15

 15

GIOVANNA PLACES a large branch from a pine tree in Silvia’s arms. The needles prick the teacher’s hands; it seems like a stiff brush rather than a pine, the sort you use for scraping dried mud off your shoes.

“For science, Miss.” This is a strange Giovanna with wet hair, much longer than she’s ever had. “I took a shower,” she explains, though the teacher hadn’t dared to ask.

Silvia looks at her, loving her, fearing her.

“Pines have long needles, but they’re in clusters . . . or in pairs. Right?”

Silvia nods, never taking her eyes off Giovanna.

“Spruce have short needles, all along the branch.”

Drops of water fall on Giovanna’s face from her fringe, which is soaking wet.

“The cones on a spruce are long and soft. The ones on pines are round and woody,” she continues, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.

Silvia makes out a figure standing in the doorway. It’s a woman she recognizes only because she kept the photographs. It’s her mother. Giovanna turns, following her gaze, and says to the woman, “Shoo! shoo!” and she moves to block Silvia’s view of the door. She’s holding her textbook but that, too, is drenched, its pages wavy and soft, paper jelly.

“That’s it, I’m not keeping this anymore,” Giovanna says. “I might as well throw it away.”

She lets it fall. Now it’s a multicolored aspic jelly, a display case of fat filled with chicken, hard-boiled egg, and vegetables that breaks into three or four sticky pieces and rolls in earth and twigs.

Silvia is hungry.