Julie by Mariana Enríquez

 

JULIE

By Mariana Enríquez

Translated from the SPANISH by MEGAN MCDOWELL

 

TO READ THIS STORY IN SPANISH, CLICK HERE.

She came from the United States straight to my house in Buenos Aires — they didn’t want her in some hotel while they looked for an apartment to rent. My gringa cousin, Julie: she’d been born in Argentina, but when she was two, her parents — my aunt and uncle — had migrated to the States. They settled in Vermont: my uncle worked at Boeing, and my aunt — my dad’s sister — birthed children, decorated the house, and secretly held spiritist meetings in her beautiful, spacious living room. Rich blond Latinos of German heritage: their neighbors didn’t really know how to place them, since they came from South America but their last name was Meyer. Even so, their firstborn’s features betrayed the infiltrated strain of Native blood that came from my Indigenous grandmother: Julie had the dark dead eyes of a rat, untamable hair always standing on end, skin the color of wet sand. I’m pretty sure my aunt even started telling people she was adopted. My dad got so mad when he heard that rumor that he stopped writing and calling his sister for at least a year. 

Spiderweb by Mariana Enriquez

Spiderweb

by Mariana Enriquez

Translated, from the Spanish, by Megan McDowell.

Mariana Enriquez / Tela de araña

December 11, 2016

It’s harder to breathe in the humid north, up there so close to Brazil and Paraguay, the rushing river guarded by mosquito sentinels and a sky that can turn from limpid blue to stormy black in minutes. You start to struggle as soon as you arrive, as if a brutal arm were wound around your chest, squeezing. And everything is slower; during siesta there is only a rare bicycle in the empty streets, the ice-cream shops seem abandoned, with their ceiling fans spinning for no one, and the chicharras shriek hysterically in their hiding places. I’ve never seen a chicharra. My aunt says they’re horrible creatures, spectacular flies with green wings that vibrate and smooth black eyes that seem to look right at you. I don’t like the word chicharra. They’re also called cicadas, which I think has a smoother sound. If they were always cicadas, their summer noise would remind me of the violet flowers of the jacaranda trees along the Paraná, or of the white stone mansions with their staircases and their willows. But as chicharras they make me think of the heat, rotting meat, blackouts, drunks who stare with bloodshot eyes from their benches in the park.

The Intoxicated Years by Mariana Enríquez

 

Mariana Enríquez

The Intoxicated Years 

by Mariana Enríquez

Translated by Megan McDowell

1989

That summer the electricity went out for six-hour stretches on the government’s orders; the country didn’t have any more energy, they said, though we didn’t really understand what that meant. Our parents couldn’t get over how the Minister of Public Works had announced the measures necessary to avoid a widespread blackout from a room lit only by a hurricane lamp: like in a slum, they repeated. What would a widespread blackout be like? Would we remain in the dark forever? That possibility was incredible. Stupid. Ridiculous. Useless adults, we thought, how useless. Our mothers cried in the kitchen because they didn’t have enough money or there was no electricity or they couldn’t pay the rent or inflation had eaten away at their salaries until they didn’t cover anything beyond bread and cheap meat, but we girls – their daughters – didn’t feel sorry for them. Our mothers seemed just as stupid and ridiculous as the power outages. Meanwhile, we had a van. It belonged to Andrea’s boyfriend. Andrea was the prettiest of all of us, the one who knew how to rip up jeans to make fabulous cutoffs, and wore crop tops that she bought with money she stole from her mother. The boyfriend’s name doesn’t matter. He had a van he used to deliver groceries during the week, but on weekends it was all ours. We smoked some poisonous pot from Paraguay that smelled like urine and pesticide but was cheap and effective. The three of us would smoke and then, once we were totally out of our minds, we’d get into the back of the van, which didn’t have windows or any light at all because it wasn’t designed for people, it was made to transport cans of garbanzos and peas. We would have him drive really fast, then slam on the brakes, or go around and around the traffic island at the city’s entrance. We had him speed up around corners and make us bounce over speed bumps. And he did it all because he was in love with Andrea and he hoped that one day she would love him back. We would shout and fall on top of each other; it was better than a roller coaster and better than alcohol. Sprawled in the darkness, we felt like every blow to the head could be our last and, sometimes, when Andrea’s boyfriend had to stop because he got held up at a red light, we sought each other out in the darkness to be sure we were all still alive. And we roared with laughter, sweaty, sometimes bloody, and the inside of the truck smelled of empty stomachs and onions, and sometimes of the apple shampoo we all shared. We shared a lot: clothes, the hair dryer, bikini wax. People said that we were similar, that the three of us looked alike, but that was just an illusion because we copied each other’s movements and ways of speaking. Andrea was beautiful, tall, with thin and separated legs; Paula was too blond and turned a horrible shade of red when she spent too long in the sun; I could never manage a flat belly or thighs that didn’t rub together – and chafe – when I walked.

 

Our Lady of the Quarry by Mariana Enriquez

(Translated, from the Spanish, by Megan McDowell.)

December 14, 2020

Silvia lived alone in a rented apartment of her own, with a five-foot-tall pot plant on the balcony and a giant bedroom with a mattress on the floor. She had her own office at the Ministry of Education, and a salary; she dyed her long hair jet black and wore Indian blouses with sleeves that were wide at the wrists and silver thread that shimmered in the sunlight. She had the provincial last name of Olavarría and a cousin who had disappeared mysteriously while travelling around Mexico. She was our “grownup” friend, the one who took care of us when we went out and let us use her place to smoke weed and meet up with boys. But we wanted her ruined, helpless, destroyed. Because Silvia always knew more: if one of us discovered Frida Kahlo, oh, Silvia had already visited Frida’s house with her cousin in Mexico, before he vanished. If we tried a new drug, she had already overdosed on the same substance. If we discovered a band we liked, she had already got over her fandom of the same group. We hated that her long, heavy, straight hair was colored with a dye we couldn’t find in any normal beauty salon. What brand was it? She probably would have told us, but we would never ask. We hated that she always had money, enough for another beer, another ten grams, another pizza. How was it possible? She claimed that in addition to her salary she had access to her father’s account; he was rich, she never saw him, and he hadn’t acknowledged paternity, but he did deposit money for her in the bank. It was a lie, surely. As much a lie as when she said that her sister was a model: we’d seen the girl when she came to visit Silvia and she wasn’t worth three shits, a runty little skank with a big ass and wild curls plastered with gel that couldn’t have looked any greasier. I’m talking low-class—that girl couldn’t dream of walking a runway.