sangre vital

Story

by suze b.

He stumbled upon me like he stumbled over his own feet: just another part of the landscape. The strong odor of human shit overpowered the alcohol emanating from his sagging mouth and gaping pores--wide open in the dead, wet heat. The kind of heat only possible in a city situated in the middle of the Chiapas jungle.

“Daaaammeunnpessso,” he slurred, nearly falling over from the effort of emitting these few indistinguishable words.

He swayed each time he spoke, losing balance when he finally shook the words from his tongue. He muttered the same words over and over again, as though he had a whole stash of them stored somewhere deep inside his gut.

“Dame un peso.”

He had me side-walked.

I had been sitting up against a yellow church in the center of Tapachula, my legs slung over the two shovels I bought earlier that day. I was taking a break from the seemingly endless surge of errands. I was writing and sipping on a bag of beet juice, my tongue made sharp from the semi-caustic juice and the wholly caustic machismo I had been putting up with for several months.

“Dame un peso,” he spat.

It wasn’t a request. It was as though he was in a hurry to get somewhere and I was the clerk in uniform behind some counter, only I had no paycheck to worry about losing.

“No. No voy a darte un peso. Déjame porfa-,” I told him clearly, loudly, calmly.
“Dame un dollar.”
“No.”
“¡Bitch!”

He started to move in.

I was backed up against the wall, knees in front of me. I threw out a foot to confuse his perception of the open space between us as he lurched forward. He tripped, not over my foot, but over one he saw in his spinning vision.

“Dame un peso, ¡ahora!”
“¡No!”

I raised my voice to meet his bid and raise the stakes a few decibels.

“No voy a darte un peso, ni nada. Por favor no me molestas más.”

His shouting was one long slur, like a drawn out belch.

“Vete,” I said loudly, with confidence that had already begun its transformation into anger.

“¿Yo?” he managed to emit as he retched laughter, like sickness from a body made of pain. The same way people laugh when I say the words ‘mujer fuerte’ as if they have never heard the words paired together before. Fast banana. Angry spoon. Strong Woman.

He was scoffing at me, a ‘pinche gringa’ telling him to go away. After all, these were his streets, in his city, his country. Passers-by continued passing, staring even after our eyes had met, my eyes slightly lighter than theirs, making me a legitimate target for harassment. Light eyes blink like dollar signs flashing neon. In a world of systematic and institutionalized racism and white supremacy, eyes that hold green reflect pockets that do the same. Only my pockets were not full of dollars or pesos but vegetable seeds that I had made it my work to ease into green for another few weeks.

People slowed to see the sideshow of yet another woman being harassed by a man heaving angry demands at her like fists. Usually this scene happens behind closed doors, so folks were all the more drawn. They stared but did not consider assisting a woman cornered, pushed against a wall, by a belligerent drunk guy reeking of shit and addiction. I raised my voice even louder and realized that attracting attention--a simple self-defense tactic I often use--wouldn’t make any difference in this situation; a very selective and self-serving machismo was at work.

See, I can’t walk down the gawddamn street without some man telling me it is dangerous for me to be alone.

Men point out that I am alone not to draw attention to an obvious fact, but to remind me of the physical danger that they could be responsible for perpetrating. It is like walking up to someone in a dark alley and casually mentioning to them that you have a gun.

But the moment someone is actually up in my face and making me feel uncomfortable, these men just walk on by. They try to ‘protect me’ by telling me what to do, what not to do, attempting to impose limitations on my movement, on my freedom. They tell me it is not safe out there to walk by myself.

"Why?" I ask. "Because there are men just like you out there? If you are so concerned why aren’t you holding other men responsible for the violence they inflict on women’s lives? Why don’t you talk to them instead of telling me what I can and cannot do? After all, I don’t seem to be the one who can’t control myself."

“Dame un peso. No me voy hasta me das un peso. ¡Cinco pesos!”
“Bueno, me voy,” I said, realizing that I would have to leave if I wanted to be left alone.

