Preparatory notes for fu.., p.10
Preparatory Notes for Future Masterpieces, page 10
12. I’ve learned that artists, not unlike academics, often feel persecuted and misunderstood. For artists and academics of color, this feeling is only compounded by the fact that they are indeed frequently misunderstood if not as often persecuted (although many would argue that they are just as often persecuted). Creating in this atmosphere can be overwhelming. Constantly defending one’s worth can be stifling. I’m reminded of Gloria Anzaldúa’s lines, “Who am I, a poor Chicanita from the sticks, to think I could write? . . .How hard it is for us to think we can choose to become writers, much less feel and believe that we can. What have we to contribute, to give?” Stripping our narrator’s words from context for the sake of metaphor, what Chicanx artist has not felt as if they are dangling from the “ends of the earth”?
PART II
The Itinerant Prophet—Reies López Tijerina
CHAPTER FOUR
Mr. Leyva dropped me off at the bus station. It was two in the afternoon; the bus to Guadalupe left at three. The waiting area was full of people. It was hot and stuffy and seemed to grow louder by the minute. Finally, the bus arrived and the doors swung open. I leapt up from my seat, anxious to escape the crowd, and was surprised when everyone else lined up to board as well. Where could they be going? I wondered. The stuffiness and noise only increased once we were all on the bus. Everyone was dressed up—men in dark buttoned-up suits, women in long dresses and wrapped in shawls—as though they’d just come from church. Children seemed to emerge from every direction, poking their heads over the tops of seats, around seats, and even from the bottom of seats. Men and women spoke across the aisle. They called to one another from the front of the bus to the back of the bus. It seemed as though everyone knew each other. Every passenger carried multiple bags of goods filled to the brim. The bus smelled like a produce market. The lady next to me kept leaning over to share her purchases with her friend in the other aisle. “And look at this, comadre,” she’d say, and her comadre would respond, “Oh my, look at that comadre, and how much did you get that for?” And all the while the woman was rubbing her right forearm and stomach against me. I kept staring at the seatback in front of me, hoping the trip to Guadalupe wouldn’t be long. It took two and a half hours.
When we arrived in Guadalupe, I expected everyone to disperse. I hoped never to see these people again in my life. But they all lingered, as though they couldn’t bear to end the party. They continued sharing their new purchases, stretched their legs, or got a bite to eat from the snack shack. I didn’t see any signs for a bus to the TSSS factory, so I went inside the station and inquired with the ticket vendor. “It will be here shortly,” he said, not even bothering to look up.
“Thank you. I just want to make sure because there’s so many people here. I don’t want the bus to come and leave without me realizing it.”
Now he looked up and peered at the crowded station. “You see all these people?” —he pointed behind me—“They’re all going to the same place.”
And so they were. When the rickety TSSS factory transport bus arrived, everyone around me lined up with shopping bags and children in tow. I tried to recall the previous day at the work camp. There hadn’t been a soul around, and I didn’t even think to ask Mr. Leyva where they were. Now I knew. They’d been shopping in Albuquerque. The bus ride to TSSS was even more uncomfortable. I was smashed between two sweaty grandfathers holding grandchildren much too big to be held on grandfather’s lap. The kids kept saying, “Grandpa, who is that? Grandpa, Grandpa, who is that?” and pointing their sticky fingers in my face. The grandfathers didn’t even acknowledge their questions, or my presence. They just kept talking about horse breeding and ointments for backaches.
