The apartment

We moved into our apartment in La Plata when I was 5 years old – I really can’t be more precise. The apartment was three blocks away from my grandparents’ house and a couple of blocks from the Plaza San Martín and the beginning of the centro, not the literal center of the city (that would be Plaza Moreno), but the commercial area. La Plata is the capital of the province of Buenos Aires, and the provincial government buildings are located around the plaza as well. One of them, the casa de gobierno, an imposing building that apparently is even more beautiful inside (pictures at http://www.laplata.gov.ar/nuevo/ciudad/arquitectura/casadegobierno.shtm), burnt sometime during my childhood. I remember a story of a maid and some curtains. There were quite a few fires happening at the time, I remember praying every night that there wouldn’t be a fire in our building. But I also prayed that there wouldn’t be a volcano explosion (I’d seen The last days of Pompey), an earthquake (there was an 8.9 earthquake in San Juan in 1977, it was felt in La Plata, over a thousand kilometers away, but I’m pretty sure we slept through it) or a tidal wave (another movie I watched). Later I would wonder if so many fires were related to the repression, but I’ve never read anything that would support such supposition.

Our apartment was relatively small. It had three bedrooms (I shared one with my sister), a large living room, two bathrooms and a kitchen large enough to become the center of the house – where we hang out.
My parents had gotten the apartment for a bargain. They bought it before it was built for $8 million pesos – I think the builders carried the mortgage. That was at a time when the economy in Argentina was quite stable (perhaps artificially so?) and inflation and interest rates were low. Soon after, though, hyper-inflation took over the country and my parents fixed mortgage payments became laughably small.
My mother had bought a lot of new furnishings for the apartment. The room I shared with my sister was furnished with a high bed for me and a crib for my sister (who must have been around 2 at the time). I couldn’t find any pictures of my room, but as I lived there for 7 years, I remember it quite well.
My bed had white and blue veneer, and had quite a bit of storage underneath. In the front there was a large cabinet with three drawers underneath. Behind that there was a cabinet with a shelf and doors on both sides – I remember using it as a tunnel.
My mother had decorated the ceiling with a mobile of paper birds. I had a little clock with the picture of a black farmer – his eyes moved as the seconds went on. The image would probably be considered offensive, at least here (when I was in Kenya last year I saw lots of images at the handicraft market that would most likely offend American sensibilities). I still have the clock, perhaps even on the wall somewhere – and yet I don’t remember where. OK, I’ve looked, it’s not hanging in this house, but I’m pretty sure I have it.
The area under my bed became, at some point, a little playhouse. There was a poster of the Aristocats on the wall – I liked it a lot. I had a play oven, refrigerator and washing machine. Later I would get doll furniture – though my dolls didn’t fit. This was the time before “fashion dolls”, aka Barbies.
The window of my room, as most of the other windows, had iron bars. The apartment was on a fifth floor, the windows were pretty low, and my mother was terrified that we’d fall out the window. Better safe than sorry. The sun hit my room in the afternoon.
The apartment, as you can imagine, evolved over time. Our aqua-colored kitchen chairs broke down, and we got new blue ones. Later, I’d guess around 1979 or 1980, my parents bought themselves a green colored, faux leather bedroom set, and us a large piece of furniture which included two desks, cabinets and several shelves. Too bad we didn’t get to enjoy it more. In any case, I continued doing my homework at the kitchen table.
It’s funny, thinking back. I lived with Mike in our first apartment together for 7 years as well, and yes, I remember what it looked like, but it doesn’t feel like “home”, the way the apartment where I spent my childhood did. Not that it’s strange, people always seem to be sentimental about the places where they grow up. But I think it’s even more difficult for me – as when we left it, we did it thinking we would come back. I did, but alone and I didn’t live there – and now I haven’t seen it for twenty six years.
As I mentioned, the kitchen was the heart of our house. There was a formica table against one of the blue-tiled walls, the aqua chairs that I mentioned before. The laundry area was by the window. My mother had the washing machine there, the laundry think, and above it a metal structure from which you could hang clothing. It’d be great if I could get one like that here. The dryer was closer to the table. Looking at the picture I’ll post here, it’s apparent that at some point it had a plant on top. At some point as well, we got birds – a gray/black & red bird whose name I don’t remember and European goldfinches – I don’t think they lasted long.
The one pet we did have for quite a while was our turtle Manuelita. Turtles, or rather tortoises, were very popular pets among apartment-dwellers in Argentina. They were left to roam around the apartment. There is a popular song by songstress María Elena Walsh about a turtle named Manuelita that goes to Paris to get beautiful, so many if not most pet turtles in Argentina were called Manuelita. I think Mafalda’s was called “Burocracia”. Later we got a turtle that we named Pepita, and in 1978, when we went to Patagonia, we took a passing turtle which we named D’artagnan (yes, that was a terrible thing to do, but we weren’t as environmentally aware back then as we are now). All our turtles suffered horrible fates. One was killed by a jumping washing machine. Another died from the insecticide that we used on some plants in our weekend house. And D’artagnan, who was a pretty big turtle, disappeared one day (from our weekend house as well). We never knew if he ran away or was stolen.
There was a little red black & white TV on the kitchen, where we watched kids’ programs every afternoon after school. I remember Carozo y Narizota (I LOVED Narizota, the mischievous one) and cartoons such as the Super Friends, Loony tunes and the wacky racers. I, of course, loved Penelope. There were cupboards and drawers, and a fridge that seemed huge then, but in reality was very small in comparison to the ones we have now.
Near the front door there was a half-bathroom which I took as my own – I kept the tiny perfumes I collected there. Granny had given me my favourite, a tiny perfume with a green cap that smelled of violets. I still have the perfume, half-empty, some of it must have spilled over the years. I’m sure it no longer smell well – but I’d like to find another perfume that smells like violets.
The living room was behind folding doors. We weren’t allowed in there when we were little. It was barely used at all. I do remember sneaking in and going through the cupboard – my parents stored all sorts of things behind its wooden lower doors. On the glass shelves, meanwhile, my mother kept her collection of foreign dolls – my grandfather had bought them for her when he traveled around the world. There she also kept the two animales a cuerda that my grandfather had brought from Europe for David and I. Mine was a little white girl duck, standing on two feet, dressed with a head scarf and an apron. I still have it somewhere, I don’t remember how she moved, I think she walked . Junior, my younger brother, had a fuzzy light brown dog, it barked and it might have jumped over itself. I don’t know what happened to it. As with my doll Belinda, my mother rarely let us play with them.
When I was 10 years old, the whole family went to Brazil to celebrate my sister’s kidney transplant. Or did we? We did for sure for our 1980 winter break, but I have this memory of having gone the year before as well. I guess it doesn’t really matter. My point is that in Brazil we bought our first color TV – color TV having arrived in Argentina around that time. Brazil, at that time, was much cheaper than Argentina, so many people were going over the border to buy TVs and other electronics.
The color TV was put proudly in our living room, and from then on we started using that room more often. What I most remember watching was Érase una vez el hombre – a cartoon series about the history of the world – starting with the Big Bang. My brother and I LOVED the show – alas, it was canceled once it reached the Middle Ages and it become somehow offensive to the Catholic Church. That can be explained by the fact that we lived in a constitutionally Catholic country, under a super-Catholic military dictatorship. But would a similar program made it to America’s airwaves?

Celebrating some anniversary of my sister’s transplant in the kitchen of our apartment.

Another transplant anniversary celebration, this time in our dining room.

With my great-aunt Grace, in the living room of our apartment