Free Umami by Laia Jufresa

Daniela, Baby). The baby is called Baby because they haven’t given her a name. They think you should get to know your kid before naming it, because if you do it the other way around you force it to take on the personality of that name, not its natural one. My dad says, though not to their faces, that everyone will just keep on calling her Baby forever. But D and D don’t want that, they just refuse to give her a name without taking her feelings into consideration. They’re waiting till Baby is old enough to have an opinion on the matter. Pina’s dad reminded them that what they’re doing is in fact illegal in Mexico. But Daniela won’t listen to him. The way she sees it, a name can make or break you. She says that in her high school there was a guy called Abel who was run over by his brother.
    â€˜On purpose?’ I asked her.
    â€˜By accident,’ she said, ‘but can’t you see? It was his fate.’
    I shove the note under the door, then kneel down to see if it went through OK. There’s a pair of feet standing still in front of me. My heart starts pounding. I scramble up and sprint back to the mews, the red trolley making a racket against the cobbles. Once safely inside the mews, I pounce on the first door I come to. How creepy, those feet standing there right next to the door but not opening. It must be Daniel, I tell myself. He must have another woman.
    *
    Bitter happens to be the first house. Marina lives there. My brothers call her Miss Mendoza, which is what she wrote on her mailbox, but she’s told me before that ‘this whole Miss thing’ makes her feel ‘old and saggy’, and that she’s ‘only’ twenty-one, which in my eyes practically makes her the local spinster. She’s definitely the token single tenant. Pina and I are also technically single, but Pi has no intentions of staying that way beyond fourteen. She swore she’s going to find a summer fling (those were her words) in Matute, or whatever her mom’s beach is called.
    Sometimes Marina lives alone and sometimes she lives with a boyfriend. There’s always some new guy hanging around, and they’re usually so good-looking that if I bump into them in the passageway I have to recite poetry in my head just to stop myself from blushing ( Brown and furry caterpillar in a hurry, take your walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each ). It never really works though: I always turn bright red. And maybe good-looking isn’t the right word either. Let’s say: tall. And when I say Marina is the ‘local’ spinster I mean inside Belldrop Mews, which is where everything that happens in my life takes place, apart from the way too many hours I spend at the school around the corner and in La Michoacana on the next block. What measly perimeters us city-kids are dealt.
    A few months ago, the Neighborhood Association got hold of several liters of a horrible rosy red paint that the hardware store on the nearby avenue was selling off cheap. It was Marina’s fault: she’s obsessed with colors, particularly their names, so she chose it because the tins said Coral. I guess she thought coral would bring her closer to her marine-a habitat or something. We all had to take turns painting. Even my mom came out of her little bubble to paint for a while. Now, if you happen to be walking along the street when someone opens the door to the mews, it looks like you’re peering down a larynx: like the long passageway is made of a living tissue, and the dew-like sunlight dappled across the textured walls is saliva.
    Marina opens the door to me in jeans and a white blouse. I reckon I’ve spent more time observing her style than any other fashion trend. I don’t really get it, but I love it. When she first came to the mews, Marina babysat us while Mom grieved for Luz. She would make us sit down with the instruments in Sweet House, where my parents