The North Down South - 7. 7. A flower in your window

I was eleven when I learned what hunger felt like.

After my mother’s death, my dad completely shut down. He locked himself in his room and didn’t leave the house for a whole month, during which he (of course) didn’t make a single cent. Bedridden, unresponsive, unemployed.

I’d suddenly lost not just one, but both of my parents.

I had to take care of myself during those four weeks. I kept going to school, which—as I attended an all-day public school—was my only source of food on the daily. We would get fruit or a granola bar in the morning and a half-decent meal for lunch, and that was it. From the moment I came home at 4:30 pm up until the following morning, I knew I was simply not going to eat anything.

Sometimes I would save the squalid apple or the granola bar for my dad, leave them on his bedside table and hope it wasn’t the only thing he ate that day. Other days, the growling of my stomach was simply too loud for me to ignore it, and I would keep the questionable breakfast for myself.

I remember the way it ached. I remember drinking water all the time, trying to fill myself up with something to make the sensation of emptiness go away. I remember the way some nights I simply couldn’t manage to sleep because of how hungry I was.

That was around the time Marian had moved into the apartment across the hall. She’d somehow learned of our situation, and she’d decided to step in and do something to help. At first, she would leave plastic bags filled with bread and butter and milk hanging from the door handle. She would leave little notes inside them that read “Let me know if you need anything else. Marian from 8-C”.

Eventually, she began waiting for me when I came back from school and would let me stay over at her apartment, and we would make dinner together. She wasn’t rich or anything, she’d just run away from her shitty ex-boyfriend’s place and was struggling to find a single mechanic willing to hire her (none of them would take her because she was 21 and a woman). But she still took me in and asked nothing in return.

We would eat while watching Showmatch or The Simpsons, and afterwards she would teach me all the things she knew about engines and motorcycles. She would tell me stories about her time growing up in a small town in Chubut, and in my mind her adventures played out like a hero movie. We clicked instantly.

Marian got me through while my dad got back on his feet. She saved me then.

But to this day, I still remember the hunger.

I honestly think I’ll never forget.

***

“we need to talk.”

Too menacing.

“hey, can i ask you something?”

That wouldn’t do it either.

“hey can you tell me what happened between you and your mom because it’s obviously still making you upset and i care about you so and i want to help but i feel like you’re not letting me and it’s honestly kind of frustrating so can you please just let me help you?”

It was probably the most honest message I’d typed out so far, but I was definitely not going to send it. I put my phone screen-down on the kitchen table with a heavy sigh.

I’d been at this for too long already.

I wondered if Lauti would even answer if I sent a message. His responses were getting shorter and more spaced out as time went by.

I was still thinking of how I was going to take on the dreaded conversation when the mighty sound of Sergio Gómez coming home derailed my entire train of thought. Door, keys, heavy steps on the parquet floor, the whole orchestra.

He walked into the kitchen and I found myself doing a double take. He was wearing a checkered dress shirt and a nice pair of khaki pants I’d never seen him wearing before. The shirt was tucked inside the pants. The shoes were new—at least I thought they were, I’d never seen them before.

It was strange enough not seeing him in his ever-present overalls and sneakers. Seeing him dressed nicely was a wholly different thing.

“Shit,” I said. “Where were you?”

“It’s Sunday. I was at mass.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. Surely he had to be joking.

“You haven’t been to mass since I was a little kid.”

He shrugged. It looked like a genuine gesture, which (needless to say) was very out of place coming from my dad.

“I felt like today was as good a day as any.”

“Well… Okay.”

These were strange times indeed.

He served himself a cup of coffee and sat across from me at the table. We sat there in silence, neither of us doing anything but for some reason not engaging in conversation. That ever-present awkward silence.

I cleared my throat.

“So… What made you want to go to church again?”

It was unusual enough to ask a genuine question to my dad. To expect a genuine answer…

He thought to himself for a moment, as if pondering what to say.

“I wanted to pray… for your mom,” he said. “And for you, for your studies. And for your boyfriend, too.”

I stared at him. It was as if I’d forgotten every single word I’d ever learned.

Why did I feel like crying all of a sudden?

Then he added: “That asshole priest is a real chatterbox, though. I thought it would never end.”

I cracked up. I mean, I actually laughed. A good, hearty laugh. I couldn’t even think of the last time I’d laughed like that at home. And my dad smiled too—he could never stop himself from laughing at his own jokes.

Who even knew grown-ups could grow up too?

We ate dinner together. Dad threatened to cook something himself, but I managed to convince him to simply order pizza. He had a talent for causing kitchen fires and I only knew how to make plain white rice and chipá guazú, neither of which felt like appropriate options.

Over dinner, I told him about my classes, and about how I was finding it difficult to stay on top of everything. He told me I needed to have a little more faith in myself (he managed to say it in a very Dad type of way, not in a Lauti way) and said I should talk to Marian about reducing my work hours. I wasn’t a fan of the idea, but I had to admit it as a possibility since I was days away from the first round of exams.

