“MOUSE-SHAPED CAKE”

by Tere Dávila

translated from Spanish by Rebecca Hanssens-Reed

Parading around me are greasy sleeping beauties, three-feet-tall Cinderellas, and a Snow White hocking a loogie. I have tried on mouse ears. Also dog, bear, and an animal of ambiguous species. A herd of Texans in orange t-shirts almost mowed me down and I’ve just been momentarily blinded by neon green plastic sandals and white tube socks. I have seen plaid, striped, and psychedelic daisy shorts, plastered to buttcheeks from the sweat of excess, the shorts riding up and revealing flaccid legs that smash up against each other. I have seen more skin than I would like to have seen and I have learned to recognize the different scents of industrial quantities of sunscreen smeared into masses of cellulite. I have inhaled the aroma of it’s-always-Christmas-even-when-it’s-one-hundred-degrees-in-August candied almonds. I have listened to the roar of one thousand two hundred families eating cheeseburgers, the thunder of two thousand four hundred jaws chewing in unison, while the smell of fry grease wafts through the muggy air. I have seen mouse suitcases, mouse sunglasses, mouse swimsuits, mouse frying pans and kitchen towels, cups with mouse ears, mouse dishware and mouse vases, mouse golf balls, mouse keychains and playing cards, mouse spatulas for flipping mouse pancakes, macaroni shaped like a mouse’s head and a wedding cake topped with a boy-mouse and girl-mouse holding hands. I have tasted cartoon sushi: a mouse carved from raw fish. I have stood in line after line after line. I have listened to singing stones. I have learned to tell Dewey from Louie from Huey. I have flown on Persian carpets and on elephants with outlandishly large ears. I have stood in line again to have a coffee while sitting on a pink mushroom. I have traveled in monorails that reek of diapers hastily changed inside the railcar. Please remain seated. Check your belongings on your way out. Fasten your seatbelt. Do not stand while the car is in motion. Hold on to the handrail. Unable to avoid it, I have touched the same handrail as half a million other people and forgotten to wash my hands. I know now the various ways people sweat: the fat, the thin, the old, the young, the bald, the people with blue hair. I have heard a baby cry in terror at the sight of a plastic tiger, and two parents scream at the top of their lungs in front of their two children, and the mercilessly ongoing debate over which line to stand in next. I have witnessed the apocalyptic tantrum of a two-year-old Tinkerbell and observed the spectacle of a woman in a teal sweatshirt rummaging through her silver purse for money that isn’t there and without which she will be unable to buy the plush mouse toy that her four-year-old daughter is holding in her arms. I have seen the cashier hand the credit card that’s been declined back to her, the girl burst into tears, her mother drag her out through the door. I have watched my hand, as though it were someone else’s, pick up the mouse by the tip of one ear and stuff it into my shirt. I have seen my feet shuffle toward the shop exit, following the girl while two other figures, much larger, follow me. Outside, I beheld the night sky as it lit up. I heard distant explosions. When it was dark and the air like a warm bath, I have observed them, mother and daughter, silhouettes against the glowing sky. I have sensed two shadows approaching: one rat grabs me by my left arm; the other rat grips my right. I see my reflection in their dark eyes as they banish me from the rat’s nest. On my way past the little girl, I’ve seen her amnesiac smile: she has completely forgotten about the mouse, which I still have tucked under my shirt. I’ve watched the mother point at the sky as three blossoms of light explode. Boom! One circle for the head. Boom! Boom! Two ears. I’ve heard the girl squeal: 

“Mickey!”

Tere Dávila is from San Juan, Puerto Rico, and is the author of three short story collections, a novel, and a book of personal essays. In 2016 she won the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture’s National Prize for Short Fiction for Aquí están las instrucciones, as well as the National Prize for Novel for her first novel, Nenísimas. Her work has been included in various national and international anthologies, including San Juan Noir (Akashic Books), and Palabras: Dispatches from the Festival de la Palabra (No Passport Press). In 2015 her story “El fondillo maravilloso” was adapted into an award-winning short film.

Rebecca Hanssens-Reed is a translator and writer from Philadelphia currently based in St. Louis. Her work has appeared widely in journals such as Cleveland Review of Books, World Literature Today, Conjunctions, The Offing, and The New England Review, and her translations have been selected by Valeria Luiselli for the O. Henry Prize and by Matthew Salesses for the Best of the Net anthology. She has an MFA in Literary Translation from the University of Iowa.