— I like: “Today I woke up happy.”
— Give me a pen so I can put it back.
— No, send me more fragments. And your curriculum vitae. So they won’t say I’m only publishing it because we’re friends. That Olmo-Olmo’s got a big mouth.
— Forget Olmo-Olmo. Leave him alone. He’s all washed up.
— I practically bore him. He is my intellectual son. But I’m sick and tired of his stinginess. Get this, he stole five computers, I asked him for one, and he gives me none. I gave him everything. Him, zip. With friends like that, who needs enemies.
— He told me:
— What’s a rich woman like you doing teaching three courses? You shouldn’t have to teach.
Can you believe I fell for it? I actually felt rich and dropped the courses. The next thing I know, he signed up to teach my courses. And now I don’t have a pot to piss in.
— That’s the sophist for you. You can’t trust a word he says.
— What a great country!
— Why did you say that?
— Why not? The greatness of a country is created by its poets. If a country has great poets, it’s a great country. You can tell if a country is rich if its poetry is rich. And why not merge the wealth of Martí, Darío, Neruda, and Vallejo with the wealth of Whitman and Dickinson.
— Because of the Eliots and Pounds who are racists and fascists.
— Yes, but Neruda hated Americans. We have to start tearing down the walls dividing our two Americas. And we — you and I — have to be the spokesmen because we’re bilingual.
— You may be bilingual, but I’m loyal to Neruda and Vallejo.
— So am I. Neruda was an ambassador.
— We can’t be ambassadors because we don’t have a country. Because Puerto Rico is not a country with any power in the world, I won’t be considered a great poet. Spain created great poets with its empire and made them known around the world through its empire. Great poetry has always stemmed from the economic prosperity of a people. That is why we have Quevedo and Góngora.
— What about Julia de Burgos and Palés Matos?
— They perpetuate our oppression — stuck, delayed in the eternal traffic jam of la guaracha. We want our liberty.
— And you think that liberty is going to liberate us?
— It’s going to free us from our inferiority complex. Because if we were already free we wouldn’t have the excuse that we’re not free because you, American, denied and deprived us of liberty.
— It’s so juvenile to point the finger. It’s your fault I’m not free. It’s your fault I can’t finish the book. It’s your fault I’m stuck. Stop blaming. The one who blames is to blame. For not accepting his own guilt. I’m to blame. It’s my fault. If I’m not free, it’s my fault. That’s how a people begins to liberate itself. We have an obligation as poets to speak words of truth, even if politicians turn them into putty in their filthy hands and point the finger at us for ridding reality of the blame. If I’m not a great poet, I’m not going to blame my country because it’s a colony. No, it’s my own fault. And I wash my hands like Pontius Pilate. There. I’ve washed away the guilt.
— You want to oppress your people.
— I want to stop thinking like my people.
— You want to stop being Puerto Rican. You want to become American.
— I don’t have to become what I am.
— You’re American? Listen to her. She says she is American.
— Why should I deny I was born here?
— But where here? Stop clowning around.
— So what do you think about Fidel? Tell me what you think.
— That’s a frivolous question. Fidel transformed my life.
— Well, if he did transform your life, then it’s not a frivolous question.
— You asked it in such a casual manner.
— Ask her seriously, c’mon, in a deep voice with your chin held high. Not casual like:
— Do you want butter or cream cheese on your toast?
— Never ask a Cuban about Fidel. It’s like talking sex with your parents.
— You always talk nationalities.
— Because Chicanos don’t have a nation. Wherever I go, I am considered to be the maid of the world. When in Germany, I’m Turkish, when in France, I am Algerian, when in Puerto Rico, I am Dominican. You know, she’s not asking you a frivolous question. She honestly wants to know what you think of Fidel.
— I refuse to be baited by a flippant tongue.
— Do you have a gut feeling about him? If he transformed your life, you must have a gut feeling about him. That’s what I want to hear. But no, you are afraid I am going to judge you: reactionary or revolutionary. But no, I just want honest, goddamn guts — do you have guts? Speak to me from your guts, from your exile, from your transformation.
— Don’t psychoanalyze me.
— I hate psychoanalysis.
— I don’t, it’s a very serious discipline.
— Then I’m going to tell you what you think of Fidel.
— It’s a complex issue.
— I’ll give you a complex answer: he’s a Bastard with a capital B. However, he has done some good things for the Cuban people. That’s what your guts say.
— Don’t speak for my guts. You don’t know me.
— Don’t pick on her. Let her finish her thoughts.
— She has no thoughts. And you, chicana mía, what do you think about the situation in Mexico?
— So far from God, so close to the United States. I am the maid of the world. I am married to a white man now, but I don’t reap the fruits of his privilege. When we go to a restaurant, they still seat us near the kitchen. Now my white man has become red because he married the maid of the world. I am the one who holds up the lines at airports and bus terminals. I am always the suspect, and my baby is strip-searched because he looks like me. He is the only baby who is busted.
— I want to know what this has to do with identities.
— Poets and anarchists are always the first to go.
— Where?
— To the front line. Wherever it is.
— I love it when she slips into a trance. I long for those stretches of glazed silence.
— How? Like this?
— No, like this. Wide open without blinking. Only then can I slip into bed and light up the set without any trepidation.
— How can you stand her? Why don’t you fight for your rights? Even in India women are allowed to watch television if they have one. Don’t indulge her habit of rocking. She is disconnected enough from society. She doesn’t watch television or read the newspapers. How can she write if she doesn’t know what is happening in the world. She should go to jury duty. Or town hall. I bet she doesn’t even vote. If she would get a job. I offered her a job as a messenger. I need someone to run visas to Rockefeller Plaza. $50 a pop under the table, papi. But she doesn’t want a job either. So what time does lazybones roll out of bed?
— Mumi, she reads all night long.
— That’s not work, hon, that’s laziness, which is hereditary like drunkenness. Look at her father, sitting on the sofa reading the papers all day long. While his wife brings home the bacon and fries it up in a pan.
— Rocking in children is a sign of loneliness.
— It’s unhealthy. She has to exercise her brain or she’ll end up like her aunt Violeta with Alzheimer’s, which is also hereditary. You talk about her trances, sugar, all you have to do is talk to her to know that she lives on Pluto. Five, right, five. She is like Sibyl. If she doesn’t like what they’re telling her, she disconnects and takes on the next personality. Shielding herself from the solitude she suffered as a child. But I was there as a witness to it all. She makes a mountain out of a molehill.