Chango's Fire (8 page)
Authors: Ernesto Quinonez
“Well, for your information, the guy she is marrying is Puerto Rican.”
“Yeah, from the island, right? That's different, they buy into this marrying-a-virgin shit. They think their wives should be pure like sugar or something, like their mother, or someâ”
“I'll pay you back!” She yells in annoyance at my rattling. For a split second only the sounds of sirens and cars passing us by can be heard.
“I'll pay you back,” she says calmly. “If I could put it on my card, I would.” And she stares at me like she has hypnotic powers.
“Aren't you against all of this?” I say, calming down a bit and shaking my head slowly. “Isn't this something that you speak out against in your church?”
“Yes, of course it is, stupid. God you're so stupid, Julio,” she says, “of course it is, this is female genital mutilation. Of course I'm against it. It's really about control over women. But right now, I have a scared girl who if she doesn't bleed on her wedding night is going to get the shit beaten out of her.”
“At times I don't get you, Mari,” I say defeated, “I don't, but all right, all right how much?”
“Two ⦔
“Yeah, two? Two what? Two hundred?”
“Two ⦠Two thousand.”
“Two thousand! You bugging, girl!” I can't max out my card, two thousand, I have a mortgage to keep, tuition, books, my parents.
“Wait, wait, wait,” she holds my arm, “I have three hundred and she has six, so you will only be paying eleven. I'll pay you back.”
I stare at her. Her face is lit by a lamppost on the corner. I once dreamed of wanting to know how Maritza's face looks in the dark. When you turn off the lights and your eyes have begun to adjust and all things take on new shades and different hues. I used to think maybe one night I'd wake up for no reason and she'd be next to me and I'd get to see that image in real life. But then I got kicked around by her so much that I realized that she was more like a big sister slapping her little brother around.
“You'll pay me back?” I say knowing she will not, she can't, like many do-gooders, Maritza is always broke.
“Yes, I'll pay you back now let's go.”
“How about giving Trompo Loco a job at your church,” I say. Maritza looks at me like I'm insane.
“Fine, but I can't pay himâ”
“No, you pay him what you owe me. You just let him do stuffâ”
“Whatever, okay. Trompo can clean up and shit, let's just go back inside.”
We walk back in the clinic.
I pay the woman.
Maritza and I don't talk. Maritza is watching the clock. She knows she has to get the girl back in time before the service is over. I can tell the girl's mother is in on it along with Maritza. The girl's father must be a nonbeliever and so he is not at church, and they can use the time to sneak out and get the girl revirginized.
We sit and do nothing but wait. In the waiting room the beautiful woman with fake tits, fake ass, fake nose is talking to a future customer.
“Hay una problemita.
You're getting married next week,” she says in Spanish, “you can't get married next week. You need at least a month or two for the stitches to dissolve.”
“Stitches?” the customer frowns.
“
S
à sweetie, stitches. If you have sex on your wedding night with the stitches intact,
ay dios mÃo,
the infection rate is so high that I can't begin to tell you.”
“But we are getting married next week. Is there another way?” the customer says.
“No sweetie, you have to find a way to postpone your wedding, otherwise, if you have sex with stitches, well, you'll fool your husband but you could die.”
Maritza had been listening to the conversation as well. She shakes her head in sadness, disgust or disbelief. Her eyes focus on the young woman whose head is hanging and who is about to cry. Maritza wants to get up and do something, but the woman hugs and coos her.
“No te apures,
” she says. “It's no big deal. I had mine done, too. I had my whole body done. The only thing real are my teeth,” she says and the young woman forces a smile. “Good,” she tells her, “smile, we women, we have our little secrets.” Then she looks my way, “We trick you men all the time.”
Dear Julio,
When I moved to Spanish Harlem I was so concerned about being politically correct and nonracist that I inadvertently did stupid things that demonstrated my fear and ignorance. I was hyperaware when I was the only white person walking on the street. So many men have said “hey baby” to me and “God bless your eyes” that I started to avoid looking at people's faces. But that didn't work, because then I neglected to see one of my neighbors saying “Hello” to me three or four times. That neighbor was your mother. I find that I still can't say “gracias” instead of “thank you,” because I'm afraid I will mispronounce it and sound stupidâdespite the fact that I'm proficient in French, Italian and Portuguese.
