La(cuna) | Chloë Rose
I just started learning español from the lips of a woman married at fourteen. She is raising her son’s daughters; at forty-four, she raises another set of children that she calls mis babies. I’ve encountered Spanish throughout my life, living in a land that once was Russia or Mexico, knowing that the strawberries or espinacas I ate were picked by migrant workers. I knew the cost of that sale on salad, the lack of sense in paying someone merely cents.
In Spanish, I encountered the word hueco first. No. I encountered the word naranja first. No. I encountered the word no first, not knowing then what I know now: that my language had been changed by Normand conquest a millennium ago, that the stock I would have come from, the commoner, was subjugated to a word for no that wasn’t their own. Orange is an ugly word. Hole is an ugly word. But naranja settles in the back of the throat like the sprays of citrus when you eat one. And hueco, I was told, meant more than hole, like duende means more than a sadness-ecstasy. The example I was given for hueco was this, from a guero no less:
You see shoes hanging in pairs on wires or intersections, right? But if you only saw one half of the
pair, knowing a half was missing, that would be a hueco. Or a red ball rolling without a child to
throw it. That would be a hueco.
That example is either correct or incorrect. Raquel Salas-Rivera translated huequitos, little huecos, as “holies.” The pun is beautiful, but I wondered: if that white man who said he spoke Spanish was just another gringo tan borracha or if for a holy there was an implication of something lacking—that the little hole needed something in it. Can’t a hueco be alone, in and of itself, without something missing from it? Can a huequito be complete in and of itself.
I think of Salas-Rivera’s potent arm of femininity, the self-same arm that penetrates, that conjures blood, that knows its favorite tomb. And so I, never having had an orgasm, began with a naranja, seeing in its navel something like my own malformed, mutilated sex organs. Not quite an orange, not quite a holy.
As I peeled each naranja, loosening its clothing of pith, I waited to penetrate the holy, eating the naked juicy flesh until I held it, my holy and navel, as one would hold a blossom or a jewel. I no longer craved the personless penetrate and craved a language that separated the first person from the second, the penetro from the penetras.
I needed to find a holy of my own.
#
As I tore apart oranges I learned to see holies. As I ate at juiced naranjas I saw in its navel only huequitos. But these beautiful, nature-made holies did not miss anything from itself, did not need anything to fill it. These huequitos were gorgeous antonyms from filled or complete. These holies were imperfections made perfect, in the grammatical sense, because while they were holes and they had formed they were, despite an appearance of lack, complete. They were naturally incomplete, complete in their incompleteness.
I think of that bastard latinate word for my parte. Calling my huequito, my holy, a sheath implies a need for a sword. But I need no sword. All I’ve ever needed was one potent, feminine arm. Again, I speak grammatically. By the standard of language I was taught, masculine words break rules while feminine words follow them. But perhaps feminine words aren’t weak as they’re called in German, schwach or leich. Perhaps, being bendable and soft, they can ally with any place their placed. The feminine arm knows how far to go. It knows when to stop, when to yield, when to run. It knows when to be penetrado or penetrar.
#
The day my mother kicked me out of her home, me—impoverished, disabled, mentally distressed—I called my caregiver, the woman who is raising another set of babies, and I cried in Spanish over the phone: me quema, me quema, vengaven porfa me quema. If I were to translate this, there would be holes. I cried other things: no me dormi, no pude. Podriasi que no hay Sistera. I forgot the word hermana so I cried what I could. When I think about it, I’m proud of myself, because, in the middle of disaster I remembered the preterite of difficult verbs.
It burns me, It burns me, you’re coming? Come please it burns me. I slept myself not, I couldn’t. I could if that there were no sister.
I meant to say:
I’m burning. I’m burning. Come come please I’m burning. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t. I could if I didn’t have a sister.
Was I correct? Or is there a hueco here?
#
“you are so much more than your translation,” Salas-Rivera says. A Mexican scholar I met some years ago spoke with an English accent. He conducted a Socratic seminar on translating sonnets from the 15th century from English into Spanish. He was also beautiful, his nose aquiline like the conquesting Spaniards who fucked his grandmother and blessed (which sounds like the French word for bruise) him with those European features. Was that his beauty? A nose? Carefully manicured facial hair. The European accent in my native tongue?
No. His beauty was his words, words he probably earned because of his beauty. But when that fades, what he said about translation will be made true. He said something like “We always translate. Translation is the act of explaining something to yourself.”
My father, the one who won’t speak to me anymore because I won’t bear the family’s secrets, said “Don’t believe everything you think.” When you explain something to yourself, you must remember “you are so much more than your translation.” Y pués, no sé que un hueco esta así—un holy, un orificio que no hay su otra parte. ¿Pero ahorita? ¿Pa mí? Sé que tengo un hueco que falta nada que mis brazos que me apoyan, así como una (la)cuna. ¿Cuál es mi parte?
