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The Slap
Memories of a life lived in Havana
Warning: this post contains language some readers might find upsetting
I can only imagine how carefully you applied make-up on your bruise. How long it took you to work around the edges of your battered eye. I can only imagine it. For I never saw you doing it. By the time I had come back from school, got changed from my uniform into plain clothes, and sprinted up to the third floor of my block of flats, you had mutated into someone else. The damage had been done and you had “moved on”.
By the time the dominoes table had been set and you, your mother-in-law, one of your brothers-in-law and his wife had perched up together, you had put on the other face. “Nothing to see here. Shit happens. I caused the shit to happen. It was my fault. I’m the shit that makes the shit happen”. He was not there. He had already left for his beat, starched copper’s uniform, duty weapon in holster, probably whistling a melody on his way down the stairs, José José or Manzanero (he was a romantic, after all); feeling like a man.
You, left behind. You, six-months pregnant. You, sitting around the dominoes table, smiling, laughing even, the corners of your mouth rising like the temperature outside in the sultry Havana heat. The others, seeing…
