Resemblance

This is a personal essay that I had to write for my freshman class. It's about my deceased grandfather. If you've read my other blog you might notice some overlapping themes or even descriptions.

Resemblance

My mother always told me that I came out like a ballerina, gracefully, yet with purpose. No one else could verify this information except for the doctor who birthed me, so I was always skeptical. She was alone when I danced into this world.  My father was in Florida, probably reporting. By then he had already moved out. My grandfather, the other man in her life, had died four months before. My mother always reminded me that I was his legacy, ending each rollicking story with,

“Ai, Marisita he would have loved you so much”.

            We visited her family in Puerto Rico twice a year since I was three months old. I was the only grandchild who had never met him, the only grandchild with a gringo father, the only one who was born out of wedlock, my cousins wouldn’t let me forget everything that separated us. My mother would stroke my hair as I cried and tell me another story about abuelito. That he was in my blood and it didn’t matter what they said. 

            Next to them in my family portrait, I looked frail and translucent. I envied the rich copper color of their skin. I longed to be darker, to look like them so that perhaps they would accept me. Yet at the same time, in San Juan, I always received extra attention from store clerks and fruit sellers because of my lightness.

            “ Que preciosa” they would say to my mother “ que cosa blancita, linda”, such a pretty little white thing.

            The older generation of my family seemed to prize my skin as well.

            “Don’t stay out in the sun” my great aunts would warn every time I walked outside “you don’t want to get too dark”.

            They would show me off to friends and acquaintances, as if I was some kind of trophy.            I was thrust in the middle of the island’s racial double standards every time I would visit. One could imagine that this would be confusing for a child. So when I was there I retreated into my own world. I found solace in the fact that my grandfather couldn’t judge me, he couldn’t exclude or idolize me because of my coloring.  When I went to my grandmother’s house I would creep into his study, the leather-bound books and Napoleonic busts sheathed in a layer of dust. I would sit in his imposing leather chair and soak in the must of the room.

             I found him everywhere, in the kitchen behind my grandmother’s pans and cazuela’s, in the ashes of the backyard barbeque. I would spin and twirl for him, I was sure he was proud of my pirouettes.  I couldn’t climb the stairs without stopping to look at his black and white portrait. I would stand on my toes, our eyes level, searching for bits of myself in the frame.

            The first time I saw a picture of him in color, I thought we looked nothing alike. His hair was black and curly in his youth. It glistened with the kind of grease men used to wear. His eyebrows were thick and masculine. I realized that all this time my mother had been lying. I was nothing like him. When I confronted her with his photo she brought me to her bosom like she always did.

            “Marisita, how many times do I have to tell you, it doesn’t matter whether you look like him, or me, or anyone else, he is inside of you, just like this place.”

            As I grew older I would practice Spanish with her at home in New York. My mother would gently correct me when I used the wrong tense or muddled a word. I danced twice a week. My posture growing straighter, each step becoming more deliberate and refined. My mother fed me rice and beans, pastelon and picadillo. I always asked for them when I felt sick or lonely.  Every time I returned to Puerto Rico I saw myself more and more in the roughness of the sand, the fluidity of the music. I waited for the coquis to sing me to sleep and the mourning doves to wake me. Slowly I started speaking Spanish with my cousins. At first I just quietly retorted their insults and teasing. They were surprised, thrown off guard not only by the fact that I was standing up for myself but that I understood what they were saying.

             In the second family portrait, thirteen years later, although my skin was just as pale as it had always been, I noticed that my aunt and I had the same lips, that my cousin and I both had round cheeks, that we all had similar dark arching brows. When my mother saw the photo she gasped

“Marisita, your smile here looks just like your grandfather’s,”

This time I believed her. 

