oh, please don’t drop me home
because it’s not
my home, it’s their
home, and I’m
welcome no more
––The Smiths,
“There Is a
Light that Never Goes Out”
Continental Airlines takes her and will deliver her back.
She left as a Salvadoran child, visited her country as a teenager (with
a migratory category of U.S. Resident Alien), and momentarily returned
as a naturalized U.S. citizen (with the public parlance classification
of hermana lejana). Three travels with contradictory association. Stage
one: A presumed unitary subject, Salvadoran. Stage two: The
hemispherically redundant, Salvadoran American. Stage three:
Certifiable Americanness . . . or going along.
At an altitude of thirty-five thousand feet, Salvadoranness or
Americanness is deployed through affinities for country, food, and
brotherhood. Seat 28D, an American citizen of Salvadoran background,
male, in a Panama hat. Seat 28C: Pudgy Salvadoran citizen, woman, with
an overstuffed belly stretching the length of the seatbelt. Somewhere
in the front aisles: A twentysomething college student with Salvadoran
ties sports the logo of his fraternity.
It has been eighteen years since she last went to San Salvador. Call
that national absence abstractly reaching legal age in a diasporic zone
of ambiguity. The certainty in that diasporic zone––the realm where
legality and illegality are diffused––is economic security furnishing
Salvadoran or American dreams. Home ownership dreams. Car dreams.
Retirement dreams. Transnational dreams with first world nationalities,
as long as dollars pave the way.
Flying over the Gulf of Mexico and through the rough Central American
terrain that looks like fortuitously chiseled rocks hammered with
hills, mountains, valley ranges, and curves, she attempts to speculate
how the life stories will be released post-airplane ride. Who will ask
the first question and about what? How do the versions of America
converge? Do they matter? Where will the stories be grounded? What is
their weight?
She wonders how the questions she raises to herself will be later
revised. Edited for no one in particular. A specialist of her own
concerns is what she is. Her American dream is her doctorate. Even that
is economically worthless. She’s like Antoine, Martin Page’s
protagonist in How I Became Stupid, who is informed of the obvious by a
Parisian unemployment officer. Antoine’s education is equivalent to
professional suicide; he has studied to become unemployed. There is no
intellectual or social glamour to unemployment. She does not desire,
nor can she afford, a bohemian stature. She has to think about
redirecting her professional career goals.
Scribble, scribble, scribble. Back to her self-fashioned repetition of
the thematic, national self.
Fuck national content. Easier written than done. Besides, national
ideologies can certainly fuck one over.
They are all specialists on board. Skilled practitioners of what
Americanness entails. They pledge allegiance to the U.S. and Salvadoran
flags. Red, white, and blue, re-coated with blue and white.
Continental, completing the American process of immigrant
self-reinvention, commercially supplements the missing red in the
latter. No one talks about El Salvador’s previous political flirtations
with red. Communist red. Her mother, seated next to her, is restless
with her fear of gang violence. Such inquietude, at a ground speed of
535 miles per hour, with street shades of red.
The first sight is the name of the nation. In red. Landing at Comalapa
International Airport, El Salvador welcomes visitors in red, block
letters. The official color is not Che Guevara red. Or a red book for
Lenin, as Roque Dalton once wrote.
In the pages of her especially bound journal, red is a color of
caution. Red as emblematic of her self-imposed stop signs seeking
satisfactory responses to the unspoken question: To what does a migrant
return?
Hers is a visitation.
National awkwardness, personal awkwardness, sets in.
Airborne, the passengers are a national family who phenotypically
resembles the other.
Who has custody of this family?
She thought she was the only one who was nervous about the arrival.
Mother and daughter find themselves removed from the motherland. Upon
exiting the plane, they decide they first want to go to the bathroom.
Mother and daughter put their entry into the nation on hold.
After a friendly “bienvenidas” from a customs official and a passport
stamp, her mother is instructed to press a switch. They must wait to
see if the airport light for tourists, for residents of El Salvador who
have been visiting elsewhere, and for Salvadorans who fall under the
qualifier “foreigner” will yield a green or red light. It gives a green
signal, saving them from inspection. They wheel the luggage from behind
them and push themselves forward with slight trepidation.
Walking outside the terminal, the airport seems like a bus depot.
