The Brooklyn Rail

Initially, it might seem like Claudia Peña Claros is offering more of a word landscape than a story. “Room” dismantles traditional story structure—there’s no discernable beginning, middle, and end, yet there’s a striking sense that something real is happening. The closest analogue I can find is diachronic photography, when time itself becomes the protagonist and plot; a diachronic photographer documents changes in person (think of Noah Kalin’s “Everyday,” comprising twenty years of self portraits all stitched together in one youtube video) or place (David Maisel’s landscape photography and Library of Dust come to mind). Space is foregrounded in “Room” and characters are only briefly glimpsed at the edge of the frame. The result is a brilliant time-lapse, with conventions flitting at the periphery.

 

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It was the only home we’d have: a rented room that served as kitchen, bedroom, and dining room all at once. Just that little space between thick adobe walls, the ceiling moldy from rain leaking through the roof. Flies entered through the single window overlooking the street, then wheeled in circles around the kitchen. A double-leaf door opened onto the dust from the river of cars accelerating, making their way out of town.

Once he ran out into the road, brandishing a broom. He clenched his teeth, screamed insults. He went to strike the car honking its horn. At the sight of his fury, the driver locked his door and rolled his window up. He started to hit the trunk and tail lights. The red glass shattered onto the pavement; passers-by stopped to behold his wrath. Then the driver got out of the car. They shouted and shoved. He expanded his back and puffed out his chest, looking larger than he was. His hoarse voice filled the street, but people started yelling: they took the driver’s side. The stranger said he was crazy. Then he said it to me, that he was crazy, regarding me with curiosity and compassion. Yes, I was his wife.

Our house had another door in back, the door to the sunlight in the yard, and the route to the only bathroom in the house: a dark little space where we’d retreat with our roll of toilet paper and the apprehension that someone might knock and we’d have to say just a second, that they’d recognize our voice and think certain thoughts. The landlords had cut off the hot water in the shower.

This was our home: a recess of dust and flies, an old cot, child-sized, and a crushed mattress, pierced by springs that grazed our backs. Beside it, almost at arm’s length, was a full bookshelf that reached almost all the way to the ceiling and divided the space in two. The books were his, all secondhand. When the food smell faded, you could feel, if you closed your eyes, the presence of the yellow flowers, the ink of the letters, the glue of the binding. Across the room: a small table, three chairs, and his tools.

We had all those afternoons. I can still remember one time, talking in the yard. He’d been collecting bits of grass in his hand. Let’s go in? he said. The light was waning. Yeah, let’s go in. He stood, opened his palm, and blew. I was still sitting on the lawn and all that green confetti floated in the air, tumbled softly toward me, onto my head. We often passed the hours lying in bed as he talked. Tell me, he’d say, then interrupt. Sometimes he’d insist on reviewing the days, seeking explanations. He wanted the details, the stories. Those men, the men before him, filled his thoughts. He’d ask. He’d want my account, settling scores as if he’d always been there.

He’d talk and his own words would enrage him. Every so often he’d raise his voice and I’d say don’t yell, or he’d nearly cry and press his head between his hands. Then I’d lie still between him and the wall. And he’d grab his bicycle and ride off. I’m going out, he’d say, and emerge onto the light of the street. Where would he go. I’d stay inside the adobe, with all his things, and leaf through the books. I knew he’d come back at night and be hungry. He wouldn’t say much then. He’d just ask what I’d done, if I’d gone to the market, if anyone had come by, if his cell phone had rung, but you didn’t answer, right? Come on, let’s go to bed. Don’t fall asleep, come here. And that was that.

We had to turn off the light at ten. If the landlady saw any light creeping under the door, or heard any sound, she’d appear in her bathrobe, dragging an oxygen tank and speaking through the mask that covered half her face. She’d bang on the door and complain, the electricity bill goes through the roof, and threaten us, we can’t pay that, they’ll cut the power on us all, until she couldn’t hear anything or see anything in any of the rooms. After that first round, she’d come by two or three more times, spying through the narrow spaces the curtains couldn’t conceal, supposedly to see if anyone was still up, even her own daughters, in the company of a little radio, a covered lamp.

Her husband was retired, from a job at a bank I think, and he managed all the money. Whenever she wanted to send one of her daughters out for bread, she had to ask him for cash. But sometimes she’d find him grumbling, everyone’s always asking me for money, and he wouldn’t give her any. Then she’d say no to her daughter, just with a shake of her head, when he wasn’t looking, and the girl would retreat to her room and wait for the mood to pass. There were three of them, all girls. The youngest would finish high school that year and was the prettiest. The oldest had a boyfriend, a police corporal, who was forbidden from visiting during the week.

We weren’t the only tenants. Two students lived in back, brothers from the countryside, sharing a tiny room. Our next-door neighbor was an older man who worked in a shoe factory. He biked to work and was always the first one up in the morning. He’d wash at the basin in the yard, sponging down his white torso, the drooping flesh of his back, and then push his bike down the hall and onto the street. It was a blue mountain bike. He was the one who’d open the main door every day and leave it open, propped with a brick so that the wind, when there was wind, which was almost never, wouldn’t slam it shut. We never learned anything about him because he didn’t talk to anyone. He’d just nod his head in greeting as he left for work in the morning and the same thing when he came back after dark.

The brothers from the countryside lived alone, and the youngest wore pants that were too short for him. Once they brought in a stray kitten they’d found. They thought no one had seen, but the landlord was sitting in the shade of the broom tree when they came in. Glenda! In the yard. The landlady appeared, dragging her tank. A few minutes later we saw her walk past our door with a look of disgust. She’d left the oxygen somewhere and seized the spindly creature by the scruff of the neck to carry it outside, the dumb white dog wagging its tail behind her. One of the boys had sat in the hallway by his room, following her mournfully with his eyes, but when he saw me watching he stood and closed the door behind him.

That’s what the rooms were like: dark caves where things were hidden. The landlords and their daughters always kept their own doors locked.

But there was the yard, with the weeds tangled together, the chipped pots acting as planters, vines climbing the walls to the roof, the windows of all the rooms gazing out onto that wild, growing center. I liked the mornings. I’d open the door and the sun would already be falling onto all the leaves. Even though nobody tended it and the plants grew every which way, the garden retained a sense of old order. There was a grapevine in the middle, a bit dried out, but it still yielded grapes when the season came.

I’d carry out a tub of dirty clothes to wash. The rooms didn’t have running water, and we’d collect it to cook and wash up before bed or when we woke up. There were no thorns, but all the paths were overgrown with grass, branches buckling under the weight of the fruit, the tumbledown armchair someone abandoned among the geraniums, the dog sprawled in the shade to nurse her pups. You had to make your way through all those leaves, those branches, those green stumps about to set, to reach the water in the only sink, which had a broken drainpipe. Clover and broad pale green leaves sprouted from the damp earth, and we’d tread on them as we passed, and they’d die.

There we’d scrub our clothes to rid them of dust, sweat, the grease on our necks. Sometimes I’d do the scrubbing, and he’d stand in front of me, reading aloud from some book, his thick lips, his perfect teeth, the waterfall voice as if spilling from a deep cavern, occasionally offering me half an orange to suck. Other times he’d scrub.

There were also times I’d go alone, with the kitchen cloths, the dirty sheets, and I’d soap them up and spread them in the sun, trying to get the stains out. Then I’d stay in the yard, among the weeds. I’d nod off in a patch of grudging shade that eased the heat for a while, and which slowly changed as the minutes passed, marking different places on my legs, my face. Then, lifting my head, I’d still be in the garden and the sun would be in a different spot, or dusk would be falling and I’d rinse out the clothes and return to the room. He’d be back soon.

But one night he didn’t come and that was the longest. I thought he might not return at all. That afternoon we’d gone down to the river and stopped at the market on our way back. Your feet are dirty, he’d said. We went to the faucet where the vendors cleaned their vegetables and he began to wash them for me. His hands rubbed my soles, my heels, gently cleaned between my toes. I felt so tired, and he was bent before me, training the stream of water toward one foot, then the other. In the middle of all that gentle touch, he asked me about a name, was that him? I said yes, a throwaway yes, which is what he was always looking for, how many times had he asked, and only now, succumbing to his tenderness, had I given it to him.

Then he shut off the water and got brusquely to his feet, thrust his hands to his hips. In that moment, though, one of the women from the market came over. She was furious. This was the faucet for washing vegetables, we were getting everything dirty. He tried to make her laugh, which only made her angrier, so he grabbed my arm and pulled me away. Back on the street, you’re hurting me, I said, and he let me go. He walked quickly back to our place, and I followed.

Indoors, the questions multiplied. He clenched his teeth, looked at me as if I had something filthy and terrible inside. Now he was a wild animal confined to a dark and suffocating space. His steps shifted back and forth, his hands gesticulating against the air, against the flies, fucking flies, and suddenly everything was a mess and it repulsed him, don’t yell at me, me getting smaller and smaller. Then he stopped, panting. And grabbed his bike, and left.

That was what had happened.

At ten I barred the door and went to bed. I closed my eyes, but I don’t think I slept at all. Every noise, every distant voice in the night sounded for an instant like his voice. I spent hours deciphering the murmurs, the footsteps passing outside the door, the breathing of some drunk who stopped to moan on the corner. I heard the engine of every car driving down the street, and for each one I imagined an accident, a story of haste, a sudden ending. The glow of the streetlamps reached the wall over the bed, sometimes creeping up to the ceiling, sometimes sinking down toward my hand, biting at it. Everything was a chasm and my body had lost its weight, falling and falling, no flesh, no bones, just the idea of myself and that other dark, perverse idea: the idea of him, dead, bleeding out in a ditch at the edge of the highway. It could be nothing else. His spilled and broken flesh.

But also maybe him lost in the embrace of a woman, maybe the one who lived by the river, the one who’d come out and offered him water that same day, when we were making our way up.

I thought of going to look for him. I knew the way. I thought of going there and chose the words I’d spit at him, screaming anguished in his face. I also imagined, or maybe I dreamed, his slender body buckled on the ground and me kicking his belly, his ribs, him shrinking to protect himself, but my kicks destroying his defenses, my saliva dripping onto his face and me swollen with pleasure, looming enormous above the sweat of him. Then his absence returned like a stab, the passing hours, the silence. I didn’t have the heart to get up, much less to open the door and go out.

Then it was day. When he finally entered the room, guiding his bicycle by the handlebar, it was too late. He came in with his clothes smeared, saying something, the guilt in his voice, about his friends, but he didn’t have any friends, about a bonfire, and his rope didn’t smell like smoke, I don’t know, I didn’t want to hear it. I couldn’t look him in the eyes and he searched mine, seeking anything that could be mistaken for a smile, an abdication. I let him say what he thought was appropriate, but I said nothing. My mouth was full of bitterness and thick saliva, heavy as rock. He’d spent the night somewhere else. Then he asked if I’d let him read me a story. Come here, come sit with me in bed, and he began to read. I listened to his deep voice, such a man’s voice, studied his mouth that wanted to apologize, his straight teeth, but even then I felt my resentment like a cramp all over my body, stifling my lungs, freezing my skull above the ears.

Later, around noon: no, don’t get up; you rest, I’ll cook. His knotted fingers, his white nails peeling potatoes. The body crouching in search of chard and his shoulder blades under his T-shirt, the muscles of his back in use, his serious eyes choosing the best leaves. His closed, stony face when he concentrates on food. Watching him do it, and even then the cramp seizing my muscles.

We had lunch late and he got to work. I collected the plates and pots and went outside to wash. I washed everything quickly but didn’t want to go back in. The water was cool. I rinsed my face, wet my hair. I ran my damp hand over the back of my neck. Then I sat next to the grapevine, in its shade.

I woke to the sound of banging on a door. It was the bathroom. The landlords’ youngest daughter had wrapped herself in a red towel and was pounding on the bathroom door, which opened, and a pair of dark arms, also a girl’s, groping outward like a monster. She laughed and the sound of her laughter was like a river. Other similar laughter came from inside and the door opened all the way. The youngest daughter stepped in and said something I couldn’t make out, but the laughter continued. 

Then I heard the creak of the faucet and the water splashing onto the ground, which was just a cement slab. Muffled little shrieks, sharp. The giggling of one sister, then the other. The one who wasn’t laughing must have been under the cold stream, holding her breath. I could hear their words only muted by distance, dislocated by the wall and the tiny window where they collided, while the laughter reached me whole, fresh. The minutes passed. The water’s murmur was part of the afternoon by then.

I drifted off again, and when I opened my eyes under the grapevine, the shadows had started to lengthen and the heat had dulled. The landlady walked past, skirting the hall. She looked like she’d just gotten out of bed, and she was hauling the oxygen tank behind her. One of the wheels had popped slightly off its axis, and the cart rattled with every turn. She had her face mask on, but even so I could tell she was in a dark mood.

She went straight for the bathroom door. She knocked three times. No voice responded, just the water, which kept falling. She waited before she tried again, and then she was clumsy, her knuckles against the wood, making a scene. I thought I heard a stifled laugh, and the landlady cursed through her teeth, returning to her heavy tread. When she retreated to her room and shut the door behind her, I heard the whispers in the shower again.

I paid attention this time. There was laughter, there were words spoken into the secret cavity of some damp ear, the muttering of fingers brushing against something soft that opens and kisses. There were sighs, a hoarse moan, and a long, deep silence undulating into the cool stream.

When the sisters shut off the water, they took a few more minutes to open the door. First the head of the eldest appeared, peering out toward the mother’s door, closed as always. Then they both emerged, one after the other, quiet, and each went to her own room.

I collected the dishes and pots from the tangle of the garden and went back in. There he was, asleep with his mouth open. His feet were spilled out, his arms chaotic. The bed looked like it was all his, and in comparison to the damp, sunny yard, our home felt dark and mean.

I didn’t have many things there. I stuffed the important ones into the backpack and left the rest. The light was waning by the time I reached the road and I headed for the highway on foot. I thought he’d come looking for me at my mother’s place, but it took him two weeks to show up, well dressed, they told me. Apparently he had a job and wanted to take me with him, but by then I’d moved in with Don Luis, who runs the store. He’s old, but he keeps busy. He has a house of his own and doesn’t disappear, doesn’t yell in the street, doesn’t ask me anything.