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Ann Arbor, MI 48106 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with with permission permission of the of copyright the copyright owner. owner.Further reproductionFurther reproduction prohibited without prohibited permission. without permission. BACK TO THE VILLAGE AND OTHER STORIES bY Marty Lopez submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of The American University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Signatures of Committee: Chair:n ( Z z ____________ n of the College DIti------ 1993 The American University 74 7<! Washington, D.C. 20016 SHE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. BACK TO THE VILLAGE AND OTHER STORIES BY Marty Lopez ABSTRACT In these four stories, characters struggle with notions of exile. For instance, in the lead story, the protagonist tries for nine years to work his way "home," even though geographically he is already there. He realizes that, since having left his village for a university education in the city, he has lost what he had left behind in the mountains. Culture becomes a barrier to his return. It is the struggle to break through barriers that characterizes these stories. The conclusion at first sounds grim: that one can never fully vault over the wall of culture that blocks one's path homeward after living in exile. Yet, once the characters acknowledge that impossibility, then they can begin to work with what lies on both sides of that wall. ii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT...................................................................................................................ii 1. BACK TO THE VILLAGE................................................................................. 1 2. UNNATURAL ALLIANCES..........................................................................22 3. THE STRUGGLE............................................................................................. 42 4. YOU REALLY DONT KNOW?..................................................................... 63 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. BACK TO THE VILLAGE 1 In our barrio everyone had their own theory about Letty's illness. One man offered, without my even asking, that she had misplaced her spirit among the piles of laundry of the pilgrims who came to touch her tapestries. The man's wife spat her betel nut. She said that after praying away evil left and right for over eight years, it's no wonder Letty accidentally wished her spirit out of existence. The village chiropractor butted in. He said that spirits often shook loose from a chest weakened by anxiety. He said that fatigued muscles—and what hardworking villager doesn't have them?—become slippery and smooth. He offered us his manipulation techniques and a purple salve to relieve stress and hiccups. Some nuns had just come up the mountain for the day with a delivery of donated clothing from Manila. When they saw me, they talked of the angel who came and relieved Letty of her heavy burden. They said this was the very same angel who had originally brought Letty one-thirty-second of the sadness of the world. An old man with a lizard clinging to his forearm overheard and agreed. He was the one man in the village well-versed in the Epistles. When he spoke to us, a tooth vibrated so that I made moves to catch it if it would fall out. "She's suffered enough," he said. "And the only relief from such memories would be to take them all away." He meant her mind. In this view, Letty first accepted the sorrow of the world when she 1 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. became pregnant out of nowhere. Her belly began to swell eight years ago-two weeks after I returned home from my schooling in Manila. I remember the neighbors treating the pregnancy with self-serving cynicism. Men and women trailed Letty from a distance, with gossiping heads wagging in her direction. When she brought clothes to the washing stone, women looked away. But they stared conspicuously from behind bushes or the fraying corners of their huts. But they never really considered shunning her from the barrio, as had happened to "harlots" in other villages. On the contrary, with an illegitimate pregnancy around, everyone could relax; a person no longer needed to worry about the red boil on his ass, knowing that the sins singled out by God for public censure were not his own. Letty's family distanced themselves more than anyone else. Her six brothers and sisters, all younger than she, stopped talking to her. Her mother left the hut for several weeks. In the village, her eldest brother was known as the General, ever since their father had been killed during a drinking session when he fell in the mud and a carabao crushed his skull. When Letty became pregnant, the General had just turned sixteen. He began bathing three times more often, washing his arms, feet, and backside, shouting, "Boy, it feels good to be clean!" He started pulling the sideburns of his two brothers to stop them from scratching their crotches in public. He threw stones at them when he caught them napping in the sun at midday. He forced his sisters to wait with him for the nuns' delivery of clothing from the city. The General hand chose olive- colored, sack-like dresses four sizes too big, which the sisters wore every day to avoid a spanking from him. with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 3 I tried talking the General out of his tyranny. I tried convincing him that, in these times, a family doesn't need rack itself on old traditions of honor. He began accusing me of things, even though I couldn't have been the one. I'd been away since I was fifteen, and returned only two weeks before Letty started to show. He told me, "Have you been away for so long that you've forgotten: 'You're either wet or dry.'" I was ready to debate with him there, knowing that he'd revised the proverb. Our river had always been so swift and its banks so steep that, for generations, one "was either pulled by its current or standing on solid ground above it." But in recent years, the river's flow had slowed to nearly a trickle, filling only during the rainy season. The river declined so quickly that some were afraid they would wake up one morning and find it a long, empty grave. A narrow shore has formed in places. And there people lounge with their legs lying in three inches of water. It seemed obvious to me, when I returned home from Manila with a B.A., that the river would soon completely dry up. So why would I choose to live in a dying village? I didn't know. I didn't know what Letty would eventually show me: that I regret my chosen exile. When I'd first left, I'd had big ideas about speaking Spanish and English in the intellectual circles of Manila. When the nuns offered a scholarship, they told me the school's name—Ateneo de Manila—Athens in Manila—and I believed they were delivering me to my destiny. In the limestone and granite halls of the university, I pored over Virgil, Beowulf. T.S. Eliot, and Joyce. I bought a camera at the estate sale of an American diplomat, and it proved to be my passion. Would anyone have believed that a newspaper would pay me a Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. salary to capture on film what my eyes were so hungry for already? The problem, I now realize, is that I traded in my eyes when I left. The eyes are quite a fee to pay just to leave home, a fee that can't be recouped.