Crowds. Barriers. Flashes. Lottery vendors who linger despite being
told “No, thank you.” Cab drivers who linger despite being told “No,
thank you.” The calling of indistinguishable names. It’s as though the
Salvadorans living in El Salvador are the paparazzi, and the
passengers––local stars, bearers of hope and promise––are being called
from all directions. They are celebrities, national celebrities, and
sometimes with Hollywood stories.
The section from where they exit services the continuous stream of U.S.
arrivals. Thankfully, they were not lost in the crowd and were quickly
spotted by her godmother and her nephew.
Her godmother and her godsister are always key geographic influences.
It was Boston in the 1980s, where she now lives, and El Salvador in the
21st century, where her mother seeks to retire.
They head towards the city in a gray VW van that runs on diesel and is
too large for soccer mom minivan status. It services elementary school
children during the school year. The driver is a University of Central
America undergrad who tells her that the kids are on vacation.
The Salvadoran afternoon heat is unforgiving. “([E]ste país es
un viejo incendio, etc.)” is how Roque Dalton cleverly captures this
climate. The VW has no air conditioner. She rolls down the front seat’s
window. On the right, a truck covered with long, brown sticks that look
like elongated, anorexic yucca, passes them. The U.C.A. student points
to it and voluntarily identifies the items. “Sugar cane,” he says.
Another truck passes them; this time, it is full of people. “Laborers,”
he discloses.
The re-introduction to her country is reminiscent of the opening page
of Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of
Solitude, where Colonel Aureliano Buendía’s childhood in
Macondo
village needs to be described, identified. “The world was so recent
that many things lacked names,” García Márquez writes,
“and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point." She does not
point, of course, and this city is by no means a village. Yet it is
clear that some parts of this not so new world made anew, if only
because she has just arrived, need to be known. Her recollection has
various deficiencies. She lacks specifics, street names. She has lost
certain words. She has no sense of direction.
The country has changed. It demands its due place within her string of
memory. You cannot expect El Salvador to be timeless, she scolds
herself, while your life and consciousness progress. Eighteen years of
national solitude is akin to an assassination of the self, a stubborn
self that selfishly denied her the gratification of exploring a
Salvadoran nationality in its fullest sense, away from the margins of
the U.S. Latino triad. Those identity politics rapidly dissolve. That
triad is marginal here; this population will not accept the fate of
irrelevancy dictated from the North.
The route to San Salvador is a variation of the U.S.–Mexico
borderlands. “Look to the left,” she is told. “Next to that supermarket
is a sweatshop.”
She notices billboards in English. One of the advertisements, featuring
Bracos, the local sneakers, reminds her of a childhood snapshot. She is
fond of that moment, although her brother will disagree. The company
motto under the sneakers is in English, pronouncing, “It’s cool.”
That’s not what her brother had said in the late 1970s, when their
father had shown up with a pair of Bracos. “I want Adidas,” her brother
bemoaned. “And these are Salvadoran,” he contemptuously added. These
days Bracos hyphenates itself. They are Salvadoran–American. (She
continues deliberating. Are Bracos a copy of Adidas? If so, what does
that suggest about their paternal relations? Perhaps their cheap father
had bought her brother cheap sneakers and purchased the legitimate
sneakers for his legitimate family.)
Arrival. The day is long overdue. She is shy about meeting people,
about talking. She can’t tell mountains or volcanoes apart. She asks
how people can tell the difference. “Because they have been pointed to
you since childhood,” is one response.
The lanes are narrow. Sites in motion require her attention. She does
not know where to focus her eyes. The road is abundant with kiosks
selling fresh coconut water, “what all hermanos lejanos crave.” That
pesky phrase reminds her. Can they drive by the monument to the hermano
lejano? “Sure,” he says amiably, “it’s on the way home.” Her godmother
wants to know why she wants to see it. She has another route in mind,
the one where they can appreciate the Antiguo Cuscatlán
neighborhood. The spelling of this Cuscatlán differs from the
one she has previously seen, Cuzcatlán. The clarification is
that “the latter is more indigenous.” As they stylistically wish.
From the quick glimpse she gives the monument, she gathers it is a
large, concrete rectangle extending a greeting in rather unimaginative
terms. Welcome distanced sibling, or estranged sibling, the homage
intimates to ex-patriots. Perhaps her godmother was right, why would
one want to look at that? The salutation does not make her feel
welcome. She would rather hear the greeting from the customs official.
