Electric, defiant, and singing with melancholia, Alejandra Banca’s devastating debut throws its arms around a displaced generation of young Venezuelan migrants, reveling in the clamor and beauty of their day-by-day survival.

Bum-Ba-Da-Dáh-Da Da-Da-Dáh-Da 

The cramp brings her to a dead stop. Feet flat on the asphalt, hands tightly gripping the handlebars. Her womb contracts again and María Eugenia bites her lip. She doesn’t have ibuprofen or anything for the pain. Her meds are stored away in a cosmetics bag hidden in her suitcase; she only uses them for real emergencies because medicines are expensive here. Menstrual pain doesn’t come under an emergency, but, fuck, it hurts. She looks up: the street brings her back to reality. 

Come on, María Eugenia, let’s go. She settles onto the bike again and starts pedaling. The pain in her legs is nothing compared to what she feels in her hips. Her body shudders with the aftershocks of an earthquake and her belly is the epicenter. 

Only a few more streets before she can deliver the order. She knows the last street will be the most difficult because it’s uphill. Freaking Carmel streets. Concentrate on pedaling to forget the pain. Sometimes she imagines she’s in a game and she needs to go faster to win more points; other times she thinks she’s competing in the Tour de France. She tries to spur herself on thinking about the physical side: she’s thinner, her legs are stronger, she has more stamina. Then there are moments when she lives with intense paranoia and fears for her life. She could get knocked down, she could have a bad fall and injure herself, she could even die. 

Some days, she feels so miserable between pedaling and more pedaling that she only thinks about death. She heard someone say that if a Spaniard knocks you down, you’re within your rights to report it and you could be offered citizenship, but she’s not sure, it could be one of those rumors that run wild. She’s also not entirely convinced she wants to stay in Spain forever, hopefully not. 

Her calves start to burn, and she pushes harder. Let’s go, dammit, almost there. The straps of her backpack chafe her armpits, she has to find out how to secure it to her bike, like Cheo does. 

She slams the brakes. 

She touches the ground with her toes and gets off the bike. Something moves, something oozes out, she can feel it. Shit, fucking cup. She pulls her panties out of her crack, pretends that nothing has happened, maybe it is nothing. 

She’s hot, she can feel the damp between her breasts. Luckily, it’s winter, it’s only twelve degrees and, luckier still, the place is on the first floor and she doesn’t have to go up any stairs. She puts the backpack down, carefully takes out the McDonald’s bag and presses the buzzer. A guy opens. Hey! I’ve got your order, María Eugenia greets him, holding the bag out toward him. He looks at her, surprised. Yeah, I know. I’m not Álex, but I’ve got your order just the same. Thanks, he says and takes the bag. 

She hopes he doesn’t give her a bad rating because the account’s ranking would go down and the schedule wouldn’t open on time for her, she’d end up without enough hours. She knows that she looks nothing like the person who, in theory, should be making the delivery, but that’s the game. Álex is a friend who lets her use his account as long as she pays his freelancer fee. It’s not bad, bearing in mind that many people who rent out their accounts don’t just demand payment of the fee, but also take a cut of the rider’s earnings. Enjoy, she says finally, as the guy nods and closes the door. 

María Eugenia turns the bike around, straps her backpack on again. She hasn’t mounted her bike yet when the phone shrieks bum-ba-da-dáh-da da-da-dáh-da. The sound of money, of hunger. She checks where she has to go: a sushi restaurant. 

An aftershock of the primordial earthquake rocks her again. Anyone seeing her in that moment would know that something was wrong. She waits a few seconds for the pain to subside, like a wave rolling out, and then stands up. Getting on her bike, she notices a strange dampness in her underwear. She’s still not used to the menstrual cup and has to adjust it several times before, like magic, everything seems to fit perfectly inside her and it doesn’t leak. It’s been five hours since she put it in and until now she hadn’t felt anything. Maybe she can use the restroom in the sushi restaurant. She always goes to the McDonald’s one as a last resort, when she can’t hold it in any longer. With her period, it’s more chaotic and she usually tries to go at home, or to work nearby so she can escape in case of a leak. 

