The Body Where I Was Born by Guadalupe Nettel Read Free Book Online

was on a trip dealing with some stuff that had to do with his business in San Diego. After three months of bureaucratic procedures, the French government gave my mother a grant that let her vanish. Which she did, in mid-July. As decided, we stayed in Mexico, in the same apartment where we had always lived. But instead of my father, the person who came to look after us was our maternal grandmother. That, Dr. Sazlavski, turned out to be the most grim and confusing period of my entire life. Why the hell our father stayed out of the country was something no one could tell us. What could have been so important to keep him from being with us when we needed him the most? Why would my mother seize this opportunity to travel even though it meant leaving us in the hands of her aged and conservative mother, whose ideas embodied exactly the kind of upbringing she didn’t want to give us? Why, after preaching the importance of always telling the truth, did no one give us a convincing explanation? The only person there for me to ask was my grandmother herself. Her answer was cryptic and always the same: “Since when do ducks shoot rifles?” she’d say, meaning that children should not demand accountability from adults.

 
     
    II.
    While the two parental hemispheres never gave me and my brother any navigational problems, the nineteenth-century grandmother universe was the least hospitable territory we’d known. This universe was governed, at least in my opinion, by completely arbitrary laws that took me months to assimilate. Many of them were based on the supposed inferiority of women. The way my grandmother saw it, a little girl’s duty, first and foremost—even before going to school—was to help clean the home. Furthermore, ladies were supposed to dress and behave “appropriately,” whereas men could do whatever they pleased. So it was that I, a fan of the jeans and athletic pants that let me comfortably climb stone walls, had to go back several decades in fashion evolution to incorporate into my everyday outfits lacey dresses and patent-leather shoes. This, in the middle of the eighties, the decade my grandmother hadn’t noticed we were in. A real blow to anyone’s dignity. Little girls were not supposed to run around in the street loosey-goosey and play with boys, and they certainly were not supposed to climb trees. That we should question her decisions—something our teachers and parents had taught us to do—showed in my grandmother’s eyes a lack of respect and a dangerous demonstration of insolence that needed to be repressed, swiftly and mercilessly. On top of all her general prejudices, my grandmother was constantly criticizing the way I walked and how I moved. She made my mother’s corrective agenda look like child’s play. Though she never said an offensive word about my limited eyesight, she constantly criticized the ungainly posture that my mother had so viciously attacked early on. According to her, there was a hump forming in my back that looked more like a camel’s than a cockroach’s.
    “For the love of God, stand up straight!” she’d command ten times a day at least, her voice shaking the walls of the apartment. She even gave me a back brace, which disappeared into the farthest corner of my closet. She called my curly hair (very similar to hers at my age, by the way) unkempt whenever I didn’t wear it straightened and tied back. Even the way I spoke was something she constantly criticized. She accused me for no reason of pronouncing my s ’s like a Colombian and demanded that I practice keeping my tongue away from my teeth to avoid whistling. I didn’t do it, obviously.
    Unlike me, who got on her nerves constantly, my brother received my grandmother’s evident adoration. She endlessly extolled his virtues and, when speaking to other members of the family, told them all how wonderful her grandson was and how his mere presence brought her such joy. I remember once, at the very beginning of her