Bad Handwriting by Sara Mesa

Author:Sara Mesa
Format: epub

PAPÁ IS MADE OF RUBBER

In felt slippers, her hair tousled and damp, the neighbor throws open the door to apartment 3A and steps onto the dim landing. Minute violet blemishes dot her checks. Her nostrils flare.

“I’d rather be called a busybody than do nothing!” she says.

Through the half-open door slips a man’s voice revealing more exhaustion than deference.

“Do whatever you want. You always do want you want anyway.”

The woman marches to end of the hallway and stops in front of 3B. She lifts her hand to press the doorbell buzzer, but then slowly lowers it and glances behind her. The murmur of the television is a sign that her husband considers their argument over. She sighs, turns back to the door, and rings. First, a quick press; then, after several seconds with no acknowledgment, she holds down the button. Though she strains her ears, she can’t hear anyone inside, no response, no movement: nothing.

As she’s just about to leave, the door opens brusquely, as if somebody had been standing behind it all along. A boy of about eleven fixes his huge dark eyes on the neighbor woman who, slightly flustered, stammers a question.

“Hello, Dani … Can I speak to your parents?”

“My mom isn’t here right now,” he says, as if preoccupied. His voice, while still child-like, is inflected with a solemness unusual for his size. “I’ll see if papá wants to come out,” he adds. “If you’ll just wait a minute …”

Daniel disappears into the shadows of the apartment. The neighbor observes, through the door separating the foyer from the entrance, bulky, unidentifiable shapes scattered down the long hallway. When her eyes adjust to the darkness, she discovers that shapes are toys, stacks of paper, small mounds of clothing strewn in corners. Only then does she spy the other child at the end of the hall. Though she can’t see him clearly, she assumes it must be the middle child, Andrés. He is engrossed, humming a little song to himself and dragging what looks like a little gadget on wheels across the floor. Despite the chaos and mess, the apartment smells good, like toast and warm pâté, the aroma of an after-school snack that briefly makes her doubt herself. Then Daniel reappears, with the serious expression of a child who knows he’s the firstborn.

“Papá says he’ll speak with you later. He can’t interrupt what he’s doing right now. That’s what he said.” The boy scratches his ear and looks at the floor. “He can’t.”

“Fine, okay.” She hesitates. “Dani, are you all okay?”

As Dani nods, well-mannered and polite, Andrés approaches silently, shuffling his feet in their wrinkled socks, a finger up his nose. The neighbor looks at him and sees that what he’s been scraping all over the floor isn’t a train or a car or any other toy, but a small, bug-eyed hamster, which he holds tightly in his dirty fist. Andrés shows her and she can see that the animal has a bloody streak running the length of its skinned belly.

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