It was almost dark by the time we arrived at the TSSS factory. I worried about not being able to find my way, so I hurried to my studio at the far end of the row of shacks. I was desperate to flee from these people and their incessant chatter. I had heard more about the good purchases to be made in Albuquerque than I ever cared to hear again. I found the wooden crates that served as my front steps and carefully hoisted my bag of belongings onto the ledge. Then I fished in my pocket, found the key, and strained to reach the lock, worried that the crates would slip out from underneath me and I’d fall crashing to the ground. The door finally open, I lunged inside and slammed it behind me. I pressed my back against it. I felt as though I were still on the bus. I could hear the deafening whir of fifty voices talking at once, each one growing louder, demanding to be heard; I could hear the screams and squeals of children ringing in my ear. I couldn’t get the combined smell of onions, parsley, overripe fruit, and chicken feed out of my nose. I experienced a strong feeling of claustrophobia, as though I were still smashed between the sweaty grandfathers, their sticky-fingered grandchildren, and the comadre rubbing her girth against me. I rose from the floor, reached for my bag, and removed The Great Book of French Painting. I needed a soothing distraction.
I pulled out a few of my favorite paintings, which included Millet’s The Angelus, which depicted two peasants praying, and Corot’s The Bridge at Mantes, a painting of just that. Both were calm, quiet scenes, just what I needed at that moment. I also started my deep breathing exercises. I stuck my fingers in my ears to drown out any noise. I took a breath, held it, then slowly breathed out, and I imagined myself with Millet’s peasants, praying with them, hands clasped, the smell of hay in the air as the sun set over the French countryside. But the peasants too closely resembled the horde of factory workers out my door. I kept imagining them finishing their prayers and then rehashing all the bargains to be made at Sunday market. So I switched my thoughts to The Bridge at Mantes, a peopleless landscape, and instead of incessant chatter I heard the crisp fall wind, the crinkling of leaves, and water lapping against the bank. This calmed me. I felt my heart begin to slow. I said to myself, “You are alone here. This is your studio and your studio only. You are here to work, to make your masterpieces.” And with that I felt fine. I breathed easier and removed my fingers from my ears.
For a second all was silent. But then I heard what sounded like two girls playing pat-a-cake. It was so clear, so close, that I was certain they were in the room. But they couldn’t be. My studio consisted of one large room, and I was the only one inside it. I moved toward the sound, straining my ears, and now I heard not just two girls playing pat-a-cake, but also pots and pans clanging together, more children giggling, a woman’s voice scolding someone, a man’s voice demanding quiet, and all of it as if it were taking place inside of my studio, as if I were listening to the ghosts of past occupants.
Then I saw it. I had a window on the left side of my studio that faced nothing but the shack next to me. Because the window was covered with a dingy violet curtain that blended in with the dingy violet wall, I hadn’t paid it much attention. The window must be open, I thought, and I hurried over to shut it. I drew the curtain back and discovered that not only was my window open but so too was the window next door. Not only that, the two windows were almost touching on account of my studio leaning left and the shack next door leaning right. We practically shared the same house. I could reach out and touch the girls playing pat-a-cake. And when they turned and saw me standing there, that’s probably what they assumed I was about to do, because they looked up at me with eyes full of terror and began shrieking.
I quickly slammed my window shut and closed the felt curtain as tightly as I could, as though it were enough to block out all the sounds in the world. It wasn’t. I could hear the girls sobbing, and the woman’s voice scolding them, “Get away from the window! Didn’t we warn you? Play on the other side of the room.”
“Looks like a sissy,” a man’s voice said.
Was he talking about me? I pressed my ear against the felt curtain.
“Well, better safe than sorry,” the woman said.
“Don’t worry, he probably just wants to play pat-a-cake with the girls.” The man began laughing boisterously at his joke.
I heard further tittering. “Well, at least we don’t have to worry about him taking advantage of Ella,” the woman said.
“Yes, that’s one man who won’t be. If only there were more sissies in this camp, we wouldn’t have to keep her cooped up all day. Well, it’s partly her fault. She brings it on herself.”
“She’s just innocent. She doesn’t know any better.”
“That sissy better—”
I couldn’t take it anymore. I moved aside the dingy violet curtain and found that my window had slid back open. I poked my head outside, which meant that I was now inside my neighbor’s shack.
