My brother has returned home, Lord. Our mother opened the door and there was my brother, and I am sure his rough arms were crossed over his chest and that smile I hate was spreading across his face. Do your will my God, and free us of his presence, of his smell, of his voice, and his gaze. He is of the world Father, he does not serve you. He says he believes in you but he does bad and dirty things, and we know it and it repels us, and we feel such repulsion for him.
Then oh God I felt your light and your breath, and your divine warmth, and I lacked my tongue to continue speaking. In its place a hollow space, and further back my throat, with its astonished tonsils, and further back my esophagus, surprised, and so on.
I still wonder what I said wrong, Lord.
I’m still lost and it seems dawn is breaking.
It seems that any moment I’ll intuit the first highway, the first bus, a house.
What you like
most about me
is that I’m
like you.
Tomorrow
morning
I’m going to change
my name.
TATTOO
A man sees another man with tattoos and he asks himself if that man was in prison.
People ask themselves questions they can answer themselves, and the answer combines with their beliefs.
I ask myself if a man who sees my tattoos wonders if I was in prison.
And the answer combines with my beliefs.
But I’m wrong, that’s not the answer.
The truth is that yes, I was in prison.
Every time I went to prison I got a tattoo.
In the women’s prison, one woman gives another a tattoo, and that woman asks her to do it with care.
So they’re tattoos born of love.
It hurts because it burns.
The tattoo.
And the love.
The women who give tattoos in prison are almost always butch. Out of sixteen women who’ve given me tattoos in prison, eleven have been butch, one more or less, and four not at all.
Right away they want to protect me and keep me and marry me. I ask myself how we’re going to get married and the reply is an impossible that bleeds like a tattoo. We’re never going to get married.
I don’t care about getting married or not. What’s important to me is to maintain my beliefs, and to get ever-prettier tattoos.
In jail there are no colors.
That’s what I steal.
Colors.
Needles.
Machines.
I steal them from professional tattoo studios, which in reality aren’t professional at all.
Just shit, is what they are.
Come on.
The only one responsible for my problems is me.
I’m drastic that way.
My mom taught me that.
That where the mule drops is where he gets the whip.
And I’ve been lucky with lawyers, who’ve always defended me tooth and nail.
Lawyers are another story.
No lawyer has ever wanted to marry me.
But I’m cool.
All in all.
None of them know how to give tattoos.
The last lawyer took me to see a movie one weekend and in the middle of the movie he put his arm around my shoulders and pinched my nipple.
Right away I knew what he wanted.
I touched it and the poor guy was about to explode.
He lasted a minute.
I won’t tell you his name because it would be unethical.
I was left wanting to see more movies.
Once I wore a doctor’s coat into a hospital to see if I could get gloves.
Because a guy was going to give me a free tattoo if I brought him a box of gloves with a hundred pairs, minimum.
The tattoo was going to be crazy.
Enormous.
Coming up like this along my arm, onto my shoulder, and finishing over my clavicle.
What it was going to be I didn’t know, but the guy had a ton of magazines and he drew beautifully.
When a guy draws like that you say he’s got the touch.
So that’s what this guy had.
The touch.
The day we agreed on our deal he gave me the touch until I came.
He sat me on his legs, lifted my shirt and got started.
Some people just like to do the work themselves.
Instead of telling me to take off my clothes.
Then he said I should marry him, that he likes animals like I do, and that he was going to cover me with beautiful tattoos.
I miss my family so much that the last tattoo I got was in their honor.
NO LOVE LIKE A MOTHER’S LOVE.
That’s what I got.
Because in the end, when it comes to the family, the mother is the main thing.
Along my whole left arm.
Letters in cursive.
Is that how you say it?
And check this out, it was the word mother that got infected.
I almost got lymphangitis.
But thank God, it scarred over well.
In any case, one day I’m going to touch it up, even if it’s just the word mother.
When it comes to tattoos, you’ve got to rise to the occasion.
You can’t drink rum, or even beer, after getting a tattoo.
You can’t do you-know-what, either.
Yes, that.
For a brand-new tattoo, soap and water is the best thing.
If it’s really necessary, Gentamicin or any other antibiotic.
I apply Heparin if I can get a prescription, because the pharmacies won’t sell you anything without a prescription.
I have a friend at a pharmacy who was in jail with me.
She hooks me up sometimes, but not always.
And I don’t push it because otherwise, she’s looking for trouble.
And she’s a coward.
Not like me.
I’m pretty sure that woman doesn’t have a single tattoo.
My only enemy is me.
Sometimes I go crazy.
I freak out.
Tattoos are a drug.
Once you get the first one you want the second and the third.
And it’s never-ending.
And they have to be odd.
For example, you can’t have eight, or ten, it always has to be an odd number.
