Category Archives: Creative Non-fiction

Creative Non-fiction, Non-fiction, The Story Weaver Project

Yellow Leaves


Okaloosa County, Florida, February 14, 1995

On four limbs over a carpet of fallen leaves, I no longer linger in scattered confusion. I watch the oncoming traffic through thick protective glasses, insert the thick nail inside the washer, and place its tip on the target. The hammer in my right hand is ready to strike, force its body through thick asphalt on that white band that marks the edge between the world and the Earth. I look up again. The sun makes my eyes squint. The honk of a double-wide truck brings me to my feet. I ebb to the shoulder of the road for refuge. After the eighteen-wheeler passes, I return to perform my task. Forget red roses and imported chocolate; this is what I do–get on my knees and jump. I know the hard hat and the thin orange jacket that waves like a flag are not going to save me. If I think that I have no health insurance, that I have to work under the rain on Saint Valentine’s Day, through cold days, under the inclement weather of Florida’s hurricanes, listen to my runaway thoughts…that I stand in this foreign margin, speaking a fragmented tongue, stripped from my culture, my family, my people, my values, my music, my art, I would quiver when the rumbling voice of the poet, Pablo Neruda, thunder my core, asking me one more time “Why do leaves suicide when they feel yellow?”

I recall a single yellow leaf during the fall. In that vision, the cold wind blows over her weak body. The leaf clinches fiercely to a tree branch, as if having little manitas that hang on, refusing to let go. I used to see my face on every yellow leaf. Back then, that image shattered my soul. It does not matter anymore.

Like the yellow leaf, I ultimately surrender and fall with dignity aware of natural cycles. There is no end and no beginning. There is no separate reality, only a place where all parts, like pieces of a giant puzzle, coexist. The head of the nail reaches the paved surface. I stand on the Earth, observe the wound that curves into the horizon. I pick up the measuring wheel, set it to zero, spray a cross with red fluorescent paint on the white band every one hundred feet. Red splotches remind me of military tanks, machine guns, and pools of blood. I keep on walking, keep on moving. The moment is all I have.

Aloof, I measure the depth of the site, from the red cross to the litter catch point, the mowing line, the hedge, the swamp, a see-through chicken wire fence, or a solid stone wall. Wondering who will pay my student loans, I force a galvanized metal rod on the grass, string the area, and survey the green rectangle.

“One empty beer can, one smashed plastic soda bottle, one baby diaper with contents, one empty snack bag, one empty cigarette pack, one piece of tire, one plastic film canister, one cardboard fast-food box, one polystyrene cup.” The cassette recorder listens. With Zen steps, I continue the inventory, measure how much trash has trespass the planet of life by counting litter, categorizing items into 82 pre-established categories I memorized to get the job. 

Litter is a terrible human habit. To throw things out the window shows how little we care about our home. The solid waste research center hired me as a temporary worker to study litter and to measure how much it infringes prairies, farm fields, rolling hills, rivers, creeks, and swamps along rural roads.

As I carry on, men dressed in orange overalls widen the road. The Sheriff drives by, slows down, and stops. I watch him approach, knowing that I have an accent and that I missplaced my green card. 

“Ma’am are you with the crew?” He points at the prisoners paving the road and lifts his hat.

“No Sir,” I say and hand him my employer’s card. Humming Willy Nelson’s “On the Road Again,” I hope to distract his search.

“I’ll be darn. It’s about time someone picks up all this damn trash.”

“I’m not picking it up, Sir.”

“What in sweet heavens are you doing with it?”

“Counting it, Sir.”

“Say what? Are you telling me young lady that you’re counting the trash and not picking it up?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“So that’s where our tax money goes!”

“I suppose.”

“Stay out of the sun and keep an eye on those prisoners. A fine young woman ought to stay away from those birds of prey.”

“I will, Sir.”

