Oysters
I often stop on my way home from midtown meetings at the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station for a plate of six Blue Points on ice. Yesterday a young mother sat beside me at the counter, eating a bowl of clam chowder with her infant in her lap. I closed the book I was reading and smiled at the baby, who threw a spoon on the floor. The woman was spent. “I look forward to the day I can eat alone with a book,” she said. But I was looking backward. The baby I lost, small as an oyster, would be eighteen had she lived.
Ostras
Con frecuencia paso por el Oyster Bar en la Estación Central en camino a casa después de las reuniones en Midtown a ordenar un plato de seis Blue Points sobre hielo. Ayer una joven madre se sentó a mi lado en la barra, comiéndose una sopa de almejas con su niña en brazos. Cerré el libro que estaba leyendo y le sonreí a su bebé, quien tiró una cuchara al piso. La mujer estaba agotada. “Espero el día en que pueda comer sola y con un libro,” dijo. Pero yo estaba viendo al pasado. La bebé que perdí, pequeña como una ostra, tendría dieciocho años si hubiera vivido.
Translation into Spanish by Dr. Armando Garcia
Relato ganador de la IV Edición del Concurso Internacional de Microrrelatos Museo de la Palabra, convocado por la Fundación César Egido Serrano.
Emily Raboteau is the author of The Professor's Daughter and Searching for Zion, winner of a 2014 American Book Award and a finalist for the Hurston Wright Award. She is currently Distinguished Faculty in the CUNY Graduate Center's Advanced Research Collaborative, where she's completing her third book.