The obsession with language.
My generation's loss has been, in this way,
many of us grew up listening to Spanish,
but not speaking Spanish.
And so I can read Cervantes in Spanish,
and I can understand everything you're saying to me in Spanish.
But to ask you, where's the nearest laundromat, in Spanish,
is very difficult.
There's guilt. There's a lot of guilt. There's a lot of shame.
There's a lot of erasure of the Spanish language.
It happened when our parents mouths
were washed out with soap.
And so many of us choose, as a political, spiritual,
linguistic decision, to attempt to become fluent in mid-life.
This is called "What the Heart Says."
It's a story.
Most of my poems, in the last two years,
have been poems that have failed miserably, only
to turn into columns, and essays,
and then finally to turn into fiction.
This story called "What the Heart Says,"
is from a collection of short stories
I'm now writing called The Block Captain's Daughter.
"You wake up one morning to discover that you can roll
your R's.
You say your name, Socorro, Socorro,
as you gaze in the mirror like a girl testing her mother's
lipstick on the sly.
You open the curtain to let in more light, then
glance around the room.
Towels, toallas.
Bathtub, bañero.
Window, ventana.
Two by two, the words come at you, creatures paired
miraculously as in Noah's ark.
Soap, jabón.
Shower, lucha.
Mirror, espejo.
Gracias a you whisper, thanks be to God.
But come to think of it, God had nothing
to do with this gift of tongues.
You remember back to that day.
'Enough bitching about not speaking Spanish,
Cory,' your husband Peter, an Anglo fluent in five languages
tells you.
He sits down at the computer.
'I'm going on line.'
A day later, a package arrives--
flashcards for Latinos who grew up hearing the language
but not speaking it, the tongue-tied
who ace classes but can't ask for directions to the nearest
laundromat, the guilt-ridden ridden
for whom Spanish is a pre-existing condition that
flares up when ordering food at a Mexican restaurant,
then recedes when the margaritas wear off.
For a week, the package sits unopened in its brown wrapping
on the piano.
You look at it, embarrassed, as if it were a sex toy.
'Come on, open it,' says Peter.
'Stop telling me how to run my life,' you answer,
heading to the backyard hammock to watch the sun set.
Why did I marry the man, you wonder,
flicking a mosquito off your wrist?
What did I see in him the night he
stood up at the Quaker Meeting House
to debut his film on Union activists in Oaxaca?
Peter, with his goofy ponytail barely rooted to his balding
head, sporting a Guatemalan peasant shirt and $125
sandals made of recycled tires.
Still, you had to admit the film was brilliant
and, thankfully for you, it had English subtitles.
And ever since then, have felt like Peter's English subtitle.
After the sun sets behind the west mesa,
you return to the house.
Peter has left a note, saying he's at a meeting.
You stare at the flashcard package.
'This is no way to live,' you say, razor blade in hand.
You slit the box open.
You spread the cards on the kitchen table
as if to read the Tarot, terrified of false promises
of fluency.
A statue of St Anthony, finder of all that is lost,
looks on you as you read each word, then flip the card over.
Stars, estrellas.
Flames, llamas.
Stones, piedras.
The hours pass.
You stretch out on the couch and doze.
You dream of summers with your bilingual grandma--
how English went in one ear, Spanish in the other,
mellowing inside you, a beautiful mole of sound.
You wake up and return to your game of linguistic solitaire.
At midnight, Peter comes home and smells
the burnt black beans you've left simmering on low.
You're asleep at the table, your head cradled in your arms.
Saying nothing, Peter makes you an omelet.
Gently, he nudges you awake and hands you a fork.
Next to St Anthony he sets up a small TV
he's rescued from the garage so that you
can watch telenovelas or hear the rosary recited in Spanish
on the Catholic station.
He kisses you on the head, then leaves for Brazil.
Night, la noche, turns into day, el día.
Summer, el verano, turns into fall, el otoño.
The kitchen table, meanwhile, becomes a country all its own.
With Spanish language newspapers from around the world, grammar
books your friend Martiza brought
you, and CDs of Cuban music--
with printed lyrics-- that Flor dropped off.
Lupe drills you on common mistakes
new Spanish speakers make, so that you will not
say you are embarazada, pregnant,
when you mean to say you are embarrassed.
Things begin to happen.
When you go for your mammogram, a nurse runs out to the lobby,
asking if anyone speaks Spanish.
You follow her to a small office.
A Mexican woman has misunderstood
the doctor's words--
she thinks she has cancer.
You take the chart from the nurse, sit beside the woman,
and hold her hand.
You deliver the happy news.
Soon the two of you are glorying in the mysteries
of benign cysts and calcium deposits that cloud up
an X-ray like the Milky Way.
Socorro, succor.
Assistance in times of distress, you think,
peaceful as your own breasts are being crushed between the metal
hands of the mammogram machine.
One day, Peter returns from Brazil.
'It's over,' you say.
'What do you mean?'
'I've had it up to here.
Teaching Shakespeare at a prep school.
I've decided to volunteer at Enlace Comunitario.
They need some English as a Second Language teachers.
It's your turn to get a day job, Peter.
It's my turn to live my dream.
'I'll look at the classified ads tonight.
Jeez, I thought you were about to ask for a divorce.'
'Don't exhale just yet.'
'What?' 'No more Cory for short.
It's Socorro.
All my life I've--'
Peter draws you into his arms.
Cory, that dry shrub of a name, floats away
as Peter, with a kiss, draws out the succulence of the name you
had almost lost.
After making love, you walk with him
around the corner to El Bandido.
As always you order water, agua, por favor,
but this time, without ice, sin hielo.
Before, you had only enough words
to get halfway across a situation,
like a car stuck on the railroad tracks.
You were unable to cry "help" in any language that
might save you.
A steaming Platter of shrimp arrives at the table with
tortillas de maíz and pico de gallo.
Across from you on the wall hangs an Aztec calendar.
You say to Peter, 'Here's to my other ancestors.
We'll study their language, Nahuatl, together.'
At last you have discovered the opening
in the fence that divides Mexico from the United States,
kin from kin, era from era.
[? Tlen ? moyolo ?] What does your heart say,
your Aztec ancestors ask.
The opening was there all along, at the tip of your tongue."