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I hung up the phone and felt a surge of adrenaline. It wasn’t fear, it was power.
I went to the kitchen and got some large, heavy-duty black garbage bags. I went to the bathroom, the same bathroom that had been the scene of my humiliation hours before. I opened Roberto’s cabinet, took out his expensive cologne, his creams, his electric razor. Everything went into a bag.
I went to Lucia’s room, her makeup, her costume jewelry that she left lying around everywhere, and her bag.
No. Wait.
I stopped. That would be stooping to their level. That would be vandalism. I’m not like that.
I took my things out of the bags and carefully placed them on their bed. I wasn’t going to touch their personal belongings. I was going to take my own things. And the problem for them is that in this house, even the air they breathe seems to have been bought.
I moved with an energy I thought I’d lost. I started taking down the pictures. I wrapped the porcelain figurines in newspaper. I unplugged the giant television. I emptied the refrigerator of my food, leaving only her diet yogurts and beers on the kitchen floor, because the refrigerator was going too.
As I worked, I remembered every sacrifice. I remembered the burns on my arms from the boiling oil to pay for Lucia’s college. I remembered the sleepless nights, doing the math so they wouldn’t lack anything. I remembered when Roberto lost his first job and I filled their pantry for six months without asking for a penny.
Useless old woman.
I looked at my hands. Working hands, hands that have kneaded, cleaned, carried, and cared. These hands are not useless. These hands built this domestic empire, and these same hands will dismantle it.
The doorbell rang exactly 40 minutes later. Don Anselmo arrived with three young, strong boys.
“Doña Francisca,” she greeted me with a hug that smelled of tobacco and honest sweat. “But you look exactly the same.”
“Thank you, Anselmo. Come in, come in. We don’t have much time. I want you to take everything with a green tag.”
She had spent the last 20 minutes sticking little pieces of green tape on every piece of furniture, every appliance, every lamp. Basically, the entire apartment was covered in green dots.
“And what about the things without labels?” one of the boys asked, looking around. He was referring to a couple of cheap plastic chairs they had brought for the patio and an old mattress they had in the guest room.
“That stays,” I said, “so they can’t say I left them with nothing.”
They started working. Watching them dismantle the room was strangely satisfying. It was like watching a surgery necessary to remove a tumor.
The sofa went out the door. The dining table followed. The rugs were rolled up. The neighbors looked out.
Doña Gertrudis, from 402, a professional gossip, came out with her curlers in her hair.
“Are you moving, neighbor?” she asked, her eyes wide.
“Not exactly, Gertrudis,” I replied calmly, holding the door open so they could bring in the refrigerator. “I’m just doing a deep clean. You know how sometimes a lot of junk accumulates, and you have to clean up the place.”
At 11 a.m., the apartment was an echo, an empty shell with marks on the floor where life had once been. In the kitchen, only the sink remained, because it’s against the wall, and the stove, which unfortunately belonged to the building. In the living room, nothing. In my bedroom, nothing. In their room, only their mattress on the floor and their piles of clothes that I had to drag out of the cedar wardrobe, which, of course, was also mine.
I stood in the middle of the empty room. The sun streamed unobstructed through the curtainless windows, illuminating the dust that floated in the air. It looked bigger, brighter, and, for the first time in two years, it smelled clean. Really clean.
I took out my set of keys. The heavy brass keys that opened the front door and the security door. I ran my thumb over them. There was still one final touch. It wasn’t enough to just leave. I had to make sure the message came through loud and clear, without any possibility of misinterpretation.
I went to the bathroom. The toilet was still there, white and solitary. I took a thick-tipped black permanent marker out of my bag. I crouched down in front of the toilet seat. My hand was still steady.
I wrote on the white porcelain lid, in large, clear letters: “Here is the only throne you deserve. Use it in good health.”
Then I went out into the building’s hallway. Don Anselmo was waiting for me downstairs in the truck’s cab. I closed the apartment door. I turned the lock twice, but I didn’t leave yet. I took out my phone again. I had to make one more call before getting on that truck and starting my new life. A call that would definitely change the game, because moving the furniture was just the beginning.
I dialed the number of the real estate agency that manages the building.
“Sir, this is Francisca speaking. Yes, the owner of 5B. I have new instructions regarding the lease agreement that we technically never signed with the current occupants. Yes, listen carefully because this will interest you.”
As I was talking, I heard the elevator doors open. My heart skipped a beat, thinking they’d come back early, but it was just the water delivery man. I smiled at him. Today was going to be a great day. Today the useless old woman was going to prove she still knows how to cook a dish that’s best served cold.
I went downstairs feeling my legs lighter than ever, ready to watch the world burn from the front row.
The silence in room 405 of the Plaza Real Hotel was so profound that at first my ears were ringing. There were no slamming doors or impatient sighs, nor that giant television blaring programs of people shouting.
I sat on the edge of the bed, an enormous bed with crisp, starched white sheets that smelled clean. Not like that cheap lavender air freshener I’d tried to use to hide my embarrassment hours earlier.
I placed my bag on the duvet. My hands, which hours before had trembled in humiliation in front of a broken toilet, now moved with surgical precision.
I pulled out a worn leather folder, the one Roberto always looked at with disdain because he said it smelled old. What my son-in-law never bothered to find out was that inside that old leather was the story of my life and, more importantly, the deed to the gilded cage where he slept.
I opened the folder and spread the documents out on the bed. Everything was there. The deeds to the apartment, registered solely in the name of Francisca Elena Morales. The bank statements for my investments, the money from the sale of La Olla de Cobre, and the utility bills.
For two years I had made myself small, I had shrunk down to fit into the space they left me, apologizing for existing, for taking up space, for having physiological needs.
“Useless old woman,” he had told me.
I looked at the numbers on the papers. My eyes scanned the figures of my savings, the fruit of 40 years of getting up at 4 in the morning to choose the best tomatoes at the market.
“Useless,” I whispered, and the word sounded ridiculous in the air-conditioned room. “Useless.”
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