Portland State University PDXScholar Dissertations and Theses Dissertations and Theses Spring 5-23-2012 American Cuerpos Devan Schwartz Portland State University Follow this and additional works at: https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds Part of the American Politics Commons, and the Fiction Commons Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Schwartz, Devan, "American Cuerpos" (2012). Dissertations and Theses. Paper 97. https://doi.org/10.15760/etd.97 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of PDXScholar. Please contact us if we can make this document more accessible: [email protected]. American Cuerpos by Devan Schwartz A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Thesis Committee: Leni Zumas, Chair Craig Lesley Michael McGregor Portland State University 2012 Abstract On election night 2008, a child is conceived by two Barack Obama campaign staffers—Daniel from Seattle, Anza from Honduras. American Cuerpos is a novel about the body and the body politic, about what it means to give birth through the eyes of both mother and father. i Table Of Contents Abstract: i Chapter One: 1-2 Chapter Two: 3-19 Chapter Three: 20-42 Chapter Four: 43-47 Chapter Five: 48-66 Chapter Six: 67-78 Chapter Seven: 79-102 Chapter Eight: 103-116 Chapter Nine: 117-130 Chapter Ten: 131-155 Chapter Eleven: 156-170 Chapter Twelve: 171-173 Chapter Thirteen: 174-198 Chapter Fourteen: 199-200 Chapter Fifteen: 201-224 Chapter Sixteen: 225-241 Chapter Seventeen: 242-264 Chapter Eighteen: 265-270 Chapter Nineteen: 271-285 Chapter Twenty: 286-289 Chapter Twenty One: 290-296 Chapter Twenty Two: 297-300 Chapter Twenty Three: 301-308 Chapter Twenty Four: 309-312 Chapter Twenty Five: 313 Chapter Twenty Six: 314-317 Chapter Twenty Seven: 318-320 Chapter Twenty Eight: 321-322 Chapter Twenty Nine: 323-327 Chapter Thirty: 328-329 Chapter Thirty One: 330-335 Chapter Thirty Two: 336-339 ii Chapter One We are alone, together. My baby suckles a rubber nipple. I look down at his cheeks, listen to tiny gasps as he draws liquid from the bottle. Does he think I’m his mother? Does he wonder why she isn’t here? Does he blame me for the chalky formula, for damming a river of breast milk? The plane climbs. Cruising altitude brings the stewardess and her beverage cart. She lists a dozen drinks. Beer is free on international flights. Coffee is fresh-brewed, pictures of the Space Needle on the cups. I shake my head and say, “No gracias,” which earns a roll of her made-up Honduran eyes. Her wheel catches a burp cloth and she tosses it onto my diaper bag. As my baby empties the bottle, I feel myself play the role of father. I once was an actor, delivering speeches by famous playwrights, mostly men. I played Sir Oliver Cromwell, Hamlet, Joe Dimaggio. A play isn’t simply performed—it’s mounted, as they say—so on opening night actors feel like they’re going into labor themselves. Don’t look for my name in lights. A ski accident ended my acting career at nineteen—skier versus tree, and the tree won. During silent hospital days, wires wove through my mandible. Food through a tube. I made a slow climb to confident speech. Though mine wasn’t some grand disfigurement, a scar slopes from ear to chin. It’s enough to make me self-conscious and alarm the baby. The stewardess tries not to gawk. Everyone gawks. My more lasting injuries were internal. A tree limb punctured my small intestine. The doctor’s ultrasound found liquid floating free—pancreatic juice, bile, chyme, and 1 blood. Not the cocktail you’d order from a beverage cart. My abdomen looks like I’ve had a Cesarean. Unlike me, the baby is perfect, a blank map, an odometer set to zero. He gurgles when he snores, dreaming of the womb. Those days before diaper rash. We drift between clouds and clearings, the baby through sleep and wake. My gaze strays out the oval window. Seattle. Sea Town. City of Sea Men. City of Mariners. City of Locks. City of Lakes. City of Timber. City of Chief Sealth. Chief Seattle. City of Amnesia. City of White. City of Latinos. City of Black. City of Coffee. City of Low Pressure. City of High Pressure. City of Flights. Jet City. City of Birth. When we reach the Cascades, the plane noses into clouds. I close the shade. Maybe I should tell my baby a story. And I realize I have only one to tell. The story of his mother and me, which is to say the story of my baby himself. Of how his heart pumps young blood through a young wrinkled body. Of father’s long