by Alisa Valdes
Amaury grabs the raisin box and throws it across the room. “Don’t do that,” he says, kneeling down so he is eye level with the child. “That’s not funny. I told you before, don’t imitate me. You understand? Where’s your homework?”
Osvaldo laughs and runs away, shouting English-language curse words. He slams his bedroom door. Amaury sits down next to me on the couch and plants his elbows on his knees, and rests his head in his hands.
“Do you see how it is now?” he asks me. “What am I supposed to do with all of this? They think I’m cool, you know? I try to hide it from them, but they know what I do.” He looks up. “That one, Osvaldo, he got sent home from school the other day for pretending to be a drug dealer at school. The teacher caught him with a plastic Baggie full of laundry soap, and they thought it was cocaine. They thought he was actually selling cocaine to other first-graders. They said it’s happened before.”
“My God.”
“Yeah.”
He leans back on the sofa, puts his hands behind his head, and blows a deep breath out through his mouth. “Come here,” he says, opening his arms to me. I do as he asks, and we sit like that, on his sister’s couch, listening to music, until Cuca calls everyone to dinner.
We sit at a rocky table in the cold little kitchen, and eat off of mismatched plastic plates. Cuca has made mofongo, a mash of plantains and bacon with garlic, and some sort of greasy chicken fricassee with white rice and red beans. The meal is delicious, and Amaury seems to have softened a little bit toward the children as soon as he gets some food in him. The boys tell him of their days, the teenage girl tells him about a school play she wants to try out for.
“That’s good,” he says. “Did you read the book I gave you yet?”
“No,” she says.
“Why not?”
“I been busy.”
“I have been busy,” he corrects her.
“Shut up,” she says. I know how she feels.
He gives her a doubting look, finishes his meal. When everyone finishes, the teenage girl clears the table and starts to wash the dishes in a trickle of cold water in the sink. When she turns the water on, the wall lets out a groan to wake the dead and the pipes clang to life. I offer to help, but Amaury pulls me away. “Let’s go,” he says. As we leave, Nancy’s husband comes home from his first job, as a mechanic, looking as tired as his wife. He greets me, then staggers up the stairs.
“How old is your sister?” I ask when we get back in the Honda.
“Twenty-eight.”
“That’s it?” She’s my age. She looks forty.
“Yes.”
“How old are the kids?”
“The girl is fourteen, the boys are eight and ten.”
“She had a baby when she was fourteen?”
“That’s not unusual in Santo Domingo,” he says. “What? Don’t act so impressed.”
“My God. With the same guy?”
He imitates me. “‘My God.’ No, not the same guy. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I had no idea.”
“I know. That’s why I wanted to bring you here. Do you understand me now? Do you understand why I do what I do?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“But there has to be a way out.”
He shrugs. “Maybe. If you figure one out, let me know.”
“How much do you earn a week?”
“Five hundred dollars, tax free.”
I laugh at the “tax free” part. He makes much, much less than I expected. I get an idea.
“I have a friend who just got a record deal,” I tell him.
“Yeah? Felicidades.”
We park on the curb near my apartment complex, at a meter. Amaury will have to move his car by 6:00 A.M., or get towed. We walk in silence the rest of the way to my apartment. Once we’re inside we sit at the dining table and I continue to talk.
“She called me the other day and asked me if I knew anyone who could help be part of her street team around here.”
“What’s a street team?”
“It’s a thing they do in the record business, you have to ask her about it. I think you have parties and play her record and give copies of her records to your friends and try to start a buzz about her music on the street.”
“They pay you to do that?”
“I swear. They do.”
He laughs. “I love this country.” He seems intrigued.
I call Amber at home. She answers her phone in a language I’ve never heard before, I’m assuming it’s Nahuatl. I’m surprised to hear Shakira playing in the background.
“Hey, Amber, it’s me, Lauren.”
