A woman named Estela García sits alone in an interrogation cell and begins talking to the police she assumes are listening in from another room. She’s 40 years old, born to a single mother in the Chilean countryside.
Seven years earlier, Estela traveled to the city of Santiago in search of work and was hired by a wealthy couple to be their “housemaid” and nanny to their soon-to-be born daughter, Julia. That daughter, now 7, has just been found dead in the family’s swimming pool. Whether the cause of her death will be deemed an accident, suicide, or foul play we don’t know; but, if it’s the latter, Estela is the chief suspect.
We readers learn almost all of this information in the first pages of Clean, a slim, extraordinary novel by Chilean author, Alia Trabucco Zerán, translated into English by Sophie Hughes. But, here’s something we never learn: what Estela looks like.
I’ve sat still in Estela’s company for hours, raptly reading her story and hearing her voice; yet, it wasn’t until I began describing the premise of this novel that I realized I have no idea of Estela’s appearance beyond the general categories of gender and age.
Through the brilliance of her writing, Zerán lulls readers into the same haughty blindness as Estela’s employers. To the señor, a doctor, and the señora, who works for some kind of corporation, invisible Estela simply is what she does for them: “making the bed, airing the rooms, scrubbing the vomit out of the rug,” cooking and serving their meals; bleaching the sweat and dirt out of their clothes; and attending to their surly child, who, even as a baby, had to be coaxed to eat.
