Paola in "The Suffering Woman": A Character Analysis

Overview

Paola is the protagonist of “The Suffering Woman,” the eleventh story in Mariana Enriquez’s collection A Sunny Place for Shady People. She works as a makeup artist at a state television station in Buenos Aires, lives alone, and leads a quiet, slightly isolated life. After receiving a series of misdirected voice messages intended for a cancer patient, Paola begins to see ghostly visions in her bathroom mirror: first a crying man, then a bald, emaciated woman with a swollen belly. The haunting escalates until the suffering woman appears in Paola’s bed, touching her skin. Terrified, Paola smashes her phone under a bus and walks to her mother’s house, abandoning her apartment. Her story weaves digital misconnection with supernatural horror, exploring themes of collective guilt and moral reckoning, trauma and the supernatural, and the fragility of modern life.

Plot Role

Paola serves as the sole viewpoint character in her story. The narrative follows her from the moment she receives the first voicemail to her flight from home. She is not a hero or detective; she is an ordinary person who becomes a passive witness to another’s suffering. Her role is to embody the unease of contemporary disconnection—when technology accidentally links her to a dying stranger, she cannot look away. The plot is driven by her obsessive research into cancer symptoms and the gradual invasion of her private space by the ghostly woman.

Motivations and Traits Shown Through Actions

Paola’s primary motivation is self-preservation, but it is complicated by an involuntary empathy. She initially tries to block the unknown number, yet she cannot stop listening to the messages or researching ascites and ovarian cancer. Her actions reveal a mix of curiosity, guilt, and fear:

• Curiosity: She uses a squeegee handle to move her closet mirror to glimpse the crying man and later the suffering woman, staring for long minutes despite her dread.
• Obsessive research: After seeing the woman, Paola stays up all night searching medical forums and reading about cancer symptoms, palpating her own armpits for lumps. The text notes that she “couldn’t forget” the bruise from a gym accident and worries that any minor ache could be fatal.
• Avoidance and denial: She refuses to call her friend Laura or reconnect with high school classmates because of “laziness,” yet she recognizes this laziness as a cover for fear. She tells herself that the suffering woman will die soon and she only needs to “wait for her departure before going home.”
• Self-awareness: Paola acknowledges her flaws. She thinks, “Being young was an instant, like being trapped in a mirror and sobbing.” She knows she is lazy, that she does not stay up to date with skin-care products, and that her relationship with Luismi is fading.

Her decisive actions—destroying her phone and fleeing—are driven by terror, but also by a painful realization that she cannot share space with death. She cannot soothe the suffering woman; she can only escape.

Chronological Arc

1. Normal life: Paola works at the TV station, eats at the grill, and keeps to herself. She receives the first misdirected message and replies, then blocks the number.
2. First vision: After her sister’s visit, Paola sees a crying man in the mirror reflection—a man who is not in her apartment. The ghost is frozen, sobbing.
3. Second vision and escalation: The crying man is replaced by a bald, pregnant-looking woman with a tube in her nose. Paola watches her through the mirror and accidentally burns the woman with reflected sunlight, causing a scream of pain.
4. Obsession: She spends the night Googling symptoms, reading cancer forums, and listening to the ghostly sounds of the woman’s moans and the husband’s lies.
5. Encounter in bed: Exhausted from work—where she pokes a client with an eyelash curler—Paola goes to sleep. She wakes to find a body beside her: the suffering woman, with taut, water-filled skin. She touches the belly, feels heat, and turns on the light only to see a flash of terrified eyes.
6. Flight: Paola showers, packs a bag, smashes her phone under a bus, and walks to her mother’s house, vowing to wait for the woman to die before returning.

Relationships

Paola’s relationships are depicted as thin and unsatisfying:

• Luismi: The son of the grill’s owner, he is a casual lover. When Paola confides about the messages, he dismisses the haunting as a “crazy lady fucking with you” and snorts at her worry. Paola knows he sees other women. Their connection provides comfort but no emotional depth.
• Liliana: The lead makeup artist, who criticizes Paola for being lazy and not saying goodbye. Liliana is unhygienic (eating chicken with her hands before doing makeup) and represents the petty workplace resentment Paola endures.
• Sister (unnamed): She visits Paola’s apartment, notices the scary mirror, and uses Paola’s lotion. She offers practical advice (“Don’t obsess”) but is unaware of the supernatural situation. Paola hides her terror from her.
• Mother: Mentioned only as a destination. Paola has a key to her mother’s house and walks there after fleeing. No direct interaction is shown, but the mother’s house represents a return to childhood safety.
• The suffering woman (ghost): The most intimate relationship is with a stranger who is dying. Paola never learns her name, yet she shares her bed. The bond is one-sided: Paola feels the woman’s pain, hears her labored breathing, and cannot bear to be near her.

