They were aliens, from somewhere else, somewhere foreign, and it did not matter that the “somewhere else” was as close as an eyelash to an eye. What mattered was that someone had once drawn a line, and once drawn, that line became indelible and hard and could not be crossed (312).Though my ethnic origins are not a strong part of my identity I do identify with Sáenz. I was born and raised in Yuma, Arizona, until the age of three when my family moved to San Diego, California, where my first memories were formed. My father worked in the Border Patrol, so I understand and appreciate both sides of his issues, but though I grew up with Mexican-Americans I am not one of them and never will be. I’ve never really had a place to belong.
As soon as I began attending preschool I understood the concept of being unpopular and different; I wore both glasses and an eyepatch and was immediately ignored and disliked by my fellow classmates. I was very young but I remember so many things... eating ice cream on grass, running down a hill I shouldn’t have been playing on, learning to swing with a rainbow pinwheel, standing in the shade of trees that had red berries, eating Twinkies out of my lunchbox, and playing on the “fire truck” with the one playmate I was blessed to have. He was as despised as I was but for a different reason: he had a growth disorder. We promised to marry each other when we grew up. I lost him when we moved back to Arizona sometime after I turned five.
In Ajo (the small town I now called home) I quickly became an outcast with my new classmates. I was in kindergarten now and already knew how to read. My teacher would get angry when I started an activity before she had finished explaining the directions... What other reason were they written in the easy to understand words that comprise a five-year-old’s reading vocabulary if not so I could do it for myself? She hated it when I asked questions, would often make me stand by the drinking fountain during recess, would never give me an ice cream bar when everyone else got one. She insisted that I would never be able to learn how to read and wanted to flunk me. I suppose that the other children were afraid to befriend someone the teacher despised so much and by the time they got to know me better my fate was already sealed as someone who was different. I took music in third grade and band in fifth but it was always the same with them: I was always an outsider.
It was from a young age I understood the longing to belong: “Clumsy in body and mind, I knew no place I could go to and feel certain I ought to be there” (Polsgrove, 224). “I was taught as a young girl not to ‘make waves’ or ‘rock the boat” (Williams, 349). My mother began homeschooling me in first grade, and I tried so hard to please her. What friends I had eventually stabbed me in the back. I longed so very much to grow up, to be in the church youth group because they did so many fun things but by the time I was old enough there was no one else in the youth group anymore besides me.
When my father insisted I attend public high school and here I found new ways to be out of place. My first day of school seniors were asking me for help and so I quickly became the brain who no one talks to unless they need help, the know-it-all that everyone despises yet uses. In volleyball–-my favorite sport–-I tried so hard (my eyesight was still a liability) but my coaches despised me and would not let me play in the games unless it was absolutely necessary. Though I had been a well adjusted child before junior high I slowly descended into a spiral of monotony and self-doubt. “The price of obedience” had “become too high” (350). I always had joy despite all of the hard things in my life, but I knew that I was losing the battle. I had always yielded to my parents’ wishes, even when one teacher advised me to quit high school and go straight to college. “Threatening and puffing up your chest is a waste of time. Nobody ever proved a thing in a pushing match, and nobody ever held onto nothing by talking about it” (O’Brien, 334), but I knew I had to do something. I was at my breaking point. “Something was burning, the side of me that knew I was treated different” (315).
There was always “the place I always like to think about” (Kingsolver, 200), but it wasn’t until I lost my “place” of escape that I realized I had one. My grandparents owned a home just outside Yuma in California. It was here that I learned to sew, bake cookies, and wash dishes. I remember curling up behind my grandfather’s easy chair to listen to the TV or read a book. I played with the same Barbies, Lincoln Logs, Spirograph, and Tinkertoys that had belonged to my mother and her siblings. I ran through sprinklers, made mud pies, hang from the same bar my mother had, and built a fort not far from where my aunt and uncle had (though I didn’t use it for smoking as they did). It was here that I fell in love with the local Mexican food, Chinese food that the whole family shares, 4-H BBQ, and have my first memories of Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. Each year we would attend the midnight Candlelight Service at the church my father grew up in before returning to my grandparent’s home and sleeping a couple of hours before we woke the whole house so we could open our presents.
My senior year of high school I dropped out. I tried to take correspondence courses but the workload was too heavy. My father, who had come to Ajo because the work was less dangerous than in a big city, now decided to put in for a transfer. Ajo had become part of the busiest sector in the United States. We all moved to Grand Junction, Colorado, and before long we moved my grandparents, too. Their health is failing, so I understand, but their new house has none of the old touches of home.
