Latin@ Rising

by Matthew Goodwin

  Through the woman’s mind, a ribbon of light tightens and slackens and tightens again. She laughs. She is actually coming. The first time we kissed, Paul and I, on my bed, in the dark, he was almost frantic, humming with energy, a screen door banging in the wind. Later he told me that it had just been so long, so long, that he felt like he was coming out of his skin. Skin. I can still hear them thinking, echoing around my head, slipping into the crevices of my memory. I cannot keep them away. This dam will not hold.

  I do not realize that I am crying until he stands and brings me with him, pulling me from the couch. On the screen, Pearly arcs of come crisscross the laughing woman’s torso. I lift easily. He holds me and touches my face and his fingers are wet for the effort.

  Shhh, he says. Shhh. I’m so sorry, he says. We don’t have to watch it, we don’t have to.

  He weaves his fingers through my hair and supports the small of my back. Shhh, he says. I don’t want any of them. I only want you.

  I stiffen.

  Only you, he says again. He holds me tightly. A good man. He repeats, Only you.

  You don’t want to be here, I say.

  The floor rumbles; a large truck darkens the front window. He doesn’t respond.

  He sits there quietly, radiating guilt. The house is dark. I kiss him on the mouth.

  I’m sorry, he says. I’m so—

  Now it is my time to shhhh. He stammers to silence. I kiss him, harder. I take his hand from my side and rest it on my thigh. He is hurting, and I want it to stop. I kiss him again. I trace two fingers along his erection.

  Let’s go, I say.

  I always wake before him. Paul sleeps on his stomach. I sit up and stretch. I trace the rips in the comforter. Sunlight streams through my curtains. I can hardly sleep through such daylight. I get up. He does not stir.

  I cross the room and pull the camera from its spot. I carry it into the living room. I rewind the tape, and it whines as it whirs back over itself.

  I insert the cassette into the VHS player. I run my finger down the buttons on the machine like a pianist choosing her first key. As I press it down, the screen goes snowy, and then black. Then, the static diorama of my room. The wrinkled sheets with the spray of blue-china pattern, unmade. I fast-forward. I fast forward, spinning through minutes of nothing, unsurprised by how easy it is for them to slip away.

  Two people stumble in, my finger lifts, the rush-to-now slows. Two strangers fumble with each other’s clothes, each other’s bodies. His body, slender and tall and pale, leans; his pants hit the floor with a thunk, the pockets full of keys and change. Her body — my body — mine, is still striped with the yellowish stains of fading bruises. It is a body overflowing out of itself; it unwinds from too many layers. The shirt looks bulky in my hand, and I release it onto the floor. It sinks like a shot bird. We are pressing into the side of the mattress.

  I look down at my hands. They are dry and not shaking. I look back up at the screen, and I begin to listen.

  DEATH OF A BUSINESSMAN

  Giannina Braschi

  In the R.E.M. song “Electrolite” Michael Stipe croons: “20th century go to sleep. Really deep. We won’t blink.” Giannina Braschi’s challenging novel United States of Banana (2011) is also a dirge to the 20th Century, to all its injustices and worn out dilemmas. “Death of A Businessman” is the opening section of the first part of the novel, a collection of essays and stories centered on the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the economic life of the U.S. “Burial of the Sardine” opens the second part, in which the fictional Giannina and the literary figures of Hamlet and Zarathustra go on a quest to free Segismundo from the dungeon of the Statue of Liberty. What is at stake in the novel is the independence of Puerto Rico. Braschi extrapolates from the colonial status of Puerto Rico into the future, showing what would happen if the U.S. were to sell Puerto Rico to China. Born in San Juan and based in New York, Braschi holds a PhD in the Spanish Golden Age from SUNY Stony Brook. Her major works include the poetry collection Empire of Dreams (1988) and the ground-breaking Spanglish novel Yo-Yo Boing! (1998).

