The Body Where I Was Born by Guadalupe Nettel

pleased with my being there. Anyone who was used to seeing me play in the plaza wasn’t surprised, but the team had taken on new players who didn’t live in our unit and traveled several miles twice a week to play with us. For them, having a girl on the lineup wasn’t only risky, it was also embarrassing. They said we would look ridiculous because of me. Everyone knows it’s not so easy to play when your teammates are hostile toward you. Even so, I think I did a good job of holding my own. They kept me on the bench for the first three games and after that would let me in during the second half, as long as we were ahead. Little by little, I was earning my place among the other players. When at last I gained definite legitimacy on the team, a new obstacle arose, foreseeable by many, perhaps, but something I had not at all anticipated: as if it had suddenly taken on a life of its own, my body sabotaged me. The first thing I noticed was a hypersensitivity of my nipples that got worse from rubbing against my jersey. It made chest traps impossible. Every time I took a shot to the chest, I would fall down in pain. I was scared; if that happened in the middle of an official game, the shaming shouts would immediately rain down on me, things like, “Tits, get off the field!” which I had already heard more than once with no provocation beyond my presence.
    In a dream one Friday night, I discovered that for the entire time my brother and I had been living with my grandmother, Dad had been living in our country house with a different family. I woke up certain I would find him there and decided to confirm it. What would I have done, Dr. Sazlavski, if, after all that had happened lately, I were to actually see him? Would I have demanded he explain, or reproached him for leaving us to our fate? That morning I got up very early and left the house unseen. I brought with me a change of clothes and a thousand pesos in bills of fifty that I’d taken from my grandmother’s cash box. It was the first time in my life that I’d gone through the gates of Villa Olímpia by myself, which ended up being easier than I’d expected. I got a taxi near the entrance and asked the driver to take me to the Taxque ña bus station. Luckily, the taxi driver didn’t ask me to tell him the route, like they all usually do, because I didn’t have the faintest idea of how to get there. As soon as I stepped inside the station, I walked up to the first window I saw and asked for a ticket to Amatlán, Morelos. Not once did the clerk at the counter ask about my parents. It surprised me that I was walking so freely around the streets and the halls of the station, enormous in my eyes, and no one seemed shocked to see a little girl alone. My entire life, I had heard stories about how children and preteens are kidnapped in our city if they get separated from their families by five inches. As I climbed onto the bus, I had time to realize that I wasn’t the only one. Other young kids like me were moving around on their own, unaccompanied. Some were just passengers, others were at work selling gum or carrying luggage. I sat in one of the first seats, and when we arrived I set off wandering toward the center of town for a few minutes, until I recognized a street that would take me straight to the house. I had to walk a half an hour before reaching the wooden outer door. Despite how nervous the idea of finding my father was making me, I also felt exalted by the adventure and proud of myself. I was ready to face whatever. Neither possible outcome, the absence nor presence of my father in this place, would defeat me. It was with this conviction that I rang the bell. I was going to scale the fence if nobody opened the door. The six feet of stones posed no challenge to my feet, so used to climbing trees and scaling all kinds of crevices. I also needed to know what had happened to the house we hadn’t been to in these long months. Was somebody still paying the gardener? I