A House of My Own: Stories From My Life

Some people who heard me perform early versions of Have You Seen Marie? out loud thought it was for children, but I wrote it for adults, because something was needed for people like me who suddenly found themselves orphans in midlife. I wanted to be able to make something I could give those who were in mourning, something that would help them find balance again and walk toward their rebirth. Since I’ve long admired her work, and because she’d recently lost her own mother, too, I knew that the artist Ester Hernández would be right as the illustrator for the story.

  Ester flew out from California to San Antonio on a scouting mission. Neighbors and their kids posed for us and got involved in the project: we included real people, houses, and places almost as if we were creating a documentary, and this book became a collective community effort.

  I liked the idea of the pictures telling another story about the people of San Antonio, of cultures colliding and creating something new. Folks with blond hair, a German last name, and a Spanish first name inherited from a Mexican grandmother several generations back. Tex-Mexicans with Arab and indigenous features and a Scottish surname. Ultra-devout Catholics with Sephardic roots. Stories the Alamo forgets to remember.

  We are a village, of sorts, with big houses and little houses, home to trust-fund babies as well as folks who have to take the bus to buy their groceries. We have houses with American flags and homemade signs. “God Bless Private Manny Cantú.” “Bring Home the Troops Now.” “Please Don’t Let Your Dog Poop On My Yard.”

  I wanted both the story and the art to capture the offbeat beauty of the rascuache, things made with materials readily at hand, funky architecture and funky gardens, creative ways of making do, because it seems to me that this is what is uniquely gorgeous about San Antonio.

  I knew as I wrote this story that it was helping to bring me back to myself. It’s essential to create when the spirit is dying. It doesn’t matter what. Sometimes it helps to draw. Sometimes to plant a garden. Sometimes to make a Valentine’s Day card. Or to sing, or assemble an altar. Creating nourishes the spirit.

  I’ve lived in my neighborhood for over twenty years, longer than I’ve lived anywhere. Last April, just as folks brushed a new coat of paint on their porches and trimmed their gardens for the annual King William parade, my neighbor, Reverend Chavana, passed away unexpectedly. His family surprised me by asking if I’d write his eulogy. I can’t make a casserole, but I felt useful during a time when I usually feel useless, and I was grateful.

  There is no getting over death, only learning how to travel alongside it. It knows no linear time. Sometimes the pain is as fresh as if it just happened. Sometimes it’s a space I tap with my tongue daily like a missing molar.

  Say what they say, some may doubt the existence of God, but everyone is certain of the existence of love. Something is there, then, beyond our lives, that for lack of a better word I’ll call spirit. Some know it by other names. I know it only as love.

  Ten Thousand

  Once, many years back, I attended a Modern Language Association conference in Chicago during Christmas break with Norma Alarcón as driver. On the way home we were stuck in bumper-to-bumper downtown traffic. Norma was upset. To lift her spirits, I started to read to her from a book I’d picked up at the conference, a reissue from an international series. Just like that, the miserable Chicago traffic and weather disappeared, and we found ourselves on the beaches of Indonesia. When our car started moving again we groaned, sorry we had to put the book away.

  What a catalog of things this writer documented, a world filled with ten thousand things, all of them extraordinary. I especially liked how the narrator talked to you as if she were in the room. Was the author borrowing from the spoken stories of the Javanese, or perhaps from an ancestor? Now as then, it seems to me this book demands to be read out loud. It has the curious ability to resonate within you for a lifetime, like the very best poetry.

  My first “finished” version of this piece is dated August 26, 2008, but I abandoned it until now.

  A woman named Maria Dermoût lived in the Molucca Islands near Java a long time ago. She lived there and fell in love with all island things, even though she was Dutch and not of the island. But as the saying goes, “¿Si los gatitos nacen en el horno, son gatitos o son bizcochos?” Just because the kittens are born in the oven doesn’t mean they’re biscuits.*1

  So this kitten, Maria, became Javanese by choice and not simply chance, and by choice loved Java intimately. She was busy. She was a mother, after all, and then a grandmother. By the time she was done with the ten thousand distractions of being both, she finally had a little time of her own and could profess her love of all things Javanese by taking up her pen. Which she did by the time she was sixty-three, or at least she began publishing then.

