The other resistance is fear*

Querida Gloria:

I packed your books away months ago when we were supposed to move and that never happened, but my things and books are in storage and your words are hidden in boxes so I try to find them online, search for those reminders and words I have made my mantras & seek comfort in them. Sometimes they are there, and I feel it, there’s an answer coursing round these parts and it feels like the words fit into sentences, laid out into poems like they are supposed to.

I wonder, if you’re disappointed in me. You’d be the kind of person to tell me. You’d say, Mera neta, Mimi, you’re fucking up. And I would say something like, what the fuck Gloria and try to give you some half assed excuse for not trying hard enough, not cracking the sentences and lines that I cannot cross, because I would be able to talk to you like that. I would tell you of my nopalito and sofrito fusion of two cultures and you would talk of serpents and tell me how nopalitos are good for diabetes. I’m make you some limonada or agua de jamaica and we’d sit back on a humid Friday night here in the valley.

If you left us your words, as instructions, as guias, then I’m fucking up. I try to write as your vessel and it doesn’t come out quite right. I worry, I worry too that I’m fucking up. That I let the words escape me in the mornings when they dissipate like dreams, when I let the pain of these bones and hands lull me into that white wall of pain of whatever it is that these doctors call it. And maybe you are pissed, maybe you’re beyond pissed for either I’m not doing what I’m supposed to be doing and I’m quoting you in all the wrong places, putting emphasis on the wrong words or that I’m getting in the way, not allowing the thoughts to pass, ignoring the whispers and messages.

For the longest time, I refused to embrace your words as gifts because you left the valley. I refused to see the gifts and trace the marks you left for us to find, learn, see. Because you got out. I don’t resent you for this anymore. I am still here, home. We are not even from here, my dad came from Mexico when he was a teenager, straight from reading the bible under trees taking care of goats in Rancho Del Toro, near Cerralvo. My mom hails from Chicago via Puerto Rico. After living here close to 20 years she moved to Indiana, which reminds her of the Chicago she knew growing up. She never could get used to our thirsty sun, burning grass all summer long. And now my dad doesn’t even spend so much time here either, mostly he stays in Mexico. His sibling are slowing dying and he is a frail man grasping for the children who he hid food from.

But here you find me Gloria, in the valley, because it’s home. And you had to leave this fucked up place, drowning in the shit that wouldn’t let you grow, love, heal.

“Tanto dolor me costo el alejamiento.” you said. “La tierra, los aguaceros.  My land, el viento soplando la arena, el lagartijo debajo de un nopalito.”

It is my land too, Gloria. Here we are, thinking of you, talking to you. Thank you. Y todavia es tu tierra.

Hasta la proxima,

Noemi

*inspiration from “Turning Points” An interview with Linda Smuckler, Gloria E. Anzaldua, Entrevistas.

This is for the next issue of This Bridge We Call Home: Finding Gloria.