Nervous System, page 8
Your gut feeling scares me, your heartburn scares me, your bloated stomach, but those people scare me more, Ella insisted, as she saw the color leave his face. El closed his eyes and stayed silent. You’re risking your hide: that unshakable certainty now came from her own gut.
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Psychiatry had realized that the body had an alternate nervous system: the chemicals used to fix troubled brains brought on adverse effects in the digestive apparatus. The gastroenterologist who was going to look inside El had explained to them that the gut has a brain of its own. He’d raised his eyelids with effort, and they saw his lacerating eyes open wide as he informed them that the brain in the guts has just as many neuroreceptors and neurotransmittors as the brain in the head.
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A lone cabin in a vibrant clearing, with a violet lake and falcons flying over in the succulent evening air. It’s growing dark, they’re rocked by the warm breath of the stars. With her head resting on his hairy stomach, she stares up at the uneasy lights of the firmament that reach them from an obsolete time. And, thinking that El is listening, she points out to him, from the hanging swing, a very bright star that in the past had been thought to be two. A binary star, she said, alpha centari, which is really three stars—there’s another one that’s very small and close by that can’t be seen with the naked eye. That would be a great subject for a thesis, don’t you think? But El isn’t listening to her; he stands up and clutches his head in his hands as if someone were howling into his ears. Did the whistling come back? He shakes his head, no, no, the whistling never left, it’s blowing softly, but this is an intense headache; his chin sinks to his chest and his hair sticks up between his fingers. Can I bring you something? Ella asks, now sitting up, alert now, thinking that his blood pressure must have risen, going over what medicines she’d put in the portable pharmacy that was her backpack. She thinks back to the dirt path without moon help croaking frogs, and she remembers that phone coverage tends to be spotty in this kind of backwater, where they’ve come to take a break from murdered workers and murderers, from neighbors partying every Friday.
This alone at last could turn out to be a lonely ending, Ella thinks, trying not to think so much, all the time, but even if she shuts off her head, her innards are still there, neurasthenic neurotic gut.
Her mind was never quiet. No mind ever was.
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And it was worse to remember that uncle Ella never met, the one who woke his wife to complain of an unbearable headache, and got up for a painkiller but never had time to find it.
But a severe headache isn’t always an aneurism, she told herself.
Repeat a hundred times, not always, not always.
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Rather than thinking about so much misfortune, why don’t you focus on your thesis?
What have you done all day? That was another of his scathing questions. Ella knew that El knew she got distracted thinking about other things. She pretended to be deaf.
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Ferocious headaches everyone had gotten used to. It happened so often: her Actor friend’s boyfriend would get a migraine and at the last minute cancel on their plans to go to the club. Then they’d go just the two of them, Ella and the Actor, who was still performing then. Neither of them anticipated that the boyfriend would have a stroke, that a hole would have to be drilled into his head to drain the blood that was putting pressure on the capsule of his skull. That soon he’d be found lying on the sticky floor of his apartment. He took too many pills, said her Actor friend, who was working in a theater ticket booth. By then they weren’t together anymore, but they still saw each other sometimes, like old brothers.
When he learned of his son’s death, the boyfriend’s father suffered a similar collapse. They were men of fragile arteries and high blood pressure, and panic attacks were particularly dangerous for them, said Ella’s Father, as if sadness were a function of the organs.
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The ancients thought that sadness came from a malign alignment of the stars.
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El dreamed again about the old neighbor who’d been buried weeks before, or maybe cremated. He moved his headstone aside, the mouth open in a mute scream, and in went El, into the howl, sliding down the esophagus toward a stomach full of acid. But, blind in those murky waters, he couldn’t find the exit and he tripped over some bones that he recognized as his own. At the other end of the sheet Ella had the passing, drowsy impression that he was babbling a string of words that rhymed with sorry sin sacrum, and she thought he was dreaming about her.
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The Father often told the story of when he was in his thirties and a worker came into his hospital, groaning. My thinking bone hurts, doctor, said the worker, taking off his cap and pointing to his temple.
But her Father’s osseous knowledge was limited, much as he insisted on discussing bones with El, making every effort to contradict him. To give him lessons about forensic studies. But you aren’t a bone specialist, El protested one day, tired of the Father’s disdain. When it comes to living bones I know a lot more than you, replied the Father, watching El rise indignantly from the table. Ella stood up, too, and left the Father alone, drumming his fingernails on the tablecloth.
I’ve had it up to here with your Father, he told Ella. I just can’t stand his arrogance. It builds up, like an allergy, it affects me more and more. Now you’re sounding just like him, Ella retorted, smiling, and El smiled, too, in resignation. Your Father is contagious.
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You were screaming, Ella said one night, shaking him awake. El opened his eyes like a blind man and shoved Ella’s hands from his shoulders, then jumped from the bed and stared at her in fear. I was strangling you, he said, and he rubbed his hands on the sheet.
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The day of the double probe was approaching. Ella started to think about what they were going to put into El between his lips and legs. She thought about El’s body, but she ended up remembering that of the man she’d never managed to love.
