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University of Texas at El Paso DigitalCommons@UTEP Open Access Theses & Dissertations 2014-01-01 Rolodex of Saints: A Collection of Short Stories Yvette D. Benavides University of Texas at El Paso, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.utep.edu/open_etd Part of the Chicana/o Studies Commons, Fine Arts Commons, Latina/o Studies Commons, and the Modern Literature Commons Recommended Citation Benavides, Yvette D., "Rolodex of Saints: A Collection of Short Stories" (2014). Open Access Theses & Dissertations. 1585. https://digitalcommons.utep.edu/open_etd/1585 This is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@UTEP. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Access Theses & Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UTEP. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ROLODEX OF SAINTS: A COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES YVETTE D. BENAVIDES Department of Creative Writing APPROVED: ___________________________________________ Lex Williford, MFA, Chair ___________________________________________ Maryse Jayasuriya, Ph.D. __________________________________________ Jeffrey Sikrin, Ph.D. __________________________________ Bess Sirmon-Taylor, Ph.D. Interim Dean of the Graduate School Copyright © by Yvette D. Benavides 2014 ROLODEX OF SAINTS: A COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES by YVETTE D. BENAVIDES, M.A. THESIS Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at El Paso in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of MASTER OF FINE ARTS Department of Creative Writing THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT EL PASO May 2014 Table of Contents Preface …………………………………………………………………………………………....v Attachments ……………………………………………………………………………………....1 Make Over ……………………………………………………………………………………....14 Loves …………………………………………………………………………………………….27 Texas Ebony …………………………………………………………………………………….31 Blackbird ………………………………………………………………………………………..56 Last Words ………………………………………………………………………………………76 Lobo ……………………………………………………………………………………………..82 Rolodex of Saints ……………………………………………………………………………….85 Fallout ………………………………………………………………………………………….103 Burning Boy …………………………………………………………………………………...114 Ardilla and Araña ………………………………………………………………………………122 Special Needs …………………………………………………………………………………..127 Marina Swallows the Stars ……………………………………………………………………..131 Swept Up ……………………………………………………………………………………….138 Pobrecitos ……………………………………………………………………………………....146 Vita …………………………………………………………………………………………….159 iv Preface In the fall of 2006, I happened upon an advertisement for a brand new online, bilingual MFA program in creative writing at the University of Texas at El Paso. Having spent the previous 16 years of my life teaching English courses in composition and literature at a small Catholic university in San Antonio, I felt myself, ironically, at a loss in terms of attempting to enter this world. I’d spent years in the classroom focused solely on instruction and assessment and had given little to the kind of writing I fell in love with first before ever deciding to become a teacher. Part of my trepidation came from the fact that I was inordinately busy raising a child, teaching a four/four course load, serving on committees, co-hosting a radio show, and writing book reviews for the local newspaper. The program’s features of “online” and “bilingual,” however, seemed tailor-made for me. I couldn’t ignore the tug of at least attempting it, and so I applied. I was accepted and became part of the first cohort of students who, as I quickly discovered, were as committed as I was, but also as itinerant due mainly to the many demands on our time in our homes and work lives. Soon I was learning and stretching as I never had in terms of my own writing. There is nothing like a deadline to motivate students sometimes. For me, the motivation came from the work. I wanted to write, to read and to write and to work with my peers on improving as writers. From the very beginning, with the very first courses offered in screenwriting and playwriting, of all things, I felt free to write about what I know. I could hold my own in discussions and in peer review. A poetry course followed. Because in those early years, there were not many course offerings to choose from, my first three courses in the program didn’t really focus on the genres I was most interested in (creative nonfiction and, later, short fiction). Even so, the depth in reading and excellent instruction set the imprint for all that would follow. v But then I dropped out. A four-alarm fire ravaged the building which housed the office and lecture halls and writing labs I had inhabited like a second home for over a decade. I was emotionally devastated. Deaths in the family followed, other hardships, illness and life’s incessant grind. However, I found I missed the sanctuary of the virtual classroom