Читать книгу Speaking Like An Immigrant - Mariana Romo-Carmona - Страница 4

You must know I am South American, though I live here.

A lifetime denying I’m exotic, a lifetime to become one with my own eyes. Yet my character is dark, my moods swing wildly, and I expect nothing from life save the satisfaction of knowing I expected the worst. There, I’ve confirmed it, and now perhaps this will explain me to you, so that I won’t have to define my impulses in mid–sentence.

Sentence, there is a word, heavy with meaning. I revel in meaning, the signification of things, what is meant by signs that we observe in life and understand without anyone having to tell us; we simply know. This knowledge had been away from me for a long time, or rather, I had been away, until recently. Until I went back to the place I was born and came back here, helpless, full of signs, symbols, and meaning.

I returned thinking I had killed the part of me that contained a soul; I wandered dangerously, I watched the rain wet the sidewalks without falling. That is, the streets were wet, the sky was gray, and the leaves were blown about by the wind carrying water in its wake. Rain water. People walked among wet ivy and wrought iron gates, the fumes of buses, and the impending moisture in the air. I thought, how like the country of my birth. I ached to go inside. I had been looking for a place like this. Simple. Steeped in the meaning of memories, but I resisted. In the bushes, beyond the ivy, dark red berries shivered, weighted down by the rain, I could not withstand the feeling that pulled me away from myself.

When we first arrived, so many years ago, my father said, start now, start working now, because you don’t want to end up like that old guy on the Staten Island ferry calling out, “shine?” to all the passengers. I worked very hard, my father was right. I see the guy now, it is another guy but he says the same thing, “shine”? even if you’re wearing suede, sandals, he doesn’t care. He says, shine, that’s his job.

So you have to understand. I’ve reduced my whole life to one moment; it’s what I am fated to do, being South American. A million jobs and a million questions, but it doesn’t matter what country I am from, to you they’re all the same. Uruguay, I tell you, and you light up and say, oh, yeah, my cousin, he has a dentist, and his wife is from Brasil! So many jobs I had. I cleaned, I dug holes, I taught Math, I drove a bus. And all is reduced to the moment when I walked in, shutting the rain outside, the wind whistling in behind me. I blended with the darkness that isn’t dark, that is soft light coming from somewhere, caressing my face, luring me gently with the smells of the place. Smells that are old and not mine, but mine all the same, known to my skin, and the silence that is balm in my heart as the murmuring goes on. And on, it never stops. Yet it is quiet in here.

I worked very hard, for many years, to give my voice another sound, my body another shape, but here I am, my whole life in this one moment when my body slides right through these doors, blends in the dark, fits like leather along these worn benches– all except the kneeling. I won’t kneel, but I will succumb to the sound, let it take my soul if it has to, and it comes like waves: Dios te salve María llena eres de gracia— Santa María Madre de Dios (Holy Mary full of Grace—Holy Mary Mother of God.) It is not religion I am after, understand. Who am I? One of the old men huddled in the back, the guy on the ferry even, offering shoeshines or one of the old women dressed in brown, kneeling up front, chanting the same song forever.

But I did return and I have seen that other face that awaited me there. Asunción, I might say to you. San Carlos or Bariloche. Cuzco, Cochabamba, or Quintay, a little fishing village. And, oh, you will reply, I know! My brother–in-law, he was in the Peace Corps!

Now I’ve seen the other face and I know who I would have been. My moods swing wildly and the features of my character seem deeper, the more I look. I could be anyone, the old man, the old woman, Santa María Madre de Dios— Shoeshine! The rain that falls without falling, the silence that calms without speaking. I never knew I searched for something so simple, that reflection from the window; slide on the bench but I don’t kneel. There’s no need except, depth is silence, depth is water, water like glass, glass like a mirror. The more I look I become one with my eyes. This is what I see. My features. Glass. Mirror. Eyes.

The more I look.

The darker they become.

(1996)