New Border Voices: An Anthology

Voyeurism, or the Third-Party Politician

Voyeurism, or the Third-Party Politician DALEL SERDA We cruised for whores on a Saturday afternoon. Ninfa needed one, and as it turns out, that made it so I did. We didn’t skirt the issue; we got to work under the Valley’s incessant sun and thorny mesquites lining her neighborhood. “Let’s go get you a girl,” I said, turning up the volume on my car stereo, adding a soundtrack to our hunt. She was girl number one, and we looked for girl number two. I watched a smile come and go from her mouth, her neck in motion, her braids swinging from side to side brushing the soft curve at the back of her ear; I watched her in my periphery, keeping time, smelling faintly of Vaseline dancing next to me as I drove her to the park we call La Placita. ♦ ♦ ♦ Recently, Ninfa shifts the course of my evenings like a curse. I think of her when my husband climbs into bed beside me. Ninfa is my obsession. I worry my conscience is too cheaply thrilled by this legendary, elusive prostitute, by this controversial character I’ve started calling friend. On nights when I’ve spent long hours writing of her, thinking of her, listening to her, and coming home late after seeing her, I imagine myself as her when my husband leans over and I feel his unrazored face scour the side of mine. I am Ninfa when he turns me over and runs his fingers along my spine and the back of my legs. Even in the obscurity of night, I see the dark purple bruises—hickeys —that appear on the lower curve of Ninfa’s neck every few weeks. The stamp of one of her lovers: a single john among many. My husband is unaware that at times I’ve grown repulsed by sex because it’s a part of every single one of Ninfa’s conversations, and I aim to detach myself from them. Because in her mouth, sex sounds dirty. She says sex and laughs when she’s proud of herself and her exploits, or she says sex and cries. I narrow my gaze to blur the image of my husband’s silhouette above me. I cover my eyes with our sheets when he reaches for me at daybreak and finds me faraway against the opposite side, nestled against the wall. I’ve grown passive in our bed; the image of Ninfa has invaded me, and if I do not see myself as her, I see her at our feet, telling us to relax like she tells her johns, turning on the area ♦ ♦ ♦ Voyeurism ♦ 33 fan, massaging our legs or taking off her blouse; it lies in a pool of black nylon in the corner of our room. She smiles; she does not touch me more than necessary; she prefers to touch my husband. Her large breasts fall soft across her chest, across the blanket at the edge of us. For now, Ninfa haunts me; she’s both inside and outside of me, she’s woven herself into my fabric. At times, I’m saturated with sex the same way she’s saturated with sex. My knowledge of her burdens me: I feel full with the anonymous sex I’ve never had, with the men I’ll never meet, never touch, never let kiss me, with the money they would give me that would never be enough. ♦ ♦ ♦ But the mornings—all of them—bring the promise of a new canvas, a cleansed state, a wiped chalkboard with its dust settling on me like powdered sugar, a thin film of it refusing to ever wash away completely. On mornings when I plan to see her, I start from scratch; I let her build the day with her words and actions; I let my imagination rest. It’s only under this false pretext of authority that I am able to work and document her life because she asked me to write a book of her while my original intention was merely to find her—esta leyenda. Yes, I meant to write of her—a poem, an essay: a manageable piece—because she is, after all, folklore ; she’s the local character we hear about as children whose existence we can never verify. “Mira, es la Ninfa,” we’d whisper . . . “Look,” we’d say, “It’s Ninfa.” We feigned understanding. She’s my hometown of Harlingen’s Llorona, roaming Fair Park at night. She...