The Angels

 

Thomas Jeffrey Vasseur

 

 

 

"Voices, voices--even the girl herself--now."

 

     --Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

 

 

Sometimes, I think of the face Frank wore that day and imagine him jumping from the airplane. How difficult it must have been--how sad--that he couldn't indulge in the thrill of the fall. I think of what he was thinking and the degree to which his thoughts were different from those of previous jumps, different from any I'll ever know. I suppose that falling out of the sky must be an overcharged version of that tender tug you feel whenever the car you're in goes over a hill too quickly, or when your body is caught by a wave. The most vulnerable part of you is lifted up and then there's a slow, sexy sinking.

I wonder, what is the scenery like from five thousand feet with the wind in your face while you're falling? What color are Panamanian hills? Or the water in the middle of the canal, miles from either ocean? Turquoise or muddy? Brown or blue? Where do all of those barges come from, and why in the world did they leave?

Whenever my mother writes me from Mexico City, my father always scribbles a few lines at the bottom of her letter. He calls me gringa and says how much he would like me to visit them as soon as I find the time and money. It's not cold-hearted, not really, and he means to be funny. But you have to know his code. This is my father's way of reminding me how far away from home I am and letting me know that he misses me too. I know this, for my memories are solid. There were good times too with my father.

Right now it is winter in Los Angeles and the man I loved has been killed. Frank is dead. So I try to remember my childhood, my parents, all the things that I thought about when I was a little girl and the innocent games we played growing up in the outskirts. I would skip rope on Calle Duraznos or kick a ball with my brothers and sisters, the standard games kids play, or we would invent something else to do: fasten bedsheets or towels around our necks, then jump off stairwells and pretend we could fly.

I remember becoming very ambitious, quite logical, about the sensation this flying produced. I wondered if with a bigger cape, or perhaps some more practice, I would be able to stay afloat for a few seconds longer. Then one day my brother Ernesto snatched my grandmother's umbrella, jumped off the roof, and broke his arm. Afterwards I forgot about the idea of rigging up something that would let me glide around the neighborhood and smile at all the others. It was a blissful state to be in though--believing. Believing that for a short space of time it might work, that the privileges and invulnerability of youth, that these good times would last forever. It is something that I'll always remember about my childhood and that I used to tell Frank about sometimes. We didn't have television, we didn't have cartoons, but on Saturday mornings my mother's mother would bake thin sheets of pie crust with honey. We would fight over who got the biggest pieces--we were kids--then race around the neighborhood, our faces smeared with cinnamon, wearing our sheets and soaring off stairs.

We used to play so hard and get filthy from head to toe. The dust from our calle would get caked on our fingers and we would chase one another around, trying to wipe our messy hands on each other, my grandmother's pastry inside us and on us, giggling and falling, the wind in our hair.

* * * * *

Everything's so different now. Every thing is different. The way I feel about being here, people's faces, this ocean, although the ocean is no colder than it was before, because the ocean was always cold, but darker now and lifeless, somewhat bluer and entirely blind. Usually there are boats here, sailboats and trawlers, headed for the faster water or the more valuable fishing grounds. It's hard to believe but this ocean is teeming with life: salmon and swordfish, sea urchins and crabs. There are bluefin tuna, I've read, fish which weigh hundreds of pounds and are worth five thousand dollars a piece because the Japanese consider them a delicacy. There is fierce competition for these tuna, but for the smaller fish too. The zones are closely surveyed, and the methods are vicious, I'm sure. They say that love makes the world go around but how much does what we love cost us. ¿Cuánto cuesta amarnos?

Out on the beach the same morning they told me, I couldn't believe there was anything moving beneath the waves. Apart from the motion of the water itself, there was no activity. No boats with their fishing nets, no surfers in wet suits--nothing--and I couldn't imagine any life beneath the waves either, although I'm sure I was mistaken.

