In her searching new novel, Jazmina Barrera threads together loss, needlework and the hypnotic coming-of-age tale of three Mexican teenagers.
CROSS-STITCH, by Jazmina Barrera. Translated by Christina MacSweeney.
Needlework is often depicted as a peaceful activity: feminine, unthreatening, decorative. Yet in Jazmina Barrera’s understated and lovely debut novel, “Cross-Stitch,” translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney, embroidery is revealed to be as quietly brutal as young womanhood, despite the shroud of innocence society often places over both.
Mila is an author, mother and needleworker whose life with a young child and a new book is so all-consuming she scarcely has time to attend to the growing patch of mold on her bathroom ceiling, let alone think about her adolescent best friends, Dalia and Citlali. That changes when Mila receives a Facebook message from Citlali’s aunt informing her that Citlali has drowned off the coast of Senegal. Citlali’s aunt asks her to help plan the funeral, which Mila agrees to, but the news also sends Mila reeling into her memories — she begins to recall a life-changing trip to Europe with Dalia and Citlali, as well as their other teenage escapades across their home of Mexico. Through her reflection she slowly realizes that in their teenage years, while she and Dalia were crafting themselves into independent adults, Citlali was starting a slow unraveling that would culminate in her mysterious death abroad.
As teens, the trio were unlikely friends. Dalia was gorgeous, adventurous and erudite. In middle school, she surrounded herself with “the sporty types, the good-looking girls who were no longer little kids, who played soccer or volleyball in the afternoons, had boyfriends, wore low-cut tops and could dance.” Citlali, however, seemed to reject the concept of cool as an identity. She was known for her raucous laughter, which “cackles like thunderclaps exploding from her wide mouth, often followed by an attack of hiccups,” Mila thinks. “She’d laugh at anything and anyone, herself most of all.”
The two go on opposite journeys in Mila’s memory and as the novel unfolds: While Dalia’s intensity, intelligence and sexuality continue to deepen over the course of the book, Citlali’s exuberance and humor fade, replaced instead with insecurity and rage. As the sparkle drains from Citlali, so does the fat on her bones, with Dalia and Mila nervously noticing that she eats less and less.
This all occurs as the trio bounce from place to place during their Europe trip, and as they grow up in Mexico. Their activities — viewing art, reading, wandering, falling in love or lust — are nothing extraordinary, but Mila’s even, restrained tone is hypnotic as she calmly recalls their adventures, which take on a darker tone as Dalia and Mila witness Citlali’s color wane. Interspersed into Mila’s memories and scenes of her present funeral planning are her philosophical musings about embroidery, language and womanhood, though their connections to the plot aren’t obvious and are never fully explained.
Citlali’s inscrutable fading is the driving force of the novel, yet fails to provide much tension from which the book could benefit. We know from the beginning more or less what happens to her. The book eventually alludes to why she died, but there’s not enough narrative about this particular plot point for it to land. The denouement feels like an emotional deus ex machina, which Barrera might have avoided if she’d spent more time at least hinting at the details of Citlali’s trouble throughout.
Still, much remains to appreciate about “Cross-Stitch”: Barrera’s compassion for, and deep understanding of, her three vulnerable young characters; the compact historical and literary diversions into needlework that add richness and context; the honest, unromanticized depiction of young womanhood, packed as it is with peril, yearning and banality. Barrera’s novel is ideal for anyone who’s ever been compelled by grief to excavate life-altering relationships.
Even when it’s used as an ordinary household tool, much danger lurks at the sharp end of a needle, something Mila’s beloved grandmother, who protected her fingers with a thimble, understood. But occasions arise in which a needle can transform into a weapon (at one point, the trio arm themselves with their needlework tools when they’re threatened on a train), and a woman’s enemies, Barrera seems to say in “Cross-Stitch,” would be well served to remember it.
Angela Lashbrook is a writer whose work has appeared in The Guardian, The Times, The Atlantic and elsewhere.
CROSS-STITCH | By Jazmina Barrera | Translated by Christina MacSweeney | Two Lines Press | 255 pp. | $24
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