“Please call me Cuicatl,” she says. “That’s my new name. I’m not a part-time Indian, so don’t treat me like one.” Humorless, as always.
“I would if I could pronounce it, okay, girl? But I can’t. So you’re Amber to me.”
She doesn’t laugh. Ever since she got caught up in all this Mexica movement stuff she hasn’t seemed to have much of a sense of humor. Like that one time I talked to her on the phone and she sneezed, and I said “Salud,” you know, the Spanish word for “bless you,” that means health. She got all uptight and said, “I’m not ill. Don’t say that.” Oookaaaay.
“Look, I was calling you about that thing we talked about with the street workers for your record?”
“Did you find someone?”
“How much do you pay?”
“It depends on how much work they do.”
I tell her the whole story of Amaury. She listens calmly, says, “I’d be glad to help him out, Lauren. Raza are always being siphoned into crime. It’s nothing new. It’s part of the master plan of the Europeans to destroy us. How much has he been making?” I figure this is a bad time to point out Amaury is probably not Indian, as the Spaniards wiped out all the Indians in the D.R. and Puerto Rico. Let her think of him as Raza. What do I care?
“Here,” I say. “I’ll let you talk to him. He’s right here.”
I give the phone to Amaury, and he talks to Amber in Spanish for at least fifteen minutes. I can’t make out half of what he’s saying, because he’s talking so fast. But I do hear him give her his address and the spelling of his name before he hands the phone back to me.
“Hi,” I say.
“He’s on my payroll,” she says. “I’ll match what he’s been making, but I want you to make sure he’s doing what he needs to do. I’ll send you an E-mail outlining what’s expected of a full-time street worker.”
“Thanks, Amb-Kweecatel, whatever.”
“You’re welcome. I’m always happy to help nuestra gente. He sounds like a nice guy.”
He sounds like a nice guy. I like hearing that. I don’t think any other sucia would say something like that about Amaury.
We hang up. Amaury is smiling. He has removed his beeper, and he’s taking it apart with a pocketknife, smashing the insides.
“What are you doing?” I ask him.
“I’m quitting,” he says. He’s beaming. He stands up and kisses me. “I’m doing what you’re always getting on me to do,” he says. “I’m starting a new life.”
Happy Cinco de Mayo. I really stopped to think the other day about what it’s like to be an immigrant. With so much immigrant-bashing going on lately, many of us forget how much courage it takes to leave your home, your language, your family and friends—and how much fear and desperation you’d have to face to do so in the first place. It’s overwhelming, really, to think of the hardships many of those around us face every day in starting their new lives, how many challenges, in accomplishing the sorts of things we take for granted: talking to the cashier at the store, mailing a letter, paying a bill, ordering a margarita at a college bar on Boylston.
—from “My Life,” by Lauren Fernández
elizabeth
IQUIT AT last. It took me four months, just enough time to see whether my scandal might have a lasting impact on the ratings. It didn’t. People still tune in. But
this whole experience has had a lasting impact on me. I don’t want to be in news anymore. I find news, TV news in particular, to be a shallow waste of time. So I do it. Quit. Without hesitating.
John Yardly waited until I had made it through the morning newscast, paced back and forth like a humid, caged animal, nervous and dripping, and then asked me to join him in his office. I’d told him I needed to talk, soon, and I think he knows what’s coming. My heart isn’t in this nonsense anymore.
As I tell him my plans to leave the business, he stands at his window, observes the small group of dedicated lunatics who still hold a minor hatefest down below. They are here every morning. Don’t they have jobs? It has also become a counter-ritual for a handful of equally nutty people who support me to show up on the opposite side of the street with their signs. I have become the subject of a morality war between the extreme far Christian right and the extreme far gay left, right here in downtown Boston. Even the national news has covered the story now, pretending the crowds are larger than they are. What I hate the most is the two drag queens who have decided to show up in full regalia, looking like the biggest, hairiest, ugliest women on earth; this does nothing to help my cause.