Let me explain that I have a weird blend of haughtiness and guilt. The haughtiness comes from abiding by the manners of the environment I am used to, an environment where it is rude to catcall and where people handling food wear plastic gloves, and no one shouts in the street or anywhere else outside. But my guilt becomes frustration in the fact that I don't know how to reconcile the fact that I didn't cause these discrepancies,
other white people who aren't even related to me did.
Still I am being held responsible in this neighborhood by
some
individuals who react to me like the embodiment of the Evil White Empire. Similarly, I react to some individuals as if they are the typical stereotypes I have encountered on TV.
Of course, I could take Spanish lessons and it would be so, so easy for me to learn the language. But to hear Spanish without understanding it is like being in front of a great work of abstract art. I feel slightly overwhelmed but I find new things every time I hear it, like I find new things when I look at Pollock. Part of me likes being surrounded by my own personal un-understanding because it feels more real and more interesting than my world where everyone assumes authority, expertise, and therefore control.
My parents moved to that Wisconsin town I was born in after they met in Ithaca, NY. After they got married, my father's company sent him there. My parents weren't native to smalltown customs. As soon as they arrived driving foreign cars and not American-made ones, the town suspected them of being communist. During the Cold War, my mother was labeled a lesbian when she protested the Arms Race. What did that have to do with her sexual preference? My father laughed at it. My mother worked as a librarian and fought tooth and nail for books that the library had banned. Yet through all of this they won the town over and in the end, decades later, they now consider themselves from Wisconsin. But not me, I longed for their past at Cornell and so I counted the days till my departure.
I don't plan on changing anything in Spanish Harlem, but like my parents I will be myself. Yes, New York City can be so materialistic and superficial. Breast implants and bleached hair have become armor women wear to prevent themselves from actually feeling anything. I don't want that NYC. I want to live in a place where people actually eat real food they made for themselves, stuff that doesn't come out of a box or get delivered in Styrofoam.
The longer I live here, Julio, the more I begin to understand the depth of complexity of what I have previously romanticized.
But I'm beginning to make sense of it. My sense, Julio, not yours. It is my way of dealing with it all. I used to see an old woman selling homemade soup from a shopping cart in the street and thought she knew the meaning of life. I'd buy soup from her, thinking it was special soup, made by wise, age-old hands. Magical soup, like something out of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel. How stupid of me. It's really simple, she's poor. I've been told I'm better at expressing myself on paper than I am in speech, and so I just wanted to let you know these things.
Helen
As soon as I finish reading Helen's letter, I think of her hands. The letter is handwritten in black, bold lettering that was as graceful as Papelito's movements. I can picture her hands skating over a white sheet of paper, doing all sorts of circles and swirls. Helen's letter is beautiful. I have never received a letter like this one, ever. I don't want to fold it. I think of taking the letter with me everywhere and rereading it at every possible chance, in subways and at bus stops. During coffee breaks at work and during class, especially when the subject is dull and mechanic. I think I will discover new things about her. New things in me, too. But if I take the letter with me, it might get ruined and I don't want that to happen.
So I iron it by placing it flat inside a book. It's all I can think of doing to protect it. I'm an amateur in these things. After putting her letter away, I feel bad I said those things to her the other night. And I wish I could express myself the way she does. I feel both terror and joy that she explained herself with a letter and feel I should do something. I don't know what. So, I feel even dumber but I will do what many do when they are in situations like this one. I'll go see Papelito. Since I have to pay my mortgage anyway, he'll never know my true reasons for being there.
P
apelito's botanica, San Lazaro y las Siete Vueltas, sparkles with glorious light. Even the life-sized tortured plaster saints look alive, like plants that instinctively sway toward the sun. It is a botanica so clean and saintly, you feel you have to whisper once inside.
