Knocking on Doors
I thought about how many states there are. There were days when I was unemployed, and I sat in his bed while he went to work and I tried to imagine which states I flew over. I never bothered to get out a map. I tried to remember what I had learned in school. It shouldn't be that hard because school was only a year ago. I'm 18 during this day and this night and the next day and the next night. 18 and 3,000 miles from home. And I'll be 18 until the summer. That's when I'll turn 19. Hopefully. I fell in love online. He's 9 years older. Those were the days of AOL. He was a poet, and I loved poetry. It was a way to get out of the tin can that I was trapped in with my parents. And my sister. And her boyfriend who was an eagle scout and liked to go camping with my sister. And I would be alone with my mother who out of protest refused to learn English. More likely she refused to admit how much she knew. Whereas my father took to the language the way he took to everything in America. He could sell furniture so perfectly. He could sell religion. Which he did. He sold it to my mother and then we were all sold. Only I didn't know how it happened. One day I was wearing a white dress for my confirmation and the next day our church became a kingdom center. We had to give up our birthdays. And now I was on the east coast with a man I barely knew and I was counting the days until my next birthday because this man promised to give me a party. One of the ways that he sold me on coming here. And even though I feel as if maybe I've been nailed to this bed, a bed that I am sure I have washed thoroughly with my tears, I am glad to be here with him. I'm glad to be anywhere to be honest. And every day I sit and watch my knuckles heal because I haven't knocked on a stranger’s door in months.
The Beast
So his friends have become my friends. His world is my world now. And I am working. I have found a place where I have made my own friends. Everyone is older here. Everything is older here. All the buildings. All the streets. There are stones in the streets. There are dates on the buildings. It's strange to walk these elderly streets. But when I go to work, I know things my coworkers don't. You see there's such a benefit to growing up with a keyboard as a rattle. It is the '90s. And they say my name all day long. I walk and never run from one cubicle to another. And I fix the things that are so easy to fix but every one of them is grateful to me. There's a kindness that they share with me that I can say surprises me. And as I tear the membrane of the cocoon and push myself into the universe, I realize my wings are beautiful. And so his friends have parties. They are theater people, and they are earnest about their craft. They are independent. And I'm excited to be a part of it. At one point I'm tapped to be a stage manager. Now I've never been a stage manager in my life, but I know how to keep my head. I know how to put things in boxes and remember where they are and go back to the right box at the right time. I know how to make it all look like magic. Because in my home there were things that we didn't say. And you had to learn to read lips or else you might never know that your sister was coming undone. You had to hear the heartbeats going up and down. You had to feel the tension in the children of these believers because none of them had found Jehovah themselves. One day you woke up and there was this beast living in your living room. And he would follow you around all day and all night. And in school, the other children were afraid to say anything because the beast was rather intimidating. And He took away all the holidays but one. And even when your teachers forgot and told you to have a Merry Christmas, you just had to take the old face from the right box that you had saved from before the beast. Because otherwise you might be the beast. You might be the one that scares them.
Squinting in the Mirror
When you're growing up in the room that your parents designated would be your room, you find ways to make the space your own. There are things you clip and cut and paste to the walls. Maybe there is a cork board. Maybe there's lighting that you distort. But the furniture is the furniture that they gave you when you were young. You decorate it. You put things in the corners of the mirrors. Your closets are filled with clothes that fit you at every size. But your bed is the bed you inherited from your childhood. Once upon a time there was a girl who slept in it who loved it. And then she kept sleeping, and she stopped thinking. And now even though your mother changes the sheets, it is the bed that once had smaller legs and smaller arms to fill it. Today, I am standing in a small apartment and the bedroom that I have inherited from him. From this new parent of mine. From this boyfriend. This fiancé even. And that is not my dresser. That is not my bed frame. In fact those are not my sheets. How can I put my fingerprints on these lightbulbs? Because as it turns out some of these things are the things that he inherited from his childhood, and yet he's so much older than I am. How can I tell him that the bureau that his mother picked for him when he was 7 years old is not the bureau that I want to have at 19? It is a conversation that doesn't happen. I don't know how to find the words inside of me to tell him that I need to decorate the corners of the mirrors and I need to create a collage of my favorite colors in the corner of our room. He breathes hard when he sleeps. I've never slept in a bed with anyone but my shadow. He is not a shadow. He takes up room. But he's not a lightbulb either. He does not help me see. I squint and I squint and I still can't see myself. I wonder why the mirrors don't work. What I used to see in the mirror of my home was a small girl who was longing to escape. And now when I look in the mirror all I see is his bedroom behind me.