* * * * *

I am fluent. Capacious. I'm interested. I want to find ways of keeping the solid moments we shared together, the pleasure that Frank and I knew. One way of doing this is to remember his arms and his legs, his mouth and his awkward monosyllables.

Frank never liked to talk much beyond the point where he'd said all he wanted. Perhaps he believed that too many words were a distraction, a slipping-away which sometimes, in their user's desperation, could constitute a loss. But I don't think Frank had enough faith in his ability to let me know what he was feeling. I would talk to him like this, the way I talk to you now, and he would listen to me, leaning forward occasionally to tell me things I wanted to know too. Frank told me what it was like being away from me so long and what his thoughts had tended toward at night, what he had wished for and what he had learned. With a child's enthusiasm, Frank told me what was involved in becoming a paratrooper--and what it felt like to fall out of the sky.

* * * * *

We used to come to the beach together and that is where we first met. On a Friday, I remember, during the summertime, when I didn't have to teach. After sunset we went out with his friends and my friends to eat shrimp and drink margaritas. Frank was originally from Charlotte, North Carolina. So this place was new to him as well. Frank was nervous at first, quite boyish and awkward when he talked to me, or whenever he tried to use Spanish. Frank knew a little. Everybody here knows a little, or says they do. But Frank wanted to learn some more.

So I thought of the whole Pacific coast that day on the beach, the day they called and explained that Frank was one of the first to fall. The newscasters broke the general news about the invasion, but the telephone call itself came over a week later. After the New Year had begun. After I had slid all his presents under the bed. I thought about us--about Frank and me--but also about this vast apartment. The Pacific Coast.

This land, you know. My new home.

It's hard to believe that it happened in the same part of the world. More or less. Of course, I'm talking about a huge chunk of the globe but the same continent with the same name, which is what I have to remind myself I'm actually standing on. Japan's an island. Cuba's an island. Even Australia. Only by a geographical accident do I find myself on what is called a continent, for the name doesn't fit somehow, and it does not feel like one to me. Right now at least, I'm on the biggest island on the globe if you ask me. And if you close your eyes and listen, then perhaps you'll see what I mean.

Or trace your finger down the continent's coast, southward, towards where I come from--that's where it happened all right. We're connected, you'll realize, up to a point. There are canals between every body. Oh yes, I know what I'm writing. I'm a schoolteacher and my English is wonderful. I'm saying there are gulfs between all of us.

But I'm not sure how good your memory is. I know little of your fascination with maps. So consider how the land swings down, low, in a crescent, past the Baja, past the borders. The land lies on its side like a sliver of moon, something wounded or weary, propped up against an ocean the color of midnight and another name that's a lie. Or think of the land as a person's body, someone smiling and leaning on an elbow, her muscles relaxed now that it's all over, one leg stretched out into the Gulf, the other sprawled in the Caribbean sea.

If I threw myself in the ocean here I could float all the way down, depending on the current. Sometimes the idea occurs to me. I could make it if the water happened to move that way. My waist-length hair would spread out like black seaweed or tentacles, swirl over my body and grow longer after I had drowned. I would take off my clothes to speed the journey, and who knows how long it would take, or if a fishing boat or an oil tanker would spot me. The albacore fishermen might fight over me--you know that joke men tell one another--or I could float off-course towards Japan.

Could I silently impress the sharks?

Avoid the hooks, the acquisitiveness, all the nets?

* * * * *

Frank was a year younger. Twenty-three. Ironically, this is currently their official figure for what happened in Panama. He was quite young in some ways and could still be giddy on occasion, although he didn't talk much or show his excitement the way I do. Still, I'll never forget what Frank told me about jumping out of an airplane, about the rush of being airborne, what it felt like the first time.

Worst of all were the interviews around Christmastime. Sitting in my apartment and trying to understand via satellite. Trying to see through their well-read words. Waiting and watching with telecommunicative curiosity the commander's assurance. His general gusto. "Good evening Ted," the big voice boomed. "It's good to be talking to you." The Southern commander and Ted Koppel gave the impression of being old friends, but I got the feeling they had never laid eyes on one another. Or cared to all that much.