The sushi restaurant is a twelve-minute bike ride away. Google Maps shows more, but she’s going to try to shorten the journey by taking different alleyways. She doesn’t know what Google Maps was smoking when it designed its routes, but sometimes she only needed to go in a straight line to get to her destination. The app works against her. Better to memorize the names of the streets and bike paths. 

The good thing about Carmel: going downhill. She cools down quickly in the breeze. Sometimes she gets scared and hits the brakes, but she usually enjoys it. She’s on the flat once more and pedals calmly. She feels something ooze out again but can’t check it, it’s overflowing. Now she knows it’s definitely blood; she feels the warmth filling her vulva. She knows when she’s staining her clothes, though she can’t explain how. 

Fuck! At least my leggings are black, and my coat covers my ass. She tries squeezing her vaginal muscles as if she could hold it in that way. When she reaches the sushi restaurant, there are two riders waiting, both sitting on the low wall by the entrance with their thermal bags on the ground. María Eugenia leaves her bike and greets them, knocks on the restaurant’s door. Hi, hello, I’ve got this order, she shows her phone to the Asian woman who approaches. Okay, a few minutes, the woman responds. María Eugenia can see them already putting some trays into a bag, presumably for the riders waiting outside. Hi, I’m sorry, would it be possible to use the bathroom, please? It sounds like she’s begging. The woman looks at her and shakes her head, sorry, love, it’s not allowed. Okay, thank you. 

She leaves the restaurant and stands by her bike, waiting. Right then, they hand two bags to one of the riders, an Indian or Pakistani, she can’t tell. The other rider is rolling himself a cigarette. She sees it and it makes her want a smoke too, but then she’d be thirsty, and her water bottle isn’t that big. Plus, it’s months since she last smoked, and it seems like this time she has finally quit for real. She feels like she can breathe better and that she’s fitter, not to mention her ability to smell things that she used to miss. 

She moves away to the corner of the restaurant and, trying not to be seen, puts her hand underneath her buttocks and pats the area. I knew it. It’s damp. She looks at her fingers, they’re lightly stained red. She smells them even though there is no need: yep, blood.

Shitballs! Okay, last one then I’m going home. This sucks, I smell like ass. She grabs her water bottle and cleans her fingers. She doesn’t have any more black panties, she’ll have to do laundry, and from now until it dries, she won’t have any option but to wear colored leggings, the ones she doesn’t like because they irritate her inner thighs. She wants to sit on the low wall at the entrance to the restaurant, but the tiles are white, she would leave a mark. She shifts her body weight from one foot to the other. While she waits, she replies to some messages. Hola mami, I love you too. Yes, all good, working right now. Heart emoji, sunflower emoji. Yeah, it’s near Sants, I’ll send you the address later, thumbs up. Hahaha LMAO that killed me, crying-with-laughter face. Sara, can you turn on the hot water? I’m coming home to shower coz I’ve leaked. Injection emoji. 

Sara is one of her housemates, there are three of them: María Eugenia, Sara, and Yunalivi. Yuna is at work and Sara is the only one at home because she works remotely. Sara is also the only one who has papers, the contract for the rent is in her name. She sublets the other two rooms because paying for an apartment on her own would be a real pain. María Eugenia and Yuna pay three hundred euros each for their rooms, Sara puts in the rest. María Eugenia isn’t too sure what Sara does, but she does know that she earns good money, that it’s something to do with numbers and codes, and that she’s always sitting at the computer typing. 

Sure, Maru. Plugging it in now. 

They decided to unplug the boiler when they weren’t using it to save on electricity. Sara has a thing about wasting electricity or water. She also forces them into rigorous recycling and has slowly convinced them to use solid shampoo; now the three of them share the same bar. The menstrual cup, of course, was also Sara’s idea. She had fabric panty liners and period undies that absorb blood, but María Eugenia didn’t trust them. She was only giving the cup a trial and, look, it was already letting her down. Fuck, Maru, listen to me. Don’t be afraid to really stick it up there, it’s not going anywhere, she reassured her. It’s got this stem for you to pull on. One thing though, you’ve gotta break the vacuum in there, otherwise you could hurt yourself. 

