Rain Trap
(In Transadaptation Collection 5: Of Flowing Vicissitudes)
Doña Perla is ageing. Wouldn’t she know it. Thirty years of marriage, a seven-year-old granddaughter at home, while still working in that godforsaken office. She used to be simply Perla to everyone. When people started adding “Doña” or “Señora” to her name, she knew she was no longer attractive, she was no longer young. She had reserved titles like “señora” for other older women she knew, but now she had joined that group, that matriarchal hierarchy where her words and her presence implied she had started down a path to decay. She might have won some respect, but, more than that, she perceived pity from people who saw her as someone who would soon become infirm, vulnerable and irrelevant.
Colleagues compliment her by saying she looks “too young to have a granddaughter.” But she struggles to remain the modern woman in her women’s magazines. Cosmopolitan says that this new trend of working with men is not easy. That one must feel proud and strong in front of them, hence the daily impeccable outfits, the makeup, the perfume. She wears armor that makes her stronger in the eyes of others. It is not easy to walk the streets of Bogotá on high heels, but one must do it. It’s like a special power: One commands authority as a woman. Cosmopolitan says that a woman’s strength lies in her power to seduce the men around her and show them their help is welcome, necessary. Even when it is not. These days it is harder to maintain that power. When her feet ache, when she feels fatigued and can’t keep up with those around her, she realizes she no longer has the vitality and the strength to continue fighting.
Every morning, Monday to Friday, Leo and Doña Perla turn on the radio in the kitchen while they boil the water to make coffee. The rain continues to devastate most of the productive regions of the country, but the situation in Tolima is probably the worst – so many fields destroyed by rivers bursting their banks. The government says it will be difficult to grow any crops over the next five years. “Bogotá already has a crisis, but they’re not saying anything,” Doña Perla remarks to Leo while she repeats to him that rice, sugar and corn are more expensive this week.
From Monday to Friday, Leo and Doña Perla complain to each other about the government, the military, the people, the weather. This is not a dialogue but a list of unsolved problems they’ve gotten used to mentioning as they start their day. The list replaces their mutual frustration: her anger about his drinking; his frustration about her aches and pains.
Dora is late this morning. She rushes about, mumbling apologies: The bus was late; the road was closed; the rain destroyed the mud roads around her barrio. She is supposed to arrive by 7:30 sharp so that Doña Perla has time to undo her hair rollers, put on her makeup, give her instructions, manage the house the way she manages Mr. Ortiz’s office. Everything was ready by the time Dora arrived; glasses of freshly squeezed orange juice for Doña Perla’ son Hugo and her granddaughter stood on the dining-room table. Even the two t-shirts for Nena to wear under her school uniform were perfectly folded and ready.
Doña Perla doesn’t care for Dora’s excuses that most likely are lies: All maids were lazy and quick to make up reasons for their lateness. In her twenty-five years as a secretary, Doña Perla has been late twice: when her mother died and when the police found Leo in a dark alley, unconscious and half-naked after being drugged, robbed and left for dead.
It was Leo’s own fault as far as Doña Perla was concerned. He liked to spend money in brothels and bars around Los Mártires, the red light district of Bogotá’s city center. A nest of thieves, prostitutes and criminals. Leo always seemed to feel more comfortable around people below his level. One of those dubious “friends” from Los Mártires suggested to Leo that Dora could work for them. The man polished shoes on Avenida Jimenez, a father of five, and Dora was his eldest. In all likelihood, he was a cobbler down on his luck, turning into a thief in Los Mártires during the night, drinking away with Leo in those bars when the nights were slow.
Doña Perla doesn’t trust Dora. She won’t take chances. She locks her closet stuffed with her office clothes and gold jewelry before she leaves for the office. She doesn’t tell anyone that she also keeps a big stack of US dollars, a safe currency now that the Colombian peso is falling again.
With valuables locked away, Dora can clean and look after Nena when her mother is not around. It’s Thursday. The floors need to be polished. Doña Perla bought a new jar of floor polishing wax she gave to Dora. Very expensive stuff. Dora was not to lather the wooden floor but to spread it thinly and let the polishing machine do the job. Everyone at home, including Nena, welcomes the smell of the polishing wax as an expected sign that the weekend is coming soon.