My favorites are the ones you see, but I have a lot you don’t see unless I’m naked.
And I’m not going to get naked now.
I’m too embarrassed with you.
And with all of them.
How many?
Twenty-nine so far.
I got the first one in middle school.
My middle school, Ana Betancourt, had really strange architecture.
One afternoon I played hooky and got the tattoo.
Twelve years old exactly.
I fell in love with a guy who looked like my grandfather.
The guy gave me rum and bought me a gold chain.
And a ring too.
Fool’s gold.
I remember as if it happened today the way my dad bawled at me when I got home.
“You don’t know how many cells you killed,” he bawled.
Over a million.
My dad is the most intelligent guy I’ve ever met, along with the lawyers.
But I don’t regret it.
It was a heart, my first tattoo.
Not to brag, but my tattoos are really something to see.
On a farm where they put me to work once, those women just went crazy.
Really.
One woman comes up on me and she says, “I want to give you a tattoo on your ass,” and I tell her, “Do it.”
We get everything ready and the woman starts.
Turns out what she wanted was to see my ass.
Check this out, she cleaned off the ink with her tongue.
And I was happy as can be becaus
e with the tongue it burns less.
She tattooed a sunflower on my ass.
An incomplete sunflower because there was no yellow ink, so the woman could only tattoo the outline.
Afterward I saw it in a mirror.
Truly beautiful.
The center of the sunflower is my ass, all covered in little dots, the way sunflowers are.
When I got pregnant my mother came right away.
She brought a letter from my dad.
My dad, so smart, only said in his letter that the most important thing in life was to know who you are.
How’s that for a laugh?
At that moment and with that message.
Know who you are, how about that.
My mom wanted to know who the baby’s father was.
If only it were a lawyer.
But it wasn’t a lawyer.
It was a Rastafarian who did American-style tattoos. That’s what he said, but I didn’t know what he meant by American-style.
He gave me a tattoo of a skull, and not just any skull, an original one, with a leg shaped like a parasol.
What a laugh.
That Rastafarian never even found out I got pregnant. With a skull and a baby.
My mom wanted to know what I planned to name it. “After you, if it’s a girl.”
After he was born, my mom took him with her.
I didn’t want her to take him but she was afraid I’d give him a tattoo. I’d have to be crazy to do that.
They went to live in the countryside, my mom, my dad, and my son.
The countryside far from the city.
My dad sent me a letter telling me that the boy likes animals, same as me. And I was very happy because animals keep you company when you’re alone. They give you love. They get sad if you don’t love them. They learn everything you tell them.
They never betray you. They swallow everything without complaint.
Even if it’s nothing but rice.
Today the boy must be three years old.
My mom hasn’t even told me what his name is.
Fear of death is ridiculous.
Now that I know everything and I have to take so many pills, I’m at my calmest.
The doctors told me nice and clear that in my situation, even a cold will kill me.
Here it’s also like a prison.
Worse, because there are no women who ask me to marry them.
There’s no fun.
It was when I got the warrior woman tattoo.
Seven colors: black, dark blue, light blue, violet, red, orange, and yellow.
It’s a rainbow, a spotlight.
Only to be seen by one who loves me.
Seems the guy didn’t change the needle.
Or the gloves.
Or the machine had sick blood.
Or whatever.
These things happen and we can’t be afraid.
It didn’t even cross my mind that you can get sick that way.
The tattoo turned out right on.
It didn’t even get infected.
The good thing is I won’t have to keep going from place to place.
No family.
No house.
A body without family isn’t a person.
Aren’t you going to ask me what Cuba means to me?
Look.
The map of Cuba, I got it tattooed in ninety-nine.
As a young girl.
By the same guy I told you about, with the gloves.
Who’s rough but I like it.
And none of that outline shit.
No.
Filled in.
On the ribs, where it hurts the most.
Man, your nation is your nation.
We were
at a bar
and we had
to leave.
It was the guy
who brought
the cocktails—
not only was
he a man,
he was really rude.
TREE
I live alone and still. I sleep a lot, for hours. I’m correcting a study I wrote last year so I could graduate. I’m correcting it so I can send it in to a contest that an android told me about. The prize is three thousand dollars. I need money so I can move. I want to live in front of the ocean. In a clean and empty apartment. It’s empty where I live, but not clean. Filth surrounds me at a conceptual level of the word. It surrounds and absorbs me. I am part of it, although I know that’s temporary. If I manage to win the prize I will no longer be part of the filth. If I don’t win I’ll do something else. I’ve outlined a plan to go and work. I’ve been an actress, but I don’t want to do that anymore. I’m interested in anthropology. And sleeping. I sleep for up to twelve hours a day, then I get up and smile. I have large teeth, and when I smile I spread harmony all around.
