SINGULARITY

If it weren't for this general strike that hit education at all levels in public and private schools and it wasn't for my mother to break into my apartment, I forgot that she had the key, I wouldn't even know what was going on. I'm sure that I totally immersed myself in that sick and strange world and although I didn't remember anything, the usual taste of earth that filled my taste buds was so remarkable that it caused nausea. - Reinaldo, son? You don't know what it's like for a mother to find a child the way I found you here. I gave my chest a squeeze! Man, the mother started talking and I could barely keep up. I gradually assimilated if I was already with both feet in this world or if a shadow or even a hair belonged to the absurd world that the book referred to. "Mom, - give me that coffee here," I said, taking the cup. She complained about something I didn't quite understand and messed up my hair, which she knew I hated being done. But the unbearable headache kept me from reacting the way I normally would. - Look at this place. How can you call this home? Those clothes. Jesus, there's a sock here with the smell of dead skunk! - Watched old lady Alma. I couldn't stand her getting into my life, like I was 13. For these things and others that I won't even stress about remembering, I wanted her very far.

- My God, what a pain you, mother! I'm 25, not 15. You're crazy! If you took care of Léo, your drugged little boy, he wouldn't be in jail, right? I think I deserved that slap. I know that touching Léo's name made her like this. I was 17 then. He was her stepson from her second marriage and since he was 13, that was when she met Agenor, his father, that the boy caused problems. She left afterwards, quite upset and I honestly didn't care. I don't even know how it got to bed, but from the mess of the room I thought there was a fight there. I had a bookshelf on the bed, with no books. Scattered on all sides, they complemented the chaos scenario. Clothes, bath towels, open and overturned wardrobe drawers. I stopped thinking about explanations. I went to take a shower. It was a long and necessary shower. The sound of water falling from the shower took me to places I didn't want to go. I went to the well, then confused flashes of memories that I don't remember having lived. In one of the flashes, with one hand I held a knife and with the other in my face I screamed. There was no blood on the knife. In the other, I destroyed my room, climbing on the bed and spreading the books, opening drawers, wardrobe doors, which ended in the mess I described earlier.

If I didn't remember anything else, so much the better. That which drained my strength, made me act out of reason and forget the things I did, was nothing that deserved my attention. I just put on shorts and left the room shirtless, even in the cold. The mother was at my bar drinking. "You are not so different from me in this, are you, mother?" Drinking in the morning? Isn't it an alcoholic who does this? - I teased. - Sorry to disappoint you son, but it's 2 o'clock in the afternoon. You have a nice bar here. What do you think of me coming for a few days? Just until things get better for you? - Don't you have more important things to do? Visiting a stepson in jail or giving gifts to his 40-year-old gigolo and profiteer? - And it was these nicks in the end that eroded my relationship with Dona Alma since Agenor, just like that, painted at home and like a leech, started to drain everything we had to offer, especially my poor mother. - In other times I would love to throw things in your face, as you do with me. Offend you and leave here sad and brooding over things. But today is different. I know my life sucks. That none of this is ideal. I know. But I also know that you are my son and I am your mother. And if we don't have each other, what's left? After what she said I wanted to end there. We combined that, I realized, with that exchange of looks. She raised her head and the glass, offering me a drink. I asked, "Gin with tonic?" She confirmed what I already knew. We drink and talk about life. More about hers than mine, of course. I didn't want her to think I was crazy on the first day of her stay in my corner.

At night while I was getting ready for bed she appeared indiscreetly in my room, which is very typical of a mother. He brought a box of photographs and we kept reminiscing about the past, telling funny stories, some not so funny. A craze that Ms. Alma had and made me angry, was to touch the tip of my nose at times like this. But I was enjoying the old woman. I missed her and times much less troubled like these. Before those wrinkles, those bottle-bottomed glasses and her grandma-style hair over her shoulders, this woman was the fucking monster killer. Yes, gentlemen, she pretended to run into the monsters I feared under the bed and in the closet and fought against them in the most epic and creative ways. I slept happily, laughing, and forgot about fear. - You know, Reinaldo, at this age here, - showing me a photo of 3 years old, crying, curled up, lying on the floor, with my hand on my knees after a bicycle crash. - You had a singularity. - Uniqueness, mother? What a strange word. Why uniqueness? I asked curiously, putting my hand on my chin and frowning. - A singularity is something that only you do, nobody else does. Or even if someone else does, it is still a gift and rare. - Right, Ms. Alma. What was my uniqueness?

- You talked to animals.

It was barely over and my amazement was already tearing down the solid roof of those happy memories. She came to tell me about facts that I didn't even know and was too small to associate with anything, real or imagined. I turned my back to her on the spot and said something like, "After that I'm going to get a beer." I brought one for her, even though she said she didn't want to. She didn't, of course. I sat on the bed, looked her straight in the eye. - Are you telling me one of those shitty afternoon movie screenplays and want to convince me that you're serious? Come on, mom. You didn't used to brown the pill. It went straight to the point. You want to tell me something, just say it! - I exclaimed. She noticed my altered state. Because when I was young I had those explosive moments that alarmed everyone. What made her grab her beer and get out of bed, stepping back a little. - You were on the sidewalk playing with a bucket truck that you got from Aunt Lucia, you loved that truck. It filled with sand and then discharged elsewhere. It posed a sparrow and stood around scratching and pecking, as sparrows do. I spied everything from the second floor, from my room. You stopped and started a dialogue with the curious animal, who even turned to follow. I gaped at what I saw. But so far so good. What made me sure of what I was seeing was afterwards, when the sparrow started filling the truck's bucket with leaves and branches. And son, believe me, this is not crazy for an old gaga. I am 62 years old, but I am still in full mental faculties.