eggs were the only things she could afford with his earnings. “When you bring me more money, you can eat whatever you like.” Pedro started hitting her. In less than ten minutes, Mica lay in a pool of blood. Even though she didn’t pass out, she could only feel the pain spreading all over her body, making her numb. The scene looked like something out of a soap opera, as Pedro ran away, fearing that he had killed her. The blood oozed from Mica’s broken lips, accumulating under her head as it slid down her neck. She bled as if she’d been shot in the head. Juanita’s daughter, who was around five and used to visit other houses and beg for cookies and candies, saw Mica on the floor and left screaming that she saw a dead woman. Then Juanita called the ambulance from her corner store and later insisted Mica file charges against her husband. She refused, but she remained grateful to Juanita. If she had ever had children, Juanita would have been their godmother. Anyway, they became close friends. “I swear, Mica. It won’t ever happen again. I love you, mamacita. Forgive me. Forgive me. This is the last time. I swear I’ll change. I don’t know what’s gotten into me yesterday.” Juanita had slipped away before Mica forgave him and made up trying to make a baby, which didn’t bear fruit. What came a few hours after their noisy reconciliation was a beautiful cage with a white-breasted yellow canary inside. “Can you forgive me?” Pedro said when he put the cage into his wife’s arms. “He looks like a marquis,” Mica said, impressed with the bird’s dignity. She named him Marquesito and took care of him as if he were her child. If Pedro had given her a canary every time he broke his promise, even thirty birdcages wouldn’t have been enough. Fortunately, Pedro was never sorry again like the first time.
Now the bird trills in hunger. With the birdcage in her hand, Mica sighs and puts the key into the old lock of the door. A stink overwhelms her as soon as she enters the room. It’s a mixture of rotten fruits, dirty underwear, stale meat, and an unbathed body. A smell of pain, hate, and resentment. “Who’s there?” says Mica as she gropes her way in the dark. She secretly hopes to hear an unfamiliar voice, a thief who would leave her house once he made off with Mica’s few belongings. But she knows it’s just Pedro. Mica has always remained hopeful. Otherwise, she would have died long ago. “Is that you, Pedro?” She’s answered only by a deep snoring sound. She remembers she has to wash beans and put the clay pot on the stove. “Pedro?” Mica turns the light on and puts Marquesito’s cage on the table. “First thing’s first.” The canary needs clean newspaper, birdseed, fresh water, and a blanket. “Then next,” Mica sighs and looks around the only room she uses as kitchen, living room, and dining room. Empty beer bottles lie on the floor next to the couch. A half-empty bottle lies, spilling the content on the floor Mica mopped that same morning before she went to work. The yellowish liquid disappears under the couch, and a swarm of tiny ants already gathers around it. She finds a muddy shoe on the couch, which Mica thinks is the most presentable piece of furniture in her house, pants rolled up like a giant condom near the bathroom door, another shoe by a flowerpot. A newspaper spreads over the metal table, which she likes to call a dining room. She’s glad she covered the tablecloth with a plastic sheet, because some kind of liquid is dripping from the table, forming a small pool on the floor. She finds a trail of footprints that gradually disappears into the other room. Mica follows them and crosses the threshold. There is no door, only a piece of translucent cloth separating the two rooms. There lies the mammoth, snoring in his drunken stupor, his ample belly moving up and down. The bristly hair on his arms, chest, and back is drenched in sweat. A thick stream of saliva flows from the corner of his mouth onto the rug. The familiar sight of his body only repulses her. Mica imagines herself indulging in a foot massage, a warn bath, a chocolate-covered polvoron, tea, soap opera, rest, spreading her wings and flying away. Again. She’s scrubbed restrooms all day. She’s battled against stingy, conceited women. Her feet are as big as motorboats. She deserves rest and pampering, but now she has more things to clean. Her monster husband lies on her bed, spreading his limbs like a hideous starfish.
Mica’s blood pressure rises like the mercury in a thermometer. In a few hours her husband will wake up expecting food on the table. If Mica doesn’t comply with his demands, he’ll use it as an excuse to beat her, and won’t let her complain about the money he has already spent, about the mess he made in the house, or about anything else. They’ve gone through the same argument and the routine beating, hundreds of times. He’ll hit her and scream that she’s useless, fat, and ugly, until he can’t do anymore, his muscles feeling numb. Then he’ll make her stand up so that he can see her face—her blood, her tears, her eyes filled with hate. Then he’ll drop her into the chair, telling her he’s not hungry anymore. He’ll go outside for a walk until he arrives at the bar.
Mica’s lips twist with bitterness. She could go out of the house, wandering through the streets until he gets tired of waiting and leave. Or she could go to her next-door neighbor’s house and ask her to let her stay there until Pedro is gone. She could run away, as she has done many times, to avoid pain. But humiliation is more difficult to avoid. It sticks to her skin like a blood-sucking leech. When she tries to peel it off, a layer of her skin comes off, leaving a permanent mark on her. Of course she could stay, eat, watch TV, wait for her husband to wake up, and let things take the usual course. She stands on the threshold, watching her chest heave up and down. She tries to picture her ribs hidden under thick layers of fat. Each time she breathes, a sharp smell of liquor fills her nostrils. “Then why did you marry him, senora?” The social worker said when she finally reported her husband’s violence. Despite the dark bruises on her face and neck, a couple of police officers, with mocking laughter, told her to take off her blouse and skirt so that they could see the alleged marks and judge whether the report was necessary. Mica remembers she left the police station with slow, heavy steps, feeling as if leeches were crawling all over her body. Mica sits astride her husband and presses a pillow over his face. Time is a snail slowly crawling. Limbs moving in spasm, smothered moans, and then calm. A fish out of water. A pristine silence. When she removes the pillow, Mica sees dull eyes that don’t stare back at her. Never again. She’ll just wash the whole bedsheet.
Translated from Spanish by Toshiya Kamei