After giving the instructions for the day, Doña Perla quickly exchanges her slippers for the black patent leather heels and sighs before taking one last look in the mirror. Lipstick and hair spray done, she grabs her handbag and umbrella, and buttons up her coat. This morning she chose the gray tweed skirt to go with the silk pink blouse. A sober outfit, not like those informal tops and trousers the younger secretaries are wearing these days.
On leaving the flat, she feels the cold air on her neck, instinct causing her to lift her shoulders like a cat about to enter a fight. Hace frio. It’s cold. She thinks trousers, like the ones her young colleagues at work wear, might be informal, but kept their legs warm. It didn’t matter. Women should wear skirts, remain feminine. That was how it should be because that was where women’s power lay. Although she was a modern woman who worked both at home and at an office, that should not interfere with her remaining feminine. That was the right way to liberation.
Hace frio, and ageing takes its toll. She feels it every day. The subtle aches and pains are multiplying, becoming more persistent.
The streets of Bogotá have taught her to be on high alert. She fights the city, the traffic, the pickpocketers, the rain. Her back feels tight inside the fitted coat. She walks fast, with short steps, then gets on the bus, holding tight to her handbag and folded umbrella. The bus is not full, but the corridor is dirty with mud from many shoes and wet umbrellas. Like every morning, her bus trip may include a beggar or a woman with an infant to feed, or a busking musician, all asking for jobs, food, spare change, something to help them. In their stories of helplessness and misery, they blame the paramilitary, the guerrillas, the government, the rain – whatever and whoever they can blame to gain the sympathy of the passengers avoiding eye contact in case they might get infected by their misery.
Doña Perla arrives right on time in the office. Her feet beginning to pulse, bunions cruelly squeezed, desperately awaiting the release from the shoes she will remove under her desk. She’s gained weight since the operation and sometimes she is short of breath, but it is the unpredictable heat waves at the most embarrassing times that she despairs the most. The doctor explained little about physical changes after they had to remove a good chunk of her thyroid gland “just in case there was cancer lingering around.” She was never told she would look older right after leaving the hospital, her face in the mirror unrecognizable after two weeks of recovery from the surgery. Now she takes her medication every morning with the secret hope that it will cure her, make everything better. In her mind, treatment is supposed to be a cure, not something to incorporate into your diet for the rest of your life as the doctor prescribed.
Loti meets Doña Perla as she clocks in. “Perlita, buenos dias,” she says, smiling and joining her fast-paced walk into the building. Loti is a nice woman, and Doña Perla feels sorry for her and the terrible misfortune of not having a husband or a child. In spite of all the misfortunes she has experienced in life, Doña Perla feels grateful for her son and Leo, who will take care of her when she retires. Leo provides for the family (as men should always do), and she continues saving up most of her salary to build their own house once she retires. It will be good for Nena to own a house some day when they die. A woman should have her own money in addition to her husband’s salary to provide for the family.
Poor Loti. She is alone, and, as women pass their prime in their thirties, their chance of finding a husband gets slimmer every day. Loti is a graphic designer, but most women in the office are secretaries. This doesn’t work in Loti’s favor because men don’t like women to be equals; they don’t like them to be competition for the jobs available. Most women Loti’s age are already respected wives of the bosses. Loti is plump, short, wears thick heels and thick glasses, not enough make up. She’s not helping herself, but Doña Perla likes her wit and the occasional gossip they share together at lunch. Sometimes Loti gives Doña Perla colored pencils, erasers and markers for Nena. So generous with her granddaughter but so unlucky with men.
The rain becomes torrential outside. She looks out the office window. Down below, a flat cross of asphalt marks the corner of Avenida Caracas and Avenida el Dorado, getting busier, with cars and buses splashing water as the streets turn into shallow canals. Occasionally the traffic comes to a complete stop when a car breaks down and has to be pushed to the side.
Doña Perla spends most of the morning busy on the electric typewriter. The fast rhythm of its keys mixed with the harmony of the rain create a comforting white noise curtain. The sky becomes dark enough to convince her that it’s time to switch on all the lights both in the open-plan workplace and in Mr. Ortiz private office. His arrival has become unpredictable since he decided to manage his own schedule – another way to ensure distance between them, to cut off any need for words beyond what is necessary.
“Buenos dias, Perla,” says Señor Ortiz, opening the door. He looks at the floor as he removes the newspaper from under his armpit and rushes toward his private office. Doña Perla replies with her standard “Buenos dias, Señor Ortiz.” She doesn’t attempt eye contact either. Their agreement that everything would go back to normal after Barranquilla has settled into an uncomfortable distance between them. The simplest comments and interactions now feel difficult. Doña Perla, trying to decipher the hidden meaning of his words, wonders what is happening in his life now that she has lost access to his privacy.