Immigration
I can't believe how long each block is. Some of these buildings have doors that look like where you might park a truck. Or a tank. Everywhere there are statues. Everywhere there's some memory of some man who did something great for the city. And then there are nymphs. And sea monsters. And handsome lions. Then there's what seems to be a giant penis in the middle of the street. A monument to the first president. Not my president. My family came from border towns. It was the slow inching up from the interior. My father and my mother made the final leap. They told their parents that they were going to Disneyland. And they did just that, but they never went back. They were 19. This was their college. This was their university. I haven't been to college either. I dropped out of high school actually. Too many absences. There was too much hurt. Too many times I had to participate in the secret pain of my family. The anger of my father. There was no monument to greatness except the bruises that I didn't know how to show. I wouldn't want anyone to see these tributes to the man of my world. Because I know that these are the markings and the memories that stretch back in my family for hundreds of years. How much was I indigenous? How much was I European? The monuments here in the city where I now live are sometimes attributed to men who came from other places but never the place where I come from. Where we come from. That was a different country. Those were different times. The war they fought on this side of the country had a different accent. But now in my new city I travel from the main arteries to smaller ones and I see evidence of my people. I see The bodegas and the grocery stores where you can buy 20 different types of peppers, peppers you won't find at the Safeway for the Aldi's or even the fresh veggie stands on the side of the road. Goya. Everything Goya. Harritos. Pina is my favorite. But I haven't entered any of these stores. I haven't bothered to speak Spanish except when I call home or when I go to a restaurant with my fiancé. He loves to hear me order. He loves to see me talking to the waiters and the waitresses who know me before I speak. And the sad tired eyes light up when we talk. Both theirs and mine.
Fireworks
I remember once when I was 9 years old that I had grabbed the little yellow suitcase that was mine for my toys and my stuffed animals when we went on trips. I packed it with whatever I could. I don't even think I took any underwear to be honest, but I was going. I was out the door. I was going to go to Disneyland and never come back just like they did. Only I didn't know what my Disneyland would be. Years later of course it would be a city on the east coast, but for now my Disneyland was as many street lights as I could pass. I stomped out of my parents' home and left everything I could behind, but as I walked it became clear to me that the dirty wet rags that felt like clogged my chest were not going to leave me. I could not remove them just because I was walking away. They came with me that night in my anger and my hurt. My parents were at the hall. I could not live this way anymore. I could not see my oldest sister being abused. She never quite mastered the language the way that I had even though she was born here just like me. But for some reason she always had that little bit of a first generation accent. And she was darker than I am. Considerably so. She could have walked out of a field and nobody would have been surprised, but if I were in the same field there would have been a sense of concern. What is this little white girl doing out here picking strawberries or blueberries? Or whatever berries were in season? Of course we didn't pick berries, but my uncles and my aunts still did. Only in America, they owned the farms. My parents owned their house. My father sold furniture. He sold God. What made it hurt worse was that I knew my father was a good man. We had many strong conversations about anything. Everything. He would listen to my music in the car and offer his honest opinions. He would take me for long walks when he knew I needed to get out. And that's what I was doing now. I was taking a very long walk with a suitcase and my temper. And as I walked I could feel the heat of my face slowly leak from me and once again my skin was as white as East Coast snow. And like that night, here I am sitting in what will always be his apartment. For as much as he may have tried to welcome me into it, there was no way I would ever feel at home. And so I want to move. I work for a company that manages properties, and I want to live in one of their apartments. I want to be up high and to see the city that I am starting to make my own. I inherited California. I chose to live here. And yes I was chasing the dream of love. I was chasing this man who was magnificent with his words and who knew how to take a good selfie. When I first saw him at the airport, I was terrified but relieved. He indeed was handsome. I wondered what he thought of me. I told him that I was short. He had seen pictures of me short. But until you're around someone as short as I am, you don't always know what short really looks like. I still don't know what he thinks but he has made space for me. And he has agreed that we can move. We will be on the 14th floor where the balcony wraps all the way around. And I have been told that on the nights when there are fireworks you can see them in every corner of the city. You can see the lights exploding in the sky. And as 9 year old me stood under 7th street light away from my home, I looked up at the black sky and stared hard. My eyes tried to open as wide as they could and I eventually saw the stars. In the suburbs of California, you can still see the stars. Only they don't explode. No one makes a noise when you see them. And the only thing I could hear as I sat there looking up was the grinding of my teeth as I realized it was time to turn around and head back to my parents’ home.