And it is always full of women. The place weeps femininity. Women walk in and out of Papelito's botanica as if it was a beauty parlor. They adore Papelito, because he'd let women in on Yoruba secrets. He makes them love potions for their men, or spells for women they hate.
Papelito is wearing a blue-and-white dress, the colors of the Orisha, the black god that had chosen him, and Yemaya, the goddess of the sea. I enter with this month's mortgage payment, as I always do. Papelito is whispering something to a woman and I try not to disturb him.
“Mira mi amor,
wrap a single strand of your hair around his mail box,” the woman listens intently, “melt red wax over the photographs of her. Place them in a black shoebox and hide it in a closet.” The woman nods her head. “Say the prayer to Ochosi, the hunter, and your man will come back to you.”
She believes it. So I guess it'll work.
The woman tries to kiss Papelito's hand.
“No, no
mija.
Kiss the Orisha's hand,” he says, pulling his delicate fingers back, “thank them,
mi linda.
Make the offerings and pray to them. They will show the way, girl.”
“But what if he doesn't come back to me?” she whines.
“Have faith in the Orishas,” he says and she almost weeps. Papelito holds her close to him.
“Don't worry, trust them,” he repeats. As the woman pulls away from him, Papelito holds a strand of her hair in his hand.
“Such beautiful hair,” Papelito says to her.
“Pero
Irma, you got split ends. So young and with split ends, I got something for that.”
I wait for him to finish with Irma, so I look around. Papelito's botanica also doubles as a pawn shop. It has so much junk that Papelito sells milk crates full of bric-a-brac for three dollars. Rumors had spread that a woman had bought one of Papelito's crates and had supposedly found a gold ring at the bottom. Others said they bought a crate and found a diamond inside a half-empty bottle of baby oil. Some had found less enviable things but useful things nonetheless, like spoons, detergent boxes, small radios, toothpaste, charged batteries, pens, canned goods, books, and toys (some broken, some not). These objects came courtesy of thieves, addicts, winos, and other down-and-outs who regularly arrive at San Lazaro y las Siete Vueltas to hock their loot. They'd walk in and ask if Papelito would take this or that off their hands for loose change. Papelito accepts everything gracefully, then he'll throw the items in one of the milk crates.
I wait patiently for Papelito to take care of his customers. I walk over to an elegant corner of the botanica. There is an altar erected to the Orisha Chango. Papelito loves Chango, because Chango is the god Papelito always wanted to be chosen by. Many years ago, when Papelito was being initiated, during the
asiento,
when an Orisha is placed on the initiate's head, Papelito didn't lose faith hoping Chango would claim him. He kept reminding anyone who'd listen to the story a part of Chango's legend,
“Ese
Chango, he once dressed as a woman to escape, and he dwells inside a woman, Santa Barbara.
So mira.
He will choose me and accept me how I am.”
But during the sacred ceremony, it was the Goddess Yemaya who claimed Papelito. His
padrino
âhis teacher/godfatherâlet him know this, and Papelito embraced Yemaya with all his soul. Blue and white, the Orisha's colors, is all he wears, and he does things in seven, because seven is her number. But Papelito still keeps a lit candle in his heart for Chango.
The altar to Chango is erected on a sturdy table covered by a red-and-white mantle, the colors attributed to the Chango. A tall statue of the regal Catholic saint Santa Barbara, who shares a duality with Chango, stands in the middle. There are symbolic representations attributed to the Orisha: a double-headed ax, various volcanic rocks, an image of a horse, bowls of hard candy, nuts, seeds, and, on the floor, a full-size bata drum with a gold cufflink on the side. On the wall, above Papelito's altar to Chango, hanging straight and upright from a carefully hammered nail, is a framed autographed picture of Robert F. Kennedy. I pick up the portrait and stare at it, like at captions from an old magazine or a sixties song playing on a far-away radio. The picture makes me think of the “might have beens” of the world. Maritza would be proud of me for thinking these thoughts.