I think of Colombia more and more, and have a ferocious wish to return.
I don’t know how to protect my heart from the look on John’s face. The disappointed news director, small and fat and slippery. What can you do with a man like that?
“The ratings,” he says. He has the Nielsens out on his desk. The last four months of them, in a neat little stack. “If you made a graph, Liz, it would go straight up. Who’d have thought all this would boost our ratings? I guess people like lesbians. I know my guy friends do.”
“That’s not necessary to tell me,” I say.
“You know, we aren’t prejudiced against you here, Liz, we like you. We’re your friends, it was a joke.”
“Oh.”
“Yes, damnit, it was. I can’t believe you’re just quitting. We’ve stuck by you for a very long time, considering. You owe us.”
“Considering what, John?”
“The controversy, Liz. That’s all I’m talking about today. If you want to go home and screw a dog, I don’t care, okay? Sleep with whatever you want. I run a news operation. All I care about is ratings. And the ratings are good. The people have spoken, you know what I mean? I don’t know if it’s because of your sexuality or your sanctimonious take on religion—a lot of them love that, too. Liz, this is Boston. Liberalville. But whatever it is, they say that they like you. I don’t ask them why, sometimes they tell me and sometimes they don’t. Plenty of them dislike you because of your accent or because you color your hair blond. There are a million reasons out there not to like you. But most love you. We need you here. Please.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So you wanna be a producer or what, babydoll? Tell me what you need to make you stay. Anything.”
I don’t have to think about it for long. At this point, it would be a relief to never have to show up here again. The muses have been biting at me to do something else, something greater than this, with my life. I want to write poetry. In Colombia. I want to go home.
“No, thanks,” I say. “I appreciate it. But no. I need out of this business.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry. No.”
“Look, Liz, you knew you were going to have to go to the other side of the camera eventually, didn’t you? You can’t be an anchor forever, right? You get a few wrinkles or a double chin, a few gray hairs, you know how it goes. Unless you’re Baba Wawa or Katie Couric, that’s just the way it goes.”
“I don’t think you get it,” I say. “I don’t want anything to do with news anymore.”
“Just take the producer slot? We could really use someone like you on the other side. You’ll regret bailing.”
“Someone like me?”
“You have a lot of experience and good ideas. You speak Spanish.”
“I’m sorry, John. I think it’s time for me to do something else with my life. I’ve been feeling that way ever since we took out those ads with the deep voice saying ‘We cover weather like news … because weather is news.’ Thanks anyway.”
“So you’re leaving, then?”
“I guess so.”
He sighs. “I’m really goddamn sorry, Liz. You were a good anchor. People have crap for brains.”
“Yes.”
“You can check down with Larry in human resources, and he’ll work out your final pay. You can count on getting a few months of pay at least. We’ll work it out for you.”
“Thanks.”
I stand and shake John’s hand. “Hey,” he says. “No hard feelings?”
“None,” I say. “I wish you only the best. It’s been interesting.”
“You ever need a good reference for something, I’m your guy,” he says.
I decide to call Larry later. I just want to get out of the building now. The air is thick with the sweet smell of death. I don’t even remove my makeup. I just grab my coat and hat, and head to the parking elevator, no security escort. I don’t want to be here at all. I pull out of the underground parking lot in the truck and speed away from the crazies and their big open mouths, as has become my custom. Once I’m on the freeway, I call Selwyn at her office.
“You remember that sabbatical you’ve been telling me you could take if you wanted?” I ask. I’m panting as if I’ve run a mile at top speed.
“Sure,” she says. “What about it?”
“How soon can you leave?”
“Now. Summer classes don’t start for another couple of days, and I’m not teaching that much anyway. They’ve got me mostly doing research type stuff this semester, they just want to see me publish books. That’s academia for you. Why?”
“So take the sabbatical, then. We’re going to Colombia.”