After a long day, back aching and brain swelling from the humid heat, I step into a raggedy room in a roach motel, unroll a sleeping bag on top of a bed with sheets so thin they look like orphan home bedwear. I refuse to sleep with fleas and bed bugs. After a long shower, I lay in bed, stare at the ceiling crack and hear the voices of my island of sun; the place my soul chose to return; the sanctuary where my roots await. What is a tree without a strong root system? I think.

In this English-only land obsessed with border and walls, hopes, dreams and aspirations clipped, I grow under planned controls, like a bonsai. I urge to set root, grow tall like cypress threes do, wear my mantilla made of Spanish Moss and never surrender to the gooey drama of the melting pot.  Arbitrary laws should never colonize my thoughts!

But I am also content to live in this country and no longer yearn for a piece of land, a slice of pie, or a broken Dream. The fabricated world means much less than old bread crumbs.

As in dreams, I, la chica del charco, wake every day to the mural of injustices awaiting outside my door. Chin up, I grab the doorknob, walk through the portal, and navigate the tempest thoughts hollering like jackals. This cold, still life, this canvas that is a refugee’s life, overfed with boundaries and limits, sucks my strength like a vampire.  Barefoot, I step on the embers of going nowhere.

The Earth embraces me and provides the nourishment and sustenance needed to endure the journey. It does not ask stupid questions. Where ever my feet stand, I reclaim as the sacred land, knowing that the Earth does not belong to anyone, much less to those egoístas fixated with borderlands, always feeding disputes and drawing lines on the sand.

Next morning, my rubber boots step again over the brittle carpet of dry leaves. I discard Neruda’s vision at the sight of falling, yellow leaves, and keep on walking through winter storms towards the spring.

Note:

An earlier version of this creative non-fiction piece written after a long workday on San Valentine’s Day back in 1995 and titled “Yellow Leaves” was published under my former pen name, Maria de los Rios, in New to North America: Writing by U.S. Immigrants, their Children and Grandchildren, edited by Abby Bogomolny, Burning Bush Publications, Santa Cruz, California, Second Edition, 1997, pp. 154-156.

Credits:

The poem, “Por qué se suicidan las hojas cuando se sienten amarillas?” (Why do leaves kill themselves as soon as they feel yellow?) appears in Pablo Neruda’s Late and Posthumous Poems: 1968-1974, edited and translated by Ben Belitt. Bilingual Edition. Fundación Pablo Neruda. New York: Grove Press, 1988.

Creative Non-fiction

Letter to First Lady Melania Knavs

 

Honorable First Lady,

Čestitam Melanija, as your mother would say. Congratulations, Melania! You are the first woman not born in the United States to become the First Lady. As an immigrant and a world traveler, you understand from personal experience how easy it is to shift roles from host to stranger. I am glad that your parents benefitted from chain immigration. As an immigrant myself, I understand how hard it is to have your loved ones on the other side of a vast expanse of land or sea.

A dreamer born in Novo Mesto, a tiny town covered by smoke and steam[i] and raised in Sevnica, Slovenia, daughter of Amalija Knavs, a farm worker who later became a local factory worker,[ii] and Viktor Knavs, a member of the Communist Party and a car salesman,[iii] your desire for more than a simple life at a snail pace took you to fashion houses in Paris and Milan.

Regarded as benevolent and respectful by a neighbor who lived in an apartment complex nearby during your youth,[iv] you became a permanent resident of the United States in 2001 and took the Oath of Allegiance in 2006. A bright woman, you speak English, Slovene, German, French, Italian and Serbo-Croatian languages.[v] Such cross-pollination of cultures and languages are integral parts of your identity.

Despite your husband’s attempts to dissuade you from launching the ‘Be Best’ anti-bullying social media campaign, you stood firm. This proves that you are not only astute and independent, but that you can tell a right from a wrong and stand by your convictions.

Abuelo Jose Maria always warned, “Nadie aprende con cabeza ajena.” Although I believe that no one learns with someone else’s head, I sincerely hope that this letter inspires you to co-create a world without walls based on the values you hold dear: justice, respect, and opportunity for all.

