The Chicano/Latino Literary Prize (31 page)

Hours, probably days later, the slitted window through which he has rejected medication, but has sometimes accepted food, opens. This time it stays open. He cups his family jewels.

“Do I take my cue from how you look or what you've done?”

Straw takes his time to answer. His knotted nerves are loose at the ends.

“Are you my shrink?” Straw asks, as if for assurance.

“Yes, I'm the psychologist.”

“You're the one who can negociate my freedom,” Straw states.

“I am?” she asks, rejecting total responsibility.

“You are. And you're the one that can wrap me in plastic, like a vegetable in a supermarket, and send me on down the highway to Camarillo.” That state mental hospital will always be there.

“I can't do all that. You'll have to do your share. What I write in your profile is up to you.”

“This Club Med is my satellite home, not a transport station.”

“Mediterranean Club,” she repeats for self clarification, “I hadn't thought of it that way.”

“Sure,” he answers smiling, while the intruding sound of an inmate's plastic shoes is clopping on the cement floor. He doesn't say they're as loud to
him as horse hoofs on a stone road. “It's like being a king here. We're fed, kept warm, clothed, kept relatively healthy, and even entertained … or are entertaining,” he continues.

“Thomas, roll it up!” he hears down the hall, then adds to her, “I don't need to be here anymore. When can I go?”

“When you talk to me… more freely than you did the other ‘shrink',” she teased.

“You mean answer more questions?”

“If you'd rather not talk to me, then you can go back to Mr. M.'s caseload, back to not talking to him,” she offered blandly.

“First, answer my question,” Straw proposes.

“Ask,” she invites.

“What's your name?”

“Mary Boles,” she answers.

“Doctor?”

“Of course,” she responds and smiles. “You're going to call me Mary, please.”

With that, she quickly moves out of the group of nameless people that observe and address him sparingly, those that he ignores as their eyes roam in and out of his isolation. That's one way to build trust to start with.

“Solitude,” wrote Nietzche, “makes us tough towards ourselves and tenderer towards others.” That's where Straw's trust had come from and made him more optimistic, more human.

The next day, thanks to Mary, he rebounded from the rubber room. He was dressed in a carrot-orange jumpsuit, but he was on his way to get new clothes and to a cell with others like himself. His wiry body would be able to breathe through the cotton, navy-blue smock, rugby-reject T-shirt, wet-dreamt boxers, wind-worn pants, construction worker socks, and brown or black plastic sandles made in The Republic of China.

Straw continued his recovery. Sometimes he felt guilty because role playing was not what he wanted to do with Mary, not even once in a while. Maybe it was enough that he knew. He always knew though he couldn't always do anything about it. With the tension relieved, physically and mentally, he is ready for the final scene of this recurrent uncontrolled role as an alien. At all times now, Mary and others give him plenty of opportunities to be totally sane, and Straw is for the most part. It's not advisable to get sane too quick. In mental recovery, there's an inherent suspicion of an affinity for doom. For that reason, Straw uses restraint when there's an opportunity for gain. He withdraws when trying to maintain, and he pushes, gently, when there's something to be lost. His thoughts seesaw for control, but are effectively processed behind the scenes. Regaining that control is costly and guarantees nothing, but it is worth it.

Things get as clear as black and white, he thinks, noting that they're both colors. And another thought about color wedges in. Yellow walls thoughout
the jail are not enough for sporty inmates. They're too safe. The color unbalances fast-tracking desire. For them, that's costly on the street. Oh well, maybe that's not his problem, or maybe not yet. That, and many other little nervous thoughts are turned to rough and cracked skin between the fingers and at the elbows.

Weeks later, Straw finds himself sitting in front of Mary. Now, he too, is behind an unlocked door, a true status symbol of a candidate for freedom. On his ankles, he feels the draft scampering by like a mouse. Though uncomfortable about that, he doesn‘t say so. By merely filling in a name on a form, a psychiatrist cannot only place, but also maintain a hold on his life. Along his upper lip, within his mustache, beads of sweat spring from that thought.

Carefully and calmly, Straw answers Mary's endless questions, careful not to question them and to restrain the hope from his eyes. Mary's “Let's see,” and Straw's distraction, from her alternately removing and replacing her eyeglasses, are okay. It's trying, but okay. She pauses the fiddling briefly, then resumes with a question, a brief pause, then doodling, then a question; often, there's direct eye contact, then a question—a question—then a question. Straw can't think of all the right answers, so he looks out for the question, the wrong question. The emotions explode and subside. It's Straw who must maintain in the struggle for acceptance into her magic circle of the saved.

They are in solo flight, within one another's informed inner circle. Straw's is one of consciousness; Mary's is of euphemisms and professional ideas, without the language she uses in her reports. She pauses, he continues to think.

“Never, for the sake of peace and quiet, deny your own experience and convictions,” wrote Dar Hammarskjold in
Markings
. For Straw, that recent reading is a melancolic remark that massages his mind. He accepts it. For that reason, the scent of his young life which smelled of roses was almost deleted several times in his life, almost, but not quite. There is still more to live before his actions disembody that spirit, or exercise it sparingly. Just as he is seasonally brittle, he can be seasonly tough.

Strawman relaxes his patient-to-doctor posture to appreciate the years of effort. He clearly feels the future and it speaks to him: peace is working harder on oneself, not being smarter. The sincerity of that feeling and insight wells in his chest. He gently eases himself forward to the edge of the chair, relaxes his legs by bending them at the knees, and shifting his weight to the balls of his feet, Straw doesn't forget to leave his arms limp at the elbows and his hands on his legs, with the fingers open and relaxed. He asks, “If I stood outside, at the front of this building, could I see the Pacific?”

