A shoehorn or a giant ear, with hound dog eyes like casters on an office chair, framed by piles of unruly locks. She was a man, really, she had a man's stature; but she had the heart of a woman and a woman's odor and her voice as I imagine it uttered camphor obscenities to Moises, her husband, when they made love under the macrame ornaments she had knotted. Her thick curls suggested Moorish blood and so did her bohemian ministrations, for you see she painted and wrote poems and kept dark, flowing plants in their cramped little cottage such that the supple leaves brushed your shoulder as you entered the foyer or strolled to the w.c. They lighted candles and incense, and they must have liked a little brandy or rum, why not. Did she and Moises smoke herb like the low-born others in the colony? Whatever secrets they enjoyed within their quarters no one would have guessed, for theirs was a polite and decent home, notwithstanding its semblance of a bazaar in Cadiz. Moises too was a painter, and like her, also dark, his name crepuscular, exotic. They were childless and smoked constantly, both of them. Smoking was important to their lives. She owned enormous sculptural cigarette lighters, one of them an ivory horn I remember. One time she gave me a rabbit's foot. It carried a trace of scent, eucalyptus or perhaps lavender and the pelt was slightly oily over the hare's tender bones.
She worked for a living and wasn't very good at it but she did it and they paid her anyway which was good enough. She was a secretary in that she could type and that was fine: she could show up, drink coffee and smoke cigarettes, answer phones, make copies and maybe type something on an index card or on carbon paper, and change the ribbon on the typewriter -- a body to fill the office and make coffee and jot down something for the books, since she could do numbers too. Reports of her infamies on the job would reverberate in my memory for they offered such an incomplete portrait, failed to say so much except that maybe she was a bit of an airhead. "Yesterday she did nothing but smoke cigarettes and talk to her friend about her lab results." Or: "Renaldo was out for three hours and she just sat there in his office, doing nothing, waiting for him to come back and finish his dictation and when he finally came at 4 she asked could she go to lunch but all she really wanted was to go home early and everybody knew it." And especially: "She was running out the door in those ridiculous heels and she slipped on the flagstone and landed on her wrist and those silver bangles sliced up her arm all the way to her elbow."
She worked for a living and wasn't very good at it but she did it and they paid her anyway which was good enough. She was a secretary in that she could type and that was fine: she could show up, drink coffee and smoke cigarettes, answer phones, make copies and maybe type something on an index card or on carbon paper, and change the ribbon on the typewriter -- a body to fill the office and make coffee and jot down something for the books, since she could do numbers too. Reports of her infamies on the job would reverberate in my memory for they offered such an incomplete portrait, failed to say so much except that maybe she was a bit of an airhead. "Yesterday she did nothing but smoke cigarettes and talk to her friend about her lab results." Or: "Renaldo was out for three hours and she just sat there in his office, doing nothing, waiting for him to come back and finish his dictation and when he finally came at 4 she asked could she go to lunch but all she really wanted was to go home early and everybody knew it." And especially: "She was running out the door in those ridiculous heels and she slipped on the flagstone and landed on her wrist and those silver bangles sliced up her arm all the way to her elbow."
Was she funny? She seemed deadly serious to me but maybe that wasn't her, just mother, an effect of translation. She was the type of person who seldom smiles in photos, and she glares out from that photo of the yard, from the children's birthday party, the lone childless adult staring somewhere beyond and behind mother, who took the picture, looking unhappy and dusky and bored. She wore knee-high boots always so I never got a look at her feet. Her feet would have told us something. Her hands! I can't remember much except the knuckles were a shade darker and blended around the edges with the rest of her golden green tone. She must have painted her nails and her nails were undoubtedly long and colored like cocoa or plums. Large hoop earrings, thick ringlets over a knitted sweater, skirt covering the knees. How about her knees? She and Moises must have had prolific sex, in fact I think their life must have revolved around sex since that's why they married, not for children, but for sex. To enjoy their cigarettes together and paint and play the ouija or read the tarot at night. And to have sex. Perhaps she and Moises read The Joy of Sex in translation, the one I snuck a look at on the shelf, and she stopped shaving under her arms. She never wore sleeveless dresses so it would have been a secret between the two of them, another humidity for private enjoyment.
One evening at coffee she announced they were divorcing. She slumped on the sofa as she filled the sitting room with smoke, pinching the bridge of her nose while the other two fingers held the dark, long cigarette, then tap-tapped her ash into the charcoal onyx bowl. Later we paid her a visit, mother and I and perhaps Sara too. There was a fresh painting in the living room on an easel, of a panther in the jungle. Enormous windows butted the room and between the heat of the sun, her cigarette smoke and the moisture rising from the oils and the watering cans it felt like the bush of the canvas. I stared at the panther and felt queer inside. "Oh, you like the painting. It's of Moises." Sara was still painting then, like a lot of the girls. Mother had taken classes at the Hilltop and was never any good. Sara on the other hand took lessons from her, and Sara thought she was good but that her taste was too exotic (panthers, for example). Sara preferred somber themes: the single fruit on the table and pale diagonal light from the window at 10 a.m. Sara never thought of it like that but her apples and pears spoke to me and what they said was dignity and quiet and purpose, and almost never fruit because in hindsight they were allegories of her heart that she didn't quite recognize and couldn't quite understand. For Sara it was another kind of work, a more peaceful work but regardless always work, and she endeavored for an honest perfection. Sara loved the camera too but she could not compose, couldn't imagine seeing with the camera's eye, could not understand the science of the machine and moreover wasn't interested to. "She was running out the door in those heels," I remembered, "and she didn't look where she was going so she slipped on the flagstone and landed on her wrist and her silver bangles sliced up her arm all the way to her elbow and she went to the hospital and missed an entire week of work."