  It’s the end of the world. I was excited by the whole situation. Well, if everybody is going to die, die hard, shit, but what do I know. Is this an atomic bomb — the end of the world — the end of the millennium? No more fear of being fired — for typos or tardiness — digressions or recessions — and what a way of being fired — bursting into flames — without two weeks notice — and without six months of unemployment — and without sick leave, vacation, or comp time — without a word of what was to come — on a glorious morning — when nature ran indifferent to the course of man — there came a point when that sunny sky turned into a hellhole of a night — with papers, computers, windows, bricks, bodies falling, and people running and screaming.

  I saw a torso falling — no legs — no head — just a torso. I am redundant because I can’t believe what I saw. I saw a torso falling — no legs — no head — just a torso — tumbling in the air — dressed in a bright white shirt — the shirt of the businessman — tucked in — neatly — under the belt — snuggly fastened — holding up his pants that had no legs. He had hit a steel girder — and he was dead — dead for a ducat, dead — on the floor of Krispy Kreme — with powdered donuts for a head — fresh out of the oven — crispy and round — hot and tasty — and this businessman on the ground was clutching a briefcase in his hand — and on his finger, the wedding band. I suppose he thought his briefcase was his life — or his wife — or that both were one because the briefcase was as tight in hand as the wedding band.

  I saw the wife of the businessman enter the shop of Stanley, the cobbler, with a pink ticket in hand. The wife had come to claim the shoes of the businessman. After all, they had found the feet, and she wanted to bury the feet with the shoes. There, I was talking to Stanley, the cobbler, because I too had left my shoes, a pair of pink boots, in Stanley’s cobbler shop. He told me — you won’t believe what I saw. I saw Charlie, the owner of Saint Charlie’s Bar ’n Grill, watching the burial of the 20th century. Charlie goes out to hang the sign, closed for business, he looks up, and jet fuel burns and melts him down. And do you know how, how the torso hit the ground, how it landed. What I saw hitting the ground was a little bubble of blood, a splash that hardly felt itself, soundless, and dissolving into the cement, and melting without a sound.

  I saw a passenger hanging on the edge of a bridge — with his feet in the air — his legs kicking — and both hands holding onto a steel girder hanging loose from the bridge — about to collapse — with the passenger — kicking his legs — as if he could peddle his way to the other side — where there is sand — sand and water — deep water — as if he could swim to shore and survive. The sand and the era of the camel are back. The era of the difficult. Now you have to climb sand dunes of brick and mortar. The streets are not flat, but full of barricades, tunnels and caves, and you have to walk through the maze, and sometimes you’ll get lost inside, finding no end — and no exit — and you’ll fall into despair — but you’ll see a dim beacon of light — appearing and disappearing — and when it fades away — your hope will fade — and you’ll be amazed — because your pace will change. I used to be Dandy Rabbit and now I am Tortuga China — not that I have lost my way — only my pace — because of the dead body I carry on my back — on the hump of the camel — in the desert storm — with no oasis in sight — but the smiling light of the promised land.

  I saw the hand of man holding the hand of woman. They were running to escape the inferno — and just when the man thought he had saved the woman — a chunk of ceiling fell — and what he had in his hand — was just her hand — dismembered from her body. Now we no longer have the Renaissance concept of the Creation of Man — those two hands reaching out to each other on the Sistine Chapel — the hand of God and the hand of man — their fingers almost touching — in unity of body and soul. What we have here is a war — the war of matter and spirit. In the classical era, spirit was in harmony with matter
. Matter used to condense spirit. What was unseen — the ghost of Hamlet’s father — was seen — in the conscience of the king. The spirit was trapped in the matter of theater. The theater made the unseen, seen. In the Romantic era, spirit overwhelms matter. The glass of champagne can’t contain the bubbles. But never in the history of humanity has spirit been at war with matter. And that is what we have today. The war of banks and religion. It’s what I wrote in Prayers of the Dawn, that in New York City, banks tower over cathedrals. Banks are the temples of America. This is a holy war. Our economy is our religion. When I came back to midtown a week after the attack — I mourned — but not in a personal way — it was a cosmic mourning — something that I could not specify because I didn’t know any of the dead. I felt grief without knowing its origin. Maybe it was the grief of being an immigrant and of not having roots. Not being able to participate in the whole affair as a family member but as a foreigner, as a stranger — estranged in myself and confused — I saw the windows of Bergdorf and Saks — what a theater of the unexpected — my mother would have cried — there were only black curtains, black drapes — showing the mourning of the stores — no mannequins, just veils — black veils. When the mannequins appeared again weeks later — none of them had blond hair. I don’t know if it was because of the mourning rituals or whether the mannequins were afraid to be blond — targets of terrorists. Even they didn’t want to look American. They were out of fashion after the Twin Towers fell. To the point, that even though I had just dyed my hair blond because I was writing Hamlet and Hamlet is blond, I went back to my coiffeur immediately and told him — dye my hair black. It was a matter of life and death, why look like an American. When naturally I look like an Arab and walk like an Egyptian.

