Tomorrow by Julia Rendón Abrahamson, tr. by Madeleine Arenivar
By Julia Rendón Abrahamson, tr. by Madeleine Arenivar
Image credit: Andrea Puente ( https://www.instagram.com/andreapuentefoto/)
Tomorrow
Usually, at 9:00 more or less I’m in the shower. First I turn on the hot water and fill the bathroom with steam, even though, at that hour, the sun is beating down outside. I have a new shampoo, cucumber scented. It’s paraben free, made with all-natural ingredients. I bought it at the health food store, where they sell the farm-raised eggs I like. The ones that are really free-range, you can tell by the bright orange yolk.
I feel the water run down my body, and I hear Sebastian’s grunts. Before going into the bathroom I gave him a bone, that I also bought at the health food store. Now even dog bones are supposed to be healthy.
The shampoo smells really good, but immediately I busy myself with picking off the price tag. I wet the sticker with the hot water. The water I bathe with is almost boiling. I rub at it with the pads of my fingers and the paper starts to peel away. But I can still see the “$12” printed on it, and that is just what I don’t want Yvette to see. She’s outside; she’s already come into the bedroom to vacuum. I’m not going to have enough time to leave my conditioner in. Yvette has now taken over the whole room. I decide to get out of the shower without turning off the water, so that she thinks I’m still inside, then I’ll have more time. My white button-down is laid out on the round couch in the middle of the walk-in; I tuck it into my jeans.
I don’t pick out shoes yet because I don’t think I’ll leave the house today. I decided to wear the lace bra even though it’s kind of itchy. The water is still running, but I think Yvette has turned off the vacuum. I’m sure she must be mopping already. Now fully dressed, I’m sweating. I turn off the water, but I sit down on the couch. I calculate how much time it will take Yvette to finish doing my room.
When I go over to the bedroom window I can see that she’s already in the kitchen. She must be preparing lunch. Vegetarian today, I told her, but really I’m craving red meat. She’s going to make me the quinoa burgers, I’m sure. I stay there looking out the window for a minute. The gardener came yesterday and left the grass beautifully smooth. There are some little black birds flitting round and round the patio. I don’t know what kind of birds they are or anything, but they fly very fast and low.
I think Yvette has gone to do the laundry outside. I go to the kitchen to prepare myself some tea before she comes back and offers to do it for me. I can make my own tea. Carolina brought me some from Dubai. She can be so intense sometimes. And now she thinks that, at three months pregnant, she knows everything about childrearing. Or at least she thinks she’s an expert on how to get a girl or a boy. If you shag like this you’ll get a girl, if you shag like that you’ll get a boy. What a ridiculous word shag is. But how would we say it here? Screw? That sounds so ugly. I never say it. Make love, maybe? I don’t know. I never talk about making love, shagging, screwing, anything like that, so I guess I don’t know how I would say it. But Carolina does say shag, and she says tits instead of breasts, and she says all kinds of weird things. Well, she’s Spanish, that’s just how they talk. She comes over to my house at least once a month. Gonzalo works with her husband and they’re best friends. They’ve always worked together, except those two years that he was transferred to Spain. I don’t know why they don’t just go ahead and transfer Gonzalo; he spends more time traveling than here.
Yvette bustles into the kitchen and grabs the kettle. She opens the tea box. “Should I make you chamomile, Mrs. Connie?”
“Sure, ok, thanks Yvette,” I tell her, and I think that maybe tomorrow I can open the teas from Dubai.
“I’ll bring it to your room?” she asks me, or rather tells me, and I walk out without answering, smoothing the rug with my foot as I go.
I lay back on the bed and open The Frozen Heart. A friend who goes to a book club suggested it to me. She’s always trying to convince me to go with her, but I don’t read that fast. I don’t want to go talk about books either. It sounds boring. As I stare at the page I think about Carolina. She brought back suitcases full of baby clothes from Spain. There are some really pretty little knits. She showed me all the sweaters and the tiny socks. Does a baby need so many socks? I know nothing about babies. All I know is that now since "those twats" Carolina and her husband, are expecting, my husband has got it into his head that maybe it’s time to call the stork. That’s how he says it, like he’s a little kid. He can’t say shag, fuck, screw, either, or at least he doesn’t say it to me. He can’t even say give birth. So he says: let’s ask the stork. You have to be a real asshole to be forty-something years old and still be talking about the stork. Well, I’m married to an asshole who only thinks we should have kids because his best friend is expecting. Monkey see, monkey do.