  Dermoût wrote two novels. Only two. But one book exquisitely done is worth fifty not worth remembering. Her first is called Days Before Yesterday or Yesterday depending on which edition you read. But the one I want to tell you about is The Ten Thousand Things. And it really does contain ten thousand things sweeping across a geography like Noah collecting all the animals. Tree snails with white shells like porcelain fruit. The giant octopus with its eight grasping arms, who lived in a hollow in the rocks waiting for the fishermen to forget. A flock of noisy, gleaming birds drinking from a moss-covered cistern in a forest that smells of spice trees.

  But not just the animals. The myths and stories too. Pearls from the sea that are tears we will have to cry ourselves, and pearls from the earth disinterred from the graves of the dead, which are never to be worn at all, else they bring death with them. The slave bell that rang whenever a proa came or left—if someone remembered to ring it. The open-sea wind different from the sighs of the land wind, and the storm wind called Baratdaja. The waves, one behind the other, behind the other, behind the other—“the father, the mother, and the child—can you hear it?”

  And the people of the islands. The man who dyed his hair blue with indigo because his son was a fearless warrior. The father and son who had once been sharks and that was why they never smiled, so as not to reveal their pointy teeth. The old woman called the mother of the Pox who had to be fended off with a branch of thorns tied to the front door. The three little ghost girls who had all died on the same day, the day of the great earthquake—or was it poison?—and who visited the garden on occasion and left rose petals in their wake. The fishermen who whistle for Mister Wind to loosen his long hair and allow their boats to go out to sea.

  And the treasures seen and unseen. The sea fans in mauve or dark yellows woven as fine as linen. The much-talked-about Coco Palm of the Sea found in a whirlpool in the deepest depths, a black tree or perhaps purple or violet, because underwater black isn’t always black. And the creature the children feared the most—“the Leviathan who is too terrible!”

  The prayer the island devout chant when someone dies: “ ‘The hundred things’ was the name of the lament…of which the dead one is reminded…a grandchild, a friend, a comrade-in-arms; or his possessions: your beautiful house, your china dishes hidden in the attic, the swift proa, your sharp knife, the little inlaid shield from long ago…” A hundred times a hundred things recited. Then they would close with: “oh soul of so-and-so, and ended with a long-held melancholy ee-ee-ee? ee-ee-ee? over the water.”

  Something of the grand yet intimate voice, something of the detailed lists she creates with patience and poetry to summon a place, a time, a state of being, inspire me to pick up my pen and play at being God.

  But, ay, what a lot of work to write like this! ¡Tanta lata! Nothing but trouble! Like sewing tiny glass beads with a fine needle in stitches that would drive a nun blind. True. All the same, exquisite needlework to make one marvel and turn over the cloth in admiration and wonder. How does she do it? Perhaps the body remembers. “The hand has a good memory.”

  Opening The Ten Thousand Things is like unlocking a curiosity cabinet filled with rare treasures, just like the ones described in its pages. A woman who f
ell into the sea and became red coral. A fleet of jellyfish with sails of milk white and a mass of streamers trailing behind in jewel blues and green. Sadness something you can move past only gradually, like rowing a boat through seawater—“She knew that a bay and rocks and trees ending over the surf cannot relieve sadness—can sadness be relieved, or can one only pass it by, very slowly?”

  If you wish, open this book at the beginning and read to the end. Or you can select any of the chapters, which read like a short story, and indulge in the Javanese flora and fauna that the author has meticulously cataloged to delight our senses.

  The ten thousand things mentioned in these pages pay homage to what was holy to this writer. Dermoût has named her world as she knew it, and in a sense she is reciting her own funeral chant, the ten thousand things that all together made up her life.

