The Body Where I Was Born Read Online Free Page A

me still to remember the things that excited me in those early years. It was unpredictable things like words, intonations in a voice, or watching a public display of affection, but also certain sounds like the whistle of the man who sold sweet potatoes or of the man who sharpened knives. All these little nothings were calls that sent me running to the handrail or my bedroom. Sometimes I see puppies who when presented with any chance of friction will publically yield to their own expectant pleasure. That was me when I was seven years old, a little girl with an unbridled carnal appetite who would succumb to a kind of desire for furniture, armchairs, the edge of a table, the front rim of the sink, or the metal poles of the swing set.
    Even though no one told me, it wasn’t long before I understood that sex was not only something pleasurable like chocolate; it was also a means to hurt someone, deeply and determinately. It was my childhood habit of listening through closed doors that led to this discovery. One afternoon, our neighbor from the last apartment on the fourth floor came to visit. She was the mother of two girls who lived downstairs from us in a clean and very organized apartment with enormous fish tanks that I still remember. Her daughters were beautiful Argentine girls with dark hair and intensely blue, catlike eyes. On several occasions we had crossed paths in the plaza and shared friendly but shy exchanges. It goes without saying that our building complex, with its seemingly bucolic gardens, also had a macabre and at times dangerous dimension. As I said before, our unit had housed the athletes of the ’68 Olympics. That time and those games constitute, as the whole world knows, the symbol of the worst massacre committed in Mexico and the start of the wave of repression that characterized the continent through the next decade. And yet, as paradoxical as it might seem, these buildings were full of leftist South Americans who had come to Mexico to escape being assassinated in their own fascist countries, as my mother explained to us in a solemn tone. Back to our neighbor: I remember that on this occasion she looked haggard. My mother was very sweet with her, sat her down in the living room and offered her tea, then sharply told me to go to my room. Bit by bit, between sobs and from the clipped phrases I was able to pick up from the hallway, our neighbor explained how the day before, in the same garden where I often gave my dolls baths, a janitorial worker had abused her daughter Yanina in broad daylight. I didn’t understand what had happened, but I knew the man had done something horrible and irrevocable to the girl. I also understood that despite all her pain the woman had come to tell my mother to be extra careful, to watch out so the same thing wouldn’t happen to me. When our neighbor left, I tried to coax more information out of my mother, but she changed the subject. There was no human power that could convince her to explain what had happened to the girl from downstairs. It wasn’t until nighttime, when my dad came home from the office and my parents thought my brother and I were asleep, that my mom told the story in full and I was able to pick up a few details. My dad agreed that it was best not to tell us anything, but they would accompany us to the plaza from then on. I was up all night crying and thinking about Yanina and how terrible sex could be, scared of suffering something similar. It was the first time I encountered a taboo, and I do understand why it went this way, but I would like you to tell me, Dr. Sazlavski, isn’t the effect of silence much worse on children who are used to asking and knowing about everything? Wouldn’t it have been better to tell us about the dangers lurking close-by? Or at least more pertinent than sowing confusion about things that have nothing to do with the day-to-day life of a seven-year-old? Yanina was never the same. Once a flirtatious and exceedingly feminine