The separation of undocumented immigrant children from their families when they cross the border, placing hundreds of young ones already at-risk miles away from their agonizing parents is a crime against nature, humanity, and god. As a former refugee, I can assure you, dear First Lady, that these children will carry wounds that will haunt them a lifespan.

I believe you when you say that you care deeply about these children. When the news hit, you expressed genuine concern, wanted to ensure the children’s wellbeing, and didn’t approve having parents and kids separated. I am sure that a bright and sensible woman like you cannot comprehend how such cruel and inhumane acts can be part of a “Make America Great Again” plan.

Abuelo Jose Maria used to say, “La ignorancia alimenta el odio.” Y asi es, ignorance feeds hatred. Por eso es tan importante to distinguish history from myth. And you dear First Lady, as an immigrant required to study the history of this country for your naturalization test, know more about this subject than the President of the United States.

As a country built from the gifts of native people and undocumented immigrants, we often sustain the illusion that everything “American” sprouted by spontaneous generation and indulge in a glorious fabricated past that never existed.

Even our nation’s namesake derives from Amerigo Vespucci, the Italian explorer, navigator, and cartographer born in the Republic of Florence in the 1400s who accompanied Christopher Columbus, the undocumented immigrant who paved the trail of genocide that decimated two-thirds of the population of what they called the Americas and who ignited the African people’s slave trade. From the natives, La Conquista stole their lands, and from Africa, it stole the people.

As a well-informed First Lady, you know that the Americas include North, Central, and South America. Pues sí, “America the Beautiful” spans from the Arctic circle all the way to Antarctica and includes Canada, the United States, Mexico, Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panamá, Colombia, Venezuela, Brasil, Guyana, Surinam, Perú, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Haití, Barbados, Las Bahamas, Santo Domingo y otras islas del Mar Caribe. ¡Esa es la única América que yo conozco!

Nothing reeks of history more than food, dear First Lady. Although you are more the smoothie and fresh fruit type to keep a cut figure, I am sure you know that in our “American” cuisine, even those praised culinary items grilled during our 4th of July came to this country in the hands of undocumented immigrants. The hamburger patty created in the 19th century in Hamburg, Germany, is a great example. The hot dog, another Independence Day favorite, can be traced back to undocumented German immigrants who brought German sausage to this country back in the 1800s.

Our very “American” corn on the cob was domesticated by natives in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. Even the potatoes in the potato salad traveled quite a bit before reaching the United States. First cultivated by the Aymara people in what is today Bolivia and Peru, around 200 B.C., potatoes arrived in North America in 1621.

When it comes to our favorite 4th of July dessert, nothing, my dear Frist Lady, is more “American” than apple pie. Geoffrey Chaucer printed the first recipe of apple pie in England in 1381. The apple pie arrived with the undocumented immigrants, also known as the Pilgrims, traveling aboard the Mayflower in 1620.

Even Lady Liberty is an immigrant. “Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” reads Emma Lazarus’ sonnet at her feet. A present from France, the Statue of Liberty celebrates Dreamers like you.

As you see my dear First Lady, everything held so dearly as an expression of the United States’ identity, character, and sense of place traveled to this land in the hands of undocumented immigrants or was already here in Apache, Blackfoot, Cherokee, Cheyenne, Comanche, Hopi, Navajo, Seminole, Pima, Potano, Tohono, Yaqui and many other native lands before the Pilgrims, the Huguenots and the Spanish Conquistadores arrived. That mixture of traditions from this sacred land and every corner of the world is what makes this nation a Gran Mestiza.

My dear First Lady, in my grandfather Jose Maria’s words, “Las almas perdidas no saben su historia.” And I agree. Lost souls do not know their history and live in terrible anguish because they don’t know who they are.

As an immigrant and former refugee, I thank you for paying a visit and offering your help to our children unjustly held prisoners at the Tucson Southwest Key on Oracle Road. Despite the “I really don’t care. Do you?” I am sure you understand as a mother that a nice haircut, a bed, and a pair of new shorts is not enough.

