bullets, who bought them, and why they always end up in the hearts of poor people. We tried to figure these things out, to use our minds, our reason. Me and my seminary classmates are people of the book. Bible readers. Our cry has been, not by the gun but by the Word made flesh in action. How naive it sounds now. Like a dream of poets andwould-be mystics writing in blank notebooks in far away North America.
If there is courage to be found, maybe it is in the hearts of those who have headed for the mountains with guns of their own. The rebels feed the people, teach them to read and write. But they also teach them to defend what they have gained. That is the courage of choosing not to be a martyr. I thought I had made that choice, too, by coming here. And by day, when I am speaking to the other dishwashers about their situation, or helping volunteers translate human rights alerts, I know I am doing the right thing. Using words to educate people who have the power to influence the U.S. government. But at night, when I can’t sleep, the torture starts up. I think of friends sleeping under ceiba trees or on dirt floors in cement block cells. I am tormented, wondering if I did the rightthing. Or if I should be in my country, fighting. With words. Or with guns.
Sometimes the torment is so great that I turn to María for sleeping pills or sex or both. Sex to escape or at least to get me breathing again, to stop the cold shaking inside. And the next morning I have to live with my guilt at having used her. It wouldn’t be bad if she just loved sex. But she loves me.
Or perhaps what she really loves is the idea of me. A refugee, a dissident, spokesman for a cause she knows little about, ignorance she seems to have made her peace with. She is trying to separate me in her own mind from my history. She thinks by loving the “real” me, the me before the war, she can make my memories of the war end. It is so American. The belief that people can be remade from scratch in the promised land, leaving the old self behind. I reallythink she believes if she loves me enough the scars inside me will disappear.
And in my own imperfect way, I love her too. I love her for believing that I can be whole, for loving me even if I exist largely as a figment of her imagination. My María with a heart as big as this house.
She makes a big deal out of the fact that I read the Bible. She says she has “fallen away” from the spiritual life. I hate it when she talks about me as if I were half god. She won’t give me the gift of flaws. And this is what worries me the most, that she wants me to save her. She talks about how beautiful our love is, how wonderful it would be if we got a little house in the Valley and brought my friends and relatives up from Salvador. Any woman who talks that way a month into a relationship wants to be saved—from what, I don’t know.
If I knew, I could at least offer advice. But María doesn’t want advice. She wants a whole new self. It’s too great a burden for me. It’s all I can do to keep my own mind in one piece, far from the knowledge that I might never return home. How do I say these things to her? Do I just let things continue until they fall apart? The warmth of her flesh is all I have to make me forget. But alcohol does the same thing. Am I using her? Or is she using me each time she looks at me and loves what is not there?
— JL ROMERO
Until now, I haven’t had the nerve to translate one line from José Luis’s journal. I should have just buried it. I might have saved myself the pain of having to open it up to identify the remains. Before he went away he asked me to keep his notebook because he feared the authorities coulduse it against him if they found it on him and pieced together his true identity. Now, all these years later, my life has come to a halt because of words written long ago by a man whose name I didn’t even know. One new testament is all it takes to warp time, to call into question
If there is courage to be found, maybe it is in the hearts of those who have headed for the mountains with guns of their own. The rebels feed the people, teach them to read and write. But they also teach them to defend what they have gained. That is the courage of choosing not to be a martyr. I thought I had made that choice, too, by coming here. And by day, when I am speaking to the other dishwashers about their situation, or helping volunteers translate human rights alerts, I know I am doing the right thing. Using words to educate people who have the power to influence the U.S. government. But at night, when I can’t sleep, the torture starts up. I think of friends sleeping under ceiba trees or on dirt floors in cement block cells. I am tormented, wondering if I did the rightthing. Or if I should be in my country, fighting. With words. Or with guns.
Sometimes the torment is so great that I turn to María for sleeping pills or sex or both. Sex to escape or at least to get me breathing again, to stop the cold shaking inside. And the next morning I have to live with my guilt at having used her. It wouldn’t be bad if she just loved sex. But she loves me.
Or perhaps what she really loves is the idea of me. A refugee, a dissident, spokesman for a cause she knows little about, ignorance she seems to have made her peace with. She is trying to separate me in her own mind from my history. She thinks by loving the “real” me, the me before the war, she can make my memories of the war end. It is so American. The belief that people can be remade from scratch in the promised land, leaving the old self behind. I reallythink she believes if she loves me enough the scars inside me will disappear.
And in my own imperfect way, I love her too. I love her for believing that I can be whole, for loving me even if I exist largely as a figment of her imagination. My María with a heart as big as this house.
She makes a big deal out of the fact that I read the Bible. She says she has “fallen away” from the spiritual life. I hate it when she talks about me as if I were half god. She won’t give me the gift of flaws. And this is what worries me the most, that she wants me to save her. She talks about how beautiful our love is, how wonderful it would be if we got a little house in the Valley and brought my friends and relatives up from Salvador. Any woman who talks that way a month into a relationship wants to be saved—from what, I don’t know.
If I knew, I could at least offer advice. But María doesn’t want advice. She wants a whole new self. It’s too great a burden for me. It’s all I can do to keep my own mind in one piece, far from the knowledge that I might never return home. How do I say these things to her? Do I just let things continue until they fall apart? The warmth of her flesh is all I have to make me forget. But alcohol does the same thing. Am I using her? Or is she using me each time she looks at me and loves what is not there?
— JL ROMERO
Until now, I haven’t had the nerve to translate one line from José Luis’s journal. I should have just buried it. I might have saved myself the pain of having to open it up to identify the remains. Before he went away he asked me to keep his notebook because he feared the authorities coulduse it against him if they found it on him and pieced together his true identity. Now, all these years later, my life has come to a halt because of words written long ago by a man whose name I didn’t even know. One new testament is all it takes to warp time, to call into question
Similar Books
