My great friend and unofficial
editor gave me The Art of Memoir by
Mary Karr a couple months ago. In reading it, I found a quote I immediately liked
and felt as if she was speaking directly to me. “No matter how self-aware you
are, memoir wrenches at your insides precisely because it makes you battle
without very self—your neat analyses and tidy excuses.” No truer words have ever been spoken. It’s
been three years since I really began to focus on Por Un Amor and each time I think I’m done there are more questions
than answers. I think a part of me wants to be done because I’m tired of having
my insides wretched, or to be honest, maybe there are aspects that haven’t been
wretched enough. In a novel where I want to focus on my Ita, there is a light
that inevitably wants to shine on me because I am as much a character as she. I
am just as important even though I want to stay backstage and let her bask in
the limelight. I have to learn to be in the light and also be the stage hand
pulling the levers and changing the lighting. I have to learn to be both. I
have to get comfortable showing just as much of myself as I’ve shown of her.
She is beckoning me on stage, “Andale, Prieta,” but suddenly I am seven years
old again, and I want to hide behind the word filled pages of her life as easily
as I hid behind her legs as child. I need to edit, revise, and write myself next
to her in that limelight. It’s in this space where we can still be together.
My grandma, Ita, called me Prieta. She called me this because my skin is toasted brown. When I was born my mom says I was light skinned, but she knew “que iba ser morena” because the inside of my little baby thighs were already darker than the rest of me. In the sun, I turn a darker brown. I get even more Prieta. It was a term of endearment. My sister, who has a light complexion, was called guera or guerinchi. When I tell people who don’t speak Spanish what Prieta means, dark or the dark one, their eyes open wide and a small gasp escapes. I see the offense they feel for me sprinkled on their faces like the freckles I will never have. When I try to explain, the offense still shadows their eyes. That is the problem with Spanish. Wait, maybe, that is their problem with Spanish. Even when I explain, they are suspicious. Their faces ask, “Is this true?” as if I am setting them up for a joke. But how can I explain the cultural and literal meaning of a word at the same time?
Sometimes have such feelings too))
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