I didn’t tell him anything about the thing with Lauti. It was already enough that we were talking and making jokes. Baby steps, right?

A while later, in the comfort of my room, I lay down on my bed and grabbed my phone. My fingers typed away as if with a mind of their own, and before I could sit and think about what I was about to say, I simply hit send.

“hey, love. you’ve been acting kind of strange as of late and I can tell something’s making you upset. I want to help you, but I can’t do that if you don’t let me. can we please talk about this?”

I let out a sigh. Had wording ever really mattered? It didn’t feel like it did now. The message was sent, I’d said what I needed to say. Now, I simply had to wait for Lauti to make his move.

Assuming he would take his sweet time to answer, I took out my laptop and put on the last Boca match I hadn’t been able to see live. The match had barely started, though, when my phone’s notification bell went off and I sat right back up again.

“Can you come by tomorrow?”

***

When I arrived at Lauti’s the following day, it was Corina who opened the door for me. She greeted me with a polite yet stiff kiss on my cheek, and a subtle smile that did not quite reach her eyes. She looked distracted.

Neither of us spoke a single word as the elevator went up to their floor.

“Hi.”

Lauti was on the couch, still in his pajamas. The bags under his eyes had never looked so dark, stark against the uncharacteristic paleness of his skin. He looked like someone had put him in a black-and-white film, all the color somehow drained from him. His hair was a mess, and for a moment I tried to remember the last time he’d had it cut.

The slightest hint of a smile appeared on his face when I went up to him and kissed him, but it was gone as soon as I pulled back.

This is weird.

Corina sat down next to him on the couch. Without either of them having to say anything, I took the armchair beside it.

No one would say anything.

This is really weird.

Corina cleared her throat.

“Care for coffee, Valentín?”

I nodded, not necessarily because I felt like having coffee but because I would have gone along with any type of interaction anyone proposed right then.

Lauti shifted on his seat.

He said: “This is weird, right?”

I chuckled, partly because I was relieved I wasn’t the only one who thought so, but also because I could feel my muscles tensing under my skin, a knot forming at the base of my throat.

“Yeah, pretty weird.”

Corina came back, handed me a cup of coffee, and sat back down. All without saying a word.

“Fuck, okay,” Lauti said. He looked pained, like the mere idea of speaking was excruciating. “This is, like, unnecessarily dramatic. No one fucking died, right? Everything’s okay and…”

“Lautaro,” Corina said. Then, she said something in English that I didn’t understand, but it looked like it really irked Lauti. He barked something back, and then she responded in turn. Then, he nodded to himself and took a deep breath.

He turned to me.

“So, um, Valen,” he started. “You’re probably wondering what’s up, because I’ve been acting kind of strange for the past few days. Hell, maybe the past few weeks. And like, I need you to know that’s not your fault. None of this is your fault, that’s really important. But even though this really fucking embarrassing and I hate having to do this right now, I guess… I should really talk about what’s going on. I should tell you what’s going on and let you in. Because it’s just like you said, you know? I need to be able to talk about these things with you. Because I love you and you love me, right?”

“I do,” I said, making use of the little space between his words to reassure him, to let him know it was safe to proceed.

He nodded again.

“The thing is… When I first came to Buenos Aires, that was pretty crazy, right? And I really thought my life was over because I suddenly didn’t have any of my friends and I didn’t know anyone or anything. But then I met you, and I befriended Nahu and Tomi and Santi and Joaco, and I did well in school, and we had so much fun. And all of those things made me feel like I belonged here, and I fell in love with you, and you made me feel like I belonged here too. You made that big, scary change feel like it was… not so big and scary, you know? But now things are different.”

I swallowed hard. “Different?”

Lauti nodded. “Yeah. Different. Because, you know, you just have so much to do… You’ve got your classes and your exams, and you’ve got so much work at the shop with Marian, and you have… new friends, too. You’re meeting new people. And I’m so, so happy for you, Valen, I really am. This is what I wanted you to do.”

“...But we spend so little time together now. And, God, I’m just… I’m stuck here at home all day, and I really do nothing with my life. It’s been six months since we finished high school. I used to do so much all the time, and now I’m starting to feel like my bedroom walls are creeping up on me, and just seeing you live your life and do things while I rot at home… It’s just…”

“Lauti…”

“I guess, what I’m trying to say,” he turned to Corina, and then back to me. “I think I’m depressed. I think I’ve been depressed for a while now.”

We held each other’s gazes in silence, until the sound of Corina lighting up a cigarette made me look away.

“Lauti, if I’d known you were feeling like this…”

“And, yeah…” he kept fidgeting, picking on his fingers. Corina put her free hand on his shoulder. “There’s more, Valen.”

Then, he told me a story.

***

There was once a boy who was unhappy.

He hated all the things about himself that he thought set him apart from those around him. One: he hated how he wasn’t white in a country made by and for white people. He hated the features on his face, the foreignness of his name. But there was scarcely anything he could do about any of those things.