* * * * *

Sometimes it's hard for me to get up and face these happy children. Their shimmering faces. Their wonder-filled innocence. So I force myself. I'm confused and angry, but I'm not sure who to blame, who I should hold responsible for what has happened. Sometimes when I'm talking to my students, a grown man's face appears, and I hear that booming voice from the television broadcast, see the bright lights from the helicopter, the waving palm fronds. The big man smiles. I tell myself that this face is no more substantial, no more solid or more real than my own face or the faces of these children. It is powerful but sculpted by many hands.

Straightforward, rigid and confident to be sure--but constructed. This face I see is ubiquitous and its owner's energy is everywhere. It has been built-up, put in place. And while it might sound like little or nothing right now, I assure you what I do makes a difference. What I do here makes an indelible impression. I too have a voice that cannot be stopped, and so that face can be transformed, rearranged. I tell myself this every morning now. I can shift a few bricks.

I'll bring in the map and show them the sliding coast, put the word pan in their mouths, slip in tuna, cuerpo, mujer. This is part of the earth, I will tell them, and then point to the place that hurts me. Corazon. Heart is not the same thing, you see, and you don't really have a, word for what I feel.

Tierra, I will teach them, but that's a hard one because of the r's.

Watch closely then and listen, I'll say.

Pay attention to my tongue.

* * * * *

I come from the largest city in the world. So perhaps I know a few things you don't know. But I'm not sure. Whenever people are packed together so tightly, then it seems like the gaps are wider. The distances between people, between people and things. Now that I have more of it, perhaps I've learned to focus more sharply on "freedom," which is just an idea like any other, you realize, the sound of which isn't worth a handful of beans. But when I use the word "freedom" don't think that I'm smiling on one side of my face. Don't think that I'm being satirical. Even after what's happened, I feel glad to be here, you see.

But have you noticed the way our eyes can slide over things?

Someone's face? An ocean? Or a book?

How you never become intimate by accident?

The fact of the matter is that we're all islands. All of us. Entirely different. Distinct. There is no denying it. We are cut off from one another in the most essential ways, which is precisely why I'm telling you all of this. It is no mistake that I happen to have a pen in my hand or that you're sitting down reading. It is something intended, that we wanted to do, or if we are lucky, desired. Yes, that's the word, or do I speak for myself? What I'm desiring is no accident.

* * * * *

I'm no general, no judge, no philosopher queen. But when I was a little girl I used to come home from colegio and sing songs and write poems. I used to dream of bursting out from that closed, stacked-up world--of living my life just right.

All the people around me, my family and friends, they wanted the same things too. But I suspected they would likely never have them and understood that some of them never could. I wanted to be the woman who did something. who left her roots and kept them too. Who worked hard, and who made a difference. Some people say we Latinos are lazy, just passionate lovers, duffers and dreamers. They say we pay too much attention to wishes, those gauzelike images that come to us. But I managed to move toward what I wanted. To work my way up, you might say.

It's not perfect, by any means, in this valley either, and a lot of other things are quite the same: the crowds, the cold money, the caca de camiones, All the rushing and distance and space. But I've got a good job in the City of Angels, which just goes to show you that there's a practical dimension to wishing--that it's one way of making things happen. So tell me this, my fellow compadres, has this other kind of desire dried up in you? Have you put up a border around dreaming?

* * * * *

Personally, I'm afraid of all passionless people, their robust voices and ironic smiles. Not laughter, mind you, but smiling. Laughter occurs within a different domain.

I think a lot of times we laugh to forget, or to remember. But deep-down we laugh because we are frightened.

Personally, I'm afraid of the fearless.

