Free The Body Where I Was Born by Guadalupe Nettel Page B

and better kept than any I had ever seen in all my ten years. I, on the other hand, went home, dragging my feet along the road. When I thought I had come to a good spot nobody ever went, I sat down on a stone step, buried my face in my hands, and began to cry. I cried timidly at first, then more and more confidently, until I completely let myself go in what seemed like a never-ending flood of tears. A few minutes later, I felt the palm of a hand on my shoulder. A warm and familiar palm that I didn’t recognize until I turned around and found myself facing my grandmother.
    “Look at you, crying your eyes out!” she said with a surprised expression. “You look like a widow.” Her tone was one of reprimand, like always, and yet this time there glimmered a hint of genuine concern. What else could I do but tell her my problem.
    Her reaction was totally unexpected, at least by me. Instead of scolding me for still being interested in the wild game for boys, as she had every afternoon since she moved in with us, she listened carefully as I told her about my visit to the club and, once I’d finished, she offered to help.
    My grandmother’s solution was to write a formal letter of complaint to the director of the sports club.
    “You will see how he consents right away,” she said, confident in her strategy. Even though her idea seemed totally absurd I didn’t dare argue with her. I was ready to do whatever it took to get into the league, and that included taking my grandmother’s advice. It was also the first time she had cared about something that involved me and, beyond that, she was ready to be on my side. After criticizing me for so many months, after calling me a tomboy and I don’t know how many other names, she finally accepted my affinity for soccer. That, in and of itself, was already a small victory.
    As could be expected, the arguments in the letter my grandmother wrote as my guardian to those distinguished people did not invoke equality of the sexes, nor the right of girls to play whatever sport they want. Instead she spoke of how difficult it was for an old woman to take care of two children with an abundance of energy all by herself and of the ordeal she faced. She also wrote that she couldn’t watch me during the day and preferred a thousand times over to pay to know her granddaughter was in a safe place dedicating herself to a sport, not in the streets playing with strangers. My grandmother went in person to deliver the letter to the office that had rejected me. On the heading where she had put her address, as typical for every correspondence, I saw she had written “cc: João Havelange, FIFA Director.” I had gone with her to the club but preferred to wait outside. I didn’t want to face another rejection.
    The meeting didn’t last more than fifteen minutes. The director accompanied my grandmother to the door with a smile on his lips and asked me which of the different teams I wanted to join. I explained that my brother and the other boys from my building were Vikings and that was the team I wanted to play for.
    “Go to the field and ask for Jerónimo, the coach, so he can give you a tryout.”
    My grandmother didn’t take her eyes off me. There was a grim look on her face and it was impossible to decipher her thoughts. When the director left, she gave me a kiss on the cheek. A kiss, Dr. Sazlavski! The first kiss in the entire time she’d been at the house. It was the most unexpected thing in that moment—even more unexpected than my joining the mini-league—and it left my mind blank for a few seconds.
    “I’ll see you at home,” she said as she left. “You’d better pass this tryout now.”
    It went well. Knowing that it had always been my position, the coach put me on defense. We practiced Tuesday afternoons and had games from ten to twelve on Saturday mornings. I put everything I had into those practices and I don’t think my performance was bad at all. Nevertheless, not everyone was