“I can hear you over here as clear as can be!” I exclaimed.
Children began shrieking, a woman screamed, a pan dropped, and the man cried, “Good God, man!”
Their shack was significantly smaller than mine, but it also looked to have an extra room, so it could’ve been bigger. To one side five or six beds were lined up as in a hospital ward. There appeared to be at least two kids on each bed. Some were asleep; others were red-faced and crying and pointing at me. The two girls, already recovered from their fright, had resumed their game of pat-a-cake. The man, probably in his late thirties or early forties, was lying on one of the beds with his shoes and shirt off and his belt buckle undone to allow room for his protruding belly. On seeing me, he rose onto his elbows. The woman, his wife I assumed, was busy scooping up from the floor whatever she had been preparing in the dropped pot.
“You can’t just be barging in here,” said the man. “You scared my wife half to death. Look, she dropped our dinner! Give us our privacy!”
“I didn’t barge in here,” I said. “I’m still in my house—”
“And mine!”
“Well, I can’t poke my head out my window without poking my head into yours, and . . . and would you mind speaking in lower voices? I’m an artist and I need peace and quiet.”
“I don’t care what you are. This is my house and I’ll speak however I damn well please.”
“Oh, this is just great. First the bus trip, now this.” I ducked back into my own place and tried to shut the window, but it wouldn’t cooperate. It kept rising and I kept pulling it down only for it to rise again, until finally I drew the curtain in defeat. I could hear the man say, “Can you believe that?” and his wife respond, “What are we going to do about dinner, Javier?”
I placed my fingers in my ears. I was going to have to do something about this. Nail the window shut and build some sort of barricade. Tomorrow first thing, I thought. I pictured myself building a brick wall. I could spare the studio space if it meant peace and quiet.
I suffered through that night, cursing unchecked procreation and large families altogether. I heard the collective breathing of a family of ten. I cursed the builders of this ramshackle complex. There was plenty of room in every direction; why couldn’t they have built the shacks at least a few feet farther from one another? After tossing and turning for hours, I decided to get up and go in search of barricade-making materials.
My task was infinitely more difficult in the dark. Using the moonlight as my guide, I made my way to what looked like the factory dump, a pile of rusty machines and scrap metal that I had noticed on the ride in. I wanted to create a fortress, and this was exactly what I needed. Unfortunately, most of it was too heavy to cart away, and after startling a third feral cat that in turn startled me, I settled on a woodpile that would hold me over. Nails were driven through most of the planks, which saved me the task of searching for those. I gathered what I could carry and returned to my studio. Once I’d hoisted all the wood inside, stacking it neatly in front of the window, I searched for something to hammer with. Finding nothing in my studio, I climbed down the crates and quickly found a large rock with a flat side.
By the time I’d climbed back in, I was breathing heavily and feeling drowsy and was starting to think that maybe a few hours of sleep would do me good. But I also relished the thought of hammering the planks to the wall and waking up the man, his wife, and their ten children. I imagined the man telling me to knock off that racket, and I would tell him, just as he’d told me, “This is my house and I can do as I please!” So I picked up my hammering rock, found a plank big enough to cover the window, and started to remove the felt curtain.
The first thing I saw were her legs, perfectly smooth and pale in the small bit of moonlight that found its way between the two shacks. I quickly shut the curtain, afraid that I would set off shrieks and accusations of being a Peeping Tom. But I heard nothing except for a contented sigh and then a quick return to the uninterrupted sounds of deep breathing. I pulled the curtain back. She was reclining in the windowsill. It was a woman. A young woman. A woman about my age, I determined. She was wearing a slip. A thin slip. A slip so thin that I thought she might be naked. I shut the curtain again. My heart was pounding. What if she should wake up and find me staring at her? But wasn’t I simply gazing out my window? Nothing wrong with that. Is it my fault that she chose to sleep in the window right next to my window and that our windows were practically touching on account of poor design and even poorer construction? I felt justified in pulling the curtain back again.
