The Arrival: Take Two

[If you wish to read, or listen to, "The Arrival - Take One," please scroll down the page.]

One day, not long after my arrival in Cambridge, Massachusetts, while at the supermarket’s queue, I found myself wondering about an angry look I was receiving from a person next to me. It was one of those looks that could kill you should you subject to it long enough. I didn’t understand why, but the person moved away from me so adamantly that, for a moment, I feared I had unconsciously committed a terrible crime, only I wasn't aware which one. I decided to glance around discreetly to see if sight could help me recognize my indiscretion.

When you are new in a place, your senses become acutely tuned to the world around you. It's almost as if you had been seeing in black and white and, suddenly, the cones in your eyes that detect color begin working properly. You notice everyone’s eyes: a strange aloof-blue or green. And you hear how some of the others describe your own: "evil dark." You notice the color of their hair: light brown or blond, and straight. And the color of their skin: predominantly Caucasian white. Their features: narrow lips, and long, pointy noses. And you can’t understand exactly what they are saying, but you try. And you make many mistakes. Many people stare at you because you walk too slowly; others ask you to repeat what you just said because they can’t understand your accent, especially the way you pronounce your "i's". "Say cheek," they ask. "Now, say chick... now chic." Some people get impatient if they have to repeat their sentences more than once. So you practice your pronunciation at "home," ad nauseam. Rarely does anybody make eye contact when you pass them by on the sidewalk. Your smile is out of place, and so is your bright orange blouse, and your cleavage.

When you introduce yourself, your tongue rolls your name in a new way, triggering the memory of those times when your mother used to joke about the way your name would be pronounced out there, "Moooooenacaaaaaaaah," she'd say. And you finally get it: At the supermarket, the person in front of you stares severely and moves away because you are getting too close to her! Being used to the queues at your Caribbean supermercado, at your barrio’s colmado, you stand too close to other people.

You cannot do that here. Take note.

You move away, because as you look around the supermarket’s queues, you notice that everybody maintains a healthy distance from each other. You estimate it: a good two feet. And everywhere you go, you notice the same pattern. You repeat to yourself: don’t get too close to people.

Now you start pondering dying your hair purple – an idea you had always played with in your mind. It isn’t that they will not notice it here; it’s just that nobody will care. Just in case they do, you don't really want to be the purple-haired-Latina, do you? So you change your mind. It wouldn't be fun anymore. Fitting in is your priority, anyway.

You arms become numb from carrying those heavy bags all the way from the supermarket to the tiny studio you are renting. They are squeezing the money out of you here with the rent, and the winter clothes, the mixture of electricity and heating, the food -- the little they pay you as a student with the scholarship you received to gain experience as an astrophysicist. You were convinced that’s what you wanted to become – an astrophysicist who worked with black holes and galaxies. That's what you thought you wanted to do, that’s what your mentor wrote on the description of your job: blah blah blah black holes. And you eyes widened. And your smile didn’t fit on your face, you remember. You will do that for a while -- study galaxies and black hole candidates. But black holes will suck everything that comes close to their event horizon.

Now, inside of your dark studio, which sucks in the cold air, you strategically place towels to block out an annoying current, covering the bottom of all windows as well as the door; and you wear four sweaters at a time, even inside the studio, and wrap your sleeping blanket around your body as you move back and forth across your bedroom, the only other room beside the bathroom where, by the way, you go to pee with increased frequency because the cold has always made you want to pee.

In a couple of years, you will not want to become an astrophysicist anymore. You will still want to become a writer though, sitting in front of your computer monitor to write, but not a code to sort out certain elliptical galaxies a certain amount of megaparsecs from ours, even though you will always find the latter interesting; even though science and literature will keep on fighting for you, tearing your cardiac muscle into shreds, only because you keep on teasing them.

In the meantime, you will become a professional whiner. After a while you begin talking to yourself, just like your father does. And you sing when you’re mad and when you’re sad, just like your mother likes to do. And since you cannot call your parents all the time, and they can’t afford calling you either even though they’d love to, and you know they do, and you understand, you begin to write letters to no one, and to the world, like Emily Dickinson. And you will want to get drunk with vodka, but you know you despise the flavor of alcohol and the only time you have drank it in your life was with your ex boyfriend -- three spoonfuls from a dusty bottle of dark Bacardi rum that had been sitting on a forgotten shelf in his ancient rented apartment. Three spoonfuls of dark rum on a cup and a half of fruit juice had been enough to shoot a current of heat up your arms and down your legs until you were unable to walk and he had to pick you up and carry you to bed.

That's it then. You will get drunk with cheap orange juice instead, and read Julia de Burgos and cry. On your darkest day, you write a letter like this:

Dear world,

I have no idea who I am writing to or how do I manage. I don't have legs. I don't have addendum of any kind that is useful anymore. My fingers are cold and are submerged within my body; they retracted from their intention to reach anything a long time ago. My arms and legs have multiplied, fusing with one another around the volume of my body, equal in length, symmetrical, and useless in the randomness of their fingerless efforts.

The empire of my tongue has collapsed; in its place, the slowly creeping fungus of another language crawls as a menace to each palabra that had confidently woven the fabric of my thought. Without fingers, with no addendum, with a crippled tongue, I stare naked before all.

Sometime, not long ago, before the fall that came upon me, I was a rock. I would watch the sea go by and towards me. The water would always slide down my rocky countenance after the hit, but never filtered through my pores. I was El Morro – my Spanish fort- standing the constant hits of the sea waves on its surface for five hundred years. But I am not even a sand castle now, reduced to a mere two dimensional drawing on the sand.

Every nostalgic bolero has become a strange tango that infuriates my veins. A tango that never belonged to me, talks to me as if mocking me, daring to reclaim what never has been his. Every tango claims me as all lost is called upon by all who never owned it.

You fold the paper where you've written your letter to the world. Then you put it away before you pick it up once more and read it out loud, smiling at your silliness. Crying. Pocking fun at yourself. What drama! you think. Then you dial his number -- the number of your ex -- and pretend you're drunk... but he knows better.

You fall asleep with orange juice breath, a hundred blankets on top, and a lineup of books leaning against the door to block the winter from coming in one more night.

[To be continued... one last time]

Photo: Ice on the Charles. Credit: Iris Mónica Vargas 2010

[Note: details about people have been changed to protect people's identities.]