The Weight of Nothing: Chapter 5
Mercy’s Advocate
Read The Weight of Nothing - Chapter One
Read The Weight of Nothing - Chapter Two
Read The Weight of Nothing - Chapter Three
Read The Weight of Nothing - Chapter Four
The gray-haired woman sits in her room and cooks. Not because she’s hungry. Because her hands insist.
She doesn’t know what she’s making. But her hands do. Chopping motions with no knife. Stirring motions with no spoon. Seasoning with no spices. The muscle memory so specific she can almost smell it.
Garlic. Onions. Something rich and slow. Stew maybe. Or… the word coming from nowhere… estofado. Her tongue knows it before her mind does. Portuguese, probably. Or Spanish. One of those languages that lives in the mouth differently than this one.
She goes through the motions for an hour. Building an imaginary meal for someone who isn’t there. When it’s “done”—when her hands finally still—she sits. Stares at the empty pot. The empty bowl. The empty chair across from her.
“I am from the place where your eyes meet with a void,” she whispers.
But that’s not true. She’s from the place where someone ate what she cooked. Where someone sat in that chair. Where cooking meant love meant purpose meant…
She stands abruptly. Leaves the room. Can’t be there anymore. Not with the phantom smell of garlic and the empty chair and her hands still twitching like they want to serve, to nourish, to provide.
Outside, the air is cold. Or maybe it’s not cold. Maybe her body just remembers cold. Remembers bundling up, remembers someone else being cold and her providing warmth.
She walks without purpose. Or with her body’s purpose, which isn’t the same thing.
She ends up at the wall. The graffiti wall everyone’s talking about, she’s been avoiding it. Knew it existed. Knew people were carving. But she didn’t want to see. Didn’t want evidence.
Now she’s here. Staring.
So many names. So many words. ANA repeated over and over. ANTÓNIO with its accent mark. HIJO. GUERRA. ANTES (before). LECHE (milk). A whole wall of somatic memory made permanent.
Her hands itch and want to pick up a stone. Want to carve.
She resists. Clenches her fists. No. This is how it spreads, this is how the poison takes hold. Better to let it fade. Better to let the hands forget.
But she reads anyway. Can’t help it. Each name a person. Each person a loss. Each loss a grief that someone’s body is still carrying.
RICARDO
MAMA
CASA (home)
MAR (sea)
And there—fresh, recently carved—ESTOFADO.
Someone else’s hands know the same recipe. Someone else is phantom-cooking the same meal. She’s not alone in this. Not unique.
That makes it worse somehow.
A man approaches. The one who was crying at the corner. The fountain man, others call him. He’s carving ANA again. Adding to his collection. Obsessive. Desperate.
“You should stop,” she tells him. “You’re making it worse.”
He doesn’t look up. “My daughter needs me to remember.”
“Your daughter is dead. Or gone. Or never existed. Memory won’t bring her back.”
Now he looks up. Eyes red. But not crying. Past crying. “I know that. But if I forget her completely, she dies twice. Once in whatever happened. Once in my forgetting.”
“Maybe that’s mercy,” the gray-haired woman says. “Maybe forgetting is the gift. The war gave us blank slates. Fresh starts. And you—all of you—you’re choosing to drag the past back. To reopening wounds.”
“The wounds never closed,” he says simply. “They just went underground. Our bodies kept bleeding.”
She has no answer for that.
Another woman arrives. The one who’s been knitting. She has maybe twenty feet of chain now, wrapped around her like armor. Her hands still working. Still adding.
“You should come tonight,” the knitting woman says. “To the meeting. Share your perspective.”
“My perspective?”
“That we should stop. That forgetting is better. We need that voice. We can’t all be rememberers. Someone has to advocate for mercy.”
The gray-haired woman considers. She doesn’t want to go. Doesn’t want to join them. Doesn’t want to become part of this collective remembering.
But if she doesn’t, they’ll all feed each other’s obsession. They’ll convince each other that memory is noble. That carrying weight is strength. They need someone to offer the alternative. To show them the cost.
“I’ll come,” she says. “But I’m not one of you.”
“You’re here,” the fountain man says. “You’re reading the names. That makes you one of us.”
She wants to argue. But can’t. Because he’s right. She’s here. She read the names. And somewhere inside her, under all the resistance, her hands want to carve ESTOFADO. Want to leave evidence. Want to prove that someone sat in that chair and ate what she made and mattered.
She turns away. “I’ll see you tonight.” Walks away before her hands betray her.