  I had four characters in my head: Hamlet, Giannina, Zarathustra, and Segismundo. Hamlet will give me the poetry. Giannina will give me the epic — I will write my own story. Zarathustra will give me the philosophy. And Segismundo will give me the plot. The truth is that the plot came first.

  I was thinking: Should the statue come down. After all, a statue is just a statue. But inside a man is buried alive. We should destroy the statue to save the man. The man is more important than the symbol. But I was also thinking: he should not be able to break out. Let’s keep him inside to prove that liberty exists. A statue is just a statue. But to have a man inside that statue — claiming he wants to become free — and never becoming free. We should charge to see him, but never free him. If he can’t liberate himself — neither the crowd nor the police nor the firemen nor the army should liberate him. He has to do it himself. And if he grows old pushing the columns — and has no energy left to push, push, and push — and the media’s attention deficit disorder turns the spotlight on someone else and the crowds forget all about him — too bad for him. There are enough problems in this city to worry about one man. And if he dies and the smell of his rotten body invades the city and brings diseases and plagues — will that be reason enough to split open the mausoleum of liberty? If an oracle says that unless we split open the statue — the body will continue plaguing the city — and there will be no peace — nobody will be able to sleep in peace.

  It’s not that we can’t rescue him. We could if we wanted to, but we would lose a fortune. Segismundo thinks he depends on me, but the truth be said — I have more need of him than he of me. The more he rattles his shackles and chains, the more tickets he sells. The military is afraid that some terrorist group will plot to rescue him. The people want to liberate him. Especially his own people — immigrants and prisoners from around the world. So, in order to prevent the coming insurrection, we create a voting system to give the people the impression that Segismundo’s destiny is in their hands. They are given three options:

  Wishy

  Wishy-Washy

  Washy

  If they vote for Wishy — Segismundo will be liberated from the dungeon. If they vote for Wishy-Washy, the status quo will prevail. If they vote for Washy, he will be sentenced to death, and nobody will have the honor of hearing his songs rise from the gutters of the dungeon of liberty. Every four years the citizens of Liberty Island vote for Wishy-Washy. They can choose between mashed potato, French fries, or baked potato. But any way you serve it, it’s all the same potato.

  I was living on 50th Street in midtown — and moved downtown — two blocks south of the World Trade Center — six months before the attack — so that I could study up close, from the shore of Battery Park, the Statue of Liberty. I took ferries to the statue and bought books about the sculptor, Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, who on a trip in 1871 to Liberty Island, at that time called, Bedloe’s Island, saw a stone fortress in the shape of an 11 pointed star — and realized — here on this 11 pointed star will be my statue. When I saw a cartoon of Bartholdi, in a children’s book, drawing sketches for his sculpture, I was thinking that same fortress over which Bartholdi erected the Statue of Liberty will be the fortress where Segismundo will be imprisoned.

  I read in the Post on August 11, 2001 about an attack by a suicide bomber on Jaffa Street, in Jerusalem, at Sbarro Pizzeria — and I was impressed by the mention of a little girl, 3 years old, who stood up among the rolling heads like Lazarus back from the dead, back to tell them all — wake up — and she saw her mother — sleeping beauty on the floor — and called her:

  — Mommy, wake up.