“Colombia?”
“You can write there, right?”
“I can write anywhere there’s paper.”
I explain it to her, and drive. I’m speeding, flying down the road of my life, free at last. I want out of here, out of this cold, gray wasteland, out of this hateful culture where people don’t hug unless they want sex from you, out of this hard, frozen land with its bruises and lacerations, out of American-style journalism with its lies and exagerrated non-stories. I want tropical breezes on my skin again. I want to see the faces of my people again, hear the rhythm of our language. I can’t explain it exactly, but I have a need to go back to Colombia. I tell her I quit, and tell her of my dream.
“I need to try it, writing poetry,” I tell her. “In Spanish, about my life, in Colombia, for Spanish speakers.”
“Okay,” she says. “Let’s think this through. Let’s make sure this is what you want to do.”
“It is. I’ve thought about it. I need to spread my wings and fly, Sel, try to be the poet I have always wanted to be. But not in English. Not in their language. I want to write poetry about me and who I am in my own language. I want to write of being a lesbian in Spanish, a language that has never embraced women like me. I want to take my scythe and carve through the jungle of ignorance. And, crazy as it seems, I want to go back to Colombia.”
“You’re sure? It’s pretty unstable right now.”
I am. We’ll go for one year, and hopefully Selwyn will come to understand who I am. She will learn to dance to the rhythm of me the way I have learned to dance American for her.
Selwyn, being Selwyn, does what she needs to do, and embraces the opportunity to experience something new in her life. We pack our things and eat pizza and dance to Nelly Furtado, her favorite artist. We rent our houses out to college students whose parents can afford it, and store the truck at Sara’s house, in her huge, five-car garage.
We arrange through a Colombian real estate company to rent a furnished vacation house along the coast in Barranquilla for one full year. Sara drives us to the airport in the Land Rover, with the boys. She mentions a few teary, crazed
phone calls she’s getting, from phone numbers police say are in Madrid, Spain. Roberto has not let go. We haven’t heard the final word from his sick mouth yet. I’m concerned for Sara, for her finances, for her safety. I can’t move away forever, because of her. Because of her—and Roberto, my fear of him—I must return to Boston sooner rather than later. They all hug us good-bye. We get on the plane.
When we arrive in Barranquilla, the air is blue with sea salt and the flowers bloom their perfume everywhere you go. Selwyn puts on a sarong and sunglasses, tucks the Spanish-English dictionary under her arm, and begins to explore the markets and the coffee shops.
I open the window to my new little room with the small desk and the typewriter. I open the window and welcome the muses who fly in on diaphanous wings, and I begin to write.
At home.
By the time you read this, I’ll be in San Juan, suffering great indignity beneath the hideous bridesmaid dress. I don’t care if it’s Vera Wang. It’s still awful. Wish me well. I’ll do my best to catch the bouquet.
—from “My Life,” by Lauren Fernández
usnavys
MY NEPHEWS, DRESSED in boys’ tuxedos, cart the cages of white doves out of my uncle’s Blazer onto the front steps of the church. As rehearsed, they set them down on the ground next to me and Juan. The birds coo and cluck just the same as common pigeons, m’ija. I punch Juan lightly on the arm and say, “Hey, did you know doves sound just like pigeons? Shouldn’t they make a classier noise?”
Juan rolls his eyes and kisses me on the lips, again. “Figures you’d think that,” he says with a smile.
“What?”
“Doves are pigeons. It’s the same bird, better publicists.”
“No way, don’t lie.” I smack his arm and the sleeve of my gown falls over my shoulder. Juan pretends to be injured by the blow just in time for the priest to come out and stare at me in terror. He’s my mother’s cousin’s husband’s brother, but hasn’t liked me from the start of this thing, when I told him I thought I deserved to wear white because married doctors shouldn’t count. He needs to loosen up. Look at all our guests! Hundreds of people, m’ija. Who knew I had so many friends?