Mountain of garbage

 It´s nap time and Julia is not going to sleep, she just arrived from the geriatric where her mother is being taken care of by Marita for the past months, she was the nurse who used to stayed with her on alternate days.

Julia’s bony fingers, the same ones grandmother used to twist when she lied, graze the wall at the height of her hip, they go along the edge of the black line that constrains every wall of the house as a strap. It smells like dark mould, it’s sweet, in a certain way like cinnamon. She drops the backpack over the floor, carpeted in mud. She gets closer to the bookcases. She massages her neck, she’s tired, it´s because the 9 hours she must spend on La Plata’s bus station announcing arrivals and departures. She bends down, that fallen photo frame had her father’s picture. They were on San Martín’s square swings. Now the transparent layer over the paper has an air bubble inside. Julia presses it, and very slowly her child’s face appears, like a circular stain left by a rusted coin in a pocket, or the unintelligible shapes that dry petals leave inside books. It’s like a half-moon, and also like a smile. Julia softly runs her fingertip along, what’s white, what’s gone below her hand, it’s the spirit that takes care of her when there is no more strength.

Up on the bookcase, on the third shelve, without her clothes and sure of herself, a Barbie doll awaits sitting by a Dickens’ book, Hard Times – For these Times. She still remembers when she stripped it to see what was beneath the clothes. When her mother was not watching, she untied its blonde hair and slowly crawled her fingers through it but when she arrived from school, and by noon, everything was in an inexplicable order.

Behind her, the fridge has fallen, the stove has fallen, the table, the cups, the washing machine, the 78’s records grandfather used to keep: Addio, mia bella, addio/ l'armata se ne va/ se non partissi anch'io/ sarebbe una viltà.

Julia leaves those wet records over the same mud cover that´s covering them. She is going to open a window so air can get in from some corner. The yellowy fabric make slow heavy moves, but seems like dancing, shy. The light is a velvety layer that stretches over everything in there, with very thin hairs casting shadows over the surfaces. The air thickens in flying infinite white dots. Julia stares at them shinning each one at its own turn and draw their gaze to the little woman sitting on the third shelve of the bookcase. It has the hair untied as Julia likes it and it stands, naked, patient, over the peak of the words.