When I was in third grade, after straightening her black and white polka dress –the one she wore to church every Sunday– Mami stamped her palms on the mahogany desk. Leaning forward, she stared at Mr. Samson, the school psychologist.
Mr. Samson looked like Goya’s portrait, Mule Reading the Alphabet. He wore a fancy grey suit and held a book, just like the mule.
“El Burro, aunque se vista de seda, burro se queda.”
Eyes darting spears, Mami looked straight into those gray-green eyes with yellow dots. Head crowned with an ethnic halo, she clicked her tongue.
“Listen to me,doctorsito. Usnavy is a perfectly healthy kid. The problem is not her head. The problem is her name.”
After slamming the door, she held my hand, “Vamos, mi amor.”
From this happy day, no more blue songs, only hoop-dee-doo songs, form this moment on. The radio played. And from that moment on, I candidly shared my visions with classmates, teachers, and nuns and explained with great detail my flamboyant explorations in the noetic world and my lengthy conversations with ghosts, spirits, and gnomes.
Papa always called me crazy goat. He knew I was up to something when my lips drew a grimace while kicking a tin can along the border zone. A borderland… What a ridiculous idea! The Santa Cruz River doesn’t stop at the border. Who in Saguaro heavens came up with that?
I was seven when I began to read El Moje Loco. I loved this comic book inspired by the 1930s horror character from Mexican radio.
On its cover, a deranged monk wearing a brown Franciscan robe looked creepier than the wealthy vigilantes who patrolled the border for no reason at all. The crazy monk played a pipe organ while releasing a wicked, “Nadie sabe, nadie supo la verdad del espantoso caso,” followed by a nefarious title, The Day One Thousand Zombies Rose. His laughter crawled on the edge of the page and flew in circles above my head under the cracked ceiling.
One particular story made me laugh so hard. A huero that had just moved to town went to bed one night complaining about everything. Next morning, morose woke up. His wife stood a skeleton cooking by the stove. His children were skeletons playing with their cereal bowls. The goldfish was a skeleton swimming inside the fishbowl. Scared, he ran out of the house wearing his pajamas. On the sidewalk, the skeleton of a dog peed on a hydrant. Skeletons strolled around, sat on the bus, directed the traffic, and picked up the trash. “Oh God,” he screamed, “I killed everything,” he covered his head with both hands and cried. What the poor huerito did not know…It was Dia de los Muertos!.
Every time I complained Mami warned, “If you don’t like your problem, mijita, try someone else’s. You will want your problem back.”
Our neighbor Octavio, the shoemaker, called me la Chanoc. Every evening, I shared with him the latest adventure I had read on Chanoc Aventuras de Mar y Selva.
Chanoc, a young fisherman living on his fishing chalana, engaged in all kinds of treasure seeking adventures with his cuate, Tsekub Baloyan. Tsekub was a skinny, old sailor with white hair, a scruffy beard, and a generous mustache. He was a big fan of cañabar.
Books, books, and more books piled up across my room. After reading Jules Verne’s One Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, I wanted to be a marine biologist and after reading A Trip To The Moon, an astronaut. I wanted to grow up and become a lyricist like Sappho, a surreal painter like Frida Kahlo, a writer like Virginia Wolf, a gardener like my grandmother, Felicia, an amazing cook like my mother, and an airplane pilot like Amelia Earhart or like Uncle Rogelio who piloted a navy aircraft in Vietnam.
I also wanted to travel the world in search of my beloved Dulcinea, like Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote. Getting greedy about the future, I turned blue with asthma attacks.
Too soon, I learned about silk worms and atomic weight. Mitochondria spoke loud to DNA. The Ural Mountains met an evergreen marsh. In my imagination, I traveled the Basque region, my Gypsy ancestor’s lands on the border between Spain and France. Opera, poetry, forces, vectors, and equations swirled inside my brain in an eternal dance.
None of these could offer a glimpse of light. Why is the world consumed with wars? When one has so much stuff to sort, there is no time to play with dolls.
Uncle Rogelio was the reason I got stuck with the name Usnavy, spelled U-S-N-a-v-y. I was given this silly name to honor the poor man’s deeds while enlisted in the US Navy serving a country that stole his land. Mami had made a promise to la Virgen de Guadalupe for his safe return. I and everyone in the family hated that name. A promise is a promise.
During a family visit to Uncle Rogelio in Sonoita, I was unable to watch Bonanza for an entire week ‘cause he had no TV, and I did not have a pinche book to read.
Facing the gleaming surface of Patagonia Lake, I daydreamed. A silhouetted figure with star on the lapel, I strode down the dusty street along Bonanza Creek. With a poker face, I ignored the tumbleweed crossing my path and stood on this spiny desert land.
The imaginary saber-like knife hung from my leather belt. I rammed the ramrod down the charge of my loaded gun.
“Bang, bang, bang,” I aimed with the made-up weapon.
“Boom, boom, boom,” I blew the gun powder residue off my fingers.
In my head, a horse charged down the street. After the fake gunfight, I stood a proud cowgirl. Kids applauded. A star was born.
“Call me Buckie,” I proudly announced.
“If anyone has a problem, you can find me at Nogales’ City Hall.”
Next day, I went to school with hand-drawn pencil mustache over my lips. The belt with the large silver buckle shone with the swing of my hips as I walked under Nogales trees. A bear claw hung from my neck. I stood with lizard boots and saluted lifting my cowgirl hat with rattlesnake band.
“My name is Buckie,” I said, chewing wild grass.
Few months later, I was the youngest and only female stunt hired by Tucson Studios. The secret is in one’s attitude. And I did not have to pull the trigger to prove a point.
Mariel Masque – Copyright 2015
All Rights Reserved
Read at the Mujeres Que Escriben International Women’s Day Festival
South Tucson, Arizona, Sunday, March 8, 2015
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