The Angels -- Part 3

 

Thomas Jeffrey Vasseur

 

 

* * * * *

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?