LA MORENITA, Chapter 17

Araceli sat on the bench near the river. “I’m so angry,” she said.
“Why?” the raven asked.
“I’m invisible. Nobody sees me at home, and nobody sees me at school.”
“How did that come about?” the raven asked.
“I don’t know,” Araceli said. Then she thought. “The teachers just see the way I look, and they ignore me. At home, my mother does exactly what my father tells her to do. Which means fussing over Chad every minute while I sit around like a ghost.”
“Didn’t your mother used to take you and your brother to El Ranchito and buy you Mexican music tapes?”
“She hasn’t done that in years. Only once since she came back from going to that group therapy at the mental health center.”
The raven hunkered down and started to flap her wings.
“Where are you going?” Araceli asked.
“I’ll be right back,” the raven said. “I think better when I’m flying.”
Araceli watched the raven take off. She kept her eye on the bird as it soared skyward and came back around in a loop. Then, just as Araceli expected it to land again, it zoomed off and glided in a lazy, looping arc around Araceli. After circling three times, the raven descended and
came to rest on the back of the bench.
“Your brother is the key,” it said. “You and your brother have to trust each other.”
“My brother doesn’t want to have anything to do with me,” Araceli said. “He’s ashamed to be seen with me or have anybody know that he’s my brother.”
“Then you have only one alternative,” the raven said. “You must use your secret writing to find the answers to all your questions.”
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Araceli resisted. The idea of writing about the truth without knowing it struck her as absurd. She was also afraid her feelings might be hurt by what she discovered. So, in spite of the raven’s exhortations, she managed to avoid writing the truth until spring during her final year in junior high. That’s when she bought a thick notebook and put a label on the outside cover that read: “Letters to the Raven.”
The first time she wrote in her notebook, she wrote: “My parents fell in love at first sight. They stayed in love and lived happily ever after.” She wanted this to be true, but she didn’t think it was. She crossed it out.
She took the notebook into the living room and sat on the couch, staring at the rush hour traffic through the front window. Maybe she should be more formal, she thought. If she had the gift to see the truth without actually being there, maybe she needed to sound more like John, the Baptist or one of those Old Testament prophets. She wrote: “I, from the Sky Altar, send greetings to you, Raven, and say unto you that the relationship of Norman Schmidt and his future wife, Maria, began in this manner.” She read it out loud and reflected on how stupid it sounded. She closed the notebook and took it to her room. There, she put it underneath the Mexican music
tapes in the bottom of the big chest near the foot of her bed.
The next day she walked down to the jogging path and sat on the bench facing the river. She held the notebook on her lap as she stared at the Columbia River flowing by. After twenty minutes, she stood up and started walking away. Hearing a voice say, “Wait a minute,” she
turned and saw the raven alighting on the back of the bench.
“Where have you been?” she asked.
The raven looked excited. “Is that it? Is that your secret writings?”
Araceli sighed.
“Well, is it?”
Araceli nodded.
“Read to me.”
“No. It makes no sense.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s silly. And not true. How could I possibly know what happened? Even if I did know what happened, how could I possibly understand what it means?”
“It’s the only way.”
“Do I have to keep scribbling words and scratching them out over and over again? I’m doing that now. And the words still aren’t making any sense.”
“You can’t give up.”
“But it’s so hard!”
“Of course it’s hard. What did you expect? Write boldly, and the truth will be revealed.” Without saying another word, the raven flapped her wings and flew off.
Later that day, Araceli lay on her bed and considered her parents. Although the sounds of a nearby ticking clock and noises from the street attempted to intrude on her consciousness, she heard only a deafening silence. Write boldly and the truth will be revealed, the raven had told
her. Nobody else had ever warned her that writing takes courage. She thought about what would happen if her parents found her notebook, so she disguised the identity of her father and mother by calling them ‘N’ and ‘M’. She sat up and wrote: “N came to the place with his lunch
bucket. M brought people their food.” She stopped. If N was going to eat the food that was made at that place, why would he bring a lunch bucket? The size of her handwriting also bothered her. It was too big, too readable. She scratched it out and wrote smaller. “N came to the place and waited for a table. M came out to greet him.” She scribbled over everything in disgust. She must find the truth, she thought. La verdad. La verdad. The words droned in her consciousness like the pulsing of a Mexican accordion. She was frightened by the challenge, but she knew the
raven was right. If she had the courage to search for it, the truth could rise like a hot air balloon in the sky.
