A Heart Of Her Own

My mother died eighteen days ago and she took a part of my heart. With her she took the memory of my birth, my first words, steps and secrets only she knew.


As I got ready for her funeral and looked through pictures, I couldn't help thinking that the girl in her youth was so different from the woman I loved.

I was right.

At the funeral reception, I learned through my nina, of the latent adventures of the woman that lived deep inside my mother.




My mother, Virginia





I learned how the embodiment of the virgin, even in name, ran off with my father.


I knew that my parents' wedding day had been ruined by a phone call. Someone had phoned the priest and said my father couldn't get married in the church because he already was. Over the years I pieced together by eavesdropping, my mother's mythology. My Grandmother appalled and ashamed that my father was divorced took off with my mother and headed to the U.S. to safe-guard her against the ridicule. My father followed them and stopped the train in Sonora, begging my grandma to please let them get married as that was a vile lie. He brought a priest to the train and they got married and my mother and father came to live in the U.S.

I could never have imagined that my mother ran-off and that she actually didn't get married in the church until much later, until after all her children were born. I found this out only last week, sorting through papers, one of them a misal with the date July 13, 1973 written down and in her writing, the day we married. Had my mother told me the truth I would have gotten married in the Catholic church because I would haveunderstood this was something that she always wanted for herself. Instead, I saw her pleading as antiquated and old-fashioned. "Who cares? "I shouted when I was planning my wedding. "I just one a one-stop thing, on the beach, I want to get married and have the reception at the same place."


On this day, her funeral, I finally felt like my mother had lived her life, the life she chose for herself and not the life that was handed to her by her mother, and left-over from her children.



I knew that this woman full of grace, had passion, and now I also knew that her heart held secrets I could never have imagined. "So you know more stories?" I asked my nina. Can you tell me? When I was putting together the picture collage, I found old photo albums with poems written for her, verses that spelled out the letters in her name with each beginning word. My nina replied, "Your mom was obedient and listened to your grandma, and yes she had many suitors but she was so in love with a man named Maclovio, but that could never be because he was Virginia's grandmother's god-son and her third cousin. " But, according to my nina, my mom was strong-willed and kept on dating him for years, until finally she realized it could never be and they finally broke up. When she met my father, she was already considered an old maid. as she was already 34, so she started using one of her dead sister's birth certificates, officially changed her middle name to match that certificate and suddenly instead of having been born in 1931, she could say she was born in 1936.

This explained the discrepancy of her birthdates, why my grandma and a lot of her family always celebrated August 10th but her birth certificate and all documents as well as the birthday she acknowledged was May 06. Wow! Now Maclovio, that was a story I had heard about, through one of my aunts, when I asked my mom she told me that he was so short, she despised him. She could not stand him, but he kept on following her around and she found him so annoying. I suppose this was my mother's way of dealing with the loss of love. I wish she sould have shared with me. Then perhaps I would not have judge her as harsh as I did. "Children should never judge their parents," she often said, but that never stopped me from letting her know that I thought she should have pursued all her dreams, all her passions. " You only get one shot at life, and you need to do everything possible to get things right, to be happy." I used to tell her this was my philosophy, why couldn't she stop living her life for us, for my dad?. Why didn't she marry for love, why didn't she travel more, why didn't she, WHY DIDN'T SHE?




Through a curtain of tears, I thanked my nina for having shared those secrets with me. I used to feel sorry for mymother because I thought she didn't have stories, because it seemed like she never had a will of her own.

"Oh, but she did. " Interjected my nina. "She knew that her window for having children was getting smaller and smaller and she decided she wanted children more than anything in the world."

I finally understand that we, my brothers and I, were her love, and the reason she didn't have stories, she didn't have adventures to share and stayed quiet was so that I could have my own.

Mayra Santos-Febres and Our Lady of the Night

Liz Vega

As I become wiser in the ways of the world, I find myself being

drawn more and more to irreverent poets, those that do not put brakes to the velocity and intensity of feelings that their words create. A fierce poet I admire and whose words I love to hear aloud is Mayra Santos-Febres. Let me here introduce La Bloga readers who are not familiar with this woman to one of the most vibrant voices among contemporary Caribbean, Latin American writers.

I met Santos-Febres when she was a visiting professor at Cornell and I bought her poetry book, Anamú y Manigua. Mayra, as you can see from the picture, is stunning, or as they say in Spanish, una mujer despampanante. She is the image that Caribbean music conjures up and when she walks into a room you want to know who she is. I will confess that I first bought her poetry book simply because I was drawn to her but I fell in love with her writing from the first stanza,
Sale a darle clemencia al universo
a su lado

se coagula toda bruma

en paralela negritud:

mi abuela

reordena el caos nómada

de todas las mañanas

cuando todavía no bullen

sus deliberadas tetas opíparas

de querer atrapar el escándalo

y volverlo hojas secas para barrer

She goes out to give mercy to the universe

at her side

the mist is all around

in parallel negritude:

my grandmother
reorders the nomadic chaos

of every morning

when her puposeful ample breasts

still do not seethe from wanting to trap the scandal

and turn it like dried leaves for sweeping up

This particular verse is just a small snippet, the entire book is about women in the life of Santos-Febres. She is a writer that venerates and loves her African roots and talks about the inherent problems of Puerto Rican society that denies or doesn't give its proper place to that part of its history.