“Sigue lloviendo. Qué clima,” Señor Ortiz continues in a friendly tone from his office.
“Si señor,” replies Doña Perla, pretending to concentrate on the electric typewriter. She resents that he continues to call her Perla when everyone else gives her the status of doña.
It was only after the affair that she noticed how secretaries – and women in general – are never more than their first name. They lack authority or status in the working world. Then, all of a sudden, they get a title that, rather than meaning respect, allows others to recognize decline settling in. She doesn’t want to risk getting into a serious discussion with men and demand from Señor Ortiz that she be called Doña Perla.
He may be thinking about firing her now that she’s close to retirement age and doesn’t look as attractive as the young secretaries.
When Doña Perla and Señor Ortiz went to the Agricultural Congress in Barranquilla, the end of the congress brought the end of their intimacy. Both realized that the lust wasn’t enough; the passion was no longer there. Doña Perla would never have agreed to the affair in the first place if it hadn’t been for her need to take revenge on Leo. His persistent drinking and patronage of brothels had escalated, and she knew that he travelled to Honda more often because he had another woman in that city. The money at home ran out quicker than before and he insisted that it was best for him to stay in Honda for longer periods of time rather than travel back to Bogotá on weekends.
When Perla was transferred to Señor Ortiz’s office, it fed a romantic dream. She was flattered by his attention and quickly embraced the idea that perhaps she had a chance to enjoy life with another man, just as Leo did with his flings. It took a few years for Perla to get used to Señor Ortiz, and it took a while longer for her to feel she missed him during weekends or when she imagined what her life with him could have been. It was Barranquilla that gave her the courage to accept his advances.
She never confessed the affair; the same way Leo never confessed to her the existence of any other woman in his life. But it is not expected that a married man will admit his unfaithfulness. By contrast, a married woman could instantly be considered a whore if she admits the same unfaithful behavior. Doña Perla felt that her affair with Ortiz had leveled the playing field; she had done to Leo what he had done to her. Whenever she thinks back on the affair, Ortiz is simply part of her calculated plan. Now that everything is over, she can continue being the decent and progressive wife everyone respected. She now has a secret treasure, a secret episode of liberation to reminisce on. She is modern; she is the embodiment of the values in her women’s magazines. The 60s and 70s are certainly decades where she witnessed changes in women’s lives. Decades to gain freedom.
Doña Perla thinks of Barranquilla and Honda, pausing her work on the typewriter to listen to the rain, expecting claps of thunder or car horns marking the peak of daily traffic outside. She would have loved this rain in Barranquilla, or Honda for that matter. Both cities built out of stubbornness against unbearable tropical heat.
Leo took Perla to Honda almost as soon as he secured a stable job traveling there to supervise sugar cane and rice shipped through the Magdalena river.
The bus drove endlessly up and down high mountains before a final drastic descent on winding roads, opening into a valley where the white houses with their balconies full of bougainvillea contrasted with the wild brown waters of the river. From the distance, it looked like the river had sliced mountains, barely leaving space for people to expand a city, fighting for every inch of land against nature.
Honda was busier than Perla expected. In her mind, cities outside Bogota were shanty towns of dirt roads and unbearable heat. Barranquilla surprised her as well. Like Honda, it had wide asphalt avenidas, with palm trees perfectly placed between lamp posts, modern cars, and well dressed people enjoying shops and restaurants like those in Avenida 19 around the international hotels in Bogota. In spite of the humidity and heat, men wore linen suits, sweating profusely under Panama hats, and women walked gracefully with their high heels and wide skirts, holding abanicos that matched their outfits.
On the trip to Honda, Perla saw ceiling fans for the first time. A luxury recently imported from America, marking a new symbol of status and prestige, like the women’s abanicos imported from Spain. Leo had booked a nice hotel room to try to convince her to move to Honda, but she had started to work and was enjoying the feeling of having a salary, not depending entirely on Leo’s job. No other woman in her family had had that experience.