The monument may well be calling her an hermanastra––a stepsibling, a
half-sibling, a rival sibling––who will never be incorporated into the
nation. If one is estranged from the national family can one regain
intimate admittance? Every family has an outcast. Almost a family
member she shall be.
El Salvador is almost America. She’s pointed to the newest mall in the
city, the MultiPlaza. There’s plenty of local talk about the opening of
a new Sears and Starbucks. San Salvador is like a sketch of Florida or
California. They pass the American Embassy, a fenced in complex with
red-tiled roofs that exudes exclusivity––gated, armed, untouchable. It
has the appearance of a country club or university. The idea of the
American Embassy as an educational institution is befitting. The world
is a pupil––a consumer––of American ideologies.
They reach their momentary home––their borrowed home, her godsister’s
home––in Santa Elena. Two English bulldogs greet them, father and
son. The dogs are incestuous and take sexual turns with each
other. Canines gone wild.
They are scheduled to stay for eleven days. Their luggage is taken to
the bedroom on the second floor with a private bathroom.
They have lunch with the family and head to Metro Centro soon
thereafter. A few blocks from the house, a group of teenagers plays
soccer on the main boulevard their car needs to access. Traffic comes
from both directions. There is no stoplight, and the players could get
hit. Maybe that is the added thrill of their game. “It’s like extreme
soccer,” someone comments.
En route, a sign of a smiling President Elías Antonio Saca, his
wife, and children greets them. Under the beaming first family is the
caption: “Un gobierno con sentido humano.” A humane government with an
inhumane past remakes itself.
If Macy’s on Manhattan’s Herald Square were an outdoor mall during
Christmas season, Metro Centro is how it would look. Except today is
not a holiday. It is a weekday. The mall is packed with people watching
other people, window shoppers, couples, families, customers. There is a
never-ending traffic of humans, like a four-lane highway. “My Dad has a
theory,” her companion begins. “He says that the people who come to
Metro Centro on weekdays are the ones who live off remittances.” A few
hours into her trip, and it is evident that the entire nation lives off
remittances. El Salvador’s minimum wage is $120 per month.
They decide to take a break for a few minutes, resting on a bench in
front of a furniture store. She thinks she is hallucinating. Since
sitting, she notices a salesman carrying the same red seat outside the
store three times. She doesn’t know if her mind repeats the scene from
the exhaustion––sort of like counting sheep during an insomniac
state––or a particular customer’s finicky need for symmetry. “They’re
buying a living room set,” her godmother clarifies. “The last piece was
the armchair. Now come the coffee tables.”
Her godsister wants her to try vegan pupusas for dinner at the
Kalpataru Restaurant, S.A. de C.V. (“Deliciosamente natural.”) She
orders a bean and soy cheese pupusa and a zapote frozzen, listed, with
a double z, on the pink receipt. She enjoys the Kalpataru’s spin on
pupusas. Earlier, she noticed a commercially different turn––an
Americanized fast food turn––at the Mister Donut, a traditional food
eatery whose name alludes to what in the U.S. would become a coffee,
pastry, and burger joint. The Mister Donut in Metro Centro solicits
signatures to petition the Salvadoran Assembly for the creation of El
Día Nacional de la Pupusa. National recognition of the pupusa is
planned for the second weekend of February. La Prensa Gráfica
reports that, after a one month and a half campaign, 5,100 signatures
are collected, adding a congratulatory remark, “Not bad for a dish that
is basically comprised of a corn or rice flour tortilla, stuffed with
cheese, refried beans, pork . . . and lately even stuffed with fish and
mushrooms.”
It is late in the evening. She has to send quick e-mails to say that
she and her mother got in okay. The message to her brother says
precisely that: “Hi. Just a quick e-note to let you know that we
arrived safely and are now going to bed. Talk to you soon, tu hermana
lejana.”
She wakes at 6:20 in the morning. She does not know it yet, but that
will be her wake-up call throughout her stay. She contemplates the
early sounds of morning––birds, in the back and front on the house,
congruously singing.
The first story of the day she hears is of a Salvadoran lady, la
niña such-and-such, who makes tortillas every midnight because
she wakes up hungry at 5 A.M.
Their breakfast, cooked by the muchacha from Juayúa, consists of
French-pressed coffee, freshly squeezed orange juice, small, rolls that
are delivered daily and known as French bread even though they’re
locally made and should thus be known as local baguettes, eggs, refried
beans, and Petacones cheese, capitas con loroco style. After eating,
her mother insists that they must do their part in the house, that they
must wash the dishes and help the muchacha with cleaning the kitchen.