I see you, Melanija, the child who wore a second-hand polka-dot winter jacket to school, descendant of farm and factory workers, a Dreamer who carved a future as an immigrant far away from her homeland, the small-town local girl who weaved her way to the White House. You inspire girls all over the world. And I trust that you, my dear First Lady, will do anything in your power to help these frightened children reunite with their distressed parents as promised during the press conference after your recent visit to Tucson.

With glimmering hope, I call the beautiful banks of the Sava River and the forest that watched you grow, the sacred rains, the winter snow, the four winds that brought you to this shore, the fire in your immigrant heart to offer you the strength required to fulfill your promise and lead us out of this violent chubasco.

Respectfully,

Luz

 

Mariel Masque – Copyright 2018
All Rights Reserved, including International Rights.

 

Sources:

[i] Johnson, Glen, “The People of a Small Slovenian Town are excited that Melania Trump is About to Become First Lady.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, California, November 14, 2016.

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Johnson, Glen, “The People of a Small Slovenian Town are excited that Melania Trump is About to Become First Lady.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, California, November 14, 2016.

[v] Kessier, Ronald, “The Real Melania Trump.” The Washington Times, Washington DC, May 8, 2018.

Creative Non-fiction

San Giving: A Cuban Refugee Family Thanksgiving Tale

According to Greek mythology around 1,200 B.C the Greek goddesses rescued the souls of all women brutally murdered by invaders and gave birth to a race of women warriors, The Amazons. The Amazons lived in Pontus, modern day Turkey near the shores of what is known today as the Black Sea. In a more recent version of the myth, one soul was left behind and Hippolyta, the Queen of the Amazons and owner of the magical girdle given to her by her father Ares, the Greek god of war, infused this soul to her first offspring born. Perhaps my fascination with the Amazons is an attempt to understand the complexity of the character of my mother, Ada Mina Garcia Masque, a Cuban Amazon, who out of her volition grew a great devotion for San Giving.

On December of 1941, William Moulton Marston’s character, Wonder Woman, appeared in All Star Comics. It was not until the week of Thanksgiving of 1962 that I came across one of this comic books. While waiting at the Freedom Towers in Florida for our weekly food allowance as refugees, a young Cuban boy left a Wonder Woman comic book on the chair next to mine. In the sea of gray, the flashy colorful cover grabbed my attention. Curiously, I plowed through its pages while waiting for my mother and instantly grew a fascination for this character wearing what to my six-year-old self resembled a Cuban flag (note that the Cuban flag features the same colors as the U.S. flag).

Suddenly, a commotion rose. My mother argued in Spanish with the woman behind the counter.

”No es justo,” she said fervently referring to the portions allowed.

One by one, all the women in El Refugio united to her plea. I looked at my mother and back at the page and smiled. Mami was very aware that Castro’s revolution had taken place to extinguish the tyranny of Fulgencio Batista, the Cuban dictator supported by the U.S. She was also aware that the pendulum had merely shifted from one patriarchal monolith on the extreme right to one on the extreme left. Wonder woman was alive, and I happened to live with her.

Becoming a refugee at the age of five traps one inside the Temperance card of the Tarot deck. One grows up with one foot on the earth, and one on the water – an apparent balancing act until one digs deeper. A refugee never intends to grow roots or stay away from her or his homeland. I learned that while flipping through the pages of Mami, my real Wonder Woman. We think of all the heart-shredding and soul-plucking chaotic confusion of exile as something temporary.

The sun always shines after a category five tropical storm. Right? Let’s make sure that our children are alive, out of danger, and well feed this moment, and then we think about how to go back. You long to return to your parents, your children’s grandparents, cousins, uncles and aunts, your culture, your language, your wedding pictures, the avocado tree in the backyard, and the homeless and skinny orange cat you named Mango who you fed religiously after dark until it grew fat.