I had already been enjoying in the program, so I returned to take classes in creative nonfiction and short fiction. Here I found a renewed sense of purpose as a writer, mostly due to the unflagging support of my professors who respected our personal stories and our desire to follow that old advice about writing about what we know. Distance and time from my subjects have not afforded me the fortitude to press on in creative nonfiction. One professor called my work some of the “most honest,” but also “the rawest.” And while I accept the words as compliments, I take them, too, as perhaps a warning to tread lightly. As I didn’t want to censor myself while still addressing the subjects I am passionate about and want to do right by, I moved with some trepidation to short fiction. Short stories are what I enjoy reading most. And this movement toward embracing this genre more seriously as the focus of my thesis study, coincided with other events in my life. I am a Mexican American woman from the border town of Laredo, Texas. As someone who has always loved to read and write, I was anomalous in those classrooms in middle and high school in Laredo. Even in university at the University of Texas in Austin, peers seemed perplexed that I was an English major. Many of these otherwise enlightened students had such a limited view of this part of our world. I had graduated from high school and started college in the same year that Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street was published. And while she was beginning to blaze a trail with various publications in major anthologies, she is not someone who was part of my vi reading experience in school, not even in University. In fact, we didn’t study any writers of color, save for a few in a unit on the Harlem Renaissance. By this time, I’d been having a long love affair with Jewish writers, Saul Bellow, among them. He was born of Russian Jewish parents and was raised in the slums of Montreal. If it isn’t patently obvious how it is that a Mexican American girl living on the U.S. Mexico border could develop such an affinity for Bellow and other writers of their respective diasporas, I’ll explain here. From the time I was six months old, until I was an undergraduate, my parents carted my siblings and me to Port Aransas for summer vacation. Port Aransas was a truly wonderful getaway in the 1960s and early 1970s. It was quiet, and life moved gently there. That isn’t so any more unfortunately. It’s crawling with bikini-ed and shirtless tourists (in stores and restaurants in town, not just on the beach), and even boasts fast-food restaurants. Life moves fast and noisily. I still love the place and still travel there with family every single summer, but I’m glad I have memories of that long-gone idyllic place that I carry with me and long for today. One of the things I remember best about it is Souvenir City. In those days this was a modest un-air-conditioned shop of cedar wood treasures, straw hats, beach towels and seashell wind chimes. There were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that lined one back wall in a corner of the store. There they were: used paperback books. They looked and smelled and felt like used paperback books in an un-air-conditioned little seaside souvenir shop. There were also hardback Reader’s Digest collections and lots of comics. I was always drawn to the paperback books. They promised to me afternoons of escape and adventure. In the late afternoons my sister and I walked along the beach; we shared plot summaries and analyses of the characters of the novels vii we were reading that week. She always said that my retellings were so detailed and vivid that strolling aimlessly at sunset, she could envision it all as if it were a movie. I’d better pause here and interject that, yes, we were allowed to walk along the beach by ourselves. This was a different era. These were the days when Mom could send us to the corner store for a half-gallon of milk knowing that the worst thing that could happen to us was that a dog would bark at us. It was a time when Myspace meant you called dibs on the window seat in the car before you left the house. It was a time when you held up a behemoth Panasonic tape- recorder in front of your transistor radio to tape your favorite song. One summer on a visit to Souvenir City, I found Saul Bellow’s Dangling Man. The thin paperback is about a man in a dreadful limbo between war and peace as he awaits being called to active Army service. On the surface that sounds more like a book my brothers would have given up their quarter for. But this was intense drama. There must have been a Saul Bellow fan living on that island. Though why that person would give up those books to Souvenir City is a mystery to me. Or perhaps it was my destiny to find those books. Herzog, Henderson the Rain King, and The Adventures of Augie March became my own summer romance books.