Those first words that captivated me were written in 1990. Since then Santos-Febres has gone on to become a Guggenheim fellow and recipient of a number of literary awards. She has penned many short stories and novels, her latest is Nuestra Señora de la Noche (2006). It has just been translated into English as, Our Lady of the Night, and is available through Harper Perennial. I read this book in Spanish and while I have never read her in translation I peeked at some of the English excerpts and I am sure it will not disappoint.

Our Lady of the Night, is the story of Isabel Luberza Oppenheimer, better known as Isabel, La Negra, an important figure in Puerto Rican folklore and mythology. In a raw, sensual, prose Mayra Santos-Febres tells us the story of Doña Isabel, a black woman who through her brothel became one of the most powerful, respected and feared women in her town. A feat made even more impressive by the fact that she came out of nothing, was abandoned as a little girl and had to work as a maid, seamstress, even a liquor bootlegger. Mayra Santos-Febres uses multiple voices to depict a 1940's Puerto Rican society that is fragmented by race, class and socio-economic status. She gives us an accurate reflection of the social composition of the times, the hypocritical morality of the upper classes and the struggle of the poor to overcome their circumstances. By the end of the book, the reader has a complete story, that encompasses the different point of views of different characters and different times.

In a sociological context, Our Lady of the Night is a case study of the collision that happens when the primal urges of the tropical Caribbean come in contact with the materialistic American way of life. In another context, to use a frame of reference with which I am all too familiar, it is a kick-ass novela love story with an atypical heroine, fiercer even than Rubí, a telenovela protagonist who also gives up and denies herself the love of a man for the ambition of power.

One of the voices in the narration of Our Lady of the Night, sounded at times, like a prayer or like a Plena, the genre of music that like the Mexican corrido tell the stories of occurences that touch the imaginations of the people in a political, religious, social tone. Incidentally, Plena also has its originis in the same part of Ponce where Isabel La Negra lived. I was fascinated by Isabel's story much like I was fascinated by Arturo Perez-Reverte's La Reina Del Sur, which also became a corrido by Los Tigres Del Norte. Both of these women are characters feared and admired who are able to move in male-dominated spheres, like prostitution and drug-trafficking.

Isabel Luberza's story is one that has captivated other writers like Rosario Ferré. In 1974, Ferré wrote a short story*about two women, Isabel Luberza and Isabel La Negra, one white and one black, one the wife and one the mistress. In this story like in Buñuel's That Obscure Object of Desire, two different women are part of the whole. Ferré's story is an exploration of the duality of woman and the juxtaposition of the whore and the lady, carnal love and divine love, and the bonding that occurs so that one eventually becomes the other.

Ultimately, what I realized in reading Our lady of the Night is that Isabel Luberza Oppenheimer's story is the story of Puerto Rico and its relationship as a colony, a commonwealth to the U.S. and I can't help but quote Mayra Santos-Febres in an interview on her blog:

"Además, tengo ganas de decirte una cosa terrible, decirte "en todas las historias de las naciones hay una puta fundadora". Pienso en Evita Perón, en las madres fundadoras de la nación norteamericana, la mayoría putas. Pienso en La Malinche , mujer vendida como cosa a Cortés. Me gusta pensar en la historia desde esa perspectiva, no desde la del "padre" legítimo de la patria,o desde la Madre sufrida que pare al pueblo legítimo y soberano; sino desde ese rincón oculto de la Puta escondida que puja a la nación bastarda."

I searched for an accurate translation of this quote and was unable to find one, so here's my best rendition:

Besides, I want to tell you a terrible thing, tell you " in all of the histories of nations there is a founding whore". I'm thinking about Evita Peron, about the founding mothers of the northamerican nation, the majority were whores. I'm thinking about la Malinche, woman that was sold like a thing to Cortes. I like to think of history from that perspective, not from that of the legitimate "father" of the country or from the suffering mother that births the legitimate and sovereign people; but from that occult corner of the hidden whore that pushes out a bastard nation.

To learn more about Mayra Santos-Febres visit her website, http://www.mayrasantos-febres.com/ or link to her blog http://mayrasantosfebres.blogspot.com/

*Ferré, Rosario. "Cuando las mujeres quieren a los hombres." In Papeles de Pandora, 23-38. Mexico: Joaquín Mortiz, 1976. ISBN 9682701066

Eulogy

Muchas gracias a todos ustedes por su presencia, apoyo y amor. Se lo mucho que mi mama los apreciaba y valoraba la amistad que tenian con ella, con mi papa y con nosotros, sus hijos.