Intimate portrait, dead of night. Ella announced her departure to the man, though she had nowhere to go. All she could leave was the room they shared, and wait for the next morning to move. She went into the small room next door, and while she was taking off her dress and hanging it over the back of a chair, the man forced the door and gave her a shove that knocked the wind out of her. She saw him unbuckle his belt and she turned her face to keep from seeing his body so close, upright, assailing her on the futon. That’s how he tried to dissuade her. The man releasing his rage onto her, insulting her, biting her, spitting in her eyes. He kept coming at her and Ella knew the blows would grow harder and they did, but she felt that she no longer felt anything, that she’d come unstuck from herself and all of her became an arm stretched out and a hand that fumbled and found, on a nightstand or in a drawer or on the floor, a stick dildo dried paintbrush. Possessed by a strength she’d been honing for centuries and by her clenched fist, she stuck that rod into him, from behind. She pushed it until she felt that whatever was in her hand had disappeared inside. Her fingers strangled by a rectum.
An object that could have been a fork or a coffee spoon, a knife left carelessly beneath the window.
Because even before that night another man had come at her. In a bend of the past. In her own country. She’d been leaving a party in the moonless early morning, heels tapping softly on uneven pavement. Her feet hurt; she leaned against a wall while she took off her shoes and wondered where she’d parked her car. She was rubbing an ankle when a stranger came out of nowhere and pushed her against the climbing vines, not speaking, not threatening her, his breathing agitated in her ear as if he were more scared than she was, though it wasn’t fear he was feeling. He held her neck, pressed her face against the wall crushed snails warm slime. On her thighs some rough fingers multiplied and tore at her underwear, went into her like slippery worms, covered her nose so she’d open her mouth. Fingers that entered her dry open lip-full mouth and muffled her scream with her own underpants while the stranger fit his body behind her.
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If she’d found a spoon. Some sharp scissors. A knife to murder that memory. But there are moments that no weapon can destroy.
Nor were there tools that could destroy her older brother’s rage.
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Take refuge in dance clubs full of men who only seek kiss punish other men.
Early morning, tired of dancing, her Actor friend drives them home in his small red hot rod. They’re crossing the city. The Actor’s boyfriend is in the passenger seat, and in the back seat Ella leans against the shoulder of her Friend, who has just become a doctor. They speed through an intersection strewn with glass. Three cars recently crashed, up on the sidewalk. Stop, stop, shrieks the Friend, a specialist in urgent care. And the car brakes and Ella and the Friend run back to the site of the accident.
They’re left in the car, those men without women.
Red flashing lights illuminate the street.
And they hear a voice wailing. The man in the truck is screaming about his ankle but the ER Friend keeps going. Pain isn’t a priority, she says breathlessly, pain is life, it’s consciousness and possible recovery. There’s an old man standing up and staggering, and as the Friend passes she orders him to lie down on the pavement. The corner starts to fill with disheveled neighbors wakened by the crash, and Ella, more awake than anyone, helps her Friend, ordering them with a newfound authority to clear the sidewalk, call an ambulance, bring a flashlight for the doctor in charge. And for the men to pull out the wounded who are still in those accordioned cars. Hold their heads, don’t let their necks bend, the fragile backbone.
Protocol is to find the fallen. Check their vital signs in two or three words. Conscious. Alert. Oriented. Because a pair of open eyes is never a guarantee. Because breathing means little. What day is it. What year. What month. Who is the president. And if they respond correctly they must be abandoned ipso facto to look for those who can’t respond, those who are at risk but can still be saved.
Abandon those who can still complain and the hopelessly wounded, the irreversible cases.
The girl was imprisoned under the metal and had to be extracted without damaging her spine, which was already broken. Lay her on the pavement, unbutton her pants. Check neurological signs.
In her dilated pupils shone the distant red light and the white light, close-up and devastating, from the flashlight the Friend turned on to see if her pupils responded. She put a knuckle between her breasts and dug it in to hurt her. Because a live wounded person, even if they’re unconscious, would try to get away from that stabbing pain. The girl barely cringed and moved her elbows, and instead of protecting herself, she balled up her fists facing outward, like an articulated doll’s.
And that head, attached to the body as though by a spring, in perpetual motion.
That hoarse guttural dissonant gasp, that panting of narrow gills. Pharynx—that’s to say wrong, because live breath comes from the larynx, her Friend would say later, light-years away from that clear night. That night the Friend decreed there was no hope for the girl. Dead? Ella asked, disconcerted, but she’s still breathing. Breathing erratically, the Friend corrected. That rattle comes from brain death.
The Father, who had been the Friend’s internal medicine professor, would confirm her diagnosis.
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The Friend had asked if she could spend the night with Ella. Her roommates had gone to the beach and she was afraid of going home alone, of putting the key in the lock alone and fumbling on the wall for a light switch. She had never overcome her fear of the dark leftover from the closet where her grandmother made her hide during the police raids in search of her parents. In there she couldn’t see those men who always repeated the same thing: where are they, where’ve you got them—as if her grandmother had swallowed them, as if the grandmother wasn’t wondering the same thing, as if she didn’t want to ask them the same question— open your mouth, you old cunt, we’ll cut out your tongue for being an accessory, and they’d shake the grandmother, kick her until she lost consciousness.