Perla remembers lying in bed, mesmerized by the immense helix on the white ceiling stirring the air. At first, she was afraid the fan would fall on her, but she was quickly seduced by the artificial wind that made it easier to breathe. She couldn’t tolerate the temperature outside and made sure to remove any suggestion of sex from Leo’s head in such a place. When she went with Ortiz to Barranquilla, the tension of sharing the office in Bogotá for so long made it impossible for him to keep his hands off her. As soon as they arrived in the hotel room, their timid hand holding, the occasional intimacy in the office, the kissing in secret behind the office door, exploded into a desperate need to remove clothes, to be together, to embrace. That contrasted with the many years of physical distance she had managed to establish with Leo.
Perla realized a while ago that she had never enjoyed physical contact with Leo nor, ultimately, with Señor Ortiz. Catholic education taught her that she should tolerate the physical urges of her man. A marriage was a business transaction that included the inconveniences of sharing a bed and a home in exchange for money, social status and security. She allowed Leo to fuck her, but just when they were young. She would lay still under his weight, waiting for him to “do his thing.” As time went by, she found excuses to avoid sex, and Leo stopped begging her for intimacy, for more children, for a big family. He arrived drunk more often, and that made it easier for her to reject him. She didn’t want pregnancies destroying her figure. Years went by, and now she was left with a combination of disgust and embarrassment when embracing or holding hands with either of the two men and to a lesser extent, with anyone who attempted any kind of physical affection.
A sheet of white paper, a sheet of carbon paper, another sheet of white paper. A sandwich of sorts to roll into the electric typewriter again, while Señor Ortiz fakes some coughing from his office, reminding Doña Perla that he expects a coffee to appear on his desk. A good secretary learns to read the mind of her boss. She leaves the well aligned papers on her desk and walks to the corridor, looking both ways as if expecting traffic. Pedro is near. His cart filled with a dozen thermoses, his immaculate white lab jacket marking the slow spread of the aroma of hot coffee for the employees. White cups and saucers with the “Café de Colombia” logo are carefully piled up on the cart, forcing him to push it slowly. When he sees Doña Perla, he maneuvers the cart towards her. “El Señor Ortiz es una persona importante” for Pedro. Men with ties and suits are important people for Pedro.
“Buenas tardes, Don Pedro, cómo está.” Not a question, but rather a respectful greeting of sorts to offer a kind gesture of status to a man who has none.
“¿Lo de siempre para el Señor Ortiz?”[1] Yes, always the same for Mr. Ortiz – “tinto”: Two cubes of sugar, hot water added when the black liquid covers three quarters of the cup. A light brown coffee she also learned to enjoy when she started her life as a working woman. The bosses get the coffee from their secretaries, but it’s an opportunity for the secretaries to get their own drink before Pedro reaches their stations in his slow daily round. Working for Mr. Ortiz allows Doña Perla priority on the coffee rounds and a window to look outside from time to time.
Doña Perla places her cup on her desk and takes Mr. Ortiz’s coffee to his office in silence, never looking at him.
“Gracias Perla.”
“A sus ordenes.”[2] Señor Ortiz and Perla are everyday strangers.
She returns to her desk and blows on her cup before sipping the hot liquid. Thick raindrops are still hitting the window. She remembers Ortiz ordering tintos in Barranquilla while they sat on the balcony of their hotel room. It was so hot there. She thought it was stupid to drink hot coffee, but somehow it felt right. Perla had let him fuck her, lying still under his weight and waiting for him to ‘do his thing’. When the physical energy was drained, an awkward silence ensued. Neither of them had anything to say. Those tintos on the balcony brought an unexpected sense of ease, aromatic comfort slowly descending to replace the already uncomfortable memory of physical intimacy.
The electric typewriter is active again. The white noise curtain is interrupted when she looks at the window to make sure it is tightly shut. The strangely comforting noise transports her to the lazy afternoons she spends with Nena on weekends. The two of them alone in the flat, lying on the sofa, Doña Perla reading her Cosmopolitan and Nena playing with her dolls. Afternoon turns to evening, and Doña Perla begins preparing dinner for Leo and Hugo – with the disappointment that years of established routine bring. She can’t predict when the men of the house will show up. Most of the time, Nena is already in bed when they arrive. Leo probably around ten or eleven, barely able to stand up straight, his money gone after buying rum, aguardiente or Cuba Libres, depending on the companions in Los Mártires. Whether Hugo arrives earlier or later, he never says no to Doña Perla’s meals, even if he has already eaten out.