As a refugee, nostalgia gnaws your bone marrow to the point that you start missing odd things: the way the roaches fly during hurricane season; the way mosquito bites sting in the spring; los batidos de mamey from la bodega de Juaquin; or the arguments Mami had at the fruit stand with Arnaldo. “Oiga, por dios, que estas bananas don’t play the piano,” Mami would reason trying to get him to lower the price. Too soon everything you witness prompts an “ay por tu vida, esto no pasaba en Cuba!”

Our first San Giving, as my mother called this U.S. holiday, not knowing the English language, had nothing to do with pilgrims stealing the land from Native Americans. We did not know about Plymouth or the Mayflower. We had no historical content for this celebration as we had no historical content for anything at all in this land we called exile. We were displaced from our history, our roots and our stories, trying to adapt and gain force to return home where we belonged.

The CIA detained and interrogated my father at the Opa Locka military camp in Florida for an entire year. My mother cleaned houses, cooked, and did manicures for a living. And my aunt Nina, picked me up every day from my misery at the Merrick Demonstration School in Coral Gables. There, I struggled with the language barrier, was forced to wear skirts, and navigated the sea of embarrassments – like the time I rose my hand because I needed to go to the bathroom. By the time Ms. Emeris paid attention, I already had peed in my pants and had received the flamboyant titles of Spic and clown of the class.

Happy to return home, I browsed through the pages of my Wonder Woman comic book – the one and only I had since we could not afford to spare 12 cents to buy a new issue. I felt lucky to have my mom and spent my nights praying for my dad and for our return to Havana to take care of Abuelito Papo, who struggled with bone cancer.

Our first San Giving in the U.S., Mami had just returned from cleaning a house in Key Biscayne, I packed my Peter Rabbit book, a very dull story I had to read for school, and my comic book. Holding Wonder Woman’s hand, I walked to Nina and Bobby’s home where my aunt heated turkey TV dinners with mashed potatoes and brown gravy for the four of us.

“Mira pa’ eso, Nina,” Bobby scooped the white creamy paste off his plate at dinner time, “quien se come esta miasma, por tu vida?” The six-foot tall mulatto stared at his lumpy meal brown eyes popping from their sockets.

“Oyeme, Antonio,” my mother called Uncle Bobby by his real name holding the fork up with her usual hoy no estoy pa’ cuentos tone.

My uncle, Antonio Maceo, was the grandson of the Titan of Bronze, who led the independence war and abolished slavery in Cuba. Before he left the island, Uncle Bobby was the surgeon general of Cuba. The great expatriate Mambi lowered his head and shot the fuck up.

“Es San Giving, Viejo. We are lucky that this country has a Santo we can thank. It could be worst. We could be dead. Tenemos que dar gracias,” she said, tasted the food and offered a grimace.

“We need to be thankful that we have food on the table. Cuantos Cubanitos no tienen que comer,” Aunt Nina added.

As is the case with most refugees, my family never gave up returning to Cuba. I never saw my grandparents again. They died on the island.

The extended family got spread all over the world. I buried Papi in Coral Gables; Aunt Teri was buried in Mexico City, Uncle Hector in Buenos Aires, and my Cuban Wonder Woman’s ashes I threw in the sea at Miami Beach in 2012 the week after San Giving to allow Mami to fulfill her life dream, to return to her island. Mami actually died during her favorite holiday, San Giving day.

And I, her surviving offspring, hike Pusch Ridge in the Sonoran Desert on every San Giving, the sands of mi isla bella still lingering from my feet. In this San Giving, I give thanks to that Santo of Cuban mother’s invention, for the journey that brought me here and for the gift of an Amazon mother who made Wonder Woman pale. Forget grizzly bears. Thanks to Mami, I never had one doubt that Cuban women are the strongest creatures on earth!

Like Mami would say, “there is always something to be thankful. If you don’t like your problem, pick up someone else’s problem. You will want your old problem back in a blink.”

Happy San Giving!

Mariel Masque – Copyright 2015 – All Rights Reserved – Including International Rights

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