New Border Voices: An Anthology

Vozilencio: River of Voices

Vozilencio River of Voices RICHARD YAÑEZ “Welcome to the Front Era! The Border es Aquí y Allá!” (Beer company billboard on I-10 that runs across the US) Women are buried inside my body. And yet the emptiness I feel is from being a man. When I ask my dad why he hurt my mother, he never denies his regret. It’s as if his only sin was not hurting himself more. Like fist through a door, his guilt is hollow. But I know the river of voices that flushes through me is like the dust that my mother curses. Calling the desert home is an invitation to choke. When her throat unclenches, coughs, clears, she will say what no one dared imagine. “I’m a victim.” Words not enough to scare him away, push him back to the man he is before his fingers leave bruises. Dark, deep, like the black paint we’re now used to seeing on pink backgrounds in Ciudad Juárez.    Uneven stitches. Each a mujer’s. Hands perfect for sewing. SONY. GM. RCA. IBM. An assembly line of corporation names, like RIP on graves for those women who actually have body parts to bury. For most, bones scatter throughout the desert with all the trash of NAFTA. In death, dust becomes US While my writer hands did not shovel the earth for my grandmother’s grave at Mt. Carmel Cemetery in Lower Valley El Paso, my memories are as difficult to bury as those of my birthplace. As a child, sand blanketed me in La Loma, my grandparents’ ancestral home. It caressed my soles like a sheet hung outside to ♦ ♦ ♦ 228 ♦ Richard Yañez dry after being washed by brown hands. Micro-beads of caliche, granules blown in our paths. A sensation that still causes me to cry. Tears are wasted in the landscape of the Chihuahuan Desert. Dry ocean that gives hope to ancient tribes of men and women and children. Warriors in an age when we still cast the tools of power with hands that sweep, mop, dig, build. Journal Entry Black Elk: “Be the Silence” Once I walked into La Loma and smelled ghosts. They’d left their haunting on the abandoned furniture. The adobe walls damp with voices never heard. A wife’s pain witnessed by an only child. Distant from the abuse, I felt secure in the tears of my ancestors, all those who’d walked inside/before me. Now, when I wear the desert to bed, I itch in remembrance. The feeling of being lost is not forgotten. My skin cloaked in vozilencio. Grandfather buried above grandmother. Husband over Wife. Although they were buried in new clothes, their bodies were stiff. Their “remains” placed in soft dirt, deep hole, open grace. Desert storms having blessed the earth for another of its children. I helped carry both their bodies. I ran my hands in the dirt I didn’t shovel.¡NI UNA MAS!¡NI UNA MAS!¡NI UNA MAS! ¡NI UNA MAS! ¡NI UNA MAS!¡NI UNA MAS! ¡NI UNA MAS! ¡NI UNA MAS!¡NI UNA MAS!¡NI UNA MAS! ChantsfromthousandsofbordergentemarchingonaValentine’sDay(2004). A holy day that is less about paper hearts than it is about the beating inside my chest. My voice rising from my lungs surprises my thoughts while my feet march through El Paso into Juárez. The streets hold our protests like the banks of the Río (Grande-Bravo). Vozilencio ♦ 229 Overflowing with emotions, our bodies journey side-by-side. The reflections of our voices in storefront windows. We demand justice for Las Mujeres de Juárez. “When will it stop?” I ask mannequins, decapitated and limbless. Nameless photos of women hang over our heads. Heat from the morning sun preys over me and Caro, my wife of less than a year. Her work experience of helping survivors, a light for me to follow in the crowds. In case you were watching, I was carrying a placard: “Ni not Una one Mas more.” Two languages interrupting each other, como siempre. They crossed over from the other otro lado side. Our voices eluded the migra guarding the checkpoints and the police patrolling the streets. Downtown El Paso/Juárez absent of traffic. The people of two cities as close as drooping flags that divide cielo from sky. A witness, I cross the borders of my mouth. ...