She started to write soon after returning to her mother’s apartment. One Saturday night when not even cigarettes or pills could assuage her. She was in her room in the dark, looking out the window at the sparkling city, listening to the elated cries of people going to or from some party in Bellavista.

One of those people who never stopped partying.

A day for self-pity.

Before, she’d lived with a man. For four years, until the day he’d told her he was leaving. It was nighttime, and they were in bed. Side by side, not touching. Not saying good night. Lying silent in the darkness, hoping sleep would come soon. Suddenly, he told her he had rented an apartment and was moving the next day. For several months he’d been repeating that he wanted to move, and she’d agreed without asking any questions. She didn’t act very excited about the idea because she thought that in general, when it came to men, one should never show too much enthusiasm. But she was enthusiastic. Maybe in a new apartment they could be happy again. So when she heard that he was moving alone, when she finally understood he was leaving her, she was paralyzed. Not so much because of the fact that he was leaving, but because she’d missed all the signs. Because she’d done what she always did: board herself up in her mind with her hopes and fears and forget about reality.

The man she’d lived with said, “I’ve been giving it my all to make this work. I focused all my energy on making you love me. I burned all my bridges.” And then she went crazy. She hugged herself and started to scream and cry. She went to the kitchen for a knife and slashed the tires of his bicycle. What she wanted was to stab the bed, but for a moment she held out hope that they could still fix things, that it could go on being their bed and she would need it unharmed.

That was the last night they spent in the bed together.

I burned all my bridges, he said, and I was left floating in the water, adrift.

She is floating now, in her mother’s bathtub.

She was eating supper with her mother when the attack of nerves came on. They were watching the eight o’clock drama, the story of a businesswoman who falls in love with her driver. “She’s too good for him” was her mother’s verdict on the love affair, which she found ridiculous but couldn’t stop watching.

The butter knife slipped from her fingers. Staring at her trembling hands, out of nowhere she started to cry.

“What’s wrong with you?” asked the mother, irritated. It was the same tone her mother had used when she was little and crying for no logical reason. “What’s wrong with you?”

A whole life of crying for no reason.

All those times when they told me to eat my food because there were children in Africa who had nothing, I didn’t understand.