Key Decisions and Consequences

Theme / Symbol Connections

• Digital haunting: The misdirected voicemails act as a contemporary version of a cursed object. The phone becomes a conduit for another’s death, and Paola’s attempt to block the number fails because the haunting moves from voice to vision. Her final act—throwing the phone under a bus—symbolizes a desperate attempt to sever the link between technology and mortality. This connects to the collection’s broader exploration of mental illness and social isolation.

• Bodily autonomy and transformation: The suffering woman’s swollen belly—ascites from ovarian cancer—makes her look pregnant. Paola fixates on this grotesque parody of motherhood. The woman’s body is no longer under her control; it fills with fluid that is both a symptom and a symbol of death’s invasion. For Paola, seeing the woman’s transformation triggers a fear of her own body’s fragility. She checks her armpits, her feet, her breast bruise, and imagines herself as a future cancer patient. This theme of bodily autonomy and transformation runs throughout the collection.

• Empathy as contagion: Paola cannot disengage from the suffering woman’s pain. She researches cancer symptoms as if she were the patient, and when the ghost appears in her bed, she feels the feverish heat. The story suggests that empathy, when forced through technology, can become a haunting. Paola’s laziness and social withdrawal are defenses against this kind of emotional openness; the voicemail breaches them.

• Historical violence and ecological decay: While Paola’s story is set in modern Buenos Aires, the decaying neighborhood described in earlier stories (such as “My Sad Dead”) provides a backdrop of urban rot. The suffering woman’s wealth (she has a nurse, a wicker chair, a beautiful plant) contrasts with Paola’s modest life, but death does not discriminate. The mirror reflects a world of inequity that is ultimately leveled by illness. This ties into the collection’s theme of historical violence and ecological decay.

• The mirror as liminal space: The mirror in Paola’s closet is a border between her reality and the suffering woman’s dying room. It allows glimpses but also acts as a weapon—the reflected sunlight burns the woman like an ant under a magnifying glass. The mirror is an ambiguous symbol of both connection and harm, much like the phone.

5 Book-Specific Questions and Answers

1. Why does Paola destroy her phone under a bus?

Paola smashes her phone because it is the original source of the haunting—the misdirected voicemails. She hopes that by destroying the device, she will sever the supernatural connection. The bus running over it is a symbolic act of returning the digital to the physical, grinding technology into pavement. Afterward, she feels relief and walks to her mother’s house, believing that if she waits for the suffering woman to die, the haunting will end.

2. What does the suffering woman’s swollen belly symbolize?

The swollen belly (ascites) makes the emaciated cancer patient look pregnant, creating a grotesque image of life and death fused. For Paola, it represents the randomness of disease—a body that turns against itself. It also echoes themes of motherhood, as the woman has a young son whom Paola never sees, suggesting grief and inheritance. The belly is a visual anchor for Paola’s fear that her own lazy habits or past injuries could become terminal.

3. How does Paola’s job as a makeup artist relate to the story’s themes?

Makeup is a surface-layer art—it covers flaws, hides illness, and creates an illusion of health and beauty. Paola’s job places her in daily contact with women who want to look younger, healthier, and more presentable for television. This irony deepens when she must conceal a news anchor’s self-harm wound. The suffering woman is beyond makeup; she is bald, without eyebrows, and visibly dying. Paola’s professional skills are useless against the truth of the body. The story contrasts artificial beauty with unavoidable decay, linking to the ending explained of the collection.

4. Why does Paola touch the suffering woman’s belly in bed?

Interpretation: Paola’s touch is partly an instinct to confirm reality—she believes at first that she is dreaming. But it is also an act of involuntary empathy. She reaches out, feels the water-filled skin and the heat, and recoils. The touch breaks the illusion that the ghost is a mere reflection; it has corporal presence. This moment forces Paola to accept that she cannot coexist with death. She flees immediately after.

5. Does Paola ever return to her apartment? What does the ending imply?

The story ends as Paola walks toward her mother’s house after destroying her phone. She tells herself she must “wait for her departure before going home.” The text does not show her returning. The implication is ambiguous: either the suffering woman will die and the haunting will cease, allowing Paola to reclaim her life, or the ghost will follow her. Given the collection’s pattern of unresolved trauma and recurring ghosts (as in “My Sad Dead” and “The Refrigerator Cemetery”), readers may infer that Paola’s flight is temporary. The questions and answers page for the book further explores such open endings.

Conclusion

Paola is a deeply relatable protagonist: lonely, self-aware, and paralyzed by a mixture of fear and compassion. Her story in A Sunny Place for Shady People uses the supernatural to examine how we confront the suffering of others in an age of constant digital connection. She is neither brave nor foolish—she is simply a woman who cannot ignore a stranger’s pain, even when it takes over her home. Her flight is not a victory but a survival instinct, and the story leaves her walking between two worlds, uncertain if she can ever return to her sunny place without the shadow of the suffering woman.