Humiliation. Paulina Flores
the little girl go into the library. She saw her follow the route laid out by her father, because surely he was her father—although what kind of father would send a six-year-old girl to the bathroom alone?—and then she focused her attention again on the man, who lowered the kickstand, checked to be sure the bike would stay up by itself, and sat across from her at the other end of the curved steps.
He was wearing a white T-shirt and tight gray jeans. He must have been around thirty. Thin, not very tall. Dark-skinned with light eyes, his hair slicked back, his beard carefully untended. He sat with his legs wide open and he leaned forward, bringing his fists together and curving his back a little. She was wearing a blue dress and her back was also a little curved, as always. Surely men noticed things like that, she thought. She looked him straight in the eyes. He accepted the look and, after a second, glanced away. He was handsome, of course, and he knew it, and he deflected those little glances. And also, she thought, he was a man waiting for his daughter to come back from the bathroom any second.
She kept looking at him, somewhat shameless but also calm. Because it wouldn’t go any further than that. She took it as a game, a water-gun duel. She wouldn’t invest anything, she’d toss the bottle into the sea without even putting a message inside. She smoked her cigarette in a more affected manner now, as if she were a movie villain. Using thumb and forefinger. During the time it took to burn, he returned her glances a couple of times. Serious, almost offended.
The cigarette took some three minutes to burn down.
She put it out on the cement and kept the butt. She got to her feet carefully so her dress wouldn’t blow up, and at that moment she went back to the same quandary as always: Why choose such a short dress? What was she trying to prove? To then respond that it was her right, that they couldn’t diminish her own legs, that the dress was a symbol of her independence and freedom as a woman. Her freedom! She threw one last glance at the man. He didn’t respond. She turned and walked toward the library door. In the reflection in the glass, she could see him watching her go.
Well, that’s that, she thought. The messages, thousands of floating bottles. So common and at the same time always different and exciting. A little adventure, without any risk. Like seeing the ocean through a porthole.
As she went through the door, the man was already part of her past, like the cigarette butt she would now throw out in the bathroom. The bathroom. The little girl. She was so . . . singular. What would become of her?
She thought, as she walked, that if she’d been the little girl whose father sent her to the bathroom alone, she would run away.
She’d give him a little scare. That’s what she’d do.
She remembered how once, when she was very little, she’d lost her parents at the supermarket. She’d wandered in the dairy aisle until a guard asked her if she was lost. She nodded. He took her to the information desk and left her in the care of a woman with a ponytail and enormous hair-sprayed bangs, who would finish the operation with an announcement over the intercom.
“Are you looking for your parents?” asked the woman, bringing the microphone to her lips.
For some reason the woman asked for her name, not her parents’.
“What’s your name, sweetie?”
She thought for a moment and replied, “Teresa.” It was her best friend’s name.
The woman with the bangs turned on the microphone, and in a robot voice announced that Teresa had gotten lost and was waiting for her parents at the information desk.
Who doesn’t believe a child? Who would doubt a little girl’s motives? Do children even have motives?
No, children act without thinking. They let themselves be carried along. They follow the invisible path traced by their father’s arm, his charming eyes.
So a half hour passed and no one came for her, for Teresa. They sat her on the information counter and lent her some rubber stamps and a blank piece of paper to entertain herself. She stamped thousands of birthdays—hers, her father’s, her mother’s, her grandmother’s, her best friend’s. In the end, she signed the document as if it were a will. Because she was always thinking about that, about her will.
Her parents saw her as they were passing by with the cart full of bags.
“Claudia!” they said in unison, surprised to find her so settled in behind the information desk.
The woman with the bangs looked at her openmouthed, and she, Claudia, lowered her eyes.
The misunderstanding was fixed with some uncomfortable laughter and some smiling and head-shaking from her parents. All of them laughing, as if it were a scene from Home Alone. No one asked for explanations. No one doubted that they were Claudia’s parents, or that she was Claudia and not Teresa.
Children don’t lie, but adults are the ones you believe.
The final words are adult.
When she snapped out of the memory, she’d already tossed the cigarette butt and was washing her hands before the mirror.
That’s what I would do, she said to herself again as she came out of the bathroom, and then she looked around for the little girl.
There she was, standing with a guard, trying to ignore his objections and go out through the library’s other door. Lost.
She smiled and went toward her.
“You have to go out through that door over there,” she said, and the girl shot her a quick glance and went back to staring at the wrong door.
The guard seemed even more disconcerted at her intervention in the matter. “Why through the other door? Is she with you?”
Neither of them cleared up his confusion. They moved away from him.
“There’s your dad, see him?” she said, and then she also traced an invisible line with her arm, like the wake of a torpedo moving through water.
The girl didn’t respond or move, just looked up at her with that flirtatious gaze.
“Your dad. There. Your dad?”
He was no more than twenty meters away. Through the window Claudia could clearly see the man who was handsome and knew it. Sitting down. There he was. Even a three-year-old would have known how to get back, but the girl’s eyes were empty, as if she were blind.
Claudia turned back toward the guard, uncomfortable. She tried to catch the father’s attention with some ridiculous gestures. He wasn’t even looking inside. He seemed very entertained with his own fists and the time on his hands. What could she do? The man was already part of her past. She couldn’t go back out now, she couldn’t turn back the clock. And with the little girl in tow! She took a few steps in the direction her own index finger was pointing, and then the girl took her other hand.
All right. So that’s how it’ll be.
They walked toward the exit holding hands, and finally the man saw them through the glass.
He opened his eyes wide and jumped to his feet.
She walked with her back even more stooped than usual in her role as superhero, but once they came out into Parque Bustamante she straightened up; she didn’t want him thinking she was crazy enough to kidnap his daughter just for one more glance from him. She wasn’t coming back for him, but for the little girl.
“Lost again?” the man asked with a trace of humor when they reached him. He had already sat back down.
“She was lost,” Claudia said, and she felt stupid for overexplaining, but went on anyway: “She was trying to go out the other door.”
He smiled at her. “Thank you.”
She smiled back. The little girl let go of her hand, and she was sorry and stood there a few more seconds, dragging out the moment. Would another cigarette do the trick?
“Thank you,” he repeated while the girl snuggled