Ceremony
I'm married. I'm 19, and I'm married. Hello Mom, this was your life, too. By next year I should have a baby. Yes? Isn't that when my sister was born? You were 20. I am married. We went to City Hall with his father and his two friends. No one from the barrio came to be my witness. I would not have wanted them there. Not yet. One day. Later they would come. Later they would stay and we would travel to New York and we would see the headquarters where they make the Bibles. We would see New York City where they make everything else. But today on our wedding day I am the only Mexican. There will be no Spanish. I’m not going to speak to myself. I don't need it. I speak both languages perfectly. I speak to computers as well. I'm good with languages. He plays guitar. We communicate. We talk. We share. And after we were married we went to a crab house and ate the staple of his state. It was a wonderful experience. I had eaten crabs with him only once before. Of course we have crabs on the West Coast but it's the Alaskan king. Just the legs. I had never had these. And they honestly were delicious. The butcher's paper was spread out on the table, and we both drank beer. He showed me how to open them the last time but he needed to remind me. As I opened the crabs and realized that I would have a new last name. I'm opening crabs for the first time as a brand new person. And even though for quite some time I had felt like a stranger in a strange land, I could see the Red Sea was splitting apart. Nothing that had been gifted to me in the past would matter. Everything from this point on was mine. I had signed that paper. I had said those things that you say when you get married. I was wearing a ring. This was the beginning of something. We had moved into the new apartment. We'd even bought new furniture for the place. A brand new couch. A chair to match. The bed was the same. But we bought a new desk. New sheets. It was a beautiful place, and I had such an advantage because I had seen the place before he had. I had seen it in pictures. I had seen the floor plan. I work at the company that manages the apartments, and so I had an advantage. And for the first time I thought I was speaking like an east coaster. It was the confidence. The darkness that had lived with me for so many months when I first came to his bed and to his city had lifted. My job was my job. I was good at it. Even without a high school diploma. They didn't know. I had all the answers. I was born at the right time. And now that all the pictures had to be hung and the clothes needed to be put into the closet, I could choose where they would go. They could go where I wanted them to go. All of this was floating through my head as I cracked open another crab. And afterwards we walked down along the water and into the store where they sold cigars. We bought two cigars, and we took them out and we smoked them together. In the hotel by the harbor, we went swimming. It was the first time we had ever gone swimming together. I remember feeling light. I'm not actually light. Sometimes people like to use the word curvy. Sometimes people like to use the word fat. But in the water he could hold me, something I don't think he could do anywhere on dry land. And despite the fact that I had had two serious boyfriends back in Sacramento, this was my first husband. This was special. I was his first wife. “First” was a word that both of us would need to use in the future because we would each have a second. But this was our first night. And when we climbed into the bed and I asked him to do things to me that I had never asked of him before, we found a way to turn this bad map of the entire country into two lips pressed together. And all the miles disappeared. There was no flight now. There was no need to travel. I could put my hand on his face and he could put his head on my chest. And I thought that this must be what it is to be married. This is what my parents felt as they were longing for their Mexican homes, starting something new in a brand new country. This is what it's like to be born again.
