Chapter 26
The night after Louise came to comida, I had the old dream from my childhood.
I hadn’t had it in more than a year. It’s always the same.
I am hitting my mother, but the blows won’t land.
My fist rebounds without doing damage, as though she’s made out of rubber.
Her face, no longer fully remembered, is always a slightly different version of itself.
But I know it’s her, and I hit harder, aiming clear through her to the wall behind, hindered by air that is gummy and thick.
In a frenzy of frustrated rage, I push her to the ground, tear at her clothes, kick her, claw at her stomach with its ugly purple birthmark, her chest and face.
What it is that’s enraged me, I never know. Only that, when I can’t hurt her with my body, I begin to rain down words. Every slur and condemnation I can think of, spit flying from my mouth: Fucking cunt! Bitch! Selfish whore!
Still, she smiles. That moony, self-satisfied smile, stubbornly asserting a reality in which she is blameless and even noble. Asserting an ownership that I can never free myself from. Because nothing, neither blows nor words, will ever break her surface.