  The mother was dead. At this point a little piece of my glazed donut fell on the little girl’s face and another crumb fell on her mother’s legs. I picked up the pieces of my donut and ate them — the way I pass beggars in the streets — the worse they appear and the more they beg the more I ignore them, avoiding eye contact with the poor and thirsty — and as I turned the page — I saw the torso of a businessman whose testicles were blown off. He was screaming to a policeman who was passing by:

  — Please, help me! I don’t want to die!

  When the policeman saw the man, he vomited on the stumps of the man’s legs — and I felt the horror — but I ate my donut anyway, thinking:

  — I’m glad I’m not there. I’m here dunking my donut while others are blown to bits and pieces. Good luck. Keep hope alive.

  One month later I would be eating a glazed donut of the same kind when the first airplane hit the World Trade Center.

  — Tess! Tess! Where are you? Let’s go!

  — I have to get my camera. And my pink ticket.

  — For what?

  — To pick up my shoes.

  — Where?

  — At Stanley’s cobbler shop.

  — Are you crazy! Let’s run!

  — No — Tess said — I have to contemplate life from the highest point of view. That’s what Emerson said it is to pray.

  So we went to the penthouse terrace — and from there we saw the second plane hit the second tower.

  — They’re going to fall! — I screamed.

  — If they fall, they will fall on themselves — Tess said.

  Bull’s eye. What a prophet. I had told Tess when I was apartment hunting earlier that year:

  — My only concern is the proximity of the towers. They will crush my building. If the Arabs came once to take them down — they will come back to finish the job. I know them. They were in Spain for eight centuries. They have a different way of measuring time. They are turtles. We are rabbits.

  — But they were designed by the Japanese — Tess said. If they fall, hari-kari, they will fall on themselves.

  — I don’t want them to fall — I said.

  — They won’t fall — Tess said — but if they fall, they will fall on themselves.

  So I signed the lease, on February 5, 2001, my birthday.

  It is amazing, you know, when I was a kid we used to say, my friends and I:

  — How old will we be when the new millennium comes?

  — I will be 45, an old lady — I used to say — and by then I’ll be dead.

  But look at me now, running for my life, and wanting to go on forever and ever. I tell
you, when my friends heard about the collapse — some of them smiled and wished me dead so they could relate more closely to the tragedy. I hate telling my story to these splinters who don’t understand — and they don’t care to understand — all they want is the scoop — and they’re happy with the splinter and the splint. It’s like misery loves company. Join the club of splinters and split your hair with a bobby pin. One of them said:

  — Finally, the empire is falling. This is the beginning of the upset. What a defeat.

  — Not because they fall, will you rise. Why are you gloating?

  — Because the fall will make other towers rise.

  — Okay, okay. But the towers that will rise will not be the ones that laughed when our towers fell. It’s not the laughter that rises. What rises is the curtain.

  A cop stumbled into the lobby, bent over, and started hacking up on the floor, while the walkie-talkie in his back pocket blared:

  — Evacuate Battery Park! The gas lines are going to blow!

  That is when Tess grabbed my hand and said:

  — Now.

  I had tried to convince Tess to leave before but she insisted on going up to the penthouse. And when we came down to the lobby — I realized I had no shoes on. So, we went back to my apartment, got my shoes and my manuscripts, and came down again. To the lobby. By then the building was rumbling — smoke everywhere — dogs running — doormen crying — mothers with baby strollers. My neighbor gave me her dog. And the handyman broke open the first-aid cabinet and gave out masks. Outside it was snowing debris. We couldn’t see where we were going. We ran toward the strobe lights of a patrol car — and knocked on the window:

  — How do we get to the other side?

  — On a prayer.

  — Which way do we go?

  — Choose your own destiny.

  We headed south toward Clinton Castle, past the Chapel of Elizabeth Seton, the home of the first American saint and the birthplace of one of my masters whose bust is in the wall with the inscription: