Thursday Night Widows Read Online Free PDF Page B

not a child. During all those years of waiting and having treatments, she had thought of various possibilities: Camila, Victoria, Sofía, Delfina, Valentina, even Inés, after her paternal grandmother. But the girl had come with her own name, and the judge had not authorized a change. For that reason, Mariana had decided to call her “Romina” without asking for anyone’s authorization, as if this
change were simply the result of some confusion over vowels. Fortunately the girl had been unable to tell the judge the baby’s name – if he had one – and referred to him only as “baba” instead of “baby”.
    Antonia was waiting for them in the doorway when they arrived; she had just been arranging the flowers sent by Virginia Guevara in a vase, which she had placed in the centre of the new pine table. She wore a blue uniform with white embroidery on the cuffs. It was also brand new – when they lived in Palermo she had not worn a uniform. She had not lived in, either. But with the move, and the arrival of the children, she had been obliged to accept the change or lose her job. The car made a sound like summer rain as it pulled onto the gravel drive, and the girl shivered. She saw through the window that it was a sunny day. “It’s raining invisible stones,” she thought. Mariana was the first to get out of the car. She went up to Antonia, giving her her handbag to hold and a bag containing a few items of clothes that had not been brought over in the move, the previous day. Then immediately she returned to the car, opened the back door and undid the seat belt on the baby’s chair. The girl watched Mariana pick up her brother. She murmured something like “come here, little one,” then lifted him out of the car. The baby’s blanket fell onto the gravel.
    â€œIsn’t he looking lovely today, Antonia?”
    Antonia nodded.
    â€œGo and make him up a bottle. He must be starving.”
    Antonia went into the house with the clothes and the handbag. Mariana, holding Pedro in her arms, glanced back at the car, as though looking for something.
    â€œErnesto?” she said, and Ernesto emerged from behind the boot, pushing a pram on which he had piled
up tennis rackets and a suit-carrier. They went into the house together and the little girl saw the door close behind them. She studied the house through the polarized car window, thinking it the most beautiful house in the world. It seemed to have been made from toffee and cream, like the one in the story they had told her, in the church at Caá Cati. She would have liked to get out of the car and run across the lawn that looked like a carpet – but she couldn’t, because she did not know how to unfasten the seat belt. She tried and failed to release it and was scared to break something and get a beating; she didn’t want anyone to hit her any more.
    Time passed. The girl entertained herself by watching people go by in the street: a lady with a dog on a lead; a woman who wore the same uniform as Antonia, pushing a baby in a pram; a boy on his bicycle and a girl on roller skates. She would like to go on skates too, one day, she thought. She had never seen a pair of skates up close, and the girl went by too fast for her to get a proper look. She did see that they were pink, though, and that was her favourite colour.
    The front door opened and Antonia came out and went to the car. “What are you still doing here. Come on, come on,” she said, undoing the seat belt with an effort – because she, too, was unused to the mechanism. She took the girl by the hand and into the house. Her new home.
    On the Monday following their move, the girl was starting school. She had never been to school before. Mariana and Ernesto had managed to get her into the first grade at Lakelands – the school to which they had always dreamed of sending their first child – even though
she had no previous