As I slipped my feet under the shovels and began to lift myself from the ground, he moved in again, this time with a determination as fierce as his drunkenness. But I was very ready. It’s not all that hard to defend against the belligerently drunk. An upward thrust of my shoulder as he heaved his body towards me sent him sprawling across the sidewalk, sending stones off in different directions like a fistful of dice. My shovels clinked like the coins he demanded as I hurried to catch a combi back home.

I did not share this story with anyone back in Urbina, where I was living and working at the time. When Tía Rosi asked me about the bruise bluing my shin from where the shovel head dug into my skin when that fool toppled towards me, I made up another story.

Not because they have silenced me, but because I’ve heard it all before.

Not saying anything protects me from the blame I would otherwise be assaulted with: it is better, it is more appropriate, for me to stay inside where the men who call me hermana cannot make inappropriate comments, slip in sexual advances guised as ‘sola una broma,’ or invade my privacy like they think they should be able to invade my body.

This female body, this queer body, this body however they choose to define it, is constantly under attack. It makes me afraid that I am merely the present occupier of this skin; another, stronger, more advantaged force may come along anytime to stage a coup.
A woman who is one of my closest friends here asked me, “¿No vas a permitir tu esposo pegarte?” You aren’t going to let your husband beat you? I tried not to sound righteous, not to reveal how completely taken aback by the question I really was. She asked it as simply as one asks what I’m thinking about eating for dinner.

Tía Elda pulled out the dress Thalia wore at her quinceañera, a frivolous piece of white softness stitched together in all the wrong places so that instead of being a comfortable fit, it would bunch out like a ball gown vomited upon by pink and red fabric roses. “Put it on,” she told me. Not only am I at least a foot taller than Thalia, with a back as broad as her arm span, but I am also not fifteen. I tried not to be insulted when she told me I could be so pretty if only I wore dresses like this. I laughed, hell no, I’m not putting that thing on.

I have problems with authority and gender police are no different.

I sit with it all, with this mess we call culture, but it’s not Mexican, it’s gawddamn patriarchy and that shit is global. I sit with it and sometimes it sits upon me like a 300-pound mass of ghost-man flesh that I scratch and bite and eventually toss off with the strength of my slim hips that ain’t never gonna bear you no baby, so keep your seed away from me.

I plant my own seeds.

“Did you carry that sack of elote up to the house by yourself?” Lubi practically hissed at me.
“¿Cómo?”
“With Rosita? Yesterday?”
“You mean a week and a half ago?”
“Yeah. Did you carry that by yourself?”
“You know the answer, Lubi. You watched me.”

She sucked air in through her teeth and raised her eyes to the sky as if she was pleading with gawd.

“Ahhhhh, Sussssi,” she practically wailed.

“You are going to kill yourself. Why don’t you leave this to the men? It is men’s work! Men’s work! Do you want to be a man? Aren’t you even going to have a husband? I bet you don’t even know how to wash a man’s pants…do you?”

“Course I do. I wash my own and the tag on them says they are men’s.”

If a TV director had been there to witness her response, Lubi would be the star of some daytime telenovela by now.

I am used to this because I have to be. But I don’t accept it. Still, I try to balance all of my actions and reactions with love and respect for all folks, no matter what they’ve got going on in their heads—despite the fact that this simple gesture is rarely, if ever, reciprocated.

I dare you to tell me to be culturally sensitive, to attempt to silence me by calling my criticism an abuse of privilege, by telling me to love it or leave it. I’ll tell you to go back to the master’s house so I can burn the whole fucken thing down--to demonstrate just how much I respect the culture of every woman and man who has done that before me.

You want to talk to me about culture? Well I’ll tell you about the culture that I know, the one that thrives deep inside the beating, bloody heart of every misogynist, racist, heterosexist, classist and otherwise oppressive culture: the culture of queers who bash back, of folks who scatter seeds in the sidewalk cracks; border crossers, cross dressers, squatters; folks who defy the 'silence is complicity' paradigm by working within the system to tear it down; my sisters who rage and wage battles to keep laws, borders and unwanted besos off our bodies.

We wage our battles in the heart of it all, creating, feeding and birthing beauty in our communities. Because we created the heart, because we are the heart.

I respect culture alright; I worship it with resistance.