I left the parlor midway through the video about the Chamula Indian and his dying boy and told Eugenia and David who were sitting in the kitchen having a shot of mezcal that David took from his Buddhist altar to calm their nerves since they had both just been kicked out of a bar down the street for no other reason than that the bartender didn't like their faces and I said, "I cant watch anymore. Is there any mezcal left?"

They both shook their heads. There had only been a tiny bottle of it, the size you buy on airplanes but I don't know any airlines that carry mezcal. I was trying not to cry since I am supposed to the brave one of the group although they don't know that or seem to think so. "It is moments like this, watching that story about the Chamulas that I know that I am Indian," I said in my own language and not in this one that I am speaking to you now because if I don't, like the Chamulas, my story will be annihilated and not heard.

Eugenia looked up at me flushed with the alcohol she had just had and said, "What are you talking about? Have you ever taken a look at yourself in the mirror?" Eugenia is a bit disrespecful, which sometimes is a very good thing for her as a mix-blood woman, a {mestiza}, to be irreverent. But I've noticed that she is not very discerning about her disrespect, which at that moment was directed at me. If I am not considered the bravest of the group, or the smartest, I am the oldest. And no one seems to want to take issue with that fact. At the very least, it isn't very nice to be ornery with one's elders.

I've decided that Eugenia is an anarchist. This conclusion was drawn one night when she called herself a leftist and later announced that she was giving up her acting career, which consisted of one small but important part in a play, and was leaving the country however she could manage it and as soon as she could, to be American exile. I didn't understand what that could possibly mean since a person had to have a country, which she claimed she did not have, in order to be in exile. Although she considered herself a leftist I mostyly observed her to be frustrated with everything, including my hope, my revolutionary work, and my action. Therefore, it came to my mind and rested comfortably in my private thoughts that she was an anarchist.

I liked her very much and I'm sure my age and my hope granted me saintly patience so I usually did not knowledge her disrespect with words but always made a gesture as if to slap her upside her head but of course never did.
"Who has ever told you that you are Indian?" She asked in disbelief.
"Many people, believe it or not," I said.
"Like who?"

I wished I had been invited to that bit of mezcal because I was still shivering from the video about the Chamula father travelling and travelling on foot with his feverish boy on his shoulders, looking for a doctor and being an Indian there would be no doctor so I had stopped the video halfway, as I said, knowing also that Indians must walk even after death.
"Once in New Mexico I was going to a house blessing ceremony at the Zuñi pueblo and a white woman said to me: 'I don't think the Zuñi are allowing white people to attend this year.' 'I'm not white,' I said, 'To the Zuñi people you are as white as I am.' That's what she said to me. After a moment of recuperation, I said, 'It's true that my people are not Zuñi, but I'm not white.' " "And it's not true that the Zuñi people would see us as white!" David said in a loud voice. Eugenia said nothing because she was angry at everybody. This little story had served only as one more brick on the wall she was building against a world of nations, to none of which she belonged.

There are things that I am. There are things that I am not. There are also some things that change. For instance, I was not always the oldest of a group. For a long time, I was always the youngest member and very quiet. I listened in order to become a person.

Now, in such groups, I do most of the talking.
The young ones are not always listening, however.

"I know that," I said to David and looked at Eugenia, "But that is what she said to me. And in New Mexico, I had another woman, who identifies herself as nuevomejicana, also say that I am not Indian. So I asked her, 'Then what am I?' 'Hispanic, of course,' she said, 'we're Hispanic.' "
Eugenia shook her head because she is from New Mexico and I think she felt ashamed.
Having made my point, which in this case was like being told to tie a double knot one more time, I went on, "When I was in Paris speaking at the Sorbonne I was asked by the students, 'Now that you're here, where do you feel you belong?'
Come to think of it, I don't know what they meant by that question, but what I understood is how I answered so I said, "My spirit belongs to the Americas. I've been there for thousands of years. I'm sure of that now that I'm here."
Eugenia had nothing to say because she had never been to Paris but also because she did not know what to say.