Demetria Martínez

First Prize: Poetry

Decked in October light adobe grows gold.

On a wall a fresco of Jesus in thorns,

red chiles strung in decades,

apples in buckets,

green chile roasting to peel and freeze,

the air sweet as come.

Santuario de Chimayó,

steeples, like pencils,

sign the sky.

This is a pilgrimage, not a tour,

make the sign of the cross.

Behind the church a mountain

kneels in a field.

Sap on my fingers, plucking mushrooms

from timbers,

someday when I sleep with you

it will taste like this.

His smile, a minus sign, cancels

whole populations.

I was useful once, a tape recorder

he talked at and played back,

a rear-view mirror announcing

his face at stop lights.

On a self-improvement spree

he took me up like tennis

or a Third World cause.

I, the colored help,

Guadalupe, quota, folk art,

more chic than a Santa Fe healer

he saw on the sly,

my Guatemalan cottons

matched his ties.

Bastard. Strip-mining wasted

your heart. How you love

to subtract. Ordering soldiers

to save a village you strike

the match. You always liked me

on my back, with an instamatic

you snap, snap. Sentimental,

you pocket my eyeteeth,

you finger my onyx. Liberal,

you do not steal it, you donate

my bracelet to a Mayan exhibit.

Silviana Wood

First Prize: Short Story

To me the first day back to school is like a holiday, even better. Everyone gets to wear something new and tries to act more grown-up than the year before, but they forget and start hitting you and running around, so everything's the same. The new teachers are so mixed up they're always missing papers or books and don't even know your name. Everything is a lot of fun, and that's why the first day is the best day of the year. Next to the last day.

In all the world I had three best friends: Maromas, Penguin, and Peanut Butter, and we were together again in the sixth grade. This was going to be a good class even with fat Hortensia Martínez who wet the bed still and stunk like a skunk so nobody wanted to sit next to her. And even with suckass Fidelia Medina who was always the teacher's pet because she was so smart. She told on everybody and nobody could beat her up 'cause she had a father who could speak good English, and would come running to the school to make the principal paddle the winner of the fight. By this I mean that the winner was
never
Fidelia.

Our new teacher was late and it was just like a party. Fidelia was showing off her new green crocodile notebook that had a special pocket inside for her pencils and erasers that nobody could borrow. It even had a pencil sharpener and the green crocodile notebook was stuffed so full of clean paper that it could hardly get zippered close. Fidelia
had
to be rich—she never wore socks with holes in them.

We were happy too because this year we got to be on the second floor of the school with nobody else but the library. And we knew that on fire drills, the most exciting thing in the year, we would get to leave the building by climbing down the fire escape stairs along the wall outside. Everyone else would just get to walk out normal. I was lucky too because I didn't have to go to Carrillo School where my cousins went. Everyone knows Carrillo School has a dead nurse ghost who haunts the toilets. Next year we would all be in the junior high across the railroad tracks. That's if we passed.

It was very noisy when the new teacher walked into the room. Maromas had almost convinced Peanut Butter to meet him later under the bridge instead of going to her dumb Catechism class, and Penguin was teaching me magic tricks, like the one where you tell him what row your card is in and he can tell on the third deal which one is your card. We all shut up when we saw our teacher; we didn't breathe. She was so beautiful, like a movie star. We kept looking at her; she smiled.

She carried a small box with her things: a bottle of lotion, a sewing kit, a box of Kleenex, a desk calendar, a white vase with red plastic roses, and a clay kangaroo with pencils and pens in its stomach. She spread these things on top of her desk and put other things inside the drawers while we waited. Then she wrote her name in big letters on the blackboard: Miss Folsom. Her fingernails were long and polished the same color like her lipstick. She got a Kleenex and wiped the chalk from her hands. Again she smiled to us.

“My name is Miss Folsom. Can everyone say ‘Miss Folsom'?”

“Miss Folsom,” we repeated. Fidelia was the loudest.

“Fine. And now I have to learn
your
names.” She read her list. “Oh, oh. I can see problems already. Well, I'll just have to seat you in alphabetical order until I've learned your names. When I call your name step up to the desk I'm pointing to. Please be patient and we can change around later after I've learned your names.”

She began to read our names: “Goo-ee-ler-mo? Gooeelermo Al-ma-zan?”

We all started to laugh when we figured out what she meant.

Except for Guillermo who didn't know it was
his
name she was saying so funny. Fidelia pointed to Guillermo. And lucky for him that we already called him “Yemo” or else he would've been called “Gooey” for the rest of his life for sure.

“Just what does Gooeelermo mean?” Miss Folsom asked us.

“Guillermo means William,” said Fidelia who knew everything.

“Ah, William. A noble name. Take the first seat, Willie.”

After Guillermo, she changed Francisco to Frankie; Juan became Johnny; Joaquín became Jack; and then it was like a game with all of us waiting to see what our new name would sound like. Maromas, who could spell all the words in the world and knew the alphabet already knew where our names would make us sit. So he pretended to be like a traffic cop at a parade, blowing a whistle, waving his arms, and moving us to the new desk even before Miss Folsom who was still trying to read our names. Maromas was funny that way.

“And what is
your
name?” Miss Folsom asked him, probably thinking she could make him sit down.

“Maromas. Maromas means somersaults,” he said as he made an ugly face at Fidelia before she could answer for him.

“Somersaults?” Miss Folsom laughed out loud, real pretty. “No one could possibly be named ‘somersaults' now, could he?” She checked her list anyway, to be sure just in case. Maromas wiggled his ears at us and stretched his mouth like a rubber band. Miss Folsom couldn't find his name so she let him keep directing traffic.

“Juan Cardenas?”

Penguin shuffled his feet and walked over to the desk.

“Thank you, Johnny,” said Ms. Folsom.