Do Judge a Book by it's Cover

       There isn't much news to report here at Milkweed. I managed to mess up one of my only projects. Which was just folding pamphlets. But at least it wasn't an editing job! There seems to be a flu of sorts spreading through the office so everyone is putting up their own set of defenses.
       Larry Watson, the author of the book that I'm currently reading came to Milkweed to sign his new book American Boy. It has a really beautiful cover of an old car from the forties with a sepia toned, vintage look. Unfortunately I'm the kind of person who judges a book by it's cover- and I mean that literally not figuratively. I think it's a tendency left over from childhood, being drawn to the most colorful eye-catching books. This technique has served me surprisingly well. I figure if you read a book you're going to have to look at it all the time so, you might as well like what you see.
       You can really tell a lot about the contents of a book based on it's appearance. For example, if the author's name on the cover is larger than the title, you know that it's probably not a piece of distinguished literature. Whether it has an illustration or a photograph can sometimes demonstrate whether or not it's historical. The best covers are subtle. Like one edition of Nabokov's Lolita that I saw. It shows just a girl's gangly legs from the knee down, wearing knee highs and saddle shoes. This evoked innocence, youth and subdued sexuality all at the same time. A bad cover is one that's either too explicit or too vague. You wouldn't want a depiction of a scene from a book because it's not a movie poster at the same time you don't want a single piece of bread. It has to be telling, but not give too much away at the same time.
        It's really a shame when a cover misrepresents the quality of it's text. It should be a vehicle for the writing, something to help the story leap off of the page. The cover is just as important, if not more important than the first line of the text itself. It's the face one's book shows to the world. It's the first thing the reader sees, and for me it's absolutely crucial.

Gradation

This started as a free write during my freshman class. I was inspired by looking down at my burgundy nail polish. I've always loved the names that nail polish and crayon companies give to colors. Once my friend and I took a box of sixty four crayons and renamed them based on the first thing we thought when we saw them. I created a character who shared this interest. 

Gradation

Her nails looked black against notebook paper. But she knew they were a very dark red. Darker than blood. She relished looking at the names of the colors on the bottoms of nail polish bottles. She always searched for one that matched her present mood. The one she chose was named simply “wine”. It seemed to embody the heaviness she felt. She would have renamed it with countless other more fitting words to describe such layers of color.

Naming hues had always been her favorite pastime. In elementary school while her teacher blathered on at the front of the room, she would take out her box of sixty four crayons, organize them by shade and proceed to write down her own name for each one. She struggled to remember the conventional names that she learned in kindergarten. To her brown had always been “daddy’s beer bottle”. And purple in her mind would always be “Bruised”. But certain colors changed as she grew older, yellow was “dandelions” until rather abruptly it turned into “jaundice”. “Cloudy day” just as suddenly became “tombstone”.

            She had to leave extra time to arrive at any destination because she would always encounter a new color in her surroundings that she had to write down. She carried a small notebook filled with seemingly incoherent lists.  “Lemongrass, empty bed, pewter kettle, morning bus ride, I can still picture your face, trampled path”. She had more color journals than books on the shelves of her small apartment. She was only renting, so she was forbidden to paint the walls. But she had devised a way to bring brightness into her home. She took swaths of fabric, cutouts from magazines, paint swatches and pasted them on, till the blankness was completely masked by a collage of different tints.

            She worked as an office assistant in a sterile room. Her boss always wore a scratchy charcoal colored tie; his face was drained and pale. He was the only person she interacted with there, at most they exchanged incomplete sentences and single purposeful words. Her job was to write down messages, make copies and file endless stacks of paper. But she found solace in the fact that, while working, she had discovered hundreds of different shades of white.

Reading, Reading, Reading

            At my internship. I have been immersed in manuscripts for the past two weeks. I've developed a more efficient way of reading them. I basically give them less leeway and decide faster whether to request more or just flat out reject them. Lately  I've been reading a lot of rejections. I realized that I need to be more selective. I've read some prose and a little bit of poetry. I got to check the translation on some Spanish poems which is really fun and coincidentally combines my major and minor (Hispanic Studies).I also started reading one of Milkweed's bestselling novels Montana 1948 by Larry Watson, which is proving to be a rather enjoyable experience.
            I've been taking advantage of the cafe downstairs and have discovered that they have delicious sandwiches. I've also been exploring the area around Milkweed. There's a really great semi-fancy restaurant across the street  called "Spill the Wine." They had an excellent black bean and beet burger.
Anyway back to Milkweed, we have a Book Lover's Ball coming up in October, which everyone in the office is anxiously awaiting. It's a chance to dress up, eat and auction. I will be volunteering at the event for a grueling five hours, but I doubt that I will be the only intern there. I've been kind of disappointed to not receive any editing jobs. I love editing (yes I am an English dork). So we'll see what this week brings. The marketing manager, published author Ethan Rutherford, and I have been exchanging novels to read mainly by Macalester Professors (Ethan was one briefly). But I don't know if I have time to add another novel to my list of two books for pleasure and then countless for school. I  just can't get enough apparently. Speaking of which, I'm off to read more manuscripts!