The first time that Maru put the cup in, she panicked. Then she couldn’t feel the stem and thought that she would have to go to the walk-in clinic for them to take the cup out, but it turned out that she just wasn’t used to sticking her fingers very far up. Tampax have a cord to pull on and you can avoid the rest of it, with the cup she needed to explore a little. María Eugenia had put her fingers in and shoved; in that moment she thought that giving birth must be the worst and most painful thing in the world. 

Babe, you’ve gotta relax when you put it in. If you’re all tense, it’s not gonna open properly. Look, what I do is fold it like this or like that, Sara explained folding the cup like a U, and bam, in it goes. Then I put these fingers in and gently touch the base to see if it’s flat, if you feel a little lump or something, it’s still folded. If it irritates you or hurts, you can put a little lube on it, but you don’t really need it, that’s for pussies. A gut punch doubles her over, squeezes her swollen belly. The waitress comes out again and gives a yellow bag to the other rider. The guy throws his cigarette to the ground and gets on an electric scooter. The woman comes back straight away and gives her a package; Maru stores it in her bag and looks at the delivery address, which is only revealed once you have the order. She has to go to Carrer de l’Arc de Sant Cristòfol, another fifteen minutes by bike. 

She sits as comfortably as she can and without thinking too much about the stain spreading across her buttocks and inner thighs, she pedals. When she sees other riders, they greet each other, though she never feels truly comfortable because the vast majority of them are men. She has seen so few women that they all know each other. 

It doesn’t surprise her that female riders aren’t very common. It’s tough work, not just physically. She regularly encounters odious men who stare at her or find ways to make innuendos while she delivers their food. More than the customers, pedestrians or drivers are the worst of all. Alright love, enjoyin’ yerself on yer bike? some idiot said to her once, licking his lips. He was with friends and all four of them laughed. The number of sexual comments she gets just for smiling while riding her bike is surprising: some people have such twisted minds. Enjoying her bike ride and showing it only provokes obscenities. Not to mention her fellow riders who mock her, exclaiming in a pack that she can’t take more than five orders, at most, that she’s not fit enough to make up to a hundred euros a day, like they do. She keeps silent and smiles, cursing them all under her breath. Dickheads. 

Like in many other jobs, it’s not easy for her to be taken seriously. They all think that she does it as a side hustle, that she’s not biking all day. Well, they’re wrong. Hey, mamita, you’re so tasty, topped off with that repulsive lip-biting and eyes that penetrate her. Just what I needed. María Eugenia looks at the guy who is laughing and watching her from the sidewalk, grabbing his balls. She looks away, almost breathing fire. What she would really like to do is get off her bike, stick her fingers in her vagina and then wipe them across the face of that imbecile who is still shouting things at her. Force them into his mouth. Take your mamita, that’s tasty, huh? In your face, you toad. The light changes and she moves on. 

She is about to arrive when she feels that the reservoir of blood is now breaching its levee. She brakes in front of a narrow building with pretty little balconies, gets off the bike and notices the seat is stained. A darker patch than the black of the seat, shinier. She tries to stand up straight, but the pain in her belly doubles her over, she feels like a hunchback. She takes the order out of her backpack and approaches the entrance to the building. Before she can ring the bell, the door opens and a girl with curly hair appears. That’s for me, thanks so much, the girl looks at her, surprised, of course, to see not Álex but a young woman looking pained. She smiles at her, and María Eugenia returns the smile with the corners of her eyes. She grabs the bag and offers her some coins that Maru accepts with profound gratitude. Sometimes angels do exist, in the form of people who give a tip, or so she likes to think. Oh, thank you so much, she says. The young woman closes the door and leaves her there with her pain and her stain. She puts the two euros in her koala, or riñonera as she should call it here, and gets back on her bike. She doesn’t think she’ll accept another order, she’s hurting, she’s done. Her head is starting to pound. 