David nodded. "It was like that for dark people in Paris," he added. They went there to get away from not being wanted where they were born, except for the Algerians. The Algerians went there to work as well as to be not wanted there.
"Of course, in Paris, I wsa not considered an American, either," I said. "I stayed with a French woman who spoke nothing but French. She was a mathematician and was useless with language. So she invited her socialite sister so that she cold come and converse with me. She was married to a doctor and they had lived in the United States for many years.
The sister came over while I was in the kitchen helping with the dishes. She stuck her head in the kitchen. We exchanged glances.
And then she said very loudly to her sister, 'So where is the American?' She had mistaken me for the maid."
"But she said it in English. . ." David said. "Presumably her sister didn't understand English. So, for whose benefit did she ask that in English?"
"The American's." I said.
"People love to hate the United States," David said, "like a rich uncle."
"Yeah---rich Uncle Sam!" Eugenia said.
"And like that rich uncle," I said, "they tolerate it and are forced to cater to it, waiting and hoping for the moment he croaks to see if they were left anything in the will."
At that moment, Jorge came in. "How did you like the video?" He asked me in our language, or rather, one of our languages. He had lent me the video. "It was beautiful," I said, "But it made me think too much of my son so I had to stop watching it."
"You have a son?" Jorge asked. Jorge and I really didn't know each other.
"Yes," I said, of course, since I had just mentioned my son.
"Where is he?" he asked, as if at any moment my child would jump out from behind a half-opened door. The others looked uneasy, too. I don't know why. Maybe they weren't uneasy but the acknowledgment of an absent child was in itself an uneasy fact.
"He's with his father," I said.

Jorge nodded. He didn't ask anything more, and I wasn't sure if this was because the question of the absent child was settled with the knowledge that he was with his father or because he didn't care.
There was some silence aruond the table. David lit the candle that was there and got up to turn off the kitchen light. This increased our solemnity. And with our solemnity our silence was given breadth. While I couldn't see it, I felt the moon over the desert, which were very far away, both desert and moon.

But I couldn't feel the stars, not the ones I slept under as a child. I couldn't feel their rapid oscillation as I always felt them in the desert, even when I didn't look out the door to verify that it was the stars making me tremble. The stars, like the moon in the city with high-rise buildings where these new and old friends had come together like family on the simple basis of sharing rent were city stars. It was a city moon out there surely shining, although well hidden behind layers of smog and not giving any light to the world.

Then David broke the silence and staring without blinking at the candle flame he said, "I'm glad I'm not a father."
Jorge laughed nervously and lit a cigarette.

I stood up straight.
"Come on now, David," Eugenia said with a smile, "Not all children are bad!"
"Children are people," he said. His eyes were transfixed on the flame and I began to stare at it too. "I'm not saying they are not all good or all bad. They are people and they are not innocent simply because they are children."

Out in the city sky there were stars at that moment dying, the sun included. The earth was also said to be dying. And David, who my eyes and therefore my mind told me was across the table from me at that moment, was also dying at that very moment. We are all dying, of course, which is the nature of life. But David alrady knew about his death. His illness had a name but no cure. It had symptoms but no fixed cause. Each of us was helpess to it but David was helpless most of all.
So, out of compassion for David who knew the name of his death and therefore all his thoughts were following after it, as if following a colon, I said, "Well, I am only responsible for the particular behavior of one child. And he is very self-assured, very loving, and very sweet."


Eugenia, out of sense of loyalty for something or someone, nodded but said nothing. Jorge didn't know my son so he nodded as one can only do to a proud mother who has just made such a comment. And David kept staring at the candle flame before it went out and left us in the dark.

written by Ana Castillo

from "Daughters Of The Fifth Sun"
--A Collection of Latina Fiction and Poetry
edited by Bryce Milligan, Mary Guerrero Milligan, and Angela De Hoyos
© 1995