I walk everywhere. With headphones on and music in my brain. When I walk along a street or turn a corner, I don’t see misery or hear the men tell me, “Mami, I’d fuck you so good, I’d lick it till you died.” My brain functions to the beat of the music. The social system around me, politics and the economy, are songs I dance to along a path of mud, mangy animals, old food. There’s so much aggressiveness in the world.
The android who told me about the prize promises to help me correct my text. In the first paragraph, for example, there are three instances in a row of “so I could/can,” which constitutes a grammatical mistake. If I want to enter and win, I have to clean up the writing so it can be read like a pool of water. Clear and fluid. The android is a writer. He has published small books at small publishing houses. We’ve known each other for years. We live in the same city and now we live very close to each other. He’s acquired some new buttons and he looks better, younger, happier. I’m still the same. Younger and happier.
* * *
The subject of my research is a theater group called the Enchanted Deer. I’ve been part of this group for four years and I know its inner workings. During those four years I’ve investigated and written. Title of the study: “El muerto se fue de rumba: The Notion of Being in the Enchanted Deer.” I’ve divided the work into two chapters. The first chapter includes the theoretical-practical foundations for the creation of Being in the Enchanted Deer, and the second chapter analyzes the Beings. The idea of Being is not an invention of the Enchanted Deer. It’s someone else’s invention. “Who invented it?” the android whispers beside me at the bar.
My research consists not of the answer, but of a continuous enigma of creativity. The high ritualistic content of each performance by the Enchanted Deer awakened my interest, inspired a curiosity and attraction that were explosive, essential. I decided to take aptitude tests to join the group as an actress. And I made it. I joined the group. The journey began.
I see altars dedicated to some intellectual, spiritual deities, which I won’t find in other temples or down other religious holes. I see offerings made to spirits who watch us every day, ashamed. I touch the offerings and I’m transformed. “Look and don’t touch,” murmur the members of the Enchanted Deer, winding three circles around my neck.
On Sunday we go to a bar with a friend who came in from Madrid. The name of the bar pays homage to one of the least accomplished films by Fernando Pérez. His cinematographic work includes films like Clandestinos, Madagascar, La vida es silbar, and Suite Habana. True works of art, monstrous and universal. The rest is dry leaves, still lifes. To get to the bar we walked for a kilometer, the android, my friend, and I. The streets from east to west are named with letters of the alphabet and from north to south with numbers. It’s one of the prettiest neighborhoods in the country. But it’s not my favorite. The place I want to move to is at the end of a tunnel. There is coast and open sea.
The ocean, in my brain, no longer has its own definition. It’s not a mass of salty water but rather a song that exists, day and night, in spite of the violence and the beauty. Seas are differentiated mainly by their contact with the ocean, and can be open or closed
. If a sea is surrounded almost entirely by land then we speak of an inland sea, while if it’s very open we speak of a marginal sea.
I had a sailor father who turned into a tree. I go visit him and the tree doesn’t even move its branches. Genetically, some day I will also turn into a tree. It’s in my blood. Every time he came back from his secret missions, he went to bed with this woman, my mother, and got her pregnant. That’s how my siblings and I were born. It would seem that getting my mother pregnant was ultimately his most important mission, the end point. But no, turning into a tree was the end point. Every one of my brothers and sisters and I have our own watering cans. I tell this story about my father to the android while we’re on the way to the bar. When we’ve nearly reached the bar the android asks me, “What did your mother become?”
The notion of Being is closely related to Jerzy Grotowski’s theory of the performer, in which he explains that a performer is not one who pretends to be another, not one who acts out characters, but rather one who develops a channel organism through which forces circulate, while he remains himself in front of others, showing himself, acting as a bridge between memory and pure forms. “I don’t ever want to live under a bridge,” whispers the android beside me at the bar. “Me neither,” I tell him, staring straight at him.
To enact this theory, Jerzy Grotowski developed a technique that he called the “negative path,” which tries to eliminate physical and psychic blockages impeding expression, in order to enter that creative state, to touch intimate and unknown places within the actor and expose them to the public. It’s a job that, instead of creating skills, eliminates them in order to delve deeper into the unknown. In the book Towards a Poor Theater, Jerzy Grotowski states that the “negative path” is a process of elimination. The actor must discover the resistances and obstacles that keep him from achieving a creative task. The exercises are a way to overcome personal impediments. The actor must not ask himself, How should I do this? but rather must know what he should not do, what stands in his way. He has to personally adapt to the exercises to find a solution that eliminates the obstacles, which are different in each actor. “Are you in love with Jerzy Grotowski?” whispers the android beside me at the bar. “Not me, are you?” I whisper to him. Then we start to kiss.
My Favorite Girlfriend was a French Bulldog Page 7