(¿?)
I just started learning español from the lips of a woman married at fourteen. She is raising her son’s daughters; at forty-four, she raises another set of children that she calls mis babies. I’ve encountered Spanish throughout my life, living in a land that once was Russia or Mexico, knowing that the strawberries or espinacas I ate were picked by migrant workers. I knew the cost of that sale on salad, the lack of sense in paying someone merely cents.
In Spanish, I encountered the word hueco first. No. I encountered the word naranja first. No. I encountered the word no first, not knowing then what I know now: that my language had been changed by Normand conquest a millennium ago, that the stock I would have come from, the commoner, was subjugated to a word for no that wasn’t their own. Orange is an ugly word. Hole is an ugly word. But naranja settles in the back of the throat like the sprays of citrus when you eat one. And hueco, I was told, meant more than hole, like duende means more than a sadness-ecstasy. The example I was given for hueco was this, from a guero no less:
You see shoes hanging in pairs on wires or intersections, right? But if you only saw one half of the
pair, knowing a half was missing, that would be a hueco. Or a red ball rolling without a child to
throw it. That would be a hueco.
That example is either correct or incorrect. Raquel Salas-Rivera translated huequitos, little huecos, as “holies.” The pun is beautiful, but I wondered: if that white man who said he spoke Spanish was just another gringo tan borracha or if for a holy there was an implication of something lacking—that the little hole needed something in it. Can’t a hueco be alone, in and of itself, without something missing from it? Can a huequito be complete in and of itself.
I think of Salas-Rivera’s potent arm of femininity, the self-same arm that penetrates, that conjures blood, that knows its favorite tomb. And so I, never having had an orgasm, began with a naranja, seeing in its navel something like my own malformed, mutilated sex organs. Not quite an orange, not quite a holy.
As I peeled each naranja, loosening its clothing of pith, I waited to penetrate the holy, eating the naked juicy flesh until I held it, my holy and navel, as one would hold a blossom or a jewel. I no longer craved the personless penetrate and craved a language that separated the first person from the second, the penetro from the penetras.
I needed to find a holy of my own.
#
As I tore apart oranges I learned to see holies. As I ate at juiced naranjas I saw in its navel only huequitos. But these beautiful, nature-made holies did not miss anything from itself, did not need anything to fill it. These huequitos were gorgeous antonyms from filled or complete. These holies were imperfections made perfect, in the grammatical sense, because while they were holes and they had formed they were, despite an appearance of lack, complete. They were naturally incomplete, complete in their incompleteness.
I think of that bastard latinate word for my parte. Calling my huequito, my holy, a sheath implies a need for a sword. But I need no sword. All I’ve ever needed was one potent, feminine arm. Again, I speak grammatically. By the standard of language I was taught, masculine words break rules while feminine words follow them. But perhaps feminine words aren’t weak as they’re called in German, schwach or leich. Perhaps, being bendable and soft, they can ally with any place their placed. The feminine arm knows how far to go. It knows when to stop, when to yield, when to run. It knows when to be penetrado or penetrar.
#
The day my mother kicked me out of her home, me—impoverished, disabled, mentally distressed—I called my caregiver, the woman who is raising another set of babies, and I cried in Spanish over the phone: me quema, me quema, vengaven porfa me quema. If I were to translate this, there would be holes. I cried other things: no me dormi, no pude. Podriasi que no hay Sistera. I forgot the word hermana so I cried what I could. When I think about it, I’m proud of myself, because, in the middle of disaster I remembered the preterite of difficult verbs.
It burns me, It burns me, you’re coming? Come please it burns me. I slept myself not, I couldn’t. I could if that there were no sister.
I meant to say:
I’m burning. I’m burning. Come come please I’m burning. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t. I could if I didn’t have a sister.
Was I correct? Or is there a hueco here?
#
“you are so much more than your translation,” Salas-Rivera says. A Mexican scholar I met some years ago spoke with an English accent. He conducted a Socratic seminar on translating sonnets from the 15th century from English into Spanish. He was also beautiful, his nose aquiline like the conquesting Spaniards who fucked his grandmother and blessed (which sounds like the French word for bruise) him with those European features. Was that his beauty? A nose? Carefully manicured facial hair. The European accent in my native tongue?
No. His beauty was his words, words he probably earned because of his beauty. But when that fades, what he said about translation will be made true. He said something like “We always translate. Translation is the act of explaining something to yourself.”
My father, the one who won’t speak to me anymore because I won’t bear the family’s secrets, said “Don’t believe everything you think.” When you explain something to yourself, you must remember “you are so much more than your translation.” Y pués, no sé que un hueco esta así—un holy, un orificio que no hay su otra parte. ¿Pero ahorita? ¿Pa mí? Sé que tengo un hueco que falta nada que mis brazos que me apoyan, así como una (la)cuna. ¿Cuál es mi parte?
(¿?)