One day she brought copies of her book for mother and Sara. Somebody had paid a little money to print it up, the thin salmon paperback with black type and the seal of the council for arts and culture on the front. There was a photo of her on the flap, a black and white snap of her in a thick woolen sweater with smokey makeup around her eyes looking somewhere beyond the camera's scope, caught by accident, wearing boots up to her knees no doubt and a cigarette burning in an ashtray nearby. That's wonderful, dear, you must be so proud, etc.; but once she was gone we gathered around in the cloud of her Benson & Hedges and oils and we shook our heads and rolled our eyes and snorted at her peculiar rhyming love spells, at the uncle on the city council who earnestly nominated the book, shepherded those husky entreaties and acute hendecasyllables through the coarse fingers of municipal typesetters and onto the pages we greased up with butter-cookie paws, with the same oils I deposited on the flimsy newsprint of the Birdman comics and later the filthy pictorials I would smuggle out of the barber's or the auto shop and into the secret clubhouse in the vacant lot. Mother: "She was always flighty like that but the divorce has really put her in a state." The divorce bore the mark of infamy, the notary's seal of failure. Perhaps even sex could go wrong. Or who knows, maybe Moises was just a faggot, with his mustache and his sandals and never holding down a proper job besides the stationery store and caring a bit too much for painting and poetry, frankly. Or perhaps there was simply better sex in other beds, other love spells and candlewax, profanities and scented oils gently kneaded into tired shoulder blades. Perhaps a body with a lighter musk, brighter eyes, an easier smile. She faded from view as mother replaced her coffee nights with mourning and seclusion and television and perhaps work. I pictured her sitting in that greenhouse smoking and gazing absently through the willows into the street, imagining herself nude in that very same attitude, posing for Moises or some other dark, curly haired man, also smoking as he massages the siennas, ultramarine and cadmium onto the canvas, a little carbon black for the eyes and maybe if he dared also the bush.
One evening at coffee she announced they were divorcing. She slumped on the sofa as she filled the sitting room with smoke, pinching the bridge of her nose while the other two fingers held the dark, long cigarette, then tap-tapped her ash into the charcoal onyx bowl. Later we paid her a visit, mother and I and perhaps Sara too. There was a fresh painting in the living room on an easel, of a panther in the jungle. Enormous windows butted the room and between the heat of the sun, her cigarette smoke and the moisture rising from the oils and the watering cans it felt like the bush of the canvas. I stared at the panther and felt queer inside. "Oh, you like the painting. It's of Moises." Sara was still painting then, like a lot of the girls. Mother had taken classes at the Hilltop and was never any good. Sara on the other hand took lessons from her, and Sara thought she was good but that her taste was too exotic (panthers, for example). Sara preferred somber themes: the single fruit on the table and pale diagonal light from the window at 10 a.m. Sara never thought of it like that but her apples and pears spoke to me and what they said was dignity and quiet and purpose, and almost never fruit because in hindsight they were allegories of her heart that she didn't quite recognize and couldn't quite understand. For Sara it was another kind of work, a more peaceful work but regardless always work, and she endeavored for an honest perfection. Sara loved the camera too but she could not compose, couldn't imagine seeing with the camera's eye, could not understand the science of the machine and moreover wasn't interested to. "She was running out the door in those heels," I remembered, "and she didn't look where she was going so she slipped on the flagstone and landed on her wrist and her silver bangles sliced up her arm all the way to her elbow and she went to the hospital and missed an entire week of work."
One day she brought copies of her book for mother and Sara. Somebody had paid a little money to print it up, the thin salmon paperback with black type and the seal of the council for arts and culture on the front. There was a photo of her on the flap, a black and white snap of her in a thick woolen sweater with smokey makeup around her eyes looking somewhere beyond the camera's scope, caught by accident, wearing boots up to her knees no doubt and a cigarette burning in an ashtray nearby. That's wonderful, dear, you must be so proud, etc.; but once she was gone we gathered around in the cloud of her Benson & Hedges and oils and we shook our heads and rolled our eyes and snorted at her peculiar rhyming love spells, at the uncle on the city council who earnestly nominated the book, shepherded those husky entreaties and acute hendecasyllables through the coarse fingers of municipal typesetters and onto the pages we greased up with butter-cookie paws, with the same oils I deposited on the flimsy newsprint of the Birdman comics and later the filthy pictorials I would smuggle out of the barber's or the auto shop and into the secret clubhouse in the vacant lot. Mother: "She was always flighty like that but the divorce has really put her in a state." The divorce bore the mark of infamy, the notary's seal of failure. Perhaps even sex could go wrong. Or who knows, maybe Moises was just a faggot, with his mustache and his sandals and never holding down a proper job besides the stationery store and caring a bit too much for painting and poetry, frankly. Or perhaps there was simply better sex in other beds, other love spells and candlewax, profanities and scented oils gently kneaded into tired shoulder blades. Perhaps a body with a lighter musk, brighter eyes, an easier smile. She faded from view as mother replaced her coffee nights with mourning and seclusion and television and perhaps work. I pictured her sitting in that greenhouse smoking and gazing absently through the willows into the street, imagining herself nude in that very same attitude, posing for Moises or some other dark, curly haired man, also smoking as he massages the siennas, ultramarine and cadmium onto the canvas, a little carbon black for the eyes and maybe if he dared also the bush.
-C.A. Rodriguez