nose and mother’s topsoil eyes, her wing of hair, blacker than inside suitcases. Anza’s voice is stronger. If she were telling this story, the child wouldn’t be distracted, wouldn’t grab the air with his fists. Alas. I hope we’ll return together: father, son, and mother. In Spanish, to hope also means to wait. I’m not much of a storyteller, nor a convincing actor. We are seats 31C and 31D on a Taca Air flight. We will fly east before turning south, spanned by one seatbelt. The stewardess pulls her curtain shut. The rest of the plane goes dark but a circle of light illuminates us. We are aromatic from spit and sweat, formula and hand sanitizer. We are alone, together. 2 Chapter Two I remember the car radio slipping between stations as I drove to pick her up. Arm out the window, I adjusted my antenna. Someone interviewed a mayoral candidate. Seattle’s political body is sick, the candidate said. It needed to get well. His words plunged into static and rattled around my station wagon. The political body. In Anza’s mother tongue, El cuerpo político. She waited at the gas station curb. Rain sheeted onto the toes of work boots. Anza wore jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, dressed for manual labor, for lifting or digging. I assumed she lived nearby—a South Seattle neighborhood where apartment buildings crowded each other for a better view of the highway. “That’s a nice sticker,” she said through the rolled-down window, noticing a red ‘O’ on my bumper. I opened her door. “With what they pay us, fringe benefits matter. Do you ever take home any free coffee? It’s Central American.” Anza shook her head. “Me either,” I said, steering us toward the highway. “Decaf is all I can stomach.” “Decaf is not coffee,” she said, and looked down at her phone. Back at the campaign office I often watched Anza—her hours at the phones, following the call script. She wore navy skirts just above her saucer-like patellas. Earth- toned sweaters. Her work attire matched her subdued efficiency. Occasionally, though, 3 she got another Latino on the phone, trilling her r’s and settling into a twangy Honduran accent. I would put my calls on hold and fruitlessly attempt to translate, taking in her voice. Today was different. Today her torn gray hood supported a ponytail that reminded me of my mother’s paintbrushes. Air vented through the window and finer hairs wisped behind her ears in the animated way you’d expect eyebrows to behave. “Thanks for the ride,” Anza said, as we began to climb toward the mountains. “No hay problema,” I said. My Spanish came out falsetto and kind of womanly. “I don’t mind waiting after my event—you sure you don’t need a ride?” She slapped a Greyhound ticket onto the dashboard. The gesture reminded me of travelers showing passports to customs officers. “I am still sure,” she said. “This is the last weekend for the apple harvest and I will stay for the whole thing.” I shrugged, repositioned my hands on the wheel, and gazed at the November morning. Trees lining the highway transitioned from evergreen to subalpine, snow resting on their boughs. The grade flattened and the stump-filled waters of Keechelus Lake reflected purple gray light. Rainclouds dried out. We were only two miles from the family cabin. I might have told Anza about how my grandfather timbered the timber himself, about the fireplace’s river rocks and limestone. Or how the surrounding hemlock trees make better floorboards than jousting partners. “So what will you do when the election’s over?” I asked. The radio seesawed between two stations and my words sat unanswered on the dash next to her bus ticket. 4 “My visa expires after the election,” she said. “So I’ll go back to Honduras.” I swallowed my disappointment, which tasted like dandelion, and thumbed through a mental encyclopedia. Honduras. Dictatorship or no dictatorship? Did they have beaches? Were they close to the Panama Canal? Did bananas grow there? I found purchase only with the capital city, its name retained from Spanish class: Tegucigalpa. “Tay-Goo-See-Gaul-Paw,” I said. “Does your family live there?” “My father does,” she said. “He has a radio show. Mostly I grew up beneath the cordillera. White people visit for tours of coffee factories.” Yeah, I thought, she probably sees me as one of those assholes. Backpack, digital camera, money belt, Hawaiian shirt. People might assume my scars were from some thief’s machete. Not that Anza fit my impression of a Central American villager.