  To read this book is to be reminded of one’s own ten thousand things. Jorge Luis Borges said the same in his vignette “The Witness.” He named a piece of sulfur in a desk drawer and the corner of two streets in Buenos Aires as his private legacy, but forgot to mention the obvious—mirrors and tigers.

  And I wonder if all storytelling isn’t a list, conscious or not, of the ten thousand things tucked inside the special drawers of the brain, a curiosity cabinet lined with old silk scented with incense. A pretty fan of real tortoise with gold inlay from the time of before. A basket woven from orchid roots. A snakestone to suck the venom from a sea wound. From the “land at the other side,” Ceram, a plate to detect poison “of rough china, glazed a light even green.”

  * * *

  *1 I found this in There Are No Madmen Here, but author Gina Valdés isn’t sure if it’s Mexican in origin or a family invention. I’ve been told that in Maine folks use a similar adage to differentiate the natives from the invaders.

  The Author Responds to Your Letter Requesting My Book Be Banned from the School Library

  I got a letter from an angry mother in Austin, Texas, that made me even angrier. However, I believe Thich Nhat Hanh has taught me the greatest lesson, and that is not to speak/write when I’m angry. And so, I waited several days…out of necessity since I was traveling, but her letter traveled with me like a burr in my sock. Finally, after a week, I wrote and rewrote this letter. I imagined I was sending it to my father, and this helped me to be more respectful, especially since my mission was to have her hear me. Friends said I was wasting my time, but I have always naively believed in the power of the word, especially when written with love. In the end, the angry mother wrote back and apologized, and we made peace. I am grateful to her for giving me the opportunity to put my thoughts to paper, and doubly grateful she was willing to listen.

  Inn of the Turquoise Bear

  Santa Fe, New Mexico

  Wednesday, November 11, 2009

  Dear JP,

  I’m sorry I was unable to write back to you until today. I’m traveling on a community-read project, and your letter necessitated more than a hasty response.

  First and foremost, my apologies for my writing making anyone ill or ill at ease, least of all a child. My first rule in writing is this—“Do no harm.” I always remind my students and readers of this primary rule. To learn my book had caused any disorder was unsettling. It was never my intent.

  If you have not yet read the introduction to the twenty-fifth-anniversary edition to The House on Mango Street, will you allow me to send it to you? In it I write how and why I wrote the book twenty-five years ago, and that it was dedicated to my high school students, kids whose lives were greatly in need of healing. I wrote because I was only their teacher and didn’t know what else I could do to save them.

  Nine-year-olds are not my target Mango Street audience, though I’m aware fourth graders sometimes read or are read selections from my book. This doesn’t alarm me because the parts they shouldn’t read were intentionally written in a poetic way that should sail over their heads if they’re not mature.

  Though I used a middle school narrator to write this book, I wrote about serious topics in a roundabout way only adults would understand. That’s why I was surprised by your letter that stated my book had made a child ill. I wonder if this child was suffering from experiences he couldn’t talk about, experiences the book may have stirred up—a delicate question that you may not have an answer for, and which may be totally off the mark. I don’t know; I’m not a social worker, but I do know this: social workers and counselors often use my book for young people who have been abused, physically, sexually, or otherwise; it allows them to talk about difficult subject matter without having to speak directly about themselves.

  Regarding my author bio—“She is nobody’s mother and nobody’s wife.” I meant no disrespect to you or anyone who is a wife and mother. I was stating the personal route I had to take in order to become an author. To be nobody’s mother and nobody’s wife was not a choice for me, but a requirement; I was poor and could hardly raise a child alone on my salary. And being single was a result of another kind of poverty: my poor choice in men, though in retrospect, I’m grateful for these constraints. They allowed me the solitude and single-mindedness necessary to write.

