I'm going to read one more.
25.
I am la guera, which sounds like la wetta, which
is slang for la rubia, the blonde one, polite
for la gringa, that means literally the fair one.
That's what Fernando tells me it means--
the fair one.
When we are at his Tía Norma's house and the screen door slaps
shut behind the boys--
his younger cousins who are chasing each other out
into the yard, and I hear them say la guera,
I know they mean me.
He has a cousin who is also called Guera,
because her skin is so white.
But I have the la before my guera which I know
has its own significance, like la reina the queen,
as in she thinks she's the queen--
the only one.
And so at the same time, it's as if I'm singled out--
or think I ought to be--
a kind of joke maybe.
But this is a new mask, a new way
of being invisible while being in plain sight.
I am simply who I appear to be marked only by my appearance.
I have become that surface.
When I'm writing on the old round green bus
down South Sixth Avenue, the bus with the windows pulled open,
no air conditioning, the bus so crowded
that there is standing room only and we may as well be in Italy
or Mexico, and we pass the carniceria and the tortilleria
and the storefronts painted bright yellow,
or orange, or pink, with blue letters and black
wrought iron bars over the windows,
and the music of Spanish is all around me, I am la guera.
When I hold in my hands at work the African trade
beads, the shells, the turquoise beads, when I iron the clothes
and dust all the vases and sculptures and bowls,
when I sweep the front walk and move the dust mop
under the display cases, and write up the sales tickets
and give the rich old ladies their change,
or try on the embroidered dresses
so they can see how their granddaughters might
look in them, I am la guera.
Something is changing.
And even though soon someday I will become Beth again,
I will never be exactly the same Beth.
It has to do with this sojourn, with this moving through my day
in a completely different rhythm, surrounded
by new sounds, and colors, and air,
as if I have chosen to become someone else in another life
in another country--
and in choosing an exterior path,
have set interior change in motion.
When I lie on the bed after work and put my feet up on the wall
because my ankles are swollen, when I lie in the sun
my hand across my belly, I know I will never
be the same person again.
And it has everything to do with being la guera and everything
to do with the fact that beneath my hand
there is a swimmer, a not yet child,
his eyes blinking at the shadows of my fingers.
[APPLAUSE]