The next day she went to the river and read aloud to the raven. When she heard herself, she thought the words sounded hollow and inaccurate.
The raven asked her, “Do you think that’s what happened?”
“No,” she said.
“Go back and work on it. And when you’re sure you have written the truth, come back.”
Araceli wrote furiously for the next three months, scribbling words and phrases, then scratching these out and writing new ones. Occasionally, she felt a flash of recognition and knew she may have stumbled onto something that resembled some small portion of la verdad. She felt
like a prospector, fumbling in murky waters, getting excited over the tiniest flakes and nuggets. On rare occasions, she felt minuscule bursts of inspiration, but these bursts came only after struggling mightily. When she didn’t struggle, her words seemed pedestrian and her facts bogus.
The best words and images came when she got so frustrated she almost gave up. Whenever that happened, she would let go of her thoughts and feelings and wait patiently. Eventually, glimpses of specific events and details did flicker in her mind.
One cold day in March, Araceli bundled herself up and went down to the river. Immediately, the raven appeared. “What do you have for me today?” she asked.
Araceli opened her notebook and read:
Dear Raven:
Maybe N got into an argument with the other guys at work, telling them the most beautiful girls in the world had fair skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes. After all, that’s what he believed. Maybe he even made a bet about it. Or maybe it was N’s friend, C, who told him the most beautiful girl in the world worked at a cantina just outside San Antonio. Anyway, N and his buddies from the construction site came to this little place called El Rincón to eat lunch. N forced himself to act casual the first time he saw M and tried to perform an objective inventory of her features. Her dark skin, high cheekbones, and full lips; her slightly asymmetrical face, the
left nostril slightly lower and smaller than the right one; her expressive black eyes that seemed too large for her face. Imperfect when viewed one at a time, all of these features together drew him, like a powerful force that made his heart wobble in his chest and forced his eyes to stare directly into hers.
N already had come to the conclusion that, in America—the Land of the Free—people should be able to do whatever they damn well please. While stationed at the Marine Barracks in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, he met an ex-Golden Gloves boxer, a black Marine from Brooklyn. During the only sparring match they ever had, the Marine from Brooklyn knocked out N after just ten seconds with a powerful right-hand lead followed by a flurry of punches that brought him to the floor and rendered him unconscious. After regaining consciousness, N asked the blackMarine to teach him some moves.
The black Marine was a talented sketch artist who carried a sketchbook and colored pencils everywhere he went. During a break from one of N’s boxing lessons, N grabbed the sketchbook and paged through it, chancing upon the drawing of a woman’s crotch. The drawing showed all the parts of a blonde woman’s vagina. When N blushed at the sight, the Marine fromBrooklyn threw his head back and roared with laughter. “What made your face so red, white boy?”
After stammering a bit, N replied, “You must’ve been real close to it if you could draw it that good.”
That made the black Marine laugh even harder.
“I don’t think people of different races should get involved with each other,” N said.
“Even in a free country?” the black Marine asked. “After all, the U.S. is not supposed to be like South Africa.” He paused and then said, “Or is it?”
N remembered that the first time he saw a white woman with a black man. It was in front of the Greyhound station in San Antonio late one night. The two of them were huddled so close together they appeared to be sharing the same body as the black man ran his hands all over the woman’s chest and stomach. When N saw this, his face flushed a bright crimson and his eyes burned with anger. “Even here,” he told the black Marine. “It’s not right.”
“What’s not right?” said the black Marine. “Is either one of them inflicting pain on the other? If the two of them aren’t complaining, how is it anybody else’s business?”
“I don’t think God wants the races to intermingle like that,” N had answered.
“How the hell do you know what God wants?” the black Marine said. “Did God have a private conversation with you, like in a burning bush or something? Or maybe you can tell me where He said so in The Bible?”
N didn’t have an answer but he thought the Bible forbade it.
Now he was staring at a woman from a different race who totally captivated him, and he thought about what that black Marine said. If the two people involved aren’t complaining, why should anyone else care? “Is that her?” he whispered to C. C nodded. After a few seconds, N corrected his gawk and fixed his gaze directly in front of himself.