Everything is so sad here. I don't laugh anymore, ever. I feel like I'm suffocating and I don't think there's room for even a small laugh. The blows still hurt. The silence hurts me. The dark hurts me. I'm hungry too. I don't remember the last time I ate. Everything is red in here. It's also hot.
I do remember, however, Rudy. From his hairy head, from his watery belly because I liked to get the stuffing out of his nose, from his black button eyes, from his old rag smell. If only Rudy was with me I wouldn't feel so alone.
We were going for a walk. I don't remember almost anything but I know because I still have the backpack hanging on my back. Maybe the juice that mom put in me is still there. I'm thirsty. My mouth is a desert.
But everything seems so far away. It's curious: as if this were not such a small confinement. I want to reach the backpack and I can't. My arms remained mute, like my mouth, like my eyes.
I'm afraid. I can't cry either. I don't have tears anymore.
Oh! Everything moves! What's going on? Who speaks so loudly? What are those screeching, distorted sounds? Are they voices too?
And the light again! Even though I have my eyes closed I feel how it warms my eyelids, my cheeks, the hands with which I hug my knees. I can not move. Everyone speaks at the same time. Where is my mom? Who are these people? Because I do not understand anything?
I think I fainted. That must have happened. Now I am lying in a very cold place. I continue hugging my knees, with my head bowed. Maybe I'll stay like this forever. But I'm very cold; They tore off my clothes. Where is my red jacket? And my jeans? Where is the hat that mom knitted for me? It's going to make me colder! Why do they do this? Where is my bag? Now I have lost all hope of finding my juice. And this thirst that does not quench. I wish I could pee and drink it. At least that. But nothing comes out of my body.
I don't know how much time has passed, but today I'm leaving here. I know this because they put me in a white dress. They did my hair. They put me in a long box, like a bed, but much narrower. I barely fit because they folded my arms in front of my chest. (Somehow they managed to straighten my knees). I feel stiff. My head is resting on a bright, white pillow. They put a crown with very small white flowers in my hair.
I have arrived at my new house. I'm in this long box and there are a lot of people around me. People I don't know. Someone speaks into a microphone. He talks about a certain Angela, but that's not my name. Maybe it's the name they gave me because they never knew who I am. That man gives a speech about which I understand almost nothing; Only one thing sticks in my mind: today they are burying me, he says, because it is the International Day against Child Abuse, and no one, in the two years since they found me in a sports suitcase, has claimed my body.
Maybe I can finally see the sea.
More from the author: Of dreams, migrations and other writings in New York