Two: he hated that he had an accent so thick people could barely understand what he was saying at first. Luckily there was something that he could do about that, so he did it: he trained himself to lose every bit of it, every open vowel, every rolled r, until no one could even think he’d spent over half his life outside New England.

Three: he hated that he was chubby—he’d always been. “De buen comer,” his grandparents used to say. With a fitness-obsessed father, a naturally slender mother, and an athlete best friend, he could not help but compare himself, could not bear to look at himself in the mirror, could not stand to feel the softness of his own body. He was far from overweight, but in his eyes there was something unacceptable about the mirror’s reflection, something unforgivable. Something that needed to be fixed.

And he knew he could fix it.

Lautaro was thirteen when he learned what hunger felt like.

At first he’d skip meals at school. At home, he’d eat just a bit and then say he wasn’t hungry anymore. Then he got ambitious, and whatever he ate at home, he’d throw it all up when no one was looking.

He’d weigh himself every day and keep track of it compulsively. It was hard and it was painful, but most importantly, it was working. Slowly, but surely. It was working.

It was months before anyone noticed Lautaro had developed an eating disorder. Harming yourself like that when no one’s paying attention is pretty easy. His parents did notice him slowly getting leaner, but they simply thought it was the much-expected growth spurt. He was around the age it was due to happen, anyway.

Sometimes he’d spend days whole without eating a thing. His parents worked all day, his cello lessons would clash with dinner hours at home, his only friend had his head in the clouds and simply seemed not to notice.

Then, one day, after seven straight days of inanition, someone passed a ball at him at gym class and before he could think of catching it, all had gone black and he was on the floor. Syncope: a drop in blood sugar. It was only natural. The bump on his head from the fall was worse than the fainting itself, but the damage had been done. The school nurse, a woman of kind voice and understanding demeanor, managed to coax the truth out of him. And all hell broke loose.

The treatment was all-encompassing. Therapy, regular checkups, entire routines altered. His parents asked his friend to look after him at school, and at home he’d have to go to the bathroom with the door open at all times. Years would pass before he could stop seeing food as the enemy, weight gain as a threat.

Lautaro had recovered, but a part of him was already irreparably broken.

And sometimes, all it takes is the smallest bit of pressure in the right spot for broken parts to make the whole machine malfunction again.

***

We spent that whole afternoon in bed. I held him as he cried, and I cried some too. I lost track of the amount of times we said “I’m sorry” to each other.

He eventually fell asleep in my arms. I felt tired, too; depleted of all energy. But my mind was racing.

Like the pieces of a puzzle, I started reconstructing what the past few months of my relationship with Lauti had been like. It was as if I’d suddenly put on glasses and could now see it all clearly. So many things started to make sense now.

The way we would never eat when we were together. The way he’d always look tired, gloomy, moody. The way he would drink water and chew gum all the time. The way he’d be strangely self-conscious about undressing in front of me when he hadn’t been before, not even taking off his shirt during sex

It’d all been in front of me all along. How had I not seen it?

He’d been a walking red flag factory and I’d somehow become colorblind. I’d been too busy, too distracted, too preoccupied with my own juggernaut of a routine to spare two minutes to put the pieces together and realize my boyfriend had been going through hell for months.

I felt like the worst person alive.

I was starting to get a headache.

Corina was smoking again when I left the room a few hours later. She looked weary. I could tell this entire situation was taking a toll on her, too.

She granted me a weak smile when she saw me, and offered coffee again, but I didn’t think I could drink any more at that point.

I cleared my throat to ask: “Will… will he be okay, really?”

She raised her brows and hands in an ‘I don’t know’ expression.

“He’s struggled with eating and weight gain before, even after his treatment. It may well be something he’ll always have to deal with.”

I let out a shaky breath. Somehow I’d known that to be the answer. Somehow I’d feared that to be the answer.

“I don’t know what to do now.”

“Valentín, I’ll tell you the same thing we got told by the first therapist we went to when this whole thing began, some five years ago. You cannot fix his eating disorder. He needs to work on getting better himself, and he needs to want to get better. What you and all of us who love him can do is let him know just how much he’s loved, how much we support and understand him. We can only be there for him and become the safe space he needs.”

“Do you really think I can be that for him? A safe space. I mean, I’ve been oblivious to all of this for months, Corina.”

She shook her head.

“I only began noticing two weeks ago, and he’s my son. He lives under my roof. Don’t blame yourself for not seeing things he’s spent years learning how to hide.”

I thought about fourteen-year old Lauti carrying the weight of secrecy, fearing no one would understand the things that were going through his head. Hating himself in secret. He was only a kid.

I would’ve killed to have met him before. To have been able to help him back then.

Corina smiled. “You love him, don’t you?”

“Of course. More than anything.”

“Then you don’t need to worry. That’s all it takes. Love. And a little patience, too.”

I nodded.

“Love and patience. I can do that.”

“Good,” she said, decidedly. Then she clasped her hands together: “Now, let’s talk about dinner.”