Mother Tongue by Demetria Martinez Read Free Book Online Page A

translations, near folders of clippings about El Salvador, was a magic circle. It was beyond law and order.
    #1
    night sheds her black silks
it is the first day of the world
love, lover
I uncurl your sleeping fist
your hands on my chest
yield up their aloes
scars recede
resplendent our flesh
no losers or winners
when wars end
just survivors
to lay hands
on one another
to begin again
    — JL ROMERO
    Around the time of José Luis’s arrival, large numbers of U.S. citizens were beginning to make trips to El Salvador in groups called delegations. They met with sisters and priests, unionists, students, those who worked the land—anyonewhose life the government had deemed dispensable, that is to say poor people, most of El Salvador’s population. And when delegations returned to the States, members spoke to anyone who would listen, in parish halls, homes, and on campuses. José Luis and I were among those who attended these presentations. I got good at whispered translations, rapid-fire summaries. Sometimes, exhausted, I reverted to Spanglish. I sprinkled Spanish words about just so, like dots in a connect-the-dot puzzle, and José Luis made the connections, discerning the full shape of the speaker’s intent. What I did not need to translate, however, was the grief in the voice of a U.S. citizen who went to El Salvador to learn about la situación and who came away with a memory of evil. Innocence was lost time and again in this fashion, leaving a void that would be filled with either forgetting or anger, an anger embodied very often in commitment.
    A priest who had traveled with an Albuquerque delegation came back with bullet casings imprinted with the name of a U.S. city—I can’trecall which one—where they had been manufactured. A month or so later the cleric gave away his possessions and returned to El Salvador for good, to work with the poor. These were not isolated incidents but formed what became a movement of sorts, of U.S. citizens taking an “option for the poor,” which liberation theologians said was God’s way of acting in history. These conversions could be traced to the stories of Salvadorans, stories about torture, dismemberment, hunger, sickness. I heard those stories and felt lucky. I had lost a mother to cancer and a father to infidelity. My losses were natural. Or so I thought then.
    After a delegation member spoke one evening at San Rafael church, José Luis and I went outside and, sitting on the steps of the kiosk, watched fake gas lamps light up one by one. The setting sun added a bronze lacquer to the adobe walls of Old Town’s shops. Folding their wool blankets, Native Americans loaded up pickup trucks with cartons of jewelry. José Luis took my hand and pressed it to his lips. Then, he yawnedand stretched, reaching for the last rays of sun with forearms that had grown strong from washing dishes for endless afternoons. He took my hand again, traced the creases in my palm. For no reason I could discern, he looked at me and asked if he could call me María. I said of course, it’s just Spanish for Mary. He said no, Mary is English for María.
    The few friends I had during that spell of my life quit calling; the word must have gotten out that Mary was in love. They knew I wouldn’t come out of the house, the house I drew with crayons, a house of primary colors I called love. The first time I fell in love, friends tried to tell me it was not real. To prove them wrong, I drew a keyhole on the front door and invited them to look through to the other side. See for yourselves, I said.
    August 1982
    I can’t stop dreaming of marrying José Luis. It only makes sense. Marriagewould be a way to kill two birds with one stone; I could save him from being deported
and
help him begin, at last, a new life. I could make something useful out of my life—and give myself some structure and direction while I’m at it. Besides, I practically live with him as it is. We’re either hanging out at Soledad’s or