Josefina Báez
Our deity Ciguapa arrived in New York too.
The subway steps changed her nature. In the ups and down to and from the
silver-grey fast worms, her feet became as everybody else's in the rush hour
crowd.
She did not notice the drastic change.
This was the first sign of assimilation
--a concept not to be understood but experienced.
And Ciguapa cut her hair; maybe to be in vogue or just to simplify her rituals.
Her lover was not a hunter as the legend goes.
He was a medical doctor by profession turned taxi driver by necessity.
He, the gypsy Caribbean, worked for an uptown car service: La Base Tuya.
In this base, our deity was codified to a mere 10-13. It meant mistress or
wife.
We never knew and she never cared.
Their love was filled with few words, passionate
actions, fast merengues, tasty
sancochos and predictable trips to la remesa El Sol Sale Para Todos.
These trips energized by green dollars reforested the island.
Ciguapa works in a factory making pinkish dolls.
Dolls that she never had. Dolls dulled by the unique smell of new.
Earning less than the minimum, she managed to pay an immigration lawyer that
she never met.
She got her green card.
It was not green.
Now she prepared herself to visit the Dominican
Republic. What a triumph!!
She made it.
She made it! She made it?
Huge suitcases, bought at 14th Street were filled with unthinkable, unnecessary
items.
Items to be sold at laughable prices. Prices calculated in dollars, paid in
pesos.
Laughable reality. She whose laugh is based on a constant and bitter cry.
Constant nostalgia. Bitter reality. Unheard cry.
Here is no man's land. Here is no woman's stand. You
can become what you
are not by circumstances, opportunity, luck, unluck, karma.
You can become a saint
or forget your divinity.
My telephone is being checked for trouble
the ATM machine coldly informs me
in Spanish informed me there is not enough funds
no it did not clear out yet and out-of-state check 4 working days
dispossess dispossess
premises must be vacant if money is not received before 5:00 pm
Susan B. Anthony and Kennedy coins were traded by their face value 1971 1973
1980
issued by law treasured spent by dawn
2 dollar bills were the personified luck
2 dollar bills were the great surprise
the educational loan people/voice activated machine got my address
no tokens no tokens MTA does not accept pennies
mine from this pockets shaven not from heaven
there's no black box to swallow my Dominican quarter
every letter is a bill threatening me to mess the
credit that I don't have. My face
and my hands told the ATM line that I did not have money
hope is never transformed in dollars
he dissed me he left too as the days with extra money
for pints of ice cream
he dissed me as the nights with $12 for 2 foreign films from the video-rental [End
Page 1039]
I told you so I told you so filled the wire
I told you so I told you so screams my mind tired
please deposit 5 cents or your call will be
terminated. This is a recording.
Thank you.
Báez’s cultural experience is multilingual and
multicultural, thus, all her texts provide a transcultural and multicultural
vision. “A 123 Portrait of a Legend” is not an exception.
All along this text, she openly mentions this
cultural symbiosis when she says: “This
was the first sign of assimilation” in line 5. In her works, Báez presents
a lot of information but does not do the work of translating or making
connections for the reader or audience. As we can see, in lines 13 and 14, she
uses plenty of Spanish lexicon as she writes: “Their love was filled with few words, passionate actions, fast
merengues, tasty/ sancochos and predictable trips to la remesa El Sol Sale Para
Todos”. It’s not only a question of vocabulary or language, but also a
question of culture. There are some cultural references there that only a
person living through the experience of sharing Dominican and North-American
culture would understand. However, Báez refuses to facilitate the
interpretation for speakers of one or the other language, since, as she
suggests, it is not enough to speak of English or of Spanish or even of
Spanglish, but it is important to look at the specificities of the languages in
particular contexts and space and places. Báez privileges the bilingual
Spanish-English reader suggesting that it is not always possible or preferable
to translate.
Another recurrent topic we can see in this work
is the hard conditions and the poverty Dominican immigrants have to go through
when they go to The United States. There are plenty of references to the lack
of money: “the ATM machine coldly informs
me/ in Spanish informed me there is not enough funds” (lines 32 and 33) or “premises must be vacant if money is not
received before 5:00 pm” (line 36). Besides, and in line with this hard
times the Dominican people have to undergo, there is another reference which, in
my opinion, refers to the so called “American Dream”, in which North- America
is seen as a land of opportunities. Báez makes an ironic reference to this in
line 47 when she says: “hope is never
transformed in dollars”.
All in
all, in my opinion, the whole text is a cry for those who have to abandon their
homelands, cultures and languages in search for a better life and future which they
hardly ever find. One of the most striking images which refer to this hardness
is line 27: “Constant nostalgia. Bitter
reality. Unheard cry”. As I see it, these six words perfectly summarize the
main topics of this work.
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