I understand and long for “the elemental world of water and light and earth and air” (224) because I grew up in the desert. I didn’t always love it; it grew on me over the years, slowly took root in my heart. First it was the rocks that are a veritable rainbow of hues, then the emptiness that’s so big you wonder if it could ever be filled. No one could ever believe that the desert could support life, let alone give it. The arroyo deceptively lies alone in wait, bone dry, but thunder announces this gift, lightning highlights it, and one suddenly understands the name “wash” when the desert suddenly rushes overflowing with the water that is the blood that gives life to the seemingly barren. The cacti grows so green after the winter rains, wildflowers burst into life, and the sun shines so clear: it is everyone’s greatest enemy but what all life stems from. You even learn to appreciate the heat after spending hours in artificial cold. Yes, the desert is harsh but it is also life unexpected. The sun is a miracle each morning, a promise each night as is disappears and the sky slowly unfolds to reveal countless jewels against black velvet. The stars always seem so far away and yet so close.
I can’t return to what I had, so I still search for a new source of belonging, a place to put down new roots, but I never find it. The church I grew up in has succumbed to the politics that my family and I forever struggled to hold at bay. My friends (such as they were) have all moved on. Since I moved to Colorado I have migrated to Virginia, North Carolina, and back again but still feel lost and alone, much as Roque Dalton must have felt when he wrote: “Do you know what exile is? / I’ll tell you, / exile / is a long avenue / where only sadness walks” (310). I struggle to define my adult self, am just as uncomfortable with “the headlong pilgrimage after money and comfort and prestige” as Berry is (224). Yet I also long for the future that I’ve always believed in and waited for, one where technology helps, not harms, all of life’s ills are healed, and dreams come true. I’ve began to wonder if I am only a hopeless dreamer, if all the things my mother taught me to believe in aren’t real. I’ve found that “I must question everything, even if it means losing my faith” (350), but my faith remains. I feel like a fool, but I cling to it like sunlight clings to clouds.
I have always longed to change the world for better. “Life isn’t fair,” someone once said; I say “Why not?” I see so much that’s just beyond my grasp. I long to touch it, hold it, but I never can. I feel as if I’m caged and bound, words that long to come forth and spring to live on the page remain hidden. “I was writing. It would come to nothing; I knew it would come to nothing” (312). One word always resounds in my soul and spirit, emanating from the depths of my heart... Why?
I feel so deeply, should I not? I feel so completely, should I be fractured instead? I dream so recklessly; should I be more grounded and practical? How could I be myself when all these things are my essence? I cannot take drugs and pretend that everything is suddenly better but no more can I cease to be overwhelmed by what I feel and know with every fiber of my being. Should I change any of this I would lose my very identity. Even if I could take the pain away I wouldn’t. Even if I suddenly had good luck I would resist it. Good things aren’t always the right things and bad things aren’t always the wrong ones. Giving in instead of being true to myself might make me rich but I would be so much poorer than I am now. “You can’t forbid us everything / You can’t forbid us to think– / You can’t forbid our tears to flow / And you can’t stop the songs that we sing” (351).
Should I come back to “reality” (whatever that is)? Should I continue to hold on to me? Should I let go of that which gives me hope (for hope also brings me my greatest sorrow)? Hope is lost, hope is clung to. “I see a number of things that make me seriously afraid” (226) but I don’t think I know how to let go.
I think I already know the truth. I have left the desert but I cannot get it to leave me. It now flows in my veins and calls to me, an addiction greater than many that I have outlived and conquered. But like all addictions it will always be a part of me; the call of the desert will always echo in me. Still, I have one that is greater: it is my greatest sorrow yet my greatest strength. Though this addiction make me a fool I will still follow it. I have to.
Anderson, Lorraine, Scott Slovic, and John P. O'Grady. Literature and the Environment: a Reader on Nature and Culture, eds. New York: Longman, 1999.
O’Brien, Dan. "Eminent Domain: A Love Story.” Anderson, Slovic, and O'Grady, 333-338.
Polsgrove, Carol. "On a Scrap of Land in Henry County.” Anderson, Slovic, and O'Grady, 224-229.
Sáenz, Benjamin Alire. "Exile. El Paso, Texas.” Anderson, Slovic, and O'Grady, 310-316.
Williams, Terry Tempest. "The Clan of One-Breasted Women.” Anderson, Slovic, and O'Grady, 347-352.
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