  True, I have no biological children, but I have, as it turns out, become a mother nonetheless. I have over one hundred creative writers I mother directly and indirectly through my two foundations, the Macondo Foundation and the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Foundation, along with thousands of readers of all ages I work with through my public engagements in libraries and schools across the country. Even though all this is exhausting and takes me away from my desk, I strongly believe the work of community outreach is part of my task of healing and making nonviolent social change in a time of extreme fear and xenophobia.

  In addition to my work as a writer, I shelter several stray animals annually and find them permanent homes. All are my children, and believe me, my work, like yours, is never done.

  Now, I must address your objection to my book featuring witches. Your fear is a cultural misinterpretation, I suspect. In Mexican culture we have gifted women who are called brujas or curanderas. They are healers, herbalists, visionaries, midwives, advisers, and spiritual guides. Women have these same intuitive gifts in North American culture too, but here they’re called intuitives, counselors, holistic doctors, therapists, psychics, health workers, social workers, nurses, artists, or nuns.

  Brujas are not necessarily the same as an evil sorceress, though they can be if they use people’s fear for their own gain. I have known a lot of politicians, media personalities, and religious folks who use people’s fear for their own gain, and if you ask me, these are the sorcerers we need to be wary of. In my perspective, anyone who works with their positive, feminine spiritual energy is a bruja/o, and we all have the ability to develop this divine gift, just as we all have the potential to turn into public menaces by working from fear.

  I believe books are medicine. A library is a medicine cabinet. What can heal one person may not work at all for somebody else. You know when something is healing you, just as you know when something isn’t. And if my book isn’t doing the trick and doesn’t serve you, you’re not required to keep reading. But please allow it to remain on the library shelf for someone else who needs its particular medicine.

  Further, if you feel the book is inappropriate for your child, you must do what your heart guides you. That too is your responsibility. My own is to write my truth, and I certainly don’t insist that children read my books. Personally, I don’t think we can make children read anything they don’t want to read, do you? True reading comes from pleasure, not obligation. When obliged to read something that doesn’t speak to you, you’ll ultimately forget it. If, however, it brings the right medicine for whatever ails, you’ll remember it. This is the nature of art.

  Finally, I don’t know where in my book you found prostitution since I don’t recall writing about any prostitutes in House on Mango Street. However, a reader must bring her own connotations to the text. My book was written in an e
pigrammatic way since I wanted to write a new kind of novel fusing poetry and fiction together. The stories are there for you to reflect on, like poetry. They are dense and intentionally enigmatic so the reader has something to discover, to savor, since so much of what happens in my stories isn’t in what is said, but in what is not said.

  I agree with you. This book was not written for children, and I often find myself editing my selections when children turn up at my public events. (I read the funny chapters for them.) House was written for adults and for children who have lived experiences beyond their years. But children insist on reading my work for some reason, and who am I to forbid what wasn’t forbidden to me? I often read books beyond my years when I was a child plucking books off the shelves of the Chicago Public Library. I couldn’t take home books beyond the “juvenile” or “young adult” categories, but I could read anything I wanted while I was there. Most adult books bored me back then, to tell you the truth, and I think boredom is censorship enough.

  I trust my books will only take flight in the minds of those who need these stories. Those too young or not needing my particular dose of medicine will be bored, and that’s how it works best, in my opinion.

  May you find the right books to fall in love with and be transformed by, and may those books that don’t meet your needs be placed gently back on the bookshelf. I wish you well in your journey of self-discovery.

  Sincerely,

  Sandra Cisneros

  The Girl Who Became a Saint: Teresa Urrea

  In 2011 a friend invited me to contribute to a book project on women revolutionaries. I picked Teresa Urrea (1873–1906). Once I even planned to write a novel about her, but her descendant, the writer Luis Alberto Urrea, claimed this project himself, so I stepped aside. Teresita Urrea, like the Oaxacan shamaness María Sabina, is a personal hero. I used strands of both these women’s lives to create the witch woman character in “Eyes of Zapata,” a story I wrote about Emiliano Zapata’s wife.