* * * * *

My mother never knew we were married and I can't tell her now. My future would be the color of a crow's wing because my parents would see things from a different perspective, from otherworldly Catholic eyes. My life as a woman would be over. My father might call me worse names than he did on the day I first left his house. So, I can't tell them now. Not that he actually said those names then, but I know what he thinks. So am I wrong to be silent on this matter, to prefer my form of pleasure to theirs?

No one had ever taken care of me, pleased me, the way that Frank could whenever he took the time. In spite of his big hands and his awkward way of saying what he wanted.

"Okay, espera. Not now," I might tell him.

But sometimes it was the other way around and he would say, "Hold on. Let's wait a minute." Occasionally I would sympathize with his strategy and neither of us would utter a word. One morning, before classes, I was wearing a yellow dress, a yellow dress with black dots, drinking coffee and reading papers from students. Frank was getting ready for work in the other room and he came out of the shower, soaking wet and dressed in a towel. He wanted to be with me, he said. "Me too," I decided to tell him. We had to hurry, of course, and afterwards I pulled down my yellow dress with the black dots. Frank drove me to school and I taught. But then all day long I felt him kissing me and had this intimate sensation which is hard to describe, like he was still actually there. I'm not talking about something vague, some evaporated sweetness like dried honey, but some solid logic, something tangible. Quite real.

I'll never forget that feeling Frank gave me. I want--I wish I had the opportunity right now, you know, of hearing him blurt out that he wanted me, then of telling him that there wasn't enough time.

I wish I had the luxury of telling him no.

* * * * *

I don't have to draw you a picture. I've not mentioned places much or named many names, have you noticed?

But this does not mean that I've forgotten the particulars of his story.

I have done what I can to be precise.

What else is there to say about my Christmas? What more can I tell you about how I feel? ¿Qué sé yo? You'll just have to imagine for yourself what my life was like in the outskirts of the largest city in the world, the things I had to do to leave, and how my life changed once I came here. Once I finished school and when I met Frank. I've only told you part of my story but every bit of it is true. While we can't absolutely control our dreams or our stories there is one difference between them, I think. Our dreams, they come to us. They're not dependable or straightforward or necessarily true, so we can say what we want about dreaming. But we can't lie to ourselves, can we, about what we've done? What would be the point in something so far-fetched?

If there's one thing I hate it is fantasy.

But perhaps I will fill you in, tell you a little bit more. I just want you to understand about my life. About the hope I had and the love I lost. About the importance of not being born important, which is the reason why I came to Los Angeles and the reason why Frank joined up.

* * * * *

I remember how one morning, when Frank had to leave for the weekend, we watched cartoons together lying on the sofa. "Oooooooh, I hate that rabbit," thundered a hot-headed prospector. Yosemite Sam was his name. Sometimes Yosemite Sam doubled as a castaway, a pirate or a cowboy, and he never learned a thing from his former experiences. In this particular cartoon, he had been tricked again. But he defied physics for a moment, racing off the edge of a diving board then feeling with his foot before falling.

While we were lying there, Frank explained about parachutes. He talked about his training drills while we watched Bugs Bunny and that dark Daffy Duck racing around, outwitting each other, or being outwitted. Then came that emaciated bird who runs across highways, past rickety cliffs and huge sandstone spires. She seems so alone in the desert. except for an occasional bus and that A.C.M.E. coyote. He is more notorious than any of these characters for not catching the drift of things, for celebrating his indestructibility.

* * * * *

I think of Frank and his parachute, the size of a man and a woman. They are playing some game together and she's riding on his shoulders. Wide-eyed and taking it all in. Overwhelmed and still not really believing that he has jumped. But the image is wrong, I realize, since Frank was completely alone. While I have no idea what it was really like, I see him buoyed up like a floating piece of cloth, flapping majestically against the purple sierras, not enjoying himself precisely, nor worried anymore that his chute might not open--beyond that now. Yet not impervious to the violet hills sloping down towards the sea. The blue and white buildings. The sand-colored sand.