[100 Challenge] Roberta gattel_63

The Widows of Thursday, Claudia Pineiro, 2005

When I was seven, one of the most exciting things was being invited to play at my classmates' house. I found the idea of entering their homes, seeing their objects, and observing their mothers irresistible. Ok, it may seem like the prologue of the "little maniacs grow up" manual, but for me, having the possibility of inhabiting other worlds - because the lives of others were other worlds - was a precious opportunity: it stimulated my curiosity and my imagination.

I had spent the first years of my life constantly moving without being able to become attached to a single place. The toys I had were objects that survived years of hostile coexistence with my cousins and bore the scars of their stories: the punk-pirate Barbie who had a black patch painted over her eye and semi-shaved hair; Polly Pocket's house reduced to just its base because the rest had been uprooted; the little plastic animals found in the chocolate eggs, all marked with tooth marks because one of my cousins use to bite everything.

The toys arrived in a black garbage bag that one of my aunts left in my grandfather's yard; the bag always had the same note: "Throw the rest away."

The garbage bag stopped being a source of wonder when I started seeing my friends' toys: virgin objects, still smelling of new plastic.

Strangely, I didn't envy my friends; I didn't want to own their things, but I was fascinated by this world of incredible abundance. I fantasized about a parallel world in which I, too, had my playroom full of uniqueobjects, and that fantasy made me happy.

Another thing I loved was observing their mothers, exquisitely sophisticated in bright clothes and heavy make-up. They were very different from my mother and the women in my family, who wore concise hair and dressed in dark colors without ever using makeup.

The mothers of the others were all sitting composedly in the living room, sipping coffee from floral porcelain cups, holding their little fingers high and talking in high voices about matters of the utmost seriousness, such as the choice of hair color, the inauguration of a new boutique, the miracle diet they were following. When the women of my family got together, it was only to work; they dressed in hideous extra-large aprons and spent their time harvesting grapes, plucking chickens, preparing tons of tomato preserve,and chopping wood. They talked about the supermarket with the lowest prices, strategies for making fewer washing machines, and how to eradicate weeds without ruining their back.

When I played by myself, I used to imitate other people's mothers: I glued the purple petals of the geraniums on each nail with my saliva, and I created my lipstick with blackberry juice. Then, I moved my hands effectively as I discussed adventures in distant worlds with my imaginary friend, imitating the same tone I had heard in other people's homes. Sometimes, I continued to play this game even while I was plucking the chickens because plucking the chickens disgusted me, so I changed my voice and began to act like a grand lady: "When I grow up, I won't pluck the chickens anymore because I will always have nail polish on my nails and I won't want to ruin it." The grandmothers laughed, but my mother was worried; one day, she told me I was vain and that vanity was terrible. It was the last time I played that game.

Looking back, I believe that what I liked about the world of others was not so much the dimension of well-being but that of lightness. People outside my family seemed carefree and happy to me, while my family seemed covered by a gray veil of solemn seriousness, which made everything ugly and weighed down. I wish my mother had also been beautiful like the other girls' mothers, but she lacked physical talent because my mother has always been attractive. What she lacked was happiness.

Shortly after these episodes, I was no longer invited to my classmates' homes either. Word spread that one of them had fallen ill after spending the afternoon at my house because we didn't have central heating but only a small wood stove in the kitchen. Perhaps part of the cause was that I showed up at one of their birthday parties with a box of chocolates as a gift. I still remember very well the disappointed and disgusted face of the birthday girl.

As the years went by, I reread these events through the lens of vanity and not through that of social class: the mothers of other girls acted in that way because they paid attention to superficial things such as appearance and fashion and not because they had more financial resources and more time to dedicate to themselves. My family had always strived to protect me from the insidious germ of class envy, explaining to me that there were many differences between people but that being rich or poor was neither a merit nor a fault.

When I read "The Widows of Friday," I had already put aside the moralistic lens of vanity as a key to understanding social differences. However, I still remember my friends' mothers sitting in their living rooms with the cups and the raised pinkies.

Claudia Pineiro's novel is set in Altos de la Cascada, a luxury residential village on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, protected by barbed wire, cameras, and private security. The city's wealthiest families live in this place and, unaffected by the Argentine economic crisis of the 1990s and early 2000s, spend their time on the golf course, the swimming pool, and the club. However, behind the golden facade of well-being and happiness lurk pettiness, rivalry, and anger: “Can you truly become friends with someone you know through their pockets? And she answers herself at the foot of the page: all miseries pass through the pockets."

Many of the women in this book resemble the mothers I remember from my classmates. I wonder if their unhappiness looked the same, well hidden behind their made-up faces.