Latinalogue, Puerto Rican Nonfiction Part I

© 2011 Odilia Rivera Santos

After some walks, writing a couple of hundred poems, beginning to submit work to journals and magazines after a five-year hiatus, hours in the sun, communing with nature and nuture in Harlem and in other parts of town, I settle down and read the long instruction manual on how to publish an ebook through Smashwords. Ok, it is only 71 pages, most of which, I was able to delete from my memory files quickly. Reading an instruction manual has always been and maybe always will be the dull part. Anyway, on June 27, 2011, I began my cottage industry of uploading and hawking carefully hand-embroidered napkins and linens - Céline reference.
My slim volume of nonfiction essays is ready for purchase and I look forward to your feedback and darling letters.
Latinalogue, Puerto Rican Nonfiction Part I by Odilia Rivera Santos

focus on music

Odilia Rivera Santos

Music was a constant in my family.
My mother always loved music and admired artists more than anyone but not with the 'celebrity vulture' mentality. She loved their talent and felt it important to always keep track of who was performing in town.
I see a connection between my mother's love of music and the poverty in which she grew up; listening to music at the beach under the palm trees as the sun set was her carnival, dancing was her travel and being told she was the most beautiful woman in town was her wealth.

My mother from all accounts was a very beautiful, tall Black woman with flawless skin, kinky hair, long muscular legs, large breasts and a tiny waist -- all the requisites for Puerto Rican beauty.
She was very comfortable with her body -- she would yell at me wearing only a pair of panties and bra. I would look at my mother's body and wonder how you could have nine children and still look so new.

Now, to my surprise, my mother is an elderly woman who has suffered several brain hemorrhages due to unaddressed high blood pressure issues, her body has thinned, losing her glorious voluptuousness, and she is no longer tall. Her voice has become a whisper, and when we speak, she reminds me that I am lucky to look like her and she also mentions that I inherited her singing voice.
My mother Ramona had an amazing singing voice, and her speaking voice was also powerful and captivating; when my father was courting her, she would sit high up on a mango tree limb and sing. She would watch him look around, trying to find her because there were so many trees he couldn't discern from where his earthbound mermaid's voice came.

CONCERTS
My mother would always make sure that we had money to go to a concert. As a child, I went to see El Gran Combo, Celia Cruz, Lucecita Benítez, Raphael, Tito Puente and on and on. This was my life before the English language. We listened to boleros from the 1920s to 1950s, Flamenco music, rancheras, salsa of course and romantic ballads that made us laugh. I especially loved to listen to Bomba and Plena; it was spiritual party music, the music of Afrocentric ritual and background to holiday celebrations and making pasteles.
Sometimes, my mother would hear a piece of music and she would clap her hands once as if to grasp a memory drifting by and the stories followed about where she was the first time she heard the song and whether it was B.E. or A.E. (before Ernesto or after Ernesto, my father)

We would stand on line at the Southern Boulevard theater with a lot of other displaced persons, mainly Puerto Rican, and talk about the trials and tribulations we had suffered to get tickets.
I was six when I took a good look at the building and thought how shabby and plain a package it was for an ethereal experience that brought us together and brought to us a respite from the feeling of loss we all felt in this new land.

THE SOUNDTRACK

She still loves to listen to music; the irritation of not being able to communicate anymore diminishes as she listens to music that made her jump and dance as a girl. Her soundtrack remains and continues to take her to carnival as she slips away.

ALTERNATE ENDING WITH MUSIC

I have rewritten my mother's life in the form of a fairytale; she is a benevolent, beautiful, strong, young powerful ruler who resides near the ocean without pain nor worry and she dances Bomba better than anyone you've ever seen.

Buy my e-book! Latinalogue, Puerto Rican Nonfiction Part I

Rain gear and geared up for work again and again

Odilia Rivera Santos

My mother who always had a special kind of Caribbean Black stoicism taught me to work through any situation. And although my first impulse was to sit in a coffee shop and stare at a nonexistent moon, I rallied around like a trooper and took the train.
I let it do what it does -- be late, be slow, jostle my body against another's -- while a tourist who did not look urban stared at me. I haven't a clue why my activities and demeanor would be more entertaining than a book. I was typing some poems on my Mac, which has seen better days because it has taken trips to the sidewalk and wood floor of my apartment.

If I were the tourist, I would read a book or magazine and leave the locals alone.
Why read me?
But it is not for me to judge and no harm done. She was a blip on the geologic radar.

Today is a day made for philosophers, poets and wood nymphs. I am here in expectation of wonderful enchantments. I am here across the street from that abandoned structure, which brings Old Havana to mind with its flaked gray paint accentuated by a slip of pink through a window.
I am here trying to make a painting with my eye and words of which I could spare a few.

Today is the kind of day for introspection and wonderment.

Even through my boots, my toes are feeling the cool of the first rough licks of winter.
Here, on this corner, now inhabited by tourists and bad pastry, I imagine Henry Miller must have strolled hand-in-hand with June and Anais.

Buy my e-book! Latinalogue, Puerto Rican Nonfiction Part I

Working with Humans: Daredevils

While working in Harlem, I met many women who were survivors of domestic violence, and who had been or were homeless. In my mind, they were quickly and easily divided into two groups: the anxiety-ridden and the daredevils.
The daredevils saw all life experience as an obstacle course in which the body, mind, spirit and sanity got a workout; they were warriors because these women welcomed the challenge with never a doubt that they would somehow get out. And they were daredevils for their impulse to self-sabotage -- to completely trample possibilities as if stasis and sanity were the enemy.
Theirs were lives filled with so much tragedy and mishaps over which they had no control that I begin to think self-sabotage was a way to control disaster.
They expected something or someone to ruin their plans and felt empowered by doing the damage themselves instead of waiting for an abusive lover or family member to step in.
But the daredevils had a strong survival instinct and if you could make them believe that getting an education was an element of survival, they would fall into line.
These women were not familiar with stability; it was that distant relative that visited infrequently and didn't remember what grade you were in. You know the one.
The daredevils knew how to fight but if there was no fight to be fought, they were lost.

One of my favorite daredevils was a woman named Female.
I saw the name on the roster and called her over to make corrections.

They forgot to put your name on the roster.
No, that's right. My name is Female.
Female?
My mother was delivering me in the hospital, my father died and there was a big mess, so she left the hospital with the bracelet that said Female _______________. The lady in the hospital said she could go back and change the name, but nobody did.

I was awe-struck that no one in the family would consider returning to the records office in the hospital to give her a name but I noticed that the name was also a source for a great story that encompassed all that her family and childhood was.

In Puerto Rico, they said the name in three parts like a Spanish word: Fe ma le.
Nobody knew what it meant.

Do you want to change your name?
No. I like it.

I cannot say anything else about Female.
I can say that she was clear about how to get in and out of trouble and that was part of the problem.

Buy my e-book! Latinalogue, Puerto Rican Nonfiction Part I


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