The mother was convinced that the purchase of this piece of furniture would facilitate the bond she so hungered for with Gabriela, although she hated the unnerving history associated with the paravent. But, she thought, what could it possibly do to a child?

She was now more than ever confronted with the outward cries of help that leaped at her like an overflowing bathtub where the water had grown cold and rancid. The catastrophe had caught up with her. It had always been there, a re-emerging siren in scarlet tones, a temptation of the abysmal artillery of the brain, a carousel waltzing with crazed horses, the heel-clicking and tap-dancing back chambers where arthropods lay on their carapaces.

When she reached out to the little girl in her, nothing erupted but the dense muteness of her own children in her belly. She felt helpless, alienated from her mirror-image, perceiving her body as a shallow vessel, possessed by human beings that she never met, draining her energy and suppressing her proper self, which she considered absent again.

Estefania was an observant mother, but not for the sake of her children.

They had been the reason for the receding love between her and her husband. She claimed a substitution for her sacrifices, an amendment of her situation.

Gabriela's pupils were immoveable tempests, dark tunnels spiraling down into invisibility, terrifying the mother. They sat still amongst the greenish-brown puddle and attacked Estefania in total muteness.

She could taste her children on her tongue, the colors they wore. Jacqueline was yellow. Gunnar was blue. Gabriela had always been red. All their weight. Their history inside of her. And she remembered her mother's synesthesia and was startled as guilt crept up her throat.

Revolted and offended, this child was fighting her mother in her head and did not even blink.

She knew those horrid words were addressed to her. They felt like the icy tip of an arrow meant to conjure up destruction, coming from the most venomous abyss imaginable, rammed right into her chest with the utmost authority, entitlement, and pleasure.