Bryan Betancur

Boquisucio
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              Breakfast tasted like soap. Every bite of egg and sip of coffee coated my tongue in a
lathery aftertaste. The mug and plate I used had just come out of the dishwasher, so I emptied the
appliance and dumped everything in the sink. The dark olive dishware was cracked and chipped,
unsuitable for anyone but a single man in his late thirties who never had company. When I left
home fifteen years ago, my mom gave me the dishes we had owned since I was a kid. I assumed
the gift was a show of support for my venture into what she called gringo adulthood (living alone
while unmarried), but now I wondered if the gesture was a ploy to unburden herself of outdated,
deteriorating plates and cups.
              The thought of having to wash the dishes by hand irked me, but I was more annoyed at
having to endure my landlord’s overblown sense of mechanical acumen. Like most Colombian
men of my father’s generation, his intractable macho ego would force him to fiddle with the
dishwasher himself and refuse to call a repair company until I stopped paying rent or threatened
to kick in his teeth. My stepfather put on similar airs whenever the car broke down. No es nada,
he like to proclaim with matador bravado before lumbering his melting-snowman physique to the
driveway. My mom always stood nearby, phone at the ready, waiting for the moment he held out
his greased-up hands as proof the issue was, inexplicably, beyond his expertise. She’d then feign
awe at the complexities of automotive repair while dialing the mechanic.
              I stared at the dishware piled high in the sink, a crumbling ceramic monument to my
childhood. The sight reminded me of the time my mom lost her shit because I let dirty dishes
accumulate on the kitchen counter. I must have been eleven or twelve, and we had just moved
into a new apartment, the first place we lived that had a dishwasher. She refused to use it,
claiming she didn’t have one in Colombia and that washing dishes was meditative, a chance to
scrub away the day’s stress. I promised to transfer everything to the dishwasher after I played
videogames, but she yanked the console plug from the outlet and demanded I wash the dishes by
hand immediately. Déjate de lujos y obedéceme. I don’t know what angered me more, the
interruption to my game or hearing her call a dishwasher a luxury and my proposal to run the
appliance an act of disobedience. Don’t be so fucking Third World! It was the first time I yelled
at her in English, the first time I used my second language in her presence for a purpose other
than interpreting. I doubt either of us knew what Third World meant, but there was no mistaking
my intention to wield bilingualism as a weapon of intimidation. She leaned her long, wiry torso
over me, fists clenched, lips pursed. Boquisucio! Foulmouthed. She flashed me the same look of
heartache and defiance she gave my father and all the other abusive, alcoholic assholes who
followed. She had never looked at me like that before.
                                                                                    ***
              The food I ordered tasted like soap. The resurgence of the foul sensation made me want
to jab my fork in the waiter’s throat. I hadn’t finished breakfast, and now some goddamn
dishwasher’s incompetence would force me to skip lunch. I raised the cutlery to my eyes, then
the glass, then the plate, scrutinizing each object for signs of spumy residue and to determine
which one I’d hurl at the manager before demanding a free meal.
              “I don’t know what’s bothering you, but don’t you dare embarrass me.” My sister glared
at me with bright owl eyes. Our mom’s eyes.
              I wanted to point out I couldn’t embarrass her more than I did at her wedding but was too
focused on smothering an impulse to gag as the taste of soap spread down the back of my throat.
Between tedious anecdotes about her husband and toddler, my sister reminded me that mom
wasn’t getting any younger and that, as the oldest, I had a moral obligation to call and check up
on her. I didn’t respond. I was too busy thinking about her wedding. Our father’s mortifying
toast, the gall of a man who never paid a penny in child support whimpering about how much he
sacrificed for his kids. Every rum-soaked word conjured more suppressed trauma: the nights my
sister and I huddled under the blanket to drown out the sounds of smashed dishes and overturned
furniture, the afternoons we cried on the front stoop because our father broke his promise to visit.
              I don’t remember tackling my father or breaking his jaw. A dissociative fugue, a know-it-
all girlfriend once told me. Whatever it was, I can only recall the sight of my mom and sister
scrambling to the dais, their bodies wrapped in dresses so grossly pink they could have only been
chosen by a bride denied a happy childhood. My mom grabbed the mic and tried to restore order,
pacing around like a flamingo. It was the first time I saw her not as my mom but as a woman, a
woman who gave the men in her life more kindness than she ever received in return.
              “Hey, Flamenca.” I knew I’d ruin our lunch date, but I couldn’t bear thinking about the
wedding anymore. “Does this food taste like soap to you?”
                                                                                    ***
              I didn’t make dinner when I got home from work despite my stomach’s angry demands
that I stop ignoring it. Instead, I ran to the bathroom and brushed my teeth over and over and
over. The revolting taste intensified. I slammed down the brush and gargled mouthwash until the
alcohol burned my throat. I might as well have emptied the soap dispenser in my mouth. I
clenched my fists and looked in the mirror. Wan, pursed lips. An unsettling look in my eyes. A
look of desperation and fury.
              My cell phone rang. It was my sister, no doubt calling to further berate me for saying
lunch was disgusting. I declined the call. The ringing immediately started again. The irritating
sound exacerbated the feeling of gnawing on a wet bar of soap. I considered searching for a
scouring pad to scrape against my tongue. The coppery taste of blood would have been a
welcome relief.
              The phone rang a third time. I pressed my hands over my ears until the noise stopped.
Silence, thick and acrid like the vomit gurgling in my esophagus, permeated the room,
punctuated by the ding of a new voicemail. I glared at the screen. In all the years my stepfather
had been in my life, he had never called me. Not once.
              Hola, soy ... it’s me ... Tu mamá ... umm ... slipped in the shower ... her bad hip, sabes?
... maybe you didn’t know ... anyway ... she hit her head ... I tried to help, pero ... He struggled
to maintain the façade of impenetrable toughness I abhorred. Yet though his voice never broke,
he was clearly broken. When I found her ... ella ya ... muerta ... I’ll take care of the funeral.
              ​I dropped the phone and walked to the kitchen, worried the taste of soap would never go
away, worried it would. The dishware was still piled high in the sink, a crumbling ceramic
monument to family love. I ran the hot water until it singed my skin. And I washed the dishes.

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Bryan Betancur is a Spanish professor in the Bronx. His fiction appears in Acentos Review, Five South, Litro, Hispanic Culture Review, The Rush, and elsewhere. 
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