“The Dirty Kid” by Mariana Enriquez
Recommended by McSweeney’s
Issue No. 114
1
My family thinks I’m crazy because I choose to live in the family house in Constitución, my paternal grandparents’ house, a hulk of stone and green-painted iron doors on Virreyes Street, with Art Deco details and old mosaics on the floor so worn out that, had it occurred to me to wax them, I could have set up a skating rink. But I had always been in love with that house, and, as a girl, when they first rented it to a law firm, I remember how much it upset me, how much I missed those rooms with tall windows and the interior patio that seemed like a secret garden, how frustrated I was when I went by the door and could no longer freely enter. I didn’t miss my grandfather much, a quiet man who scarcely smiled and never played. I didn’t even cry much when he died. I cried a lot more when, after his death, we lost the house.
Read the full story here!
About the Author
Mariana Enriquez was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1973. She has a degree in Journalism and Social Communication from Universidad Nacional de La Plata, and she is the editor of Radar, the arts and culture supplement for Pagina/12. She has published two novels, Bajar es lo peor and Cómo desaparecer completamente, a collection of short stories, Los peligros de fumar en la cama, a novella, Chicos que vuelven, and a collection of travel narratives.
About the Translator
Joel Streicker’s translations of Latin American authors have appeared in A Public Space, Subtropics, Words Without Borders, Zyzzyva, and Epiphany. He received a 2011 PEN American Center Translation Fund Grant to translate Samanta Schweblin’s collection of short stories, Pájaros en la boca. Streicker holds a B.A. in Latin American studies from the University of Michigan and a PhD in cultural anthropology from Stanford University.
About the Guest Editor
McSweeney’s began in 1998 as a literary journal that published only works rejected by other magazines. That rule was soon abandoned, and since then McSweeney’s has attracted work from some of the finest writers in the country, while continuing to be a major home for new and unpublished writers. Each issue of the quarterly is completely redesigned. There have been hardcovers and paperbacks, an issue with two spines, an issue with a magnetic binding, an issue that looked like a bundle of junk mail, and an issue that looked like a sweaty human head. McSweeney’s has won multiple literary awards, including two National Magazine Awards for fiction.
“The Dirty Kid” © Copyright Mariana Enriquez 2014. All rights reserved by the author.
