The way she walks.
Combs in a row near the mirror, handles to the right. Moisturizer and perfume line up on the left, side by side. A chair with floral prints and bunches of grapes sat in the center, in front was the powder box, arithmetically in place without a grain outside its margins. Five natural hair brushes, upside down, perched on their knobs from largest to smallest. The scent of orange blossom and vanilla. A drawer full of eye pencils, sharp and in order like an army about to attack. Flowers, with water of today, and so every day since the vase was put there. Cotton gauze pads, nobly perched near the acetone and nail paints, in the right drawer next to the mirror.
The sound of her heels grated in my chest like a doorbell, ringing loudly, as when there’s urgency and someone else’s crying no longer matters, you need to get in. Orchestrating that anticipated event that sometimes urges us to make decisions without thinking. I saw her pianist fingers slide over the contour of my ribcage and I lost myself between notion and time, letting myself be carried away by that tingling that makes your hair stand on end without wanting to… And it was like that, for God’s sake, how she unbuttoned me like a purse, wide open. “Stay the night,” I said, but she had other plans. She didn’t even let me finish the sentence before she resumed the course of her conviction, she wanted to leave. To break with the “everything” that had so embittered her. My words settled on her wound, activating that “aandoor” that had been so hard for us to assimilate. Her hands and mine merged in symbols of farewell. In farewell ceremonies, which always escaped me, all her signs, all her silences full of elephants, so graphic that they seemed to have life, walking with us. Today I remember her as a wound, as a weary impertinence that made me look at what I didn’t see, what escapes you when you run. But all this came to me late, it entered with blood.
Yet, I sometimes felt overwhelmed by the multitude of plans. Our lives were a series of cautious rooftop changes, driven by survival, warmth, and safety. The present, that unyielding beacon of freedom, now seemed to betray us, summoning the specter of fear. It loomed over us, a premonition of pain. Then came the knock—forceful, deliberate—at the heart of our door. It was them; it was time to move again.
She came and settled in the cozy lounge at the entrance, right before crossing the hall that opened to the main dining room. Then a sound like a pair of heels stumbling snapped her out of it and I heard her say: Ana? Are you there? Something she used to ask; transformed into what they had made of her. Red satin heels, with leather lining and soles. Pointy but not too much. Then she walked into the room and eyed the suit.
And as the night deepened, we'd retreat to our respective corners of the chamber, claiming rooms that once housed royalty. Our beds were makeshift—pallets cobbled together from cushions and coats—but they were ours. In the silence that followed, broken only by the sound of rain and the occasional distant rumble, we'd find sleep, each lost in dreams of a peaceful tomorrow, when suddenly, father's gaze swept across the room, drawn to the sound of marching boots. His sharp intake of breath was a silent alarm, rousing us from our beds. We exchanged glances, each understanding the gravity of the moment without a word spoken. With practiced haste, we followed the plan.
The Way She Walks is a short novel telling the story of Martin and Ana, a gay man and a lesbian woman who dived into a fictitious marriage during the late 50s in Spain. During their lives, they move countries and have descendants.
Ana kept all the letters and photographs from their lovers in an old meds box. Throughout their daughter's adolescence, Ana voices out all the content in the box to her. They often have long conversations where Gael asks about her father and their life before coming to The Netherlands. The plot takes place in Spain and Holland between the ’30s - ’70s.
This project is inspired by a family story, although none of the events or characters in the plot are based on any real person or people’s lives. The work is a fictional story that aims to explore notions of mimicry and suppression within gender norms. It studies how these social codes are translated into the aesthetics and imagery of the time through writings, photography, and sculpture.
This work was generously supported by Mondriaan Fonds.
Special thanks to Archivo Regional de la Comunidad de Madrid and Stadsarchief Amsterdam.
