Mother Tongue by Demetria Martinez Read Free Book Online Page B

going back and forth to Old Town. He’s getting pretty regular work now at the cantina. (He met some other refugees there, including a guy from his own village.) The plaza’s like a third home to him, after Soledad’s and after Salvador.
    Heck, maybe we should just move in together. It would make things a lot easier. We wouldn’t have to spend half our lives in the truck. We could spend more time doing poetry translations, which is when he seems happiest. The problem is I don’t know if I could really bring myself to believe inliving together. Because I still believe in marriage—no matter how many tries it takes to get it right. Though most people my age, last I heard, tossed marriage out along with the flat-earth theory. It’s embarrassing. Once a Catholic always a Catholic. You rebel and rebel against the Church’s stupid rules, but the fact is, you wouldn’t bother to rebel if you didn’t believe in your heart of hearts that there was something worth rebelling against.
    Even Soledad says if she ever gets married a fourth time, she’ll get one of her radical Jesuit priest friends to do the wedding. Besides, living together seems so ordinary nowadays. (And my life has already been too ordinary!) And Old Town is still an old-fashioned little village. If word got back to old Mr. Baca that the girl he was renting to was living in sin (across from the church at that), who knows what might happen? I stillworry about what people think—as if they didn’t have their own secret sins. It’s ridiculous.
    (But if by some miracle José Luis and I do get married, I want to write my own vows. It’s dangerous for a couple to promise to stay married until they die. It’s better to vow to stay together until the marriage dies—and to do everything in their power to keep it alive. If you don’t think of marriage as a plant, fragile and in need of attention, then you’re asking for major trouble.)
    I’d better get over to the cantina. José Luis will be off his shift, and we can get beers at this time for half price. We’ve gotten in the habit of going there in the afternoons. It’s really beautiful. Ancient wooden saints stand in niches in the adobe walls. Candles burn everywhere. We feel safe there. He told me that in the darkness, with the santos, no one can tell he’s an illegal. I told him nohuman being on earth is illegal. He accused me of being romantic again and said, go tell that to the authorities.
    One thing that worries me is he’s been drinking a lot lately.
    Every afternoon last week he finished off something like five beers in a sitting. I told him it’s not good to drink that much, and he cut back to two beers or so when we went back the next day. I think he did it not because it’s good for him but to please me. I don’t like that. It’s all to the same end, but I don’t like the means. When I’m most centered I want him to put his needs above mine. That’s what I hate about love. Bit by bit you start to give things up. You become like a good parent. But I love him so it’s all worth it. I’ve never felt this way about anyone.

Two
     
    August 5
    I wish there were a way I could tell her. Say to María, you’re inventing José Luis. And your invention may be very different from who I really am. She sees my scars and thinks I was brave for having survived. She doesn’t understand that you don’t always need to be brave to survive the most brutal injuries. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), woundswill often start healing even if you don’t want them to, even if you would rather die quietly in the corner of a cell. The body’s will to live sometimes is greater than that of mind or spirit.
    I wish I could say to her, nothing I have done has required courage. When you’re being shot at, it doesn’t take courage to duck. Animals do as much. Me and my compañeros were being shot at so we dived for cover. And when we were not dodging bullets, we were asking questions about who made and sold the