One Million Words
When we were courting, I was careful to keep myself concealed. I was afraid that he would reject me. My previous boyfriend from high school was there at the beginning and then the end. He saw my body change. Now it's years later, and I've been through two pregnancies. PCOS has been attacking me since I was in puberty. It's left me incapable of becoming a mother. At least biologically so. It's also done many other things to my body, and I was ashamed. When we met, it was difficult to tell what his reaction was to me but he certainly embraced me and took me into his life. How much did we really know each other after all? Yes we'd spent almost a year chatting. I had met him the night of my 18th birthday. That was the first time we spoke online. And when he picked me up at the airport it was almost 2:00 in the morning. My flight had been delayed. I was a wreck. But he took me to his apartment, and we made love. That was a relief. And so the years did that thing that years tend to do which is to slowly twist your life into knots until one day you wake up and you can barely breathe. Everything is that tight. One day I woke up and I thought about the little electric doorway that we had created from one side of the country to the other. And I went to see the doorway, and I realized his door was still open. Only I wasn't on the other side, but somebody was. Who knows how many? And of course I felt rage. I had lost two babies. And here he was giving out his words. He had so many words. But I thought they were all mine. Once he told me that there were probably a million words in the English language. I figured he knew them all. Well you would have to know that many words to speak to that many different people. But some of the words describe the place where you live or the wheels on your car. Some of the words describe the fact that you eat or you talk or you sleep. But which are the words that you use to seduce? Could I remember the words that he used on me? I didn't have to remember. I have them saved. And when I would climb into my computer and pull open all the drawers to find the files that I had of his, I could see the words he used. You'd think that with so many words in your head you could find different ones for different people, but it was clear he had used the same words for me as for them. How should I react? They had pictures. They weren't careful to hide themselves. Some of them were naked. And so what do I do? Because now his name is mine. And this home that I have with him is ours. These are words. “His” and “mine” and “ours.” But even these words were not sacred. Because he was theirs. Hers. There were many “hers.” And “she.” And “you.” That was the word I hated seeing the most because that word was meant for me. It had been my word. It was the word that unlocked the cabin to the airplane that brought me from the west coast to the east. That was the word that I held onto in my pocket as I walked the long hallway to the place where he stood waiting for me. That was the word that was wrapped around my finger, and that was the word that left my body and swam down the toilet drain. If he were to use it now with me I would not be able to accept it. It was not my word anymore. It belonged to everyone else.
The Secret Names
He went back to school to become a teacher, and we took out a loan which we used to help me buy a car. I got a new car. He drove our used car. And I drove the new one. When we went places, I drove my car. Because it was mine. Even though he helped pay for it, the car was mine. It was the first car I had ever owned. It was the first car I ever drove that wasn't somebody else's. It was the first car that I could name. I named her after my sister. Her middle name which of course was my grandmother's first name. And it was a secret name. I never told him her name. And then one day we took the car to the dealership and we sold it. We made a good amount of money on that car. And we sold the house. You see we bought a house after the apartment. That was my house as well. That was my choice. I'm the one that painted the walls in the dining room. I'm the one that chose the couches and the silverware. I had taken over those jobs. And I was only 27. A lot had happened between us. Too much. Too many different times we discussed his vocabulary. We discussed the open door. He slammed it shut and nailed it but of course everything you close can be reopened. And he did many times. Too many times, and now I'm taking the money from the car, and I'm buying a plane ticket. I'm taking the money we made from the sale of the house and I'm moving. I'm going to fly to my friend in Seattle. She has agreed to let me stay with her for a bit. And that's where I'm going to buy another car. And with that car I’m going to drive to the places where I want to go. And again I will name that car. And he won't know her name either. He knows too many names. I'd like to keep a few for myself. I named our daughters. He was too busy learning everyone else's name to ever bother asking me theirs. I doubt he even wants to know them. They are long gone now just like me.
Using English
I carried it. I picked it all up and took it with me. No matter how heavy everything else is, nothing is heavier than this. This is the thing that I took with me into my next marriage. This is the thing that now clogs my heart. The heavy wet dirty washcloths that used to stop my breathing have all been replaced with this. Failure. Regret. Loss. Oh, loss. When you're young and you experience loss you look around desperately and you expect the world to turn off and turn to you and acknowledge the pain you're feeling. But when you get older the last thing you want to do is waste your time on some kid who's crying over her grandmother’s passing. You don't want to even bend your neck down to see the child who's hurt because she no longer gets to celebrate Christmas or her birthday. These are significant losses of course but as you grow older the losses pile up. Like laundry. Like unwashed laundry that you just can't seem to bring yourself to clean. And everywhere you look you see the losses. I see my two losses. And now there are more. Because I can't have children. I can't make them. I can't keep them. They don't want to stay inside of me. They won't hold on. I can't seem to find a way to keep them inside my body. So how could I ever take care of them in the world? Maybe this is the universe's way of keeping them safe from me. My second husband is a wonderful man. He wants children but not more than he wants me. And that's something different. He doesn't have the words. He's not a poet. But he’s present. He lives every day in the same world where I live and never tries to escape through the door at the back of our computer. There are other options for us. We will explore them all. To adopt. A surrogate. He will do them all. Without a high school education I have still managed to land one big job after another. I currently hold an important position in an international bank. Once again I just know how to whisper to the computers. I know the language. My father mastered English. My mother always pretended she couldn't. But I'm pretty sure she understood everything we said. Even when the words were hurtful, I know she could translate them all.