Yvette comes into the bedroom with the cup of tea on top of the little plate that I love; it looks English. I keep staring at my book. She doesn’t know that I figured out that she hides my birth control pills. She pretends like she’s moving them to clean, but she always leaves them hidden. Yvette has six daughters. I met them one Christmas when they came to pick her up and get the two frozen turkeys that Gonza bought them. They are all short, with straight black hair, except the smallest who has curls. I don’t know them very well, but the one with the curls was cute. I know the fifteen-year-old is pregnant.
I get up to put on a darker foundation; I have a lot of freckles on my face, and some new moles too. I’m not going to put on eyeliner. In a few minutes lunch will be ready, and I want to eat out on the patio. I hope she’s made the pineapple juice that I like, the one that comes out all frothy. I put on some red lipstick. It’s too dark so I blot it on some toilet paper until it lightens. I’m about to leave the bathroom, but then I decide to wipe it all off. I’m going to eat lunch now. It would be ridiculous to eat lunch with lipstick on.
Yve serves me blackberry juice. I like that, too. In the end, my lips will be red anyway. While I eat, the phone rings.
“It’s the man from the dry cleaners, he’s not going to be able to bring your blouse until tomorrow!” she yells to me from the living room.
“Ok,” I reply quietly, while I think that I could wear the blue button-down instead. Tomorrow we’re going to Carolina’s. I hope they serve red meat.
I don’t feel like eating the tamarillo fruit in syrup for dessert; I don’t like it, but she still makes it for me once a week. I take a tiny bite so that Yvette sees I’ve eaten something. I go to the study to get out my laptop. I’m sure she put it away in the second drawer instead of the first.
I log into Facebook. Cris has posted a photo of the class of ‘98. I crack up at how now we’re using the same jeans that come up above the belly button. The fashion industry is really out of ideas. Someone’s invited me to an event at the Botanical Gardens to see bonsais. I’ve seen thousands of bonsais; I don’t want to see any more. I look up my ex from high school. He has two kids. I think one is already going to university, but I’m not very good at calculating.
“Yvette, I’m going out to buy dessert for tomorrow!” I don’t think she heard me, so I yell louder. She answers me, ok, missus, and I grab the keys to the Toyota Fortuner.
The bakery is three blocks away. I stand staring at the red velvet cake. Since when did they start making red velvet cake in this country? I buy some macarons. There’s a man whose only job is to carry the boxes out to the car. My box isn’t heavy; it’s only macarons. Still, the man takes it and puts it in the trunk for me. It took no time at all, and I drive the three blocks back. I go around the housing development the long way. It’s 4:45; if I take fifteen minutes more, Yvette will have left already.
I drive around until 5:10. The house is spotless. I turn on the TV and watch two episodes of Grey’s Anatomy. When it’s 7:30 I decide it’s a reasonable hour to microwave my food. Gonza hasn’t called. Sebastian is hungry, so I serve him his dog food. He at least likes to eat; he devours it, and as soon as he finishes he goes to his bed in the living room. I pet his head. Good night little one, sleep well. I put my pajamas on.
Around 9 I’m already in bed; I feel my eyes closing. At 9:30 I wake up, look at my phone. Gonza is going to be home late, I suppose. Tomorrow he’ll want to shag, I’m sure, because after having dinner out he gets horny. I should look for my pills. Or better, tomorrow.
About the Author and translator
Julia Rendón Abrahamson (Quito, Ecuador, 1978) is part of the recent “boom” of Ecuadorian women writers reaching the Anglophone literary market. She is the author of the short story collections La casa está muy grande (Linda y Fatal Ediciones, 2015) and Yeguas y terneros (La Caída Editorial, 2021), and the novel Lengua ajena (DeConatus, 2022). Her short stories have appeared in English translation in Another Chicago Magazine, Latin American Literature Today, and Los Angeles Review, and have been selected for the Best Literary Translations Anthology (Deep Vellum, 2024). She has degrees from the Universidad Andina Simon Bolívar, Boston College, the National University of the Arts, Argentina, and the Argentine institute Casa de Letras. She teaches creative writing at Universidad de la Rioja. She currently lives in Barcelona.
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Madeleine Arenivar is a literary translator from Spanish living in Quito. Her translations of short fiction have been published in Another Chicago Magazine, Latin American Literature Today, and Los Angeles Review. Her work has been selected for a PEN Translates grant, the PEN Presents program, and the Best Literary Translations Anthology (Deep Vellum, 2024). She has degrees from Vassar College and FLACSO Ecuador. Her translation of Carnaval Fever by Yuliana Ortiz Ruano is forthcoming in 2025.