Elena Knows by Claudia Piñeiro

Author:Claudia Piñeiro
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: elena knows;Claudia Piñeiro;charco press
Publisher: Charco Press
Published: 2021-06-01T16:11:22+00:00

5

Elena lets herself be driven along. She decides to take her medication early. She knows it’s okay, that even if Herself, that fucking whore illness, might not like it, Elena can manipulate her time with pills, although only barely. She opens her handbag, rummages inside and pulls off a piece of the cheese sandwich she packed before leaving home, she knows the pill is easier to swallow when it’s mixed with the wet crumbs, which is why she carries that piece of bread and cheese beside her wallet and keys. She chews, swallows, some crumbs fall to the floor of the taxi and Elena tries to cover them with the paper mat before the driver notices. When she finishes chewing she opens her handbag again, she finds the pill case and the juice box, she rips the straw from its wrapper, she takes the pill, pinched tightly between her thumb and index finger, and places it in her mouth, as far back as she can. She holds it in place with her tongue. She stabs the little straw into the juice box and drinks. The pill won’t go down her throat, it won’t go past her tonsils. She takes another sip. The taxi driver is talking to her, she ignores him, breathes in deeply through her nose to keep from suffocating. A honk startles her, then another. Idiot, the driver says, and if Elena could see she’d know he was referring to the man who didn’t make it to the other side of the avenue before the light changed. But if I run him over I’m the one who’d have to pay for being in the right. Elena takes another sip, pressing the box to make the juice come out faster and even though the pill doesn’t move it begins to dissolve from all the liquid. If she could just lean her head back a little she’d be able to swallow it, but she can’t, her body won’t permit that little shake of the head everyone else does to swallow an aspirin. So she leans sideways on the seat, she slides down to help the pill get over that hill it can’t climb, and this time she manages it, the pill scrapes down her throat and disappears. In relief, Elena drops onto her arm, straightens the juice box so that it doesn’t spill, lays on her side across the seat. She waits. Someone walks up to the car and tries to clean the front windshield. Elena can see the squeegee through the space between the seats, but the taxi driver honks his horn, repeatedly, until the hand wipes away the detergent it had splashed onto the windshield and disappears. Elena can’t see who the hand belongs to, probably a kid because it was a small hand, because it wasn’t wrinkled, but these are merely guesses, from her position she can only be certain of what she sees on the dirty roof of the taxi that is driving her. What animals,

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