To my relief, she was still there. For a second, I thought that maybe in my exhaustion, my lack of sleep, my delirium, I had invented her. But she was as real as our windows were close, and not only that, the cool morning air had given her goose bumps. But who cares about goose bumps when through the thin fabric of her slip I could see dark nipples surrounded by the milky white skin of her breasts. The artist in me wanted to observe her. The young man in me wanted to touch her. I knew that I shouldn’t. I knew that it was wrong. I knew that no good could come from it. But this whole window-abutting business was driving me insane. It was as if she were in my very own home. How could I resist?
So I slowly poked my head out the window and reached out my hand. What I was reaching for exactly, I don’t know. I was letting instinct guide me. But just as I was close enough to feel the energy radiating from her living, breathing body on my fingertips, she stirred. She was probably just shifting her position on the windowsill. After all, it couldn’t have been very comfortable. But my trance was broken, and I pulled back quickly. Too quickly. I hit the back of my head on the window frame. Hard but not so hard. Hard enough to propel my head forward so that I hit my face against the windowsill. And that was hard enough to knock me out cold. Before I lost consciousness, I got one last glimpse of the girl sleeping in the windowsill, and I knew I was in love.
“Is he dead?” I heard someone say.
“I don’t know. He’s been lying like that for hours. When I went to shut the window this morning I saw him there. He hasn’t moved since.”
“Should we call the doctor?”
“Of course not. It’s none of our business.”
I opened my eyes and tried to figure out where I was and what had happened to me. My head hurt and I tasted blood. I feared I had suffered another epileptic attack. I turned to my left and noticed the planks of wood I had gathered to barricade the window. Then I remembered the girl in the windowsill. I remembered trying to reach out to touch her. I hadn’t succeeded. I felt a wave of relief, as I imagined the situation if I had. There would’ve been hell to pay with her father or brother or uncle or whoever the man was. I turned toward the window and my neighbor’s curtain quickly closed.
I rose to my elbows and saw that I was covered in dried blood. I touched my nose. It was tender. I stood up and felt lightheaded. When I regained my balance, I decided to move the planks of wood out of the way. I wanted to avoid stepping on an exposed nail. It dawned on me that I wasn’t going to be using the wood anymore. I couldn’t barricade my window as long as there was a chance that a beautiful girl in nothing but a slip could be found sleeping just outside that window on a nightly basis. I could hardly wait for her return. But first I had to get through a day with a splitting headache and what felt like a broken nose.
The children next door seemed to multiply. There were the two girls playing their endless game of pat-a-cake, then at least four boys alternating between games of cops and robbers and cowboys and Indians. Then there were sets of toddlers and infants that took turns crying, babbling, and knocking things over. I heard thuds and crashes, followed by cries of, “Oh, no!” There were older children, too, trying without much luck to corral the younger children. I observed all of this through my open window abutting their open window. At some point their curtain was pulled back and the window opened by one of the children, and it remained that way. I could have tried shutting my window again or at the very least my curtain and maybe achieved some respite, but that would have meant missing a glimpse of the girl in the windowsill. As long as their window and curtain were open, I would be a fool to shut mine. I wanted to make sure she hadn’t been an apparition or a particularly vivid dream.
Meanwhile, I tried to draw. My thinking was that if the girl was real, and there, and happened to look through my window, best that she find me drawing rather than holding an icepack to my tender nose. But the children made it hard to concentrate. They were loud, full of hysterical conversations, squeals, giggles, and all manner of cries, and when they weren’t loud it was because they had poked their heads out their window and into mine and were watching me, quietly, waiting to see what I was going to do. I was about to set charcoal to paper when a heavy silence compelled me to turn my head, and there they were: five, six, seven small faces, brown and ruddy, dirty, sticky, sweaty, and, above all, curious. “Whattaryou doing, thir?” they asked.