Now that the rain is becoming an important matter for everyone, Doña Perla takes time to read all the mail arriving in Señor Ortiz’s office. Perhaps it’s not about the rain, but her way to keep control of the office now that his diary became private.
Doña Perla takes one last sip of her now tepid coffee and looks out the office window. Her life has become colored by the rain, the gray sky, like a shadow to her thoughts. The raindrops on the window run down her many frustrations. If only the rain would stop Leo from drinking and sleeping around. If only the rain could change the course of her life. What if the rain doesn’t stop? What if life never gets better? Is there a chance that it could get better after so many years? Questions intertwined between raindrops and worries.
How come the rain has not stopped today? Nena should be back home from school. She might be getting ready for her children’s TV programs. The office day will be over soon.
An overwhelming and sudden sense of danger grips Doña Perla when she remembers Nena at home. She walks to the window, a chill running down her spine. She feels she’s going to be sick. Something inside her belly has awoken and calls her urgently to run away. She doesn’t understand this feeling and her efforts to find a logical explanation fail when she realizes words cannot describe what she is sensing. This is not her menopause, this is not the result of frustration or anger. She has been transported into a space where her mind, her internal dialogue and her emotions don’t exist. She is now pure impulse, instinct. She feels like an animal needing to escape a predator.
This has happened before, but she has never done anything about it. She has always waited for it to pass. This time she won’t. She grabs her coat and bag and leaves the office. She wouldn’t have stopped to offer an explanation to anyone. But no one notices her. Doña Perla simply walks into the street. She faces the stream of cars on Avenida Caracas splashing water toward her feet. She holds her ground, missing the umbrella she left behind, but keeping her hand resolutely in the air until a taxi stops. Her clothes are already soaked, her hair ruined. The driver looks at her through his rear-view mirror, awaiting instructions. Doña Perla recites her address automatically: “Calle 13 sur con Caracas, por favor.” They join the slow stream of traffic.
Doña Perla speculates that something is happening with Nena, or at home. Maybe it’s nothing, just this rain. Her inner voice interrupts continuously with attempts to make sense of her initial impulse. She tries to calm herself down by thinking she’s just tired. Perhaps her menopause symptoms are to be blamed, or perhaps it’s another one of those odd things because of the operation. Mr. Ortiz should understand her sudden actions when he finds out she’s not there. Anyway, if he causes trouble, she can tell his wife about what happened between them. That strategy – if necessary – will keep her from being fired this time, so she saves the idea in the same space that she stores her secret affair with him.
Doña Perla knows in her bones that her life as a modern woman is an illusion starting to crumble. Not because of her age, but because she is now possessed by the animal instinct that she saw in her mother. Something she has ignored, hidden, but is being felt more intensely. Like a dormant parasite growing stronger and feeding on her every day. Doña Catalina was impulsive and irrational. But she could also sense things no one else could explain. She reminded Perla that they came from a long lineage of psychics, but she was not to mention that in public.
The psychic ability of her mother was put to the test when she was still at home. Specifically, it was whether Perla was still a virgin while dating Leo. Doña Catalina sensed that Perla had slept with him before they were married and forced her out. They had no choice but to run away.
The news on the radio helps the driver avoid conversation with Doña Perla, and she looks out the window in silence, not paying attention to what she sees, but to what the radio is saying about more rain, floods and destruction coming to Bogotá. Things are going to get worse for everyone.
The taxi stops. Doña Perla takes a few pesos from her purse and passes them to the driver with a quiet “gracias.” When she arrives at the apartment, she finds Nena crying on the chair in the corner of the living room, her eyes fixed on the ceiling. Nena is holding the phone and telephone books, as if she is hoping to find someone to call and rescue her. Doña Perla immediately sees the thick drops of water lazily falling into the buckets, pots and pans placed randomly around the room. Dora greets Doña Perla with an apologetic smile, feeling relieved that she will be able to leave on time at the end of her workday.
Dora and Doña Perla keep an eye on the ceiling, emptying the assorted containers whenever they fill up. Dora will be leaving soon; Nena is calming down now that Doña Perla is sitting on the sofa with her, the noise of the children’s television programs against the backdrop of random splashing sounds.
This pointless attempt to escape her life has failed. Her home remains another cage just like the office. A long night of changing buckets, pots and pans replaces her attempt to disentangle her complex feelings, the mess of this life she started building the day Doña Catalina made her leave.
[1] The usual for…
[2] At your service.