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El swallowed half of the intestinal wash that started right away to do its plumbing job. They both suffered the excremental burst. El was emptied out, Ella stared into space, diverting her thoughts.
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And though it was nearly dawn when they were dropped off at Ella’s apartment, they couldn’t fall asleep. They’d gotten into bed with a chamomile tea to shake off the tragedy of the dead girl. Then they heard steps above their heads. Someone was walking on the roof— more than one person. And the balcony was long and narrow and the locks on the glass doors were rusted. The Friend grabbed a steak knife from the drawer in the kitchen and Ella, equally afraid of the footsteps and the metal blade, called the police. And a cop came with a laughing air and let fall a Ladies, how many drinks have you had? Quiet, Ella blurted as if addressing an impertinent child. Listen. The steps were above their heads again. And the cop called reinforcements, who came immediately, and they all went up to the roof, but there was no one there. And the cops smiled ironically, and both girls were still in nightgowns, and Ella asked them again to lower their voices so they could hear, all of them together in the silence that followed, the creaking footsteps of those bodies that weren’t there.
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A body is always somewhere, El observes, furrowing his brow.
That wasn’t true. A body could vanish, Ella thinks, hating all those professors who stopped answering the messages she sent asking for help with her dissertation. One by one, they’d evaporated.
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It’s no longer a state secret that the cadavers belong to recent immigrants and that they aren’t the only ones: others are discovered during the excavation for the foundation of a building, and in a mass grave beside the river with shovels swastikas knives banners proclaiming death to migrants. Shit, El says, twisted up by cramps, it’s happening before our eyes! Breaking news! And though he had already swallowed half the liquid and was in and out of the bathroom, he decided to postpone the exam. He couldn’t be absent the whole next day if his boss was still away.
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El opened a bottle of wine and poured two glasses. He asked her to sit down, he wanted to say something. Ella ran her hand through her hair and raised her eyebrows and sat down without knowing how to look at him, because she was afraid it was going to hurt. I’m all ears, she said, not daring to pick up the glass. Why don’t we leave? El asked. ¿A dónde? she said, realizing what he was suggesting, that they go back to the country of the past, and she asked, to live? Certainly not to die, El parried, smiling moodily. This country is finished and it’s going to finish us. Ella looked at him in astonishment: I don’t have any future in my country of the past.
But that wasn’t true either.
The only true thing was that Ella was starting to doubt.
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El traveled to the capital, and Ella stayed working more on her classes than on research for her thesis. She kept wasting human oneiric cosmic time but she wondered, to excuse herself from work, just who could dive into astral abstractions with all the terrifying news going on around them. All the victims were, like her, immigrants.
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She was still alone in the apartment and in her manuscript when the doorbell rang: it was a scientist from El’s team who lived in the neighborhood. She didn’t recognize his voice and at first she thought he was drunk, but he was asking for a painkiller, the strongest Ella had. He mentioned the medicine chest, and she understood that El had described it to his inner circle. What else had he told them? And though she didn’t know the man, she let him up, waited on the threshold for the scientist who was now introducing himself with an unintelligible first and last name. Come in, she said, watching him clutch his bearded jaw with one hand. The dentist had filled one molar and broken another, but the scientist had realized only once the anesthesia wore off and the dentist’s office was closed. The pain was unspeakable: he couldn’t open his mouth. Ella called her Mother to ask if she’d left any extra ordinary painkillers in the first-aid kit. Of course, her Mother said eagerly. A vial of dipyrone, a gram that she would have to inject for the scientist. But this injection wouldn’t be like the vaccines Ella had learned to give herself. She would have to inject his gluteus. That was the word the Mother used with Ella, and then Ella used it with the scientist who was lying on his boss’s bed. He’d have to pull down his pants and underwear, and he obeyed, he surrendered to her clumsy hands while she filled the syringe and flicked it with a fingernail to get any air bubbles out. She was slapping him so he would relax and the hypnotic hammer fork needle wouldn’t hurt so much, because that was what her Mother, still on the phone, had suggested. The Mother was telling her to divide the gluteus into four parts and inject the outer upper quadrant, that she should avoid the ilium, and if the needle did hit it, she should withdraw. That was absurd, it was impossible to touch bone, the Father would say later, because the scientific ass was round and hairy and adult and the bone was sunk very deep beneath muscle. But Ella didn’t know that, and, afraid of striking skeleton, she didn’t dare force the needle. She rested the point against the flesh and pushed slowly, does it hurt much? and he let out a groan that was hard to decipher. Ten or twelve? Ella said, knowing the scientist didn’t under stand the question, that he couldn’t answer, tell me to stop if I’m hurting you, but she said it with no intention of stopping, pressing harder until the syringe went into the skin and the needle disappeared and Ella could finally give him the painkiller.