They’ll probably lower her rating for not completing these peak hours, but she just can’t; she needs to get changed, shower, throw herself into bed and cling to the covers. Now she will take an ibuprofen, because the pain is stronger than her money worries. 

Only another fifteen minutes of movement before she can get home and give herself over to the task of relaxing, she no longer cares about the stain or if blood is still leaking. She managed to make forty-two euros in six hours. She can’t do any more, she’s not well today. Today she does believe the comments from her fellow riders: that she can’t do it, that she’s not fit or strong enough. If only you all bled from your dicks and your balls hurt as much as my womb does, I’d love to see you then. The image brings her comfort. 

She thinks about her parents and her younger brother, still on the other side of the Atlantic, hoping everything goes well for her and that she’s able to save at least enough money to bring him over. The thought depresses her, she tries to get it out of her mind by thinking about other things, but a bitter taste remains in her mouth. Today it’s period pain, tomorrow what will it be? One of her worst fears is getting sick: with no documents, no money, no insurance, and responsible for three lives that depend on her. She bites her lips to keep from crying. I’m hormonal, that’s all. I’m fine. 

***

She finally reaches her street and as she opens the door to her building she feels the levee break, the great flood is coming. She goes up in the elevator to the fourth floor, opens the door to the apartment, and hears Sara typing at the computer. The hot water’s ready for you, Maru, she shouts without looking away from the screen. María Eugenia places her bike on the stand they got to avoid marking the walls. She leaves her backpack in the corner and takes off her shoes. She only wears socks or slippers at home, Sara’s orders, of course. Thanks, Sara, you’re the best. So, has there been a murder in your panties? A massacre. 

She closes the bathroom door and takes off her socks, then her T-shirt, and finally her leggings and underwear. Shit. She forgot to put on dark underwear. These are beige and the whole ass is now dyed burgundy, she’ll have to wring them out by hand in very cold water to remove the stains. At least the blood hasn’t fully dried. She puts them to soak in the sink. Twisting, she spots the scab of blood on her ass. She turns on the shower and waits a few seconds for the water to heat up. She sticks her fingers in and takes out the cup, blood spills over her hand and down her wrist; the cup is full and now there are clots on the shower tiles and running down her thighs. She puts her head under the hot water and relaxes. 

The water flows, cleans the ceramic shower tiles, white again now, sweeps away clots, blood, and with them her frustration at only earning forty-two euros. Don’t think about that, Maru. Tomorrow you’ll make more money. She closes her eyes and massages her stomach, her hips. 

Bum-ba-da-dáh-da da-da-dáh-da, bum-ba-da-dáh-da da-da-dáh-da. 

Fuck! The goddam sound of money, of hunger. She’d forgotten to cancel the last hour. Where did she leave her phone? Sara, reject the order pleaaaase! she shouts, half out of the shower. The music insists. Sara! she shouts again, more forcefully, this time holding on to the shower curtain while trying to open the bathroom door. She miscalculates and slips. Falls flat on her ass, taking with her the shower curtain and the metal shelf where they keep the shampoo, conditioner, soaps, razors, and a thousand other things. 

María Eugenia gives in; everything hits her all at once in an uncontrollable wave of emotions. She surrenders to the tears that are camouflaged in the water pounding her face. 

The music stops and the bathroom door slowly opens. 

Sara discovers the wrinkled mass of curtain on the floor, the bathmat soaking up water, and the corpse of poor María Eugenia sobbing under the flow. Are you okay? she whispers. Maru? she gets closer. No! I am not okay! María Eugenia covers her face with her hands. She weeps. 

Sara can’t help but chuckle, the scene is just too funny: María Eugenia sprawled in the shower like a jellyfish on the shore, surrounded by conditioners, the shower curtain a shroud, the poor thing sobbing with her hair over her face. They look at each other and both break into fits of giggles. They laugh nonstop until the bum-ba-da-dáh-da da-da-dáh-da, bum-ba-da-dáh-da da-da-dáh-da pulls them back to the present again. 

Translated by Katie Brown

From Savagery is available for preorder via Restless Books.