El dia de hoy no es solo una despedidia pero tambien una celebracion de la vida de Virginia Bastidas de Vega. Mi mama fue bendecida de tantos modos--teniendo a tantas personas maravillosas cerca y que ahora deja para que lamentemos su ausencia y continuemos bendiciendola en nuestros recuerdos.

En su vida fue una buena amiga y tambien fue una hija, esposa, madre y abuela ejemplar. Los recuerdos mas tempranos que tengo, siempre incluyen su mirada tierna, y palabras amorosas, en sus ojos yo siempre era su linda princesita del oriente, Albert era su querubincito y Valente su baby azucarado. A simple vista uno pensaria que fue una mujer tradicional, de su casa, respetuosa hacia su madre, y luego hacia su esposo, pero eso es solo a primer vista, si uno llego a conocerla entonces sabe que fue una mujer que siempre camino por un camino el cual ella forjo a medio de sudor y esfuerzo. Desde muy pequena , ya que su papa murio cuando ella solo tenia nueve anos, ella comenzo a trabajar, como secretaria en el gobierno de Culiacan. para asi poder ayudar a sus 5 hermanos menores. Trabajando en el gobierno paso su adolecensia y siguio trabajando hasta que se convirtio en mujer y finalmente hasta casarse con mi papa, a una edad en la cual ella ya habia gozado de vestidos y zapatos nuevos, perfumes de paris y viajes con amigas. Se caso y muy pronto dedico su vida a su familia. Dejo de comprar prendas caras, remendendando siempre sus vestidos viejos y Aunque nunca pudo continuar sus estudios mas alla de la secundaria siempre nos inculco lo importante que es la educacion, siempre nos decia que solo habia dos cosas que podia dejarnos: Alas y Raices. Las alas vendrian a travez de la educacion y las raices a traves del amor en la cual yacen los cimientos de nuestra familia.

Muchos la recordaran por su sonrisa amable, y su dulce voz, pero yo siempre la recordare como la mujer fuerte, la cual tomo decisiones que requerian valor y valentia. Fue asi como ella me dio permiso para irme estudiar tan lejos a los 14 anos, en la escuela donde yo estudie los administradores estaban sorprendiddos de que mi mama fuera tan moderna. Aunque le causo bastante dolor lo hizo por el bienestar de mi futuro. A mi mama, mis hermanos y yo le debemos todo lo que somos, lo que no hemos podido ser solo se debe a la valentia que nos falta y que a ella siempre le sobro. Tambien la recordare como una mujer que siempre tenia que tener la untima palabra, aunque lo hacia de una manera suave y con elegancia sin que uno se diera cuenta. Un ejemplo de esto es que a cada uno de sus tres hijos dejo una ultima carta, la carta mia y tambien el sobre estan dirigidos, escritos por su puno y letra a Elizabeth Vega Carroll, de esa manera ella me da a entender por ultima vez de lo mucho que queria que yo me cambiara el apellido, ya que al casarme conserve el de Vega, cosa que no fue de su agrado porque parece que ni estoy casada.

Tambien me dijo que le gustaria que en su funeral recitara un poema. Hoy en honor a la mujer que me arrullo en sus brazos y la cual se lleva un pedazo de mi corazon junto con los recuerdos de mi nacimiento, mis primeras palabras y tantas cosas que solo ella conocia, le dedico Gratia Plena, de Amado Nervo a mi madre.

Gratia Plena

Todo en ella encantaba, todo en ella atraía;
su mirada, su gesto, su sonrisa, su andar...
El ingenio de Mexico de su boca fluía.
Era llena de gracia como el Avemaría;
¡quien la vio, no la pudo ya jamás olvidar!

Ingenua como el agua, diáfana como el día,
rubia y nevada como margarita sin par,
el influjo de su alma celeste amanecía...
era llena de gracia como el Avemaría;
¡quien la vio no la pudo ya jamás olvidar!

Cierta dulce y amable dignidad la investía
de no sé qué prestigio lejano y singular.
Más que muchas princesas, princesa parecía;
era llena de gracia como el Avemaría;
¡quien la vio no la pudo ya jamás olvidar!

Yo gocé el privilegio de encontrarla en mi vía
dolorosa; por ella tuvo fin mi anhelar,
y cadencias arcanas hallará mi poesía,
era llena de gracia como el Avemaría;
¡quien la vio no la pudo ya jamás olvidar!

¡Cuánto, cuánto la quise! Por muchos años fue mía;
pero flores tan bellas nunca suelen durar.
Era llena de gracia como el Avemaría
y a la Fuente de Gracia, de donde procedía,
se volvió... como gota que se vuelve a la mar.

Chile Peppers Haiku

a burn to the heart
a grotesque-formed tear gloved in
silky, smoothness skin