Vale la Pena (It's Worth it)

I wrote this prose poem for my introduction to creative writing course in freshman year. The assignment was to write an autobiographical piece, so I tried to sum up my life in a few words. Enjoy!

P.S. I will be posting a piece of my creative writing every Friday.

Vale la Pena

Holding my hand, passing the hijabs, plum pantsuits, maybe daddy will buy me a baklava, pink carpet , Mami brought home Cinderella but I wanted snow white, dancing to Selena on the couch, waking up with orange kitten wrapped around my head. I found her wedding dress in the closet, the one she didn’t wear when she didn’t marry daddy. Spanish hymns, polished Park Slope pews. Strawberry tarts in summer , I ate all the red off first, then the custard. They told me to draw my family. When everyone was done I still didn’t know who to draw. I read her my first poem, she hugged me in the classroom. “Daddy can’t come over anymore” I didn’t understand. When they held each hand and swung my little body in between them, I was whole.  San Juan coquis in abuelita’s backyard, arroz y habichuelas on the stove. pursed lips touch my cheek, bright lipstick “Ai, que preciosa!” Too shy to speak , but I understood what “gringa” meant. They say that certain things will be explained as you grow older. There was a woman with dark hair at daddy’s house, not my mother. She came to the movies, to eat, to bookstores. Replacing me. Mami had a lump, then she only had one breast. I cried and Daddy didn’t comfort. He’s scared of tears. Parishioners  brought  Tupperware dinners,  her frame arched over the toilet, hair thinning. Pill bottles. We tried to take care of her but couldn’t. Abuelita told them that I spoke Spanish and there was no need to translate. Hobo in the  subway car, holding branches and beer bottles. Morning commutes. “Make sure you call me when you get off of the train”. Whiteboards, intoxicating markers. I didn’t know we were friends until you told me. I watched them snort coke in the classroom, they gave blowjobs in the bathroom. Lips touch, snack aisle romance. You loved me even with braces. Brooklyn bonfires. Friends are one’s comfort. We clutched our stomachs, laughing on wooden floorboards. I fell asleep on her shoulder, eating three bars of chocolate in a row. Mami’s incessant questions. She still wiped my cheek with her own spit.  “Why are you going so far away?” “How could you leave me alone?” As if college was something I was doing to her. I waved to them in front of the dorm. Daddy’s splotched tears.  Maybe he already knew what I had yet to learn.

My First Day at Milkweed

          Milkweed Editions is located in a beautiful converted warehouse in a newly gentrified area of Minneapolis. It shares it's building with  the Loft Literary Center, a comprehensive writing center hosting events and creative workshops, Minnesota Center for Book Arts, a small bookmaker that creates books by hand, two for profit tenants and a lovely coffee gallery. Milkweed's office is very simple. It welcomes it's guests with shelves lined with it's newest books. I was impressed by how professional they looked. They were glossy and pleasantly colorful. The office itself is small, with only about eight full time staff and five interns. Most of my first day was spent in training. 

          We were given a very brief tutorial on how non-profit publishing functions (which I didn't totally understand to be honest). There are many different steps involved. I was surprised by how wasteful large publishing houses could be. One intern told us that a publishing company shipped quite a few copies of the wrong book to her yoga studio and when she notified the publishing house they told her to throw the books out. As an aspiring author and book lover this idea is simply horrific to me. But, none the less it is more cost effective for the company for the books to be destroyed than to be sent back. I think Milkweed shares my sentiment. Each copy of a book is a precious artifact, not only of writing but of our contemporary culture. With the advent of e-books, paper books are losing their value by the minute, but Milkweed seems to continue to appreciate the written word in it's original form, as do I. 

         After training I was given a full length manuscript, which I was absolutely thrilled to read it. Interns and new employees in the publishing world are infamously assigned to read 'slush' or unsolicited manuscripts. I rather enjoyed my slush and thought with some reservation that Milkweed should get behind it. Milkweed publishes texts in a more traditional style. This manuscript was about an incestuous relationship between a mother and son and there were many neologisms (made up words) throughout. The nontraditional subject matter and style might not make it the best fit for Milkweed but I found it quite well written and entertaining. For those of you looking for a similar read, look up Nike by Nicholas Flokos. 

        I also read a poetry book which I thought Milkweed should reject. I am a bit biased being more of a fan of prose but I found the style of poetry to be too uncreative and unoriginal. Overall it was a very stimulating first day and I'm looking forward to going back!