Carmen Elcira: A (Love) Life
Before him, of course, others had turned her head. Notably, a few years earlier, a boy named Cristóbal Vega had moved in with his family next door to Carmen Elcira and hers. Cristóbal Vega was not charming, nor intelligent, nor adventurous, nor even particularly funny. In fact, every time Carmen Elcira tried to talk to him, she found him fairly boring. So she satisfied herself with simply staring at him, which was all a boy like that was good for. Her bedroom faced his, so she kept her window open wider than usual to listen for the moment he walked into his room. As soon as she heard his door close, and the chopping blades of his fan start, Carmen Elcira went to her window and stared longingly at Cristóbal. She watched him sit and flip through the thin pages of comic books. She watched him nap on his bed. She watched him nibble his nails. She watched him kick his shoes off into the corner of his closet. She watched him look at more comic books. And every night before bed, Carmen Elcira gazed upon Cristóbal as he took off his undershirt—the way he crossed his arms and drew the cotton over his head, his honey silk skin underneath—and she had to bite the tip of her tongue between her teeth to stop the strangest feelings that buzzed within her until she was calm enough to go to bed herself.
After Cristóbal Vega came Filiberto Berto. The entire class, including Carmen Elcira, broke into riotous laughter on the first day of school when the teacher called roll. “Berto Berto!” one of the boys yelped in hysterics. “Filiberto fucking Berto!” Then a group of boys started chanting “Berto! Berto!” until the teacher quieted them. Carmen Elcira still had a gurgle of laughter in her chest when Filiberto Berto stood and told the class, “You can call me B.B.” Then he held his arm out like a rifle and fired imaginary shots around the room. “Like the gun,” he said, lowering his arm and fixing his gaze on the boys who now looked at him wide-eyed. The laughter that had been worming in Carmen Elcira vanished and was replaced by a vigorous thumping that was most definitely emanating from her heart. She smiled at B.B. when they switched classes that day. She sat beside him in science and in literature. She followed him to his bus after school. Eventually, she gathered the nerve to ask him on a date, but B.B. coughed into his fist and said he already had a girlfriend.
“Who?” Carmen Elcira demanded. “I’ve never seen you with anyone.”
B.B. pointed to Maria Salinas, who was smoking in the far corner of the courtyard.
Carmen Elcira rolled her eyes. “Never mind, then,” she said. “I couldn’t be with someone who evidently has no taste.”
Cristina Henríquez is the author of Come Together, Fall Apart (2006), a collection of eight stories and a novella all set in Panama. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, and Glimmer Train. Her first novel, The World in Half, will be published next year by Riverhead Books. She lives in Chicago.
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