The word “servant” is never uttered. It is implied through the synonyms
of muchacha, child, girl. Her godsister senses their unease with
domestic help, and lightly comments, “welcome to the tropics.”
La Prensa Gráfica
is delivered. The stories are a public record
of arrivals and departures, of the unfolding economy. One of the
headlines grabs her attention: “El país recibió
más turistas en el 2004.” Another story reports that Dell plans
to hire five hundred bilingual Salvadorans to assist U.S. customers in
sales or technical support through the company’s call center in El
Salvador. The same page includes an additional note of economic
progress, “Remesas baten récord en 2004.” A full-page, public
service announcement illustrates the highway sign found in U.S.–Mexico
border zones––the one with a hurried man, woman, and child––alerting
drivers about undocumented people running across freeways. The ad
reads: “Canal 21 y La Prensa Gráfica te llevan a conocer los
obstáculos y peligros que muchos enfrentan en su afán de
hacer realidad el sueño americano.”
She has her first Salvadoran bus ride in more than a decade. The bus
had a previous American life. Traces of its yellow, public school days
are apparent: a stop sign still rests on the driver’s side. The bus has
been personalized to the proprietor’s taste. She enters through a
turnstile. She is greeted with the sounds of acid and techno, like a
mobile disco. A masculine voice emphasizes the phrase “welcome to the
jungle” over and over, giving way to Caribbean demands at home or on
the dance floor, depending on what one assumes is the meaning behind
the lyrical request, “dame más gasolina, más gasolina.”
She sits. Others stand. She notices the back of a man wearing a black
leather belt with the inscription, El Salvador. The man seating next to
her carries a Bible. A couple nearby carries a baby girl. The father
contentedly tells his daughter, “One thousand kisses. Not nine hundred
ninety-nine! One thousand!” The ride is bouncy, like ground-level
turbulence. She’s observant. She doesn’t feel parenthetical. They share
un día en común. The window is open. She smells diesel
fumes in their purest, unpurified form. It’s like the scent of the
Lincoln Tunnel has been bottled, well shaken, and explosively released
for her disfavorable inhalation.
Vendors easily walk in and out, selling coconut water, lollipops,
socks, friendship cards. The last merchant is instantly crafty with his
testimonial for Korean Ginseng. She is curious about how the preppy
looking solicitor will build a need for his product. “Good afternoon,
ladies and gentlemen,” he begins. “I am going talk to you about your
health. Health is something that you take for granted. But we can all
take preventative steps to assure that we remain healthy. I am talking
to you about Korean Ginseng. Better than multivitamins. Better than
other supplements. Korean Ginseng has multiple uses for headaches,
migraines, insomnia, back pain, memory loss, tiredness. For only one
dollar, this little bottle of Korean Ginseng will give you energy. . .
.” Mission accomplished. He sells two packs. Anyone else?
Most things cost a quarter. In Salvadoran talk, the price is a cora or
corita. The constant repetition of an item for a corita is a
captivating sound. The language bears the traces of an imposed economy.
The American way of life is acted out in urban quarters, in mobile
spaces, in transient economies. Spoken diminutively, the little quarter
becomes less imposing, while highlighting that the customer is getting
a good deal. Her mother must have thought so. She purchased four
lollipops for a corita, noting, “They remind me of when I was a
cipota.”
Her craving from childhood is the Hawaiian banana split from the Pops
ice cream shop. They go to Pops one afternoon to relive what she
remembers. She and her mother try two flavors before making their
selection. A woman with a hair net urges her colleague, in a tactless,
audible whisper, not to give too many free samples. Their group buys
two banana splits and a milkshake. One of them savors the dessert on
the go. Their car stops at a red light. A little girl appears from
nowhere. Knocking on the window, she points to an object on the
dashboard. She wants the milkshake. The window rolls down. The drink
transfers ownership.
God is public art in this city. He is graffiti. A prayer. An evocation
on walls or commercial spaces. A bus owner has inscribed on the back of
his window, “Dios no te pedimos riquezas. Te pedimos el pan de cada
día.”
They go to the national cathedral and pay their respects to Archbishop
Romero, who is buried there. The Archbishop’s tomb is surrounded by
several small, plaques thanking him for the blessings he has given many
people during times of adversity. They touch the grave and say a
prayer.
A few yards from the cathedral, they speedily walk through the market
at the center of the city. She notices that she can’t look at a kiosk
for more than two seconds. A lingering stare gives vendors the
impression that she wants to purchase something. She looks at the floor
and notices three severed chicken feet on the pavement. They have been
stepped on and flattened by pedestrian traffic. She hears a man
commanding a child, in English, to “Stop it!” One item holds her
attention. It’s a market bag, a white sack that has been industrially
sewn together, with each side bearing the brand of local products. She
tells the saleslady that she wants the bag with the Café
Doreña (100% puro) logo on one side and the Frijosal ad on the
other. “What does it matter?” the lady counters. “What matters is what
you’ll be carrying inside.” Rhetorical question aside, the woman gives
her the Café Doreña/Frijosal reversible sack for
thirty-five cents. Her mother stops for pirated compact discs. Each
costs one dollar and is tested on a portable stereo before the sale.
The dollar bills handed back to them are well worn. They are grayer,
almost a charcoal color, thinner, creased.
That afternoon she heads with her mother, her godsister’s daughter, and
a friend to the MARTE, El Salvador’s Museum of Art. They see paintings
by Carlos Cañas. As they enter one room, they find television
cameras, bright lights, a reporter, and fourteen women in jeans,
slacks, and mini skirts. The women wear a white banner identifying
their department. “Oh, my God,” the friend speaks softly, “these are
the Miss El Salvador contestants.” Instead of engaging with the art,
which is what they paid for, they watch the Misses, who can’t be
bothered with spectators. Interest about the museum’s installations
differs within the group. Some of the Misses stand. Others sit, writing
notes on loose-leaf paper and small memo pads. The rest look bored. The
Misses walk in two groups. The heels clinking from room to room make a
marching echo––a walking noise about the different ways to illustrate
the nation, to wear and interpret El Salvador.
It has been years since she remembers her brother’s games in northern
New Jersey. He was fond of teasing one of their cousins and declaring
her the beauty of Zacatecoluca, the capital of the La Paz department.
Putting on a spectacular, entertainment voice, he would announce, “I
proclaim you Miss Zacatecoluca!” Their cousin would cry and tell their
mother to please put a stop to the decree. The possibility that
Zacatecoluca was a phenotypic mirror of the rest of the nation went
beyond the mestizo adolescents’ amusement. Even the most indigenous
looking people conceptualize themselves in un-Indian, mestizo terms.
The homemade contest had more to do with the richness of the sound and
the images that geographical space activated. Zacatecoluca was a
substitute for Indian, an identity italicized and further emphasized as
a differentiation from their U.S. industrialized world.
Indian––an
affiliated usage akin to Mary Rowlandson’s disdainful
accentuation in her autobiographical account about being taken captive
by Narragansett Indians. Indian
is anyone but the upwardly mobile
mestizo. Watching telenovelas that evening, a character on the Mexican
production, Mujer de Madera,
is described as an “Atlacatl,”
an Indian.
Atlacatl––someone
who has not evolved much since Atlacatl,
the
sixteenth century figure who resisted Spanish conquest in Central
America. Atlacatl
Indianness––that which the majority of Salvadorans
cannot escape.
She has been frequenting shopping malls much more than she is used to.
With its capitalist repetition, San Salvador is more like Alberto
Fuguet’s and Edmundo Paz Soldán’s notion of McOndo, visions of
progress that are “urban, hyper-real, disinclined toward magical
realism, in tune with American popular culture, and with the new
technologies that appear [sic] in the landscape of the continent.”
Malls multiply from neighborhood to neighborhood with the same shops.
American programs bombard Salvadoran homes. She watches Desperate
Housewives and teenage telenovelas like The O.C.. She’s entertained by
That ‘70s Show and
the E! channel. She surfs
through the 30–Minute
Meals host from the Food
Network and her dreadful linguistic shortcuts
like E.V.O.O. for extra virgin olive oil. She prefers tuning into Radio
Femenina’s program “1900 Ayer,” 1900 Yesteryear. The station plays far
more enjoyable and diverse songs than are usually heard on U.S. radios.
She goes to the Centro Romero at the University of Central America; a
civil war gallery paying tribute to prominent figures murdered by the
military. The evidence is behind window cases displaying personal items
that belonged to Archbishop Romero and the Jesuits killed on the U.C.A.
campus. Photo albums capture how the bodies were found. On view are
bloodied books and bloodied shirts. Pictures and letters from the U.S.
nuns who were raped and murdered are shown. A glass case is devoted to
the El Mozote massacre, containing the skulls of an adult and child
beside rusted artillery shells. She thinks that the remains from El
Mozote should be properly buried. Directly above the Romero Center is
the yard where the Jesuits were executed. It is a now rose garden. She
notices two white Americans on her way out, receiving a tour in
English. She e-mails her impressions to a Salvadoran friend in the
States, who responds, “Estoy de acuerdo sobre las calaveras pero la
derecha en El Salvador esta en total denial y te aseguro que si no
muestran esas calaveras, ellos dirian que son mentirillas y cuentos de
la izquierda: las masacres de campesinos.” National memory varies.
“At some point,” her boyfriend had urged when learning that she was
writing a series of autobiographical essays about the self and nation,
“you have to return to El Salvador with your adult perspective.”
Alas, she is back as an adult, with the need to update her history. The
least of her worries is whether she is Salvadoran enough. Stories of
relocation such as hers are not unusual in this country of migratory
subsistence. Two days ago, her next door neighbor from San Miguel had
paid her mother and godmother a visit. La niña Tula––short for
Gertrudis––says that all but one of her kids remains in the country.
The rest are in New Jersey, Texas, Vancouver, and Montreal.
“Ooooohhhh,” la niña Tula says, “If someone had told me a while
back that my kids were going to leave El Salvador, I never would have
believed them.” She adds that not many have stayed from their old
neighborhood.
Their American futures have made ghosts out of their towns and
neighborhoods. But one can always catch up. Her mother has been
thinking about this too. Traveling through the city one afternoon, she
noted, “We leave out of necessity. But we always return to our land.”
Their return date nears. They head to the Mercado Nacional de Artesania
to buy souvenirs. She is not interested in buying folkloric goods for
herself. Family members and friends have stocked her with popular
Salvadoran staples: painted towels with toucans; colorfully engraved
wooden chests; and a cross from La Palma, bearing the designs
influenced by the nation’s most exported artist, Fernando Llort. Her
shopping is limited to one ring and two bracelets made from coconut
shells.
As her mother decides on her purchases, she overhears a group of
college-age students mocking the kinds of things estranged siblings buy
to take to the United States. Their eyes stare at a hammock that
Salvadorans living in El Salvador find in bad taste. “That’s the type
of hammock that only an hermano lejano will buy,” says one. She wonders
what her recently acquired goods say about her. Does one become tacky
abroad, or does local tackiness force one to buy things that are
ridiculously made for decoration overseas?
They buy riguas and atol de elote in Antiguo Cuscatlán. “This is
our tea hour,” she teases as they all sit in the living room chatting
and drinking their atol. They will leave El Salvador the next day. The
rest of the time is a rush to capture as much of the flavors from the
city. Everyone pitches in ideas for delicacies that must be sampled.
One suggestion is cevada and horchata from Mister Donut. Chilate and
nuegados are added, as are green mangoes. She eats as much as she can,
and also drinks what she avoids in the States––soda––only because the
Coca-Cola in El Salvador does not list high fructose corn syrup as an
ingredient.
They head for Comalapa before sunrise, joining the outdoor chaos of the
airport. Her godsister is in the shuttle with them. She is going to
Guatemala City on a business trip.
They go through a one-hour process of checking in, and reward
themselves with a desayuno tipico at the Pollo Campero. People rush in
and out, packing their last taste of the nation. Noticing that a lady
orders a bucket of 40–pieces and that the line is growing, her mother
decides that she wants her own country-style chicken to go. She buys
nine pieces; the gratification is postponed. The taste is to be
replicated in New Jersey.
Boarding the aircraft, she overhears a flight attendant instructing
passengers that if they purchased Pollo Campero, they need to place the
packages under the seat, not in the overhead bins. Their assigned space
is at the end of the airplane. Hers is the window seat. She
contemplates the Salvadoran landscape without ambivalence. Tearing up,
her mother says, “me da no sé qué El Salvador.”
The pilot announces that the flight attendants need to prepare for
departure. She hands her mother a piece of green Clorets gum